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In Prothero’s God is One, he explores the notion of Islamism, defining Islamism as a “radical form of politicized Islam.”
He notes that Islamism means different things among different groups, but the “ism” largely denotes an ideology—that being an anti-Western and anti-American ideology applied to“political ends.”
The goal of Islamists is to “purify Islam” from the “pollutions of modernity.” Politically, this means creating Islamic states that adhere to their version of Islamic law.
Prothero thus posits: “if Islam is a religion, Islamism is a political project, revolutionary in aim, utopian in spirit, and radical in all senses of the term.”
He says that ultraconservative intellectual movements like Salafism do share much with Islam, but are distinct and regularly antagonize it, given that Salafists, for example, focus in redirecting religions traditions bak to “the pure, primitive, Islam of the earliest Muslims.”
So, that’s Prothero’s take on Islamism! Check out my full Religion 101 article list (useful for studying, or just learning!) here.