One almost believed that Islamism had been abolished.

At least not much has been heard from him lately.

Yes, the Taliban continue to bully Afghan women.

You don't want to know exactly what happened to the local staff, for whom you were once responsible.

And the so-called Islamic State seems like a bad nightmare.

The fact that thousands of IS members are still haunting Syria and Iraq, in prisons, camps and, in the worst case, on the loose, who cares.

So Islamism has almost been forgotten, and even more forgotten that there is also such a thing as Shiite Islamism.

Then a 24-year-old Khomeini fan fell on the author Salman Rushdie with a knife in the name of a 33-year-old fatwa (religious feelings hurt because of a funny novel).

An act whose bestial, outrageous, godless character leaves one speechless.

The fact that Islamists do not take a joke was already evident when the Taliban murdered the Afghan comedian Kashar Zwan, when the attack on the satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo" or when Erdogan wanted to ban women from laughing.

Colonial ignorance in the name of postcolonialism

Recently I read a text in the "taz" by a correspondent in Beirut, which can be summarized as follows: The feminists from Iran, above all Masih Alinehad (who had escaped an assassination attempt a few days earlier), shouldn't behave like that .

Nuns would also wear bonnets.

And the protests against compulsory headscarves are just western propaganda.

One would only want to curry favor with the colonialists.

There is no need to comment on every confused utterance by a self-proclaimed feminist who, in the name of postcolonialism, feels she must lecture suffragettes from the Middle East, North Africa, or elsewhere in the finest colonialist manner, and whose writing reads as if it were straight from propaganda -Faxed to Department of Islamic Republic.

But such outpourings are piling up.

"Beauty is in diversity as freedom is in hijab," says a Council of Europe campaign.

And a few months ago, a video by Datteltäter, a funk channel, appeared entitled "My headscarf, my choice".

This mix of advertising, music and fashion clip says: "My hijab is feminism because it stands for freedom and dignity."

"Islamophobia" as a chewing gum term

Basically, this is nothing more than colonial ignorance towards the women who are forced to veil in Iran or Afghanistan.

Solidarity?

None!

As Audre Lorde said so beautifully: "I am not free while any women is unfree." The headscarf requirement is not the only problem women face.

But that's where the terror begins, when women who take it have to reckon with exclusion, loss of freedom and physical integrity.

Activists complain that too few positive stories are being told about Islam.

In general, too much is occupied with Islamism.

Appropriately, I recently read a commentary by Farid Hafez, also in the “taz”, in which he complained about the criminalization of Muslim women in the fight against Islamism.

Hafez of all people, who in 2019 also published the “European Islamophobia Report” for the SETA foundation, which is close to Erdogan, in which a bunch of Muslims critical of Islamism were branded as enemies of Islam.

And who sees himself as a victim of allegations of contact guilt.

The fact that Hafez wrote an uncritical book about the stars and starlets of the Muslim Brotherhood and worked for the SETA Foundation was a gift.

Islamophobia and contact guilt seem to be chewing gum terms, stretchable beyond recognition.

Islamism, the whole spectrum - legalistic to jihadist - is one thing, the other is the conglomerate of ignorance, ignorance, wokeness, optional tolerance, i.e. wanting to be on the right side - to be found from left to conservative.

(The right-wingers are an exception here, they are only interested in misusing Islamism for their racist resentment anyway).

Entanglements with Islamist organizations like Milli Görüs or DITIB are of little interest.

That Erdogan's palace imam Adem Kemaneci has now moved to the central mosque in Cologne-Ehrenfeld.

That in this country people are being threatened by Islamists.

That most of the terror proceedings initiated are still directed against Islamists today.

Taking Islamism seriously also means finally talking about the ideological, religious and political breeding ground in which it flourishes and thrives.

And that without immediately reinterpreting the perpetrators as victims (victims of racism, colonialism) and being satisfied with that as an explanation.

The idea that religious feelings should not be hurt under any circumstances is a totalitarian one.

As for Rushdie, Hadi Matar stabbed, Khomeini supplied the knife.

And all those who have been preventing a long overdue discussion for decades have been watching.