Islamic fascism

Islamic fascism is a term adopted by journalist Christopher Hitchens intended to refer to a small number of Islamist extremists, including terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. The term has gained wide currency in the United States, particularly among neo-conservatives. Since the term is both pejorative and coined by critics of militant Islamist groups, there are no self-identified Islamic fascists. The most recent appellation by President Bush describing assorted cells of British Muslims of Pakistani origin in England.

Islamofascism is a neologism and political epithet used to compare the ideological or operational characteristics of certain modern Islamist movements with European fascist movements of the early 20th century, neofascist movements, or totalitarianism. Organizations that have been labeled Islamofascist include Al-Qaeda, the current Iranian government, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah. None label themselves fascist, however, and critics of the term argue that associating the religion of Islam with fascism is both offensive and historically inaccurate.

Fascism is a particular kind of authoritarian political movement adopted in Italy during the 1930s. In the traditional European scale of Left vs. Right politics fascism is categorised extreme Right-wing politics. Modern usage has tended to extend the definition of the term to refer to any totalitarian worldview regardless of political ideology (see: Fascist (epithet)). In the case of "Islamic fascism" this refers to political movements that either call for, or are believed by thier opponents to call for, some authoritarian imposition of Islamic law. This explains how critics associate the term with groups of Islamic fundamentalists like the Taliban which governed Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

Robert S. Wistrich has described Islamic fascism as adopting a totalitarian mind-set, a hatred of the West, fanatical extremism, repression of women, loathing of Jews, a firm belief in conspiracy theories, and dreams of global hegemony.[2]

Many dispute the accuracy of the term Islamic "fascism." They point to the fact that political ideologies actually derived from fascism have been violently opposed to Islamism. (see: The Hama Massacre). Fascist-derived ideologies in the Middle East such as the Kataeb Party, the Baath party, and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party have been almost entirely supported by Christians or minority groups in the Arab world which feared Islamism. The founders of the SSNP, the Baath, and the Kataeb were all Christians. All these ideologies were officially secular, but had mainly Christian support.The discussion of the existence of various forms of "Islamic fascism" is highly contentious. Critics associate the term "Islamic fascism" with groups of Islamic fundamentalists like the Taliban which governed Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Several other outspoken critics of Islam go even further, and claim that Islam itself is fascistic, arguing that Islam shares with fascism what they claim are its essential characteristics, such as totalitarian control. These critics do not generally discuss the philosophical bases of fascism, nor do they tend to cite fascist thinkers, but rather approach their understanding of Islamist philosophy by operating a checklist of evils that they consider Islam and fascism to share.

On the other hand, Daniel Pipes equates only militant Islamism to fascism. Thus Pipes and most others critics say they refer to a small number of Islamist zealots, including terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.

The use of the term "Islamofascism" is contentious and discussed on the page Islamofascism. For pre-1945 events, see Fascism: Overtures to Muslims and Arab countries.

Concepts and terms

Main article: Neofascism and religion

Although the concept of clerical fascism is used widely in analyzing certain forms of fascism, is it fair to apply it to certain forms of theocratic Islamic fundamentalism? Some scholars say it is fair, including Walter Laqueur who discusses fascistic influences on militant Islam in his book Fascism: Past, Present, Future.

Robert S. Wistrich has described Islamic fascism as adopting a totalitarian mind-set, a hatred of the West, fanatical extremism, repression of women, loathing of Jews, a firm belief in conspiracy theories, and dreams of global hegemony.[3]

J. Sakai, an analyst, has suggested that some middle class Islamists have formed groups that can be called fascist [4].

Many dispute the accuracy of the term "Islamic fascism". They argue that political ideologies in the Middle East derived from fascism have usually been violently opposed to Islamism. (see: The Hama Massacre). Fascist-derived ideologies in the Middle East such as the Kataeb Party, the Baath party, and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party have been explicitly secular, and have drawn their strongest support from minority groups in the Arab world which feared the consequences of an Islamist government. The founders of the SSNP, the Baath, and the Kataeb were all Christians, and the movements have tended to have their strongest Muslim support from religious minorities like the Sunni Arabs of Iraq or the Alawites of Syria.

