Hopping across the capitals of Southeast Asia, stopping at Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Jakarta and Manila one gets the same impression: "Radicalism is a dirty word."

This veritable fatwa from the high priests of Washington has managed to intimidate millions of Muslims the world over, and cast a spell on many a collective conscience. Unwittingly, some of the brightest and sharpest minds that the Muslim world has produced have also begun parroting the litany of nonsense that now has become the stuff of international political discourse.

Even prominent Muslim leaders in Indonesia, including intellectuals from the Muhammadiyah, Nahdatul Ulama, PPP (Islamic Party), PKB (Nahdatul Ulama's political wing) and the PKS (Justice Party), have begun to speak the same language of shallow apologia: 'We are not radical Muslims,' they plead, 'we are moderates, the good Muslims you can talk to.'  Never mind that the so-called 'battle for the hearts and minds' of Muslims is a prehistoric relic of the cold war, and that such phrases were used during the Vietnam conflict.

The real danger now is that the very discursive terrain of Muslim politics and society is being altered and redesigned. The redesigning of the Muslim mind and political conscience will be next, to the point where Muslims cannot even be critical and confrontational, for fear of being labeled a radical.

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The semantic acrobatics is as neat as it is sophisticated: a chain of equivalencies has been drawn, linking Islam to terror and violence, linking militancy to radicalism. By doing so one who is 'guilty' of one is immediately assumed of being 'guilty' of the other. To call oneself a radical activist in Southeast Asia immediately earns oneself the dubious title of 'militant' as well; the next thing you know, the security forces will be knocking on your door - if not breaking it down in the early hours of the morning.

While Islam clearly prohibits indiscriminate violence against civilians and acts of terror, terrorism and radicalism are two completely different things. Muslims denounce all forms of terrorism as fundamentally un-Islamic for they know it only too well as having themselves being victims of terrorism - in Palestine, Jammu & Kashmir, Bosnia, Kosova, Chechnya, South Philippines, and elsewhere. But does this mean that we should abandon a radical approach to politics?

One can only answer this question if one goes back to the etymological roots of the word 'radical' itself. To be a radical does not necessarily mean being a bomb-wielding fanatic devoid of reason and compassion. Indeed, until recently being a radical was seen as a good thing.

One famous 'radical' who upset the status quo was Nelson Mandela. He was a radical because he defied and challenged the racist and abusive regime in South Africa that systematically oppressed black Africans for centuries.

When Mandela was dubbed a radical, the world rejoiced, not just his supporters: it underlined the just principles upon which his whole political project was based. Was 'radicalism' a dirty word then? Surely not!