Key Points:

More than 2 billion people worldwide practised the faith of Islam by 2020, marking a sharp increase of 347 million people since 2010. With 2030 just a few years away, the number of people practising Islam continues to rise. According to a study by the Pew Research Centre, Muslims are the second-largest religious group in the world, following Christians.

The rising number of discourses surrounding the faith of Islam has led to a conflation of the terms Islam and Islamism. Does a form of political ideology emerge from a form of faith? If so, why is it often segregated? Gad Saad, a Canadian professor and author, sheds light on the recurring debate on “Islam vs Islamism” in a conversation with host and American conservative Dave Rubin.

Gad Saad stated in one of the episodes of The Rubin Report, aired on August 11, 2017, that “Islamism is part of Islam.”

See Also: Origins of Islam: From Muhammad’s Early Preaching in Mecca to Political Authority in Medina and the Subsequent Expansion of Islam into Parts of Europe

Born in Lebanon to parents of Jewish origin, Saad expressed that dividing Islam into several categories is not an ideal approach. He described this process as misleading and remarked, “It is a misnomer to constantly come up with qualifiers before the word Islam.” Saad further explained his position by stating that Islam and Islamism are not different; rather, the latter is a part of Islam itself.

The religion of Islam is commonly understood in its most widely recognised sense as a faith that acts as a guiding principle for its followers. Saad further added that Islam is a “set of codified ideas” that includes both a “spiritual element” and a “political element.” He further pointed out that many people refer to Islamism as something separate from Islam as a faith.

Islamism is described as a “radical political ideology” that promotes the expansion of its influence into the political landscape, including government, laws, and everyday life. The most prominent and widely recognised distinction between the two is that Islamism is often viewed as a separate entity that seeks to regulate society.

Saad told Rubin that the political element within the codified ideas of Islam is none other than Islamism. He elaborated the reasoning behind why people segregate the two terms. “I understand the reason why people want to do this. It’s because they feel as though it’s too gauche to frontally attack a religion,” Saad said. He added that people find it easier to criticise something that has “ism” at the end of it.

Saad said, “So if you attack something that magically has ‘ism’ at the end of it—Islamism—that’s okay.” He questioned what he described as the hypocrisy of such distinctions, stating that there is not a plethora of segments originating from the religion, but rather the religion itself.

See Also: What is wrong with our Western leaders? Ayaan Hirsi Ali Warns Radical Islamism Has Evolved Into a Deeper Ideological Threat

He added, “But the reality is, if we’re truly going to have a serious and honest conversation about this topic, we have to recognise that it’s not radical Islam, it’s not Islamism, it’s not militant violent extremism, or any other permutation of a euphemism you come up with. It’s Islam.”

He criticised people for selectively choosing certain aspects of Islam that they prefer while disregarding or turning a blind eye to other aspects of the religion. He described this as a “cafeteria version of Islam,” where individuals pick the parts they like and ignore “the endless parts that they don’t like, and that becomes their personal relationship with Islam.”

Gad Saad explained that this cafeteria-style approach is not limited to Islam but is widely practised across almost all religions.

He further elaborated on the rationale behind such selective belief systems, stating, “But you (Rubin) and I and everybody else don’t stay up worrying about Seventh-day Adventists.”

He argued that Islam should not be given a free pass on all fronts, asserting that the real issue, according to him, lies within a particular variant of Islam. As per Saad, Islam is codified in the Quran, codified in the Hadith, and codified in the Sirah, the biography of Muhammad.

Saad raised a hypothetical scenario, asking whether one could read all these religious texts and “come up with a message of brotherly love and love for Jews.” He then answered, “No, that’s not Islamism. That’s not radical Islam.”

The Canadian marketing professor has authored several books, including The Saad Truth About Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life (2023), Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind (2026). Saad is also an active advocate for the integration of evolutionary psychology into marketing and consumer behaviour.

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