The West keeps making a category error. It treats Islam as “a religion” in the narrow civic sense modern liberal societies usually mean: private belief, voluntary worship, and a clean separation between pulpit and state.

Islam can be lived that way. Many Muslims do live that way. But Islam, as a tradition, also carries a developed legal–political vocabulary: a picture of how authority, law, community, and public order ought to be arranged. That does not make Muslims suspect. It makes Western assumptions incomplete. A liberal society can only defend what it can name.

A faith that has historically included law

In the classical Islamic tradition, sharia is not only “spiritual guidance.” It is commonly described as governing interpersonal conduct and regulating ritual practice, and in some countries it is applied as governing law or in specific legal domains. (Judiciaries Worldwide) That matters because the modern West is built on a particular settlement: religious freedom inside a civic order that does not belong to any religion.

The relationship between religion and governance in Islamic history also does not map neatly onto the European story of Church versus state. Even critics of the simplistic slogan that Islam “fuses religion and politics” concede a real point beneath it: Muslim thinkers draw distinctions between din (religion) and dawla (state), but the domains and their interrelations do not mirror the European pattern. (MERIP)

So when Western elites insist, “Islam is just a religion,” they are not being tolerant. They are being imprecise. And imprecision is how liberal societies lose arguments before they begin.

The distinction that matters: Islam and Islamism

Precision starts by separating two things that get blurred, sometimes by ignorance, sometimes by strategy:

  • Islam: a religion with immense internal diversity, spiritual, legal, philosophical, cultural.
  • Islamism (political Islam): a broad set of political ideologies that draw on Islamic symbols and traditions in pursuit of sociopolitical objectives. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

A devout Muslim can reject Islamism. A culturally Muslim person can reject Islamism. A believer can treat sharia as personal ethics while rejecting its coercive imposition in a pluralist state. Islamic sources themselves contain the frequently cited line: “Let there be no compulsion in religion.” (Quran.com)

But it is also true that in many parts of the world, substantial numbers of Muslims express support for making sharia “the official law of the land.” (Pew Research Center) That doesn’t prove anything about your Muslim neighbour in Edmonton. It does establish something narrower and important: the political question is not imaginary. It is not a fringe invention.

The engine: infallible doctrine, universal horizon

The political question is whether a movement treats its doctrine as a governing blueprint, one that must eventually become public authority. That is what makes Islamism different from ordinary piety: it is not satisfied with private devotion or voluntary community. It wants law, policy, and state power aligned to a sacred ideal.

If you want a useful analogue for how Islamism works, look at Marxism. Not in theology, mechanics. The doctrine is treated as infallible, so failure can’t belong to the doctrine; it must belong to the people, the impurities, or the enemies. That logic produces a predictable politics: dissent becomes not an alternative view but a problem to be managed, re-educated, or removed.

From there, the “universal” impulse makes sense. This is not always military conquest talk. More often it is a civilizational horizon: the expectation that Islam should be socially and politically ascendant, with public authority aligned to that vision. Classical Islamic political vocabulary has long included categories describing the realm where Islam has “ascendance,” historically paired with an external realm. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

A liberal society can coexist with any faith. It cannot coexist with a program that treats liberal pluralism as a temporary obstacle to be overcome.

What the West keeps getting wrong

Western discourse often collapses three claims into one muddy accusation:

  1. “Muslims are dangerous.” False, unfair, and morally corrosive.
  2. “Islam has a legal–political tradition.” True, and visible in texts, history, and institutions. (Judiciaries Worldwide)
  3. “Islamism is a modern political project that can conflict with liberal norms.” True, and increasingly relevant. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

If claims (2) and (3) are denied out of fear of sounding like (1), the result is not compassion. It is blindness. And blindness is not a strategy.

What a liberal society should do

This does not require panic. It requires clarity.

First, speak precisely. Say “Islamism” when you mean political ideology. Say “Islam” when you mean the religion broadly. Don’t use a sweeping civilizational label to do the work of a specific critique.

Second, draw the civic line cleanly: the liberal state is not negotiable. Freedom of worship is protected. Violence and harassment are punished. Attempts to import coercive religious governance into public law are rejected.

Third, stop outsourcing integration to slogans. Liberalism is not a magic solvent. It is a culture of habits, rights, obligations, and red lines that must be taught and applied evenly.

Fourth, refuse collective guilt. Defend liberal norms without treating ordinary Muslims as a fifth column. A society can oppose an illiberal political project while still welcoming neighbours who want to live in peace.

Here is the honesty sentence: if political Islam is largely marginal in Western societies, with negligible institutional influence and no meaningful appetite for parallel authority, the urgency of this argument drops. If, instead, organized efforts continue to carve out exemptions from liberal norms, to pressure institutions into censorship, or to substitute religious authority for civic law, the urgency rises.

The West doesn’t need a religious war. It needs vocabulary. It needs the courage to name ideological ambition without demonizing human beings. And it needs to remember that liberalism is not the default state of humanity. It is a fragile achievement that survives only when people are willing to defend it

References

  1. Federal Judicial Center, “Islamic Law and Legal Systems” (overview of sharia as governing interpersonal conduct/ritual practice; sometimes governing law). (Judiciaries Worldwide)
  2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Islamism” (definition as political ideologies pursuing sociopolitical objectives using Islamic symbols/traditions). (Encyclopedia Britannica)
  3. Pew Research Center, The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society (overview and chapter on beliefs about sharia; questionnaire language on making sharia official law). (Pew Research Center)
  4. MERIP, “What is Political Islam?” (discussion of din/dawla and why European categories don’t map neatly). (MERIP)
  5. MERIP, “Islamist Notions of Democracy” (notes the common modern formulation of “religion and state” and its relationship to secularism debates). (MERIP)
  6. Qur’an 2:256 (“no compulsion in religion”) and Ibn Kathir tafsir page commonly cited in discussion. (Quran.com)
  7. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Dār al-Islām” (political-ideological category describing the realm where Islam has ascendance, traditionally paired with an external realm). (Encyclopedia Britannica)