There are some common properties between the folk music and the maqam: they both have a clean form with a strong inner structure showing certain rules of natural principles. There are however some differences. The folk music is simple and transparent. The maqam is complicated and toned. The folk music is available for everyone while the maqam claims initiation. Not everyone can play maqam. Nevertheless the maqam and the folk/traditional music made mutual influence on each other. Maqams took on folk motifs, folk songs took on maqam motifs. The folk music can freely exist and is available in a specific cultural community if outer intervention does not threaten it. The maqam can exist only in an initiated, skilled and educated environment. The bequeathing based on studying, and happens from master to student by initiation and accepting the rules. That is why this culture can remain clean. By now the maqam is taught in high level music academies.
Both Folk music and the maqam can be very organic if the player performs it in improvisation.
Folk music does not have notation, in the maqam the notation exists but not such an exact way as in Western classical music. In the maqam the pieces are not always written pieces, many performers improvise the whole piece keeping the rules of the tradition. The Hungarian maqam might be very similar to this.

Folk music is the imprint of the collective recollection and the author is not known. The maqam many times is a composed piece but sometimes only improvisation (takasim), or both.
We could rename it but it is important to place this new musical phenomenon in a historical background which proved to be strong enough to survive the centuries of adulterated history.