Over at Harry’s Place they are discussing Timothy Garton Ash’s struggle with terminology to describe Islamic imperialists. Rather than being drawn into that debate, I’m more interested in those who do not wish to make the distinction between various strands of Muslim opinion. These people can roughly be divided into two groups, the first being left wingers who refuse to accept such terms and label them as Islamophobic - who are probably motivated by an unwillingness to accept terminology used by their political opponents. The second group are right wingers who see Islam as the central problem. One example of this crops up at Harrys Place in the comments:

I don’t like ‘Islamist’, one bit - because Islam is a political ideology anyway.

Despite the professed anti-fundamentalist stance of this commentator, he concedes too much to the fanatics. They do not represent all Muslims. Many Muslims do not want a theocracy - see the struggle in Iraq as an example.

His objection to Islamist is also undermined by his later choice of the term Koranic literalist, since that would suggest that he thinks there are followers of Islam who are not literalists - otherwise why make the distinction? The correct term for the group people like this have a problem with is Muslims, shown by their inability to accept there are people who can follow Islam without desiring its role in the political. I meet these types of people everyday, they are not hard to find.

Koranic literalism is also useless term, because it depends on the interpretation of literalism being used - one could be peaceable, one not. In addition, it ignores the point that modern day jihadists owe as much to Nazi anti-semitic propaganda and Western European totalitarian movements as to the religion they purport to represent, as people like Berman and Küntzel have put forward. Left wingers avoid terms like Islamist or Islamofacist precisely because they see it as endorsement of such ideas. They prefer to see a monolith of peacable people under attack from arrogant imperialist Western ideology, undermining the progressive forces under attack by Islamist forces. By not opposing extremism, they weaken moderates lengthening the time it will take to undermine Islamists - who will eventually lose as their fanaticism will never carry the majority (see the fall in support for Al Qaeda over the years).

What the right wing variant does is give the impression of a monolith of organised violent people who are not amenable to reform, have no interest in democratic states, and who can only be fought militarily. There are no moderates in this universe. They may as well say they have a problem with all Muslims and be done with it, since just like Osama they believe all Muslims, to be real Muslims, should comply with the most extreme interpretations of Islam. It is form of wish fulfillment for these people to be involved in some sort of religious war, and their adoption of Al Qaeda’s binary division of the world is ironic given their professed defence of democratic values. The only logical conclusion to their analysis is war without end.

See also Norman Geras for another discussion about Garton Ash’s piece.