"Islamofascist" Muddies Rather than Clarifies the Picture

[BurtWorm]

From American Footprints:

http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/2790

A blog-friend who requests anonymity offers this observation in an e-mail on the use of the term "Islamofascist":

I have always thought that Islamofascist was a very foolish way to frame these types of discussion because it implies a false similarity where none exists. The same is true with how Islamic fundamentalism attempts to make a false comparison to Christian fundamentalism. As for Islamist, it's a made-up term that is so broad that it encompasses everyone from bin Laden to the Turkish AKP but is still too narrow to include Saddam Hussein.

One of my suggestions would be that in using labels in public discourse the terms should serve to illuminate rather than obfuscate the discussion (especially if one wishes to end comparisons to WW2). While I think fascism is an acceptable enough description to apply to Baathism, I think that a far better way to go about labels is to start using terms like Khomeinism, Qutbism, Salafism, and so on. Saying that someone is a Khomeinist, for instance, tells you a great deal about their political views, how they think society should be ordered, and so on. Not so much with the Islamofascist label. During the Cold War people were able to understand and recognize distinctions between Trotskyism, Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism within communism even if they didn't view these ideologies as being all that different WRT how various communist groups and states viewed their capitalist opponents.

The writer makes a good point about the broad brush approach, and how it muddies, not clarifies, the picture. It succeeds in creating a category that roughly translates into "Muslims with authoritarian views we don't like." While in some ways the groups most frequently included under the "Islamofascist" umbrella do share some traits in common with "fascism" per se, there are, more importantly, fundamental differences in the world views, tactics, aspirations and objectives of these various actors.

Failing to differentiate highlights our ignorance and creates the impression that we don't take these differences seriously. We should, though. For one, if we don't, we risk alienating many potential allies in the Muslim community for no discernible value in return. We begin to resemble the caricature of the mobs that attacked Sikhs in the wake of 9/11 because of the head gear that is vaguely reminiscent of that worn in some Muslim cultures, and of the nation led by the President who signed off on an invasion of Iraq without knowing about the fact that the Sunni and Shiite sects even existed. In short, it undermines our credibility by fostering the image of contempt and disdain for an entire group of people numbering over a billion - a group whose cooperation is kind of important at this time....

[Name removed]

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[greenman3610]

3. Fundamentalist Christianity is also a fascist system

"Islamic Fascist" is like "Axis of Evil" -
radically unuseful.

[Name removed]

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[BurtWorm]

8. "Islamofascist" is nothing but an insult.

One reason we can easily insult Republicans is that we know and uinderstand them so well. The same is not true of Islamic jihadists. To me, it makes more sense to understand (not in the hippy dippy sense, but philosophically) these guys, to really know what they're up to.

Of course, if it makes you feel good to hurl insults at them, go ahead. But realize it's an insult, nothing more.

[Name removed]

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[BurtWorm]

15. That's a right-wing sort of take on what I said.

I can tell you what's wrong with the right-wing approach to extremist Islam with one word: Bush.

Understanding extremist Islam is not the same as making nice and friendly with it, contrary to what the dopes on the right want you to think. It's using brains rather than brawn to win a battle, if you will. If you want them not to kill you, you have to be smarter than they are.

[High Plains]

27. "Islamofascist" is nothing but name calling.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

32. This is true.

The proper term to call them is "muslimocommunists."

[BurtWorm]

7. Well, we don't include religion with national identity or race

and Islam is not a nation. Some individuals may want the world to be Islamic. Some may even want all Muslims to belong to one nation. But fascism implies the capacity to organize via state mechanisms.

Would you call Iran a fascist state?

[Name removed]

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[BurtWorm]

11. The people we're talking about are outside and in opposition to the state.

That's the major difference between them and fascists, who desire to control the state and have the means to acquire control of it. Fascism, furthermore, is a European phenomenon. There are fascists in other parts of the world, but they're students of European fascists.

"Islamofascist" is not useful for anything but insult. As I say, if you want to use it, just don't pretend it's anything more than an insult.

[Name removed]

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[BurtWorm]

16. Look at al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia, for example.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt.

[The Magistrate]

17. One Point, Sir, You Seem To Be Ignoring

In the Moslem tradition, the identity and unity of all believers in the umma quite supercedes any state or local identity: in effect, the believers on Islam are viewed as a single nation, and thus distinguishing between religion and nationalism becomes a dubious process in analyzing the thought of raduicals, whether in control of a state apparatus or hunted by one. They consider themselves the true leaders of the whole "nation" of the umma.

[BurtWorm]

18. We're talking about the real world, your honor.

The one Sunnis uneasily share with Shiites, for example.

In your learned opinion, is the "umma" the same as the "state?" If so, "fascism" may be possible within it, insofar as it would be able to exert control on all members of it. I don't think it is the same, however, and this is why I argue that it is really off-base to call al Qaeda or Wahaabism fascist.

[The Magistrate]

21. What Is The Real World, Sir?

What people believe to be so guides their actions, as well as forming their plans, and shaping their thoughts.

