Islamist

[Lynne Murphy]

Dennis Baron asked about _Islamist_:

The term is used in the UK often, and checking back into the BBC archives
it was used well before Sept 11.  (I can't tell you how far before, but I
got as far back as 1997).  It is in the names of various political
parties--at least as they are translated into English--and many of the
earlier citations I found were just using it as part of a name, but these
days it's used in general to refer to a certain kind of politicised Islamic
fundamentalism.

After Sept 11, I recall some overt discussion of the term in the news
media.  A quick search finds Salman Rushdie in the Guardian (3 Nov 2001)
writing:

'These Islamists - we must get used to this word, "Islamists", meaning
those who are engaged upon such political projects, and learn to
distinguish it from the more general, and politically neutral, "Muslim" -
include the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the bloodsoaked combatants of the
FIS and GIA in Algeria, the Shia revolutionaries of Iran, and the Taliban.'


You can see much more discussion of the term on the web if you put "word
Islamist" into Google.

Would be interesting to use _Christianist_ in the same way to refer to
politicised Christian fundamentalism.  I've searched for that on Google and
most examples seem to use it as a neutral adjective (The Christianist Era),
but found an article on 'nationalistic christianism':
<http://shock-awe.info/archive/000811.ph>

There's also a political editorial about 'islamist' (vs. 'christianist')
from a-Jazeerah at:

<http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/Feb/7%20o/
Sticks%20and%20Stones%20May%20Break%20My%20Bones,%20Michael%20Saba.htm>


Cheers,
Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics

Department of Linguistics and English Language
Arts B133
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9QN
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