Islamism, DEFINED, ORIGIN

Terminology

Originally the term Islamism was simply used to mean the religion of Islam, not an ideology or movement.

It first appeared in the English language as Islamismus in 1696, and as Islamism in 1712.^[29]

The term appears in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in In Re Ross (1891).

By the turn of the twentieth century the shorter and purely Arabic term "Islam" had begun to displace it, and by 1938, when Orientalist scholars completed The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Islamism seems to have virtually disappeared from English usage.

The term remained "practically absent from the vocabulary" of scholars, writers or journalists until the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1978–79, which brought Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of "Islamic government" to Iran.^[30]

This new usage appeared without taking into consideration how the term Islamist (m. sing.: Islami, pl. nom/acc: Islamiyyun, gen. Islamiyyin; f. sing/pl: Islamiyyah) was already being used in traditional Arabic scholarship in a theological sense as in relating to the religion of Islam, not a political ideology.

In heresiographical, theological and historical works, such as al-Ash'ari's well-known encyclopaedia Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn (The Opinions of The Islamists), an Islamist refers to any person who attributes himself to Islam without affirming nor negating that attribution.

If used consistently, it is for impartiality, but if used in reference to a certain person or group in particular without others, it implies that the author is either unsure whether to affirm or negate their attribution to Islam, or trying to insinuate his disapproval of the attribution without controversy.^{[31][32][33][34][35}]

In contrast, referring to a person as a Muslim or a Kafir implies an explicit affirmation or a negation of that person's attribution to Islam.

In order to evade the problem resulting from the confusion between the Western and Arabic usage of the term Islamist, Arab journalists invented the term Islamawi (Islamian) instead of Islami (Islamist) in reference to the politicists, which is nonetheless sometimes criticized as being ungrammatical.^[36]