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by mpyne 4756 days ago
Also remember when all the fatwas were proclaimed for a Danish newspapers publication of a cartoon featuring the Prophet Muhammad? That's not even considering the issue of extremist religion and Sharia law, as led to the shooting and near-murder of Malala Yousafzai.

Islamist culture is not entirely compatible with Western democracy, just as far-right fundamentalist Christian extremism is not entirely compatible with Western democracy (e.g. the 1996 Olympic Park bombing).
1 comments
jckt 4756 days ago
Why do you say Islamist and not radical Islamist, while you say Christian extremism and not just Christian?
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mpyne 4756 days ago
I'm using Islamist as the term was first defined, which means exactly "Islamic terrorism". As far as I know there's never been a popularly-agreed-on meaning of "Islamist" other than that, if you're referring to the peaceful followers of Allah the term is Muslim, or perhaps Islamic, but never Islamist.

Christian on the other hand is already overloaded with many meanings and I don't feel like inventing new words when I can simply add adjectives as appropriate.

Pray tell, is my explanation sufficient?

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tome 4756 days ago
"Islamism" certainly does not mean "Islamic terrorism". It means a belief that Islam should be a force in the public sphere, not just a private religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism

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gngeal 4756 days ago
Which is precisely the thing that is incompatible with Western democracy. Of would you like to amend the First Amendment?
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tome 4756 days ago
It's absolutely incompatible with democracy, and more importantly in my opinion, with liberalism.
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jckt 4756 days ago
Sorry, I didn't realise that such a term was even widely used. Accepted!
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mpyne 4756 days ago
Well, it's certainly a pity that Islamic terrorism is a big enough threat that they had to invent a Huffman-coded word for it. Though perhaps we can treat it as a relief that Christian terrorism is no longer so prevalent that we had to make a shorter term for it after we invented 'terrorist'.

Though I hear 'Crusader' is a close equivalent among many Muslims, for obvious reasons. I don't think Americans or most West. Europeans would understand that as a negative connotation though.

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