Morocco’s Prime Minister: ‘We Are Muslims, Not Islamists’

And that settles it. Doesn’t it?

There are still many people in the U.S. and Europe today who carefully draw a distinction between “Islamism” and “Islam,” insisting that while the former is a danger, the latter is benign and cuddly, and should be welcomed wholeheartedly into the West. Last month, on September 10, 2026, The Economist made this plain with an article entitled “Islamism is a threat to Britain. Islam is not.” And now Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, who became prime minister of Morocco on September 29, has agreed, stating of Moroccans that “we are Muslims, not Islamists.”

As they say in the South, Well, shut my mouth. I’ve noted many times over the years that “Islamism” is a Western construct designed to distance Islam from the crimes done in its name and in accord with its teachings. There is no concept of “Islamism” in Islamic theology or law; Islam is inherently political, and all the elements of “Islamism” are found in standard Islamic teaching across all mainstream sects and schools of jurisprudence. Cowards and trimmers still use it to court mainstream approval, but those who are more interested in truth and accuracy than mainstream acceptance and big donor checks do not use it.

Yet here is the prime minister of Morocco using the term “Islamist.” So I must have been wrong all these years, no? Well, maybe. As it happens, other Muslims are criticizing El Mansouri for making this statement, because they recognize that the term has no legitimacy from an Islamic standpoint. A typical response to El Mansouri from a Muslim on X: “‘Islamists’ is a Western term and this term ‘Islamist’ does not exist in Islam. The religion is call Islam and its believers are Muslims. Yes she is not an Islamist. ‘Islamist’ is a misleading term against Islam.”

In fact, the desire to separate “Islamism” from “Islam” stems from nothing within Islam itself, but from the impulse of non-Muslim Westerners to regard Islam as a benign entity having to do purely with spiritual matters, and to exonerate Islam from the crimes done in its name and in accord with its teachings by consigning those crimes to the realm of “Islamism,” which is understood to be a certain adulteration or bastardization of the genuine, benign Islam.

This is just wishful thinking on a grand scale. Islamism, i.e., political Islam, is part of Islam proper. The West will never figure out a way to have its fantasy of a benign and pluralistic Islam without having jihad terrorists and Sharia supremacists who are working to make their countries into Islamic states.

Certainly there are Muslims who do not wish to pursue the expansion of political Islam. Muslims, like everyone else, being susceptible to a wide variety of influences, priorities, desires and goals, with the religious impulse being just one of these. That is an obvious and undeniable fact. However, the political, supremacist, expansionist and violent aspects of Islam cannot really be separated, as “Islamism,” from Islam proper. There is not now and never has been such a distinction within Islamic theology and law, and even today, there is no major sect or school of jurisprudence that does not teach that under certain circumstances, Muslims must wage jihad, understood as physical warfare with guns and other weapons, in order to establish the hegemony of sharia over a hitherto non-Muslim entity.

So what is Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, when her people know that the distinction between “Muslims” and “Islamists” is entirely spurious, and she knows that they know? She is courting the West, hoping for foreign aid and to smooth over any objections that anyone may have to that aid based on suspicions that it will end up in the hands of jihadis. She is also trying to signal to her own people that jihad activity will not be tolerated in Morocco. This also could even be a signal to Spain that the invaders from Morocco who have poured by the thousands into Ceuta are nothing to worry about, for the Islam in Morocco is harmless.

Whatever Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri may have intended, however, the jihad against unbelievers is an imperative that is firmly rooted in Islamic texts and teachings, as is the goal of imposing Sharia and denying basic rights to unbelievers. Some Muslims in Morocco will continue to pursue that goal, no matter what their new prime minister says about “Islamists.”