The new clarity in the discourse about Islamism

A new tone has been set. To what extent? Insofar as Islamism as an ideology is now referred to directly, regardless of the political origin of the designator. Since the attack on Berlin's Christopher Street Day (CSD), the linguistic shells that previously made it possible to avoid naming the monstrosity of the ideology and its religiously entangling persuasive power in detail have fallen. Instead, the linguistic avoidance course made it possible to focus primarily on factors that were external to the ideology, such as possible psychological problems of the perpetrators, their lack of social integration, and so on.

There is currently a shift in emphasis in the public discourse. Because the emphasis is now on Islamism, on the ideology as such. It is only in connection with their central role that their affinities in the clinical or social sector are examined. For example, the Green Party co-leader Felix Banaszak caused a stir when he - with whatever calculation - described the lack of naming of Islamism in the SPD and the Left Party as "outrageous" and then did not mince his words: "Islamism is a fascist, barbaric ideology, a corrosive poison, filled with hatred and of immense danger." It was important to investigate the attack “without quick shots and without blinkers,” which, Banaszak understood, also included conceptually exposing the ideology as such instead of just focusing on the variables that presumably made it possible.

It's clear: causalities are never just linear

As important as it is to make them present, psychological and social issues must not, in the proportionality of their weighting, assume the status of an alibi discourse that seeks to hide the religiously asserted mode of action of Islamism. Causality is never just linear, that is already clear here. It is all the more important to maintain tried and tested analytical patterns such as the distinction between reason and occasion, causality and correlation among the driving factors. In order to then state that in the context of the above-mentioned terrorist excesses, Islamism occupies a central position as a religiously exalted heresy, which as such cannot tolerate any relativization of a social or psychopathological nature.

This is essentially the finding that has now reached the talk shows, as observed last Wednesday with Markus Lanz, who warned with rare clarity in unison about “outsourcing”, about the outsourcing of determining reasons in the earlier Islamism debate. What appeared discursively to be cost-effective at the time, i.e. the lowering of the ideological basis, has actually turned out to be a cost driver of security. Now it's better to say what is happening here too.