Two really unhelpful political terms

...are:

1. Islamism. This is supposed to refer to the view that Islamic faith should impact on one's political views. Guess what? A lot of Muslims think that - and quite frankly, good for them: the idea that one should (or even can) separate one's politics from one's substantial ethical commitments being a liberal prejudice we'd all be better off without. Amongst the Muslims signed up to this view are socialists and feminists, think Salma Yaqoob, any number of tedious and unremarkable parliamentarians the world over, oh, and ISIS. I wonder who out of that list you think of when you hear the word 'Islamist'. Oh, and 'Islamist' sounds quite a lot like 'Islam'. You see where this is going? Compare the hardly-ever-used term 'political Christianity'. This would encompass Tony Benn, Tony Blair, Ian Paisley, the Ku-Klux Klan, German Christian Democrats, Chinese underground Catholics, some of the Palestinian resistance, a good proportion of Tea Party members, liberationist fighters in Latin America.... Do you find it a particularly helpful political category? Well, then.
2. Extremism. This is the current term for Bad Things on the part of UK (and wider) state agencies and media. Thus ISIS are, when they are not being Islamists, extremists. Sometimes they are Islamist extremists; more worryingly they are often Islamic extremists, of which more post haste. The thought presumably is that were ISIS moderate theocratic murderers, that would be all well and good. Why must people always take things too far? Related to the extremism trope is the perennial creed of the English bourgeoisie, that the truth always lies midway between two extremes. Faced with two proposed answers to the question "What is twice eleven?", twenty two and three thousand, a certain type of calculating pragmatist would split the difference somewhere in the mid thousands. Anyway, extremism, to the extent that the word means anything at all, is surely a good idea. We should react in an extreme way to a world in which millions starve needlessly. Also notice the danger of modifying "Islam" with "extreme" to describe ISIS - as one recently blocked Facebook 'friend' put it, "If Islam really is a religion of peace, why aren't their extremists really peaceful?". The KKK are never "extreme Christians". Once "extremists" have been established as people who blow up shopping centres and behead soldiers on the street, however, animal rights protestors, peaceniks and other similar enemies of civilisation become "domestic extremists".

Anyway, thanks for letting me get that rant off my chest. I've been on holiday.