Where are these “Islamists” that everyone keeps talking about?

An e-mail I sent to Michelle Malkin:

Michelle,

You continue to do great work at your blog. I’m sorry to hear that certain parties are trying to bring down your website because of the cartoons.

What I’m writing to you about is the term you use to describe activist Muslims. You rarely call them Muslims. Instead, you use the word “Islamist” and “Islamists.” (Below I’ve listed several current examples from your blog.)

My question to you is, what is the basis for this term? Have any of the people you are referring to described themselves as “Islamists”?

For that matter, can you point to any Muslim person that has ever identified himself as an “Islamist”? Can you identity any Muslim organization that has ever identified itself as “Islamist,” or any Muslim movement that acts in the name of “Islamism”?

Since the people you’re writing about do not call themselves Islamists, what is your basis for calling them that?

When we speak of Nazis, there was an actual Nazi party running Nazi Germany. When we speak of Communists, there was an actual Communist party and Communist ideology which controlled a large part of the earth and had millions of followers elsewhere. But where is there an “Islamist” ideology? Where is there an “Islamist” party? Where is there a country run by an “Islamist” government? These things don’t exist.

Therefore, how can we describe Muslims as Islamists, given the fact they don’t call themselves that? What they call themselves is Muslims, followers of Islam. Since that’s what they call themselves, shouldn’t we call them the same?

Here are some current instances of “Islamist” at your blog:

• I. Security Pro News reports on the latest Islamist hacker attacks spurred by Cartoon Jihad:
  

• . AP reports on the worst violence in the Islamists’ pretextual protests against the Mohammed Cartoons today in Pakistan:
  

• And the Islamists burned down a McDonald’s too in the name of fair and balanced anti-Western jihad:
  

• In Iran, Islamists attacked the British embassy with Molotov cocktails and also targeted the German embassy (via Vital Perspectives):
  

• Speaking from a country that sent us the majority of the 9/11 hijackers and from a conference that banned Denmark for daring to speak up against Islamist bullies, Al Gore this weekend blasted the United States for its “abuses” against Arabs:
  

• There are a few brave men left in France. Hooray! Two of them—dressed in pro-Denmark shirts and gear—went to the Islamists’ demonstration over the Mohammed cartoons at the Place de la Nation in Paris, France this weekend.
  

• No Pasaran has the story of the Danish-American and French-American’s peaceful stand against the angry Islamists here.
  

• My problem, as I’ve made clear on this blog, is with radical Islamists at home and abroad who threaten our existence. I don’t care what they wear on their heads. I care what’s in their heads and what’s strapped around their chests and and what’s hidden in the soles of their shoes and what’s being cooked up in their labs and nuclear reactors.

But then you also write describe the same people as “Muslims”:

• III. Andrew Cochran at The Counterterrorism Blog reports on Muslim cyberterrorist hacking of American websites, and posts one reader’s thoughts on where this is headed:
  

• Muslims in Canada are threatening to sue over publication of the cartoons.

Best wishes,

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 16, 2006 10:22 PM | Send