Dear Sam —

I’m greatly enjoying your latest podcast episode, The End of Faith Sessions Episode 2. As a Bernie Sanders supporter who is planning reluctant support for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election, I don’t think I have heard a more precise dissection of the national embarrassment that is Donald Trump. The phenomenon you’ve witnessed first hand of my fellow Bernie Sanders supporters withholding their support for Hillary because they want better than the lesser of two evils is frustrating for me personally, and I do hope they come around. It seems we were once again on track for complete agreement, until the city of my birth became the latest victim Jihadist terrorism.

I think we can agree on that label: Jihadist terrorism. I think there are several less precise labels that are also valid, including Islamist terrorism. Islamic terrorism is even accurate from my perspective as an atheist. Then again, I take no issue with calling Robert Lewis Dear Jr. a Christian terrorist, an Evangelical terrorist, and a Pro-life terrorist, though I think the most precise term would be Anti-choice terrorist. Yet my Christian, pro-life friends don’t seem to appreciate the labels Christian or Evangelical terrorism. My pro-choice Christian friends seem to appreciate the labels even less so, and I think it is natural to want to separate . You and I have both felt the need to separate ourselves as atheists from Craig Stephen Hicks, who murdered three of my fellow students at UNC Chapel Hill. And our arguments are perfectly sound: That individual never cited his atheism as justification for the murder of Deah Barakat, Yusor and Razan Abu-Salha. But if he were to do so, we would be able to say quite easily that Atheism does not give any commandments, therefore he is wrong on an intellectual level. We could also top the denouncement sundae with the cherry of his mental instability. Yet, I would still resent the use of the phrase Atheist terrorism in this case.

My resentment would be on multiple levels: We don’t know that this case was terrorism, although it was very likely a hate crime, which shares many of the concerns we have for terrorism. But more importantly, it was not his atheism that drove him to carry out this crime: It was any number of other factors that drove him there. And I would never contemplate doing something similar… Do people think that I am a potential terrorist because I am an atheist? I share nothing else with this murderer, and his brand of atheism must be different from mine if it drove him to kill his next door neighbors. How dare anyone lump me in with this nutjob!

I have several friends who are observant Muslims. I have spoken with a few of them briefly about ISIS, about terrorism, and even about Donald Trump. I had the privilege of explaining to one of them the nuances of my meaning when I said the words Islam, Islamism or Jihadism, as you and Maajid Nawaz discussed in Islam and the Future of Tolerance. None of my friends so far as I can tell are at risk of suddenly becoming Jihadists. Still, the way a certain demagogue has rallied this country and emboldened Islamophobes to come forward with their fears is enough to frighten me, and likely them as well.

Islamophobia is another word I feel the need to defend as well, though I will agree with you on its frequent misuse. I do not consider you an Islamophobe, although you occasionally let yourself be thought as one when you don’t pepper Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s “some but not all” over your speech sufficiently. But I can’t say the same of one of my former undergraduate students and his father. The younger of the two recently posted on my facebook wall a series of videos that would be perfectly at home in Nazi Germany if they were discussing Jews instead of Muslims; the most offensive (and obviously flawed) of these being this gem. People who actually believe that every Muslim is in favor of Shariah law and Jihad are essentially claiming that every Muslim is a closet Islamist. For people who hold this irrational fear towards Islam and Muslims, I cannot think of a more accurate or precise word than Islamophobia.

I will agree with you that failing to name the problem of Jihadist terrorism is a problem, as would be a failure to recognize Islamism as the ideology we are at war with. But that is neither a war with Islam, nor a war Muslims — although most if not all of the people on the other side of the war would describe themselves as Muslim. Some small number, not all, of Muslims are a threat to our country and way of life. So let’s try to be precise with the language here, and call this small, incomplete group of Muslims what they really are: Jihadists. And let’s call their allies what they are: Islamists. There’s no need to lump a million-fold larger group of Muslims into this.