re: #824 Aceofwhat?

The basic logic is twofold, for me:

Calling it ‘radical Islam’ over and over, rather than, even ‘Radical islamists’, but even better ‘violent Islamicists’ or ‘violent Muslim extremists’, associates “radical’ with ‘Islam’. This can have the twofold effect of making non-Muslims associate Islam with being radical, leading to the distrust of all Muslims, no matter how moderate they are— a conviction that somewhere they must actually be radical— but also, for Muslims, makes them feel that they are included in that.

For example, Spare O’Lake has repeatedly castigated a Muslim website for ‘shilling Sharia’, ‘peddling Sharia’, etc, even though Sharia is just the name for ‘living like a good Muslim’ and is not a monolithic whole, but instead varies according to sect, mosque, Imam, and individual believer. It is like saying that a Jewish synagogue is ‘shilling Halakha’. The word ‘Sharia’ has been used so often to mean the most radical forms of Sharia that people don’t bother to say ‘radical Sharia’ or ‘extremist sharia’, but denounce sharia as a concept. This means that even a completely moderate Muslim is having what is a part of his faith denounced over and over, and his form of sharia conflated with the most violent and oppressive forms.