The Inseparable Relationship Between Islam and Islamism

The Inseparable Relationship Between Islam and Islamism

July 17, 2026 · 18 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the relationship between Islam and Islamism, exploring their conceptual differences and connections through Sayyid Qutb's work.

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 171 A heated and important discussion rages about the two parallel terms "Islam" and "Islamism." Are they the same? Is there some difference? Is that difference, if it exists at all, a distinction without any real difference? Different people have different, and strong, opinions on this matter. To look into it in this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay does something he's famous for doing: turning to an original source. In this case, the source is Sayyid Qutb's 1964 book Milestones, a radical Jihadist Salafist book that reinvigorated and reinspired the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, then beyond. He reads a short segment here from Milestones (https://amzn.to/4vQZNC7) that makes clear that at least for Qutb's style of Salafist Islam, "Islam" as the religion and "Islamism" as "the movement" to implement that religion are intrinsically connected in the same way as theory and praxis are wedded in Communism. Join him to understand that while there is a conceptual difference between the religion and the "correct" movement to implement the religion, they are in fact at the end of the day fundamentally inseparable. Join us for the Preserving…

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