Reply #5: My defense is that the term doesn't need to be used [View All]

[Igel]

with that level of precision. Nazism used to be distinct from fascism, remember.

On the other hand, when you get a group preaching supremacy of that particular group--whether the Teutonic Volk or the Muslim ummah--the racial teachings get a bit fuzzy. But religion is a substitute for ethnicity in many cases, and was routinely used to identify communities much like race is today. So they're analogous. Note that any religion or belief system is likely to say its adherents are better--DUers think progressivism or liberalism is superior to conservatism, after all. It's a question of what's the appropriate action to take based on the belief: prayer, voting, or militancy?

Fascism also was based on degrading other groups. Islamists do this routinely. Whether Crusaders, polytheists, Zionists, descendants of pigs and apes, whatever their epithet of choice.

Fascism also tended to nurture victimization and victimize others. It's unpopular to say that non-Muslims weren't full citizens, and were frequently abused, under traditional Islam in the Middle East/N. Africa, but true, nonetheless. Islamist thought today still has the meme that the only reason they're not at the pinnacle of power is because they've been oppressed. "Justice" requires that they properly subjugate and cause others to submit, while they submit only to Allah.

Fascism also was highly conservative in most social respects (certainly not all) and regulated the individual. Islamist thought is typically Salafist: those closer to Muhammed in time were more righteous, and should be emulated. Shi'ism is a bit different, but still wedded to shari'a, with most of the postulates being of long standing. In any event, obedience is mandatory.

Traditional European had corporatism. Islamism doesn't have this; but most places with Islamist regimes still have strict regulation on businesses, when they can open, and the like, and lack 'corporations' as such. Then again, they do have partnerships as the alternative to interest-bearing bonds, and these are regulated. It would be interesting to see how Islamism *would* deal with corporations.

What else is traditional in fascism ... ah, exalting the group over the individual with centralized authority, perhaps? This is a problem. Because instead of submission to a small set of people, submission is to a set of doctrines that are promulgated by a large set of clerics based on tradition. I figure this is where fascism would have gone had it survived a few hundred years. Soviet-style communism was there, with a coterie of folks being the 'imams' to interpret Marx, Lenin, and other theoreticians who set the rules.

But the problem with the term isn't whether it meets some scholar's or a textbook's definition of 'fascism'; it's associating Islam with something negative. "Islamic tyranny" would be no more acceptable that would "imamcracy" or "Islamcracy". J. Cole even tries to say that Islamofascist is just as offensive to Muslims as Christofascist is to Xians--and therefore we shouldn't use them.

Do we really believe that no term should be used if it offends the people being referred to?