what the hell is ISLAMISM?

Seriously, ....is the world populated by idiots, or do i just always happen to find things that piss me off totally in local papers.

take today for example, some stupid "white" surbabanite, named DOUGLAS PIERCE, currently residing in the suburb of observatory in johannesburg, wrote in to the saturday star opinion column, ... i qualify "white", so it is clearly understood that this is a south african, from a privileged class, who obviously has not had much to struggle for in his priviliged existence, and for whom not much in life has really changed. post independence.
douglas, i would also suggest before you post opinions in white liberal newspapers, you catch up on some reading. to guide you in this regard, try..tariq ali/edward said /robert fisk/john pilger. perhaps some active discussion with enlightened membrs of the muslim community, might go a bit further in improving your rather limited knowledge of islam, as a faith and a way of life.

the title of his piece "NO WAY ISLAMISM ISN'T ISLAM". DOUGLAS WHAT THE !@#$%#$$@ IS islamism?, all of a sudden, pseudo intellectual's, have created an ism out of the islamic faith, this great brain goes on to say, that if you claim that islam is not islamism, its like saying judaism is not jewish, and christianity is not christian.
obviously i have missed some raging debate in the paper between all these poorly read pseudo intellectualls,... as, douglas, is also harping on the fact as to why the question of not removing jihad from the Quran has not been answered.
reading this i realise the extent to which people are ill informed and uneducated, i wish you would take some time out to read before you post crap, for the rest of us to read.

douglas is seemingly not belonging to a religious faith, nor has he understood, the concept behind jihad, "struggle", this is not to assume that i am a great scholar in this regard, but for me jihad really is the struggle, translated simply, the struggle of life, every man/woman wether muslim or not, struggles daily, but the struggle is also greater, it's the fight for human dignity, it's the fight for religious freedom, it's the fight to survive in a world which has become acceedingly intolerantt of people, simply because they have bought into the propagandist machinery, in this case the ant-islamic sentiment, ...

jihad... , is to create a space in the world, both in the world of islam and in the world of the west, in which freedom of thought and imagination can be defended without fear of persecution and death.
further than that,.. douglas, since the jihad u undersatand is played out on your television screen daily, what could drive a people, any people to the depths of despair that they are willing to take their own and others lives in a bid to reclaim their humanity, have you ever thought of that, when you learn to walk in the shoes of the other,.. douglas, then perhaps you might understand the motivation's behind jihad.

i am just pissed with white liberal bull shit, and it's about time that you got off your soap box, and really understood, what life in the not so privileged world is like. and for fuck sake, who the hell would want to fly a boeing 747 into your house, your not worth the effort, ...

back to this term islamism, what the hell is that.
"islam" as it is used today seems to mean one simple thing but in fact it is part fiction, part ideological label, part minimal designation of a religion called islam. in no really significant way is there a direct correspondence between the 'islam' in common western usage and the enormously varied life that goes on within the world of islam, with its more than 8milion people, in millions of square miles of territory,principally in africa and asia, its dozens of societies, states, histories, geographies, cultures.
on the other hand 'islam' is perculiarly traumatic news today in the west, the media have prior to and since september 11. portrayed it, characterized it, analyzed it, therefore made it "known".
this coverage is biased and misleading, with help from academic experts on islam, geopolitical statergists who speak of the 'crescent of crisis', cultural thinkers who deplore 'the decline of the west' ,...it has given consumers, like douglas,..the idiot,.. the sense that they have understood islam without at the same time intimating to them that a great deal in this energetic coverage is based on far from objective material. in many instances 'islam' has liscenced not only patent inaccuracy but also expressions of unrestrained ethnocentrism, cultural and even racial hatred, deep and even paradoxically free-floating hostility. all this has taken place as part of what is presumed to be fair, balanced responsible coverage of islam. aside from the fact that neither christianity nor judaism, both of them going through remarkable revivals, is treated in so emotiomal a way., there is an unquestioned assumption that islam can be characterised limitlessly, by means of a handful of recklessly general and repeatedly deployed cliche's.

'islam' has always represented a particular menace to the west, see edward said, "orientalism" it is no accident that the turbulance and upheavals which are know taking place in the muslim world have exposed the limitations of simple minded orientalist cliche's about 'fatalistic' muslims without at the same time generating anything to put in their place except nostalgia for the old days when european armies ruled almost the entire muslim world, from the indian sub-continent right across to north-africa.let us say that discourse on islam, if not absolutely vitiated is certainly colored by the political, economic, and intellectual situation in which it arises, in reality "truth" about islam is relative to who produces it.

so to the like's of the douglase's of the world,...
the atrocities of 9-11 serve as a dramatic reminder of what has long been understood; the rich and powerful no longer are assured the near monopoly of violence that has largely pre-vailed throughout history; and with modern technology, the prospects are horrendous indeed. though terrorism is rightly feared everywhere, it is not surprising that perceptions about its nature differ rather sharply at opposite ends of the guns, a fact that is ignored at their peril by those whom history has accustomed to immunity while they perpertrate terrible crimes,...in another's homeland.

despite my long diatribe, i have not as yet understood, what the hell islamism is.