This article is about political Islamism. For an article on the religion of Islam, see Islam

Islamism is a set of political ideologies derived from Islamic fundamentalism. Islamist ideologies hold that Islam is not only a religion, but also a political system that governs the legal, economic and social imperatives of the state according to its interpretation of Islamic Law.

The term “Islamism” first appeared in eighteenth-century France as a synonym for Islam. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was being displaced by the latter, and by 1938, when Orientalist scholars completed the Encyclopaedia of Islam, had virtually disappeared from the English language.Martin Kramer: Coming to Terms -Fundamentalists or Islamists?

It attained its modern connotation in late 1970s French academia, thence to be loaned into English again, where it has largely displaced “Islamic fundamentalism.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines Islamism as, "An Islamic revivalist movement, often characterized by moral conservatism, literalism, and the attempt to implement Islamic values in all spheres of life." Dictionary: Islamism

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