The problem many on the left seem to have with this usage is simply that they are accustomed on the one hand to having "fascism" to themselves as a term of abuse for opponents, and on the other hand, are used to viewing any opposition to Western activities in the Near East as expresing laudable anti-colonialist sentiments, and at bottom liberationist and proper. The first produces a sort of "trademark infringement" resentment, and the fact that this set of opponents to the West are in fact obscurantist reactionaries of the sort routinely dubbed "fascist" when they appear in domestic politics requires a switch from pre-conceptions some find disorienting.

The fact is that "fascist", as an indicator of totalitarian aspiration or fact, fits these people pretty well, certainly well enough for good agit-prop work and sloganeering.

[BurtWorm]

23. "agit-prop work and sloganeering"

Exactly. "Islamofascist" conveys only the information that the speaker hates whom he's speaking about. Nothing more.

PS: It matters very much if we're talking about an ideal world in which all Muslims are brothers and sisters abiding by the laws of Sharia, or the real world, in which Muslims kill each other for not being Muslim enough.

[The Magistrate]

25. It Conveys A Bit More Than That, Sir

It conveys the information that the orientation of the target is totalitarian; that it intends a dictatoship and the suppression of human liberty.

The killing of other Muslims for not being Muslim enough is an essential part of these groups' program for restoring the umma to health as a dominant community of believers obedient to the will of their diety. The various persons who "profess Islam with their lips but do not live it in their hearts", the various factions fallen from the true way as they construe it, are in their view the principal problem, the reason that Moslems are no longer the dominant force in the world, and that the diety is not presently favoring them above all others: Western ascendancy is merely the visible sign of the effect of their rot within the community of believers. Their elimination, the purification of the people, is the first necessity for future success. It need hardly be pointed out that such elimination of "internal enemies" to restore the "greatness" of the people and the nation, is one of the chief hall-marks of fascist thought.

[BurtWorm]

26. Magistrate, you surprise me.

Does the umma exist on this earth or is it an ideal? Where is this umma?

Fascism can only be implemented within the structures of a real, pre-existing state. It is all about the absolute power of the state. Do the Islamic extremists we're talking about want to glorify the umma above all? (I honestly don't know the answer to that question, but I suspect the glory of Allah comes above the umma.)

Let me ask you another question: Where did this term "Islamofascist" come from? I do know the answer to that question.

[The Magistrate]

28. It Is Not, Sir, A 'Kingdom Not Of This World'

It is the community of all believers on earth, and depending on how seriously one takes certain verses and recollected speeches, is to be a unity, and form the sole ground for political identity. That it is far from such an ideal state now, and probably never has even approached it since the days of the foundation, matters no more than whether persons like you and me think it a sensible or accurate view. All that matters is that a certain number of people do take that ideal view, and have seriously set themselves to make it manifest, "again" as they conceive the doing, by force of arms. They conceive the umma to have existing structures, specified in the texts they regard as sacred, which describe exactly how it ought to be governed and arranged, and which they believe once existed in unchallenged operation, and must be restored. In your statement fascism requires a pre-existing state apparatus, you are mistaking a tactic employed in gaining power for a distinguishing characteristic of a form of thought. Fascist movements certainly sought to gain control of a state apparatus, and once having done so, to turn it to their own ends of restoring past glories and purifying the nation of unsound elements. Where fascist movements did succeed in taking power, in all cases the state apparatus was widely viewed as ineffective, and the predominant social motif was one of chaos and disorder that the existing government was not equal to containing; in other words, a state whose organs were not functioning properly, and on a course to extinction. The various Islamic fundamentalist radicals take exactly this view of the umma, that its specified organs have lapsed, and in so doing have produced a chaos threatening the people, that must be checked, and checked by restoration of the proper organs prescribed for its rule by their diety.

The contradiction you seem to see between the glory of the umma and the glory of the diety is not actually present. The umma is the only proper social and political organization, superior to any such unit as tribe or state. Restoring this happy condition, believed to have once obtained, simply reflects the glory of the diety who ordained it to be so, manifesting it in human terms. That the believers do not live in this condition is why they are no longer the dominant element in the order of the world, and why various un-believers are in a position to oppress believers: if all believers were living as the diety specified they should, then all would be going well for them, since the diety will exhalt those who do its will in all things, and all unbelievers remaining would be subject to them, rather than the other way around.

[BurtWorm]

29. It seems to me you're glossing over a crucial material distinction

to make this word work for you. The neocons at The Weekly Standard who invented the word certainly make that mistake.*

A person is either a fascist or not a fascist. The line is drawn over how much they agree with Mussolini and Hitler about human progress, the role of the state and the individual's relationship to it--if fascist is to mean anything other than "rat" or "bully," that is. Fortunately, all but a very tiny portion of the world these days is *not* fascist by that definition.



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* http://the-muslim-question.blogspot.com/2006/08/what-is-islamofascism.html

What Is 'Islamofascism'?

