Islamoid?

Map by Braun & Hogenberg of Damascus, the "most noble city by the mountain of the Lebanon, metropolis of all Syria", 1575, via Sanderus,

Scott Shane at the Times is now joining in to the universal trolling of the president for refusing to say that the United States is at war with Islam, though he agrees with the president that the United States is not at war with Islam, a fairly delicate act:

But Mr. Obama’s verbal tactics have become a target for a growing chorus of critics who believe the evasive language is a sign that he is failing to look squarely at the threat from militant Islam. The vague phrasing, they say, projects uncertainty and weakness at a time when extremists claiming to fight for Islam threaten America and its interests around the world.

I cannot understand why this is a thing. Either we are Crusaders at war with Islam, and Osama bin Laden was basically right, or we aren't, and Osama was wrong, and I'd personally prefer the latter. Even Ross Douthat has climbed down from his Crusader attack of last week to offer a more reasonable position, to the effect that the bad things done by members of a particular religion or complex of religions (it seems crazy to insist that "Christianity" or "Islam" are single, coherent systems of faith, given the range of conflicting ideas both sometimes quite cheerfully accommodate) are not the collective responsibility of the entire community, relatively few Westerners are Crusaders and hardly any Muslims are terrorists, and it just doesn't require that kind of a discussion:

even as we acknowledge the obvious and describe ISIS as Islamic, we should give the rest of Islam credit for being, well, Islamic as well, and for having available arguments and traditions and interpretations that marginalized this kind of barbarism in the past, and God willing can do so once again.

What Obama needs is a succinct way of saying "Muslims, but not in a good way", and his method of doing it, by saying that they aren't "Islamic" (strictly speaking, people are never Islamic, that's an adjective properly applied to cultural phenomena—Islamic art, Islamic jurisprudence, etc.,—and not to people, who are described as Muslims or belonging to Islam) is not such a terrible expedient, though it may not say it exactly right, and distract people with its takfiri sound (but he's an infidel, so he can't really pronounce takfir on anybody—what he's saying can only be a figure of speech). Similarly, it seems possible to say that Crusaders, with their solid refusal to love their enemies or give their possessions to the poor, are "Christians, but not in a good way" or, for short, not Christianic. Why is it important to insist on their Christianicity, unless your object is to condemn the entire shebang?

The Da'ish theologians describe themselves as Muslims, and, as we've been learning from Graeme Wood's Atlantic article, their aims and aspirations are defined in entirely religious terms, they're not merely thugs but very theological thugs, but it's also the case that they're extremely heterodox Muslims, whose views have been condemned as un-Islamic by authorities everywhere throughout the democracy of the ummah. Why should Obama have to use language suggesting that they represent "militant Islam" or some such concept? It's arguable that they aren't Muslims at all, in the way Christian Scientists or Mormons certainly aren't Christians, or Jews for Jesus ought to be enjoined for calling themselves Jews (I'm sorry, you can be Jewish if you don't obey the dietary laws or don't have a bar mitzvah or don't believe in God, but you cannot be Jewish if you think the Messiah came and went 2000 years ago).

I have liked the terms "Islamist" and "Christianist" to refer to those idolators who worship their religions instead of worshiping God, which would include the Da'ish theologians as well as the literal idolator Justice Roy Moore and his fans, but that seems to be too subtle for the kind of audience the president needs to address, from the Sunnis of Iraq and the Shi'ites of Syria to the whole Times staff. Maybe he should try "Islamoid", practitioners of a faith that takes its forms and its textual underpinnings from Islam but is inhabited by a spiritually different content. "Christianoid" too, I guess.