Palestinians pray during Laylat al-Qadr in the holy month of Ramadan, at the compound that houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City. Photo: Ammar Awad/Reuters.
By Suad Abdel Aziz – Jun 30, 2025
There’s a word that keeps showing up whenever resistance movements in Africa and the Middle East are discussed: “Islamism.” It appears in headlines, policy briefings, and even activist spaces, almost always as shorthand for “extremist,” “undemocratic,” or “terrorism.” Hamas in Gaza. The Yemeni armed forces fighting foreign occupation. The Sudanese military. Iran’s anti-imperialist state. Despite vastly different political contexts, they are all branded Islamist. But where does this label come from, what does it mean and what work is it doing?
The term Islamist didn’t emerge organically from Muslim communities. It was coined and popularized by U.S. intelligence agencies, especially the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as part of a counterterrorism lexicon that divided Muslims into binary categories: the “secular” Muslims, deemed safe and cooperative, versus the “Islamists,” portrayed as irrational, violent, radical and incompatible with modern governance.
This framework was never about understanding Muslim political life—it was about controlling and manipulating it. A 1985 CIA intelligence report, for instance, outlines how to distinguish between “traditional” Muslims and those considered “Islamist fundamentalists,” clearly implying that any political expression of Islam is inherently subversive.
This racialized framework rests on the liberal-secular assumption that religion belongs strictly in the private sphere. But that assumption is deeply ideological. It comes from a Euro-American political tradition in which governance is supposedly “neutral” while in reality being saturated with Judeo-Christian norms. As Edward Said highlights in his seminal Orientalism, the West has long constructed the “Muslim Other” as irrational and threatening, defining itself in contrast as modern, enlightened, and rational. The idea that Islamic governance is uniquely oppressive or backward erases the reality that many states—including the United States—are governed through religious values and ethno-nationalist principles. The West’s real objection is not to religion in politics, but to Islam in politics.
Labeling a movement Islamist is not an objective descriptor- it’s a form of political warfare. It delegitimizes Muslim political agency and brands any Islamic alternative to Western liberalism as inherently dangerous. In Palestine, the label “Islamist” has been central not only to justifying Israel’s refusal to recognize Hamas, but also to framing all resistance as extremist, thereby rationalizing the collective punishment and targeting of Palestinian civilians. In Sudan, the genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia justify their campaign of terror by claiming to fight “Islamist terrorists”– a narrative eagerly picked up by the UAE and spread through Zionist news outlets like the Jerusalem Post, where a recent op-ed openly calls for Israeli intervention in Sudan under the guise of counterterrorism.
This framing is also dangerously misleading within Sudanese political discourse itself. Among the Sudanese diaspora and segments of the opposition, there’s a growing tendency to call corrupt military figures or opportunistic politicians Islamists, simply because they use Islamic rhetoric. But this is a misdiagnosis. The people of Sudan are not rising up against sharia or Islamic values—they are rising up against authoritarianism, corruption, and the betrayal of Islamic principles. The issue is not Islamic governance; it’s hypocrisy and corruption.
Much of this confusion stems from decades of distorted portrayals of sharia. In dominant Western media, sharia is often misrepresented as a draconian legal system that aims to subjugate non-Muslims. In reality, sharia is a diverse ethical framework grounded in principles like justice, equity, and communal welfare. Islamic political expression is not a monolith. It is deeply varied, shaped by local histories, cultures, and aspirations. Historically, non-Muslims living under Islamic governance were protected, allowed to practice their faith, and governed by their own religious laws. The idea that Islamic law is inherently oppressive or incompatible with pluralism is a colonial myth.
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That’s why even civil rights organizations like CAIR have denounced the term Islamist as ill-defined and derogatory. It has no consistent meaning other than to mark certain Muslims—and their politics—as suspect. It functions as an Islamaphobic dog whistle and a green-light for occupation, drone strikes, blacklists, and propaganda wars. And liberalism, deeply internalized in many of us, makes it easy to reproduce this framing, even in progressive spaces. This internalization is the product of decades of media narratives and school curricula that present Western liberal democracy as the default model for modernity and progress. In his lesser-known work, Covering Islam, Edward Said explains how the legacy of colonialism still shapes what kinds of voices and beliefs are seen as legitimate, especially when it comes to Muslim communities. Western media, in particular, has played a powerful role in painting Islam as irrational, violent, or stuck in the past. Over time, these ideas creep into how we think, shaping what kinds of political expressions are seen as legitimate and which are dismissed as backward, irrational, or extremist.
We must be more precise in our language. If a government is repressive, if a leader is corrupt, if a political movement commits harm, critique it clearly and specifically. But don’t outsource our analysis to the same vocabulary used to justify genocide and domination.
Because when you call a group Islamist, you’re not just describing- you are indicting.
You’re invoking a counterterrorism framework designed to crush Muslim self-determination. You’re aligning with a system that destabilizes entire regions, topples democracies, and replaces them with puppet regimes who serve Western interests. And worst of all, you’re alienating the very communities whose liberation you claim to support.
It’s time to retire the term Islamism. Not just because it’s analytically lazy or politically dangerous—but because it was never ours to begin with. It’s a tool of the empire. And we can’t dismantle the empire with its vocabulary still in our mouths.
Suad Abdel Aziz is a Sudanese American lawyer and founder of Decolonize Sudan, supporting Global South defenders and challenging human rights abuses through legal advocacy, education, and organizing.
