When and why did “Muslim” become “Islamist” in the media? I’ve been seeing the term “Islamist” more and more lately.
Did somebody suddenly find out that the word “Muslim” is offensive or something? Or is “Islamist” a term that means somebody who’s merely claiming to be a follower of Islam?
Muslim = Follower of the religion Islam
Islamist = Person who seeks to promote and spread Islam through political or other means.
The two overlap, but are not the same.
An ‘Islamist’ is a person who believes in a politicized form of Islam that advocates violence. A ‘Muslim’ (‘one who submits to God’) is a person who believes in Islam as a religion. The idea behind saying ‘Islamist militants’ or ‘Islamist terrorists’ rather than ‘Muslim terrorists’ is to emphasize a difference between people who believe in Islam as a religion and those who use it to justify violent means to achieve political goals. In the media, one would still use ‘Muslim’ to refer to, say, the feelings of American Muslims about violence in the Middle East, but not to refer to terrorists.
Thanks - that makes sense 
No, TLD got it right. Not all Islamists are violent - some are committed to reform through the political process. Violent Islamists are referred to by several terms/phrases, but ‘Jihadist’ is one of the most common.
What they said. An Islamist is someone who advocates Islamist government, constituted in Islamic law. (Think of the mullahs in Iran, the Taliban, various factions in other countries.) The point is not to use the broader term “Muslim” when speaking of Islamists, lest you tar non-Islamist Muslims (which is most Muslims). Using “Islamist” to mean “Muslim” is wrongedy-wrong-wrong.
For a while, people were using “fundamentalist Muslim” for groups like the Taliban & al-Qaeda, but maybe they were finally told that Fundamentalist is a specifically Christian term, & there is no certain definition of “fundamentalist Muslim.”
And Tamerlane made me look like an idiot, because I was sticking with the implication of “violence,” or actually, of armed struggle. The thing is, Islamists do often embrace a bit of violence, broadly speaking, in that sharia law has corporal & capital punishment, but it’s legal violence.
What’s scary is that Islamists, by making the Muslim identity paramount to policy, can be tempted to encourage religious & ethnic violence because, after all, the caliphs did it. Iran has funded guerrilla war against Israel, Islamists in Pakistan trained the Taliban, & Islamists haven’t exactly stopped purges in the Sudan. But a lot of violence in the world is for secular reasons, so it’s not that the Islamists cause it. They just have an irritating ability (like various people in politics) to make common cause, in some contexts, with political killers.