Absolutely! People seem to think that 'ideology' is just a fancier, more modern-sounding word for 'principles.' In fact, 'ideology' started as a pejorative term, just like 'bureaucracy,' and is still correctly used as such.
As St. Thomas Aquinas warned us, beware "the man of one book." One book, or idea, becomes a Procrustean bed against which the whole of creation gets measured, and must be chopped or stretched to fit. Ideology and religion are not incompatible, but ideology and compassion are: the ideologist is a ruthless judge, to whom any thought or fact outside the idea is unforgivable.
In this sense, it might be correct to call Islam an ideology.
Oh so very true, mrreaganaut! Alternatively, an ideology is like a kind of filter that one lays down over reality, which screens out all evidence that does not conform to one's ideological presuppositions. Two great examples of this: Marxism and Darwinism....
Marx absolutely forbade any questioning of his system. You had to buy it whole cloth, or not — but if not, you'd be some kind of an "enemy," someone "outside" of "our group." Darwinism rejects any and all non-material aspects of reality. If something cannot be directly observed, then it doesn't exist. But note that no Darwinist (or anybody else for that matter) has ever directly observed evolution. The very idea is non-material — as are all ideas.
Ideologies tend to be riddled with internal contradictions of this type. Which is evidently why their sponsors do not want you to look too closely into their fundamental premises or — as in Marx's case — outright forbid all questioning altogether.
As to your suggestion that Islam might be ideological in this sense — e.g., is selective when it comes to its definition of reality — well, just on the basis of what can actually be observed, I think you are correct!
In any case, I do not/cannot recognize the reality it proclaims.... That the God of Truth wants his sons to exterminate non-believers is simply incredible to me. To me, such a "god" is no God, but a satanic creature conjured up in the imagination of 7th-century Bedouins....
Still it is true that not all Muslims subscribe to this doctrine of Jihad — i.e., as the extermination or subjection of non-believers so that the Ummah, the global Islamic caliphate, may be established on earth. For such "non-radicalized" Muslims, Jihad is understood as an internal battle, as a self-conquering whose object is to conform one's self and moral life to God's law. It has nothing to do with wiping out Jews and Christians....
The problem is complex; certainly I do not have all the answers. Islam itself seems to have divisions in it. And has actually been subjected to withering criticism by such Muslims as Salman Rushdie. Of course, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini instantly proclaimed a fatwa — a death sentence — against Rushdie, after his Satanic Verses came out in 1988. Somehow, after all this time Rushdie has managed to stay alive....