[hermit22]

I think it's unfair to associate any social movement specifically with religion. There are a lot of things that make people turn to religion or some other philosophy - from economics, nationalism, social conditions, etc. In addition, every major philosophical movement goes through cycles - every few decades, its adherants want to go back and clear the barnacles of liberal interpretation off of the ship of their movement. We're seeing a lot of that in the resurgence of Christianity in America in the past two decades. Modern day Marxists claim that Communism failed because it didn't stick to Marx's initial ideas, and that future implementations need to reflect them more clearly.

So you see, my problem is with using the qualifier "Islamic." When you remove that, you're left with extremist, fascist, fundamentalist, etc. All of these terms have problems, but the last two are worse than the first because they pigeon hole the targets into an ideology they don't necessarily agree with. Extremism, however, is quite broad. And that breadth, unfortunately, is its problem. I think, however, in lack of anything resoundingly better, that its acceptable.

And what do you mean by the Palestinean red herring?