I’m not sure the ‘inevitable ambiguity of names’ is a problem in search of a solution. See, for instance, Avrum Stroll’s Sketches of Landscapes: Philosophy by Example (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998). Nor do I have any problem with names qua names. Names, nonetheless, can be more or less accurate, more or less misleading, more or less fitting or appropriate….

That said, I simply want to come up with terms that more accurately capture the religious ideology of Islamists. I well realize that nothing will definitively capture everything I or someone else believe is essential or important in referring to Islamist radicals of one sort or another. ‘Islamofascism’ simply doesn’t makes sense, it’s incoherent. Apart from the problems noted above, some may take it to refer to al-Qaeda and kindred groups, others would include Hamas and Hizbullah in the mix, and it’s rather clear that there are signifcant differences here, in fact, I think an argument can be made that Hamas and Hizbullah are not terrorist groups simpliciter, while al-Qaeda better fits such an appellation. There are some candidates (alternative names) out there but, to a fault, they rely on terms intrinsic to the tradition, in other words, they don’t seem to capture what is truly novel in this kind of Islamist politics (e.g., ignorance of or disdain for Islamic legal traditions, selective appropriation of aspects of modernity, etc.; this has something to do with what anthropologists refer to as the ‘etic’/'emic’ distinction). Even something as simple as ‘Islamist militants’ (or militant Islamists) is preferable, if only because it does not mislead by way of colloquial description. ‘Jihadist Islamists’ or ‘Islamist jihadists’ is problematic insofar as it allows the militants to appropriate and propagate the referential scope of ‘jihad’ in a manner intolerable to most Muslims, especially in light of the fact that what is meant by jihad here is what is known as the ‘lesser jihad,’ not at all the ‘greater jihad’ (the struggle against the ego, against nafs, against the passions or what the Christian calls the seven deadly sins…) which is obligatory for all Muslims. Furthermore, even as ‘lesser jihad,’ the term is used and applied irrespective of the tradition’s legal conditions on its use, so much so one wonders how it can be plausibly construed as any longer ‘Islamic.’ Islamist militants sometimes use ‘theocratic’ rhetoric but there are no clear models of same that help us understand what is meant by this (references to ‘the’ caliphate are hopelessly vague), and if or when they participate in electoral politics, they often alter their conception of Islamic governance in a way that is no longer theocratic (cf. the variety of Islamic republics; furthermore, consider how Khomeini had to come up with s novel concept within Shiism–vilayat-i faqih–to implement his unique vision of Islamic governance; one reason, among others, that describing the Iranian regime as ‘theocratic’ tells us very little about the goverment, whatever its theocratic features or the pretensions of some of its ideologues.