Conservatives are seemingly aware that insisting on “radical Islamic terrorism” nomenclature is a hollow ruse, the purpose of which has more to do with appealing to Islamophobic sentiment and dividing liberals than with any geo-strategic goals. What gives the “radical Islam” language away as a partisan wedge is that it’s highly prescribed and revealingly imprecise at the same time. When they aren’t hammering away at that wedge, conservatives are happy to use specialized terminology, which is both more precise and less inflammatory.

We'll be fighting the Salafi jihad, today called AQ+ISIS, for many decades yet. This is war. You really don't want to let these animals win. — John Schindler (@20committee) November 28, 2015

John Schindler is a blogger, former professor and former NSA analyst, and champion of the national security state. I cite this tweet not to associate him with any particular opinion about the religious right or Republican war rhetoric, but to illustrate the fact that plenty of conservatives are smart enough to know the term “Salafi jihad,” and to use it when they want to project erudition. None seem to realize that it gives the “radical Islam” game away entirely. Liberals and Democrats would have no problem defining groups like ISIS as jihadist or Salafi jihadists, which should obviate the need for more alienating terms like “radical Islam”–except that “radical Islam” pays unrelated political dividends, and must therefore supersede more appropriate diction.



What’s less surprising, but more dispiriting, is that conservatives are unable to see the trouble with conflating terrorism and radical Islam reflected in their own cognitive rejection of the terms used to describe Dear.

If conservatives had their way, the media would consider it off limits to describe Dear as Christian or right wing or anti-abortion—let alone to reference a generic concept like right-wing Christian terrorism—because we don’t know all the facts, and because even if it turns out he’s all of those things, his actions don’t reflect the values of Christian conservatism.