By Stephen Schwartz

"Islamic fascists" -- used by President George W. Bush for the conspirators in the alleged trans-Atlantic airline bombing plot -- and references by other prominent figures to "Islamofascism," have been met by protests from Muslims who say the term is an insult to their religion. The meaning and origin of the concept, as well as the legitimacy of complaints about it, have become relevant -- perhaps urgently so.

I admit to a lack of modesty or neutrality about this discussion, since I was, as I will explain, the first Westerner to use the neologism in this context.

In my analysis, as originally put in print directly after the horror of September 11, 2001, Islamofascism refers to use of the faith of Islam as a cover for totalitarian ideology. This radical phenomenon is embodied among Sunni Muslims today by such fundamentalists as the Saudi-financed Wahhabis, the Pakistani jihadists known as Jama'atis, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. In the ranks of Shia Muslims, it is exemplified by Hezbollah in Lebanon and the clique around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran.

Political typologies should make distinctions, rather than confusing them, and Islamofascism is neither a loose nor an improvised concept. It should be employed sparingly and precisely. The indicated movements should be treated as Islamofascist, first, because of their congruence with the defining characteristics of classic fascism, especially in its most historically-significant form -- German National Socialism. ...

[The Magistrate]

30. That Does Not Bother Me, Sir

The term remains accurate enough to be useful, and as indicated above, opposition to it on the left stems more from pique than anything else: it ought to have come into circulation from persons on the left, and might have, if the situation had been regarded with clearer eyes from the start. The fact remains that the fundamentalist Islamic radicals are totalitarian in outlook, and in their aims of restoring former glories, purifying their society, and in their exhalting of a nationalism, albeit one a little different from familiar Western models, overlap with most of the real criteria of fascist movements. Detail agreement with Mussolini and Hitler are hardly the diagnostic: after all, neither of those two much agreed with the other....

[BurtWorm]

31. We'll just have to fundamentally disagree on this.

I think "Islamofascism" is a junk word. It insults a wide range of Muslims, including ones who are our American neighbors. It puts smirks on the faces of Civilization-Clashers. All this is reason enough for me to avoid the word myself and campaign against it generally.

[Jed Dilligan]

2. Good article, giving reasons enough to scrap

this particular form of Newspeak without opening the pesky can o' worms that an accurate definition of fascism can be for today's American...

[whistle]

4. Islamic Fascism, Christian Fascism, Hindu Fascism, Hebrew Fascism...

...Buddist Fascism, the pattern is that totalitarian rule and obedience to strict religious doctrine seem to go hand and hand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neofascism_and_religion

[BurtWorm]

14. A quote in that entry from George Orwell

"...the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else ... Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathisers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come."<4>

[Donald Ian Rankin]

19. Currently, I don't know of any Hindu or "Hebrew" fascist states.

The only states I can name off the top of my head that I'd classify as "fascist" or "sharing most characteristics with fascism" are Iran, Libya, Myanmar and Syria, with questionmarks over Belarus, North Korea and Pakistan, although I'm sure there are some others I've either forgotten or don't know about.

Most of those are Islamic, one iffy one is Christian, a couple are (I think) largely Buddhist. Historically there have been numerous other largely-Christian Fascist states, and several other Eastern ones (e.g. Japan), following presumably a mixture of Buddhism, Shinto etc (my knowledge of Eastern religions is poor, I'm ashamed to say). However, as far as I know, the only Hindu and "Hebrew" (by which I presume you mean Jewish?) states have been India, Nepal and Bangladesh, and Israel, none of which is or has ever been to my (admiteddly poor) knowledge fascist (although Nepal is a monarchy, which is in some ways similar, I think).

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Everytime somebody uses that dumb term...

I get the picture loud and clear.

[ComerPerro]

10. Well, your blog friend is absolutely right, and therefore he must realize

why what he proposes isn't being practiced.

It requires too much thought.

And the more you think, the less likely it is that you will blindly hate.


"Islamofascist" is like "Feminazi".

It sounds cool and sounds smart to stupid ditto-head freepers, and its a fun new buzzword for them.

Plus, it puts evil right there in the nickname of their enemies.

[loyalsister]

20. False similarity......

Christofascism could simply refer to "Americans who are Christian," in the mind of a person who would use that in the context of defining us as "enemy" based on religious beliefs.

Therefore, at least one definition might include Amish, Menonites, Universal Unitarians, Quakers.......

As the author points out, the word "Islamofascist" is dangerous not only risks an implication that we simply disregard differences in cultures and interpretations associated with the religion.
It has frightening implications for our perceived intentions.

[loyalsister]

22. False similarity....

Christofascism could simply refer to "Americans who are Christian," in the mind of a person who would use that in the context of defining us as "enemy" based on religious beliefs.

Therefore, at least one definition might include Amish, Mennonites, Universal Unitarians, Quakers.......

As the author points out, the word "Islamofascist" risks an implication that we simply disregard differences in cultures and interpretations associated with the religion.
It has frightening implications for our perceived intentions.

[Name removed]

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