Austin Bay documents how al Qaeda’s chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has had a falling out with his religious mentor, Isam Mohammed al-Barqawi, because Barqawi told al Jazeera television that “the number of Iraqis killed in suicide operations has become a tragedy.” To which Zarqawi warned,

“… do not follow the path of Satan that leads to your destruction. Beware, our noble sheik, of the trick of God’s enemies to lure you to drive a wedge in the ranks of the mujahedeen.”

I am wondering whether we are starting to see a split forming within Islamism. Maybe it would help to explain the difference between Islam and Islamism - a distinction, by the way, of meaning mostly to the West that Muslims themselves do not generally make.

Islamism has been defined by scholars such as Gilles Kepel as “political Islam” and it existed long before Osama bin Laden came along. (See my PDF essay on the history of Arab terrorism.) What we call Islamism began some decades ago as a Muslim reform movement and was not originally violent. Islamists generally call for the unification of a Muslim country’s law and social order under the umbrella of sharia, strict Islamic law. The apparati of the state, the mosque and civil society would be a single, organic unity.

Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the closing days of 1979, Islamism began a merger with jihadism. I would define jihadism as a war-based, expansive, aggressive form of Islamism for which violence is the central tactic and main act of worship. Jihadists have strict boundaries marking who is a true Muslim and who is not. Generally, jihadists consider only themselves, supportive Islamists and submissive ordinary Muslims as falling within true Islam. Even bona fide Islamists like Barqawi who seem to have reservations about the indiscriminate lethality of jihadis can fall into the category of Muslim apostate, for whom death is the penalty.

Hence, Zarqawis warning to his now-former Islamist mentor that he is following the “path of Satan” is a clear indication that jihadism allows no self-critical thinking. To be accused of following Satan is one of the worst accusations a Muslim can make of another Muslim and clearly indicates that Zarqawi believes Barqawi is at least dangerously close to apostasy.

Jihadism is a virulent outgrowth of Islam. I think that jihadism should now be distinguished from Islamism, although the two are still closely related in their religious theory. But their practices are starting to diverge, at least a little, even though Islamism and jihadism have the same long-term objectives. Their differences concern not what they want to accomplish, only how. (I delineated the objectives in part one of this series.)