Discussions of Islamic neofascism often point to strands of Wahhabi or Salafi Islam, which are claimed to display some of the signifiers of fascism or totalitarianism[5], [6], [7]. Sometimes there are specific references to the Muslim Brotherhood and similar movements in Sunni Islam inspired by the writings of Sayyid Qutb, while others use the term neofascism to describe all highly politicized strains of Islam, including Shi'a radicalism as practiced in Iran. Iran practices partial control of the economy, nationalism and leader worship, thus sharing some common ground with fascism.

Politicized strains of Islam, which seek to replace secular governments in Muslim countries with Sharia law, are often simply called Islamist, but this is a broad political category which covers political movements such as Turkey's Justice and Development Party which do not seek to overthrow secular constitutions. The classification of that party as Islamist is, however, disputed, precisely on those grounds. Others have proposed to classify it as an Islamic Democracy movement instead.

Application

Some writers have used "Islamofascism" to refer strictly to Islamic movements whose doctrines reflect the influence of propaganda promoted by the Nazis, especially the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This includes Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and other movements inspired by the writings of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Islamist who acknowledged that he was influenced by French fascist philosopher Alexis Carrel. Other sources point out that Carrel did not see himself as a fascist, but he was affiliated with the Vichy regime. Others have applied it to all highly politicized strains of Islam, including Shi'a radicalism as practised in Iran.

While several modern political and militant organizations describe themselves as "Islamist", none refer to themselves as "fascist." Some view the term as an historically inaccurate metaphor. The term is generally not used to describe historic fascist organizations that had Muslim members. A few scholars have cautiously used the term fascism to discuss certain forms of militant Islamic fundamentalism. (See: Neofascism and religion.)

The more widely used term for politicized strains of Islam that seek to place governments in Muslim countries under the guidance of Sharia law is Islamist.

Islamists do not advocate corporatism, an important component of "classic" fascist governments in Italy and Germany. However, the Islamist idea of Ummah has been compared to the German fascist idea of Volksgemeinschaft.

Historian of fascism, Roger Eatwell, notes that the debate can be traced back to fascism's heyday: "Some made this equation – though in the reverse direction - back in the 1930s. For instance, Carl Jung said of Adolf Hitler in 1939: 'he is like Mohammed. The emotion in Germany is Islamic, warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with a wild god.'."

Origins and usage

The origins of the term are unclear, but appear to date back to an article, "Construing Islam as a language", by Malise Ruthven that appeared on September 8, 1990 in The Independent, where he wrote:

Nevertheless there is what might be called a political problem affecting the Muslim world. In contrast to the heirs of some other non-Western traditions, including Hinduism, Shintoism and Buddhism, Islamic societies seem to have found it particularly hard to institutionalise divergences politically: authoritarian government, not to say Islamo-fascism, is the rule rather than the exception from Morocco to Pakistan.

The Guardian attributes the term to an article by Muslim scholar Khalid Duran in the Washington Times, where he used it to describe the push by some Islamist clerics to "impose religious orthodoxy on the state and the citizenry".

British journalist Christopher Hitchens used the term "Islamic fascism" or "theocratic fascism" to describe the fatwa declared on February 14, 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses, an event that was pivotal in shaping the attitude toward Islamism of Hitchens and several other prominent journalists on the left. Hitchens also used the term "fascism with an Islamic face" in The Nation after the 9/11 attacks, when the phrase spread to the blogosphere, shortened to "Islamofascism." For Hitchens and ex-Marxist Julie Burchill, who also uses these terms, there is a resonance with phrases like clerical fascism used by Marxists.

The scholar Walter Laqueur has also described Islamism as a new form of clerical fascism.

On October 6, 2005 President George W Bush used the term Islamofascism in a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy.

Radio talk show host Michael Savage has used the term "Islamofascism" frequently on his program. The context suggests the invocation of Islam to justify fascist-like activities.

In his 2004 book Power, Terror, Peace and War, Walter Russell Mead invoked a different but related term, which he calls "Arabian Fascism", to describe both secular and Islamic "enemies" of America in the Middle East.

Examples of use in public discourse

• "[T]he bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there's no point in any euphemism about it. What they abominate about "the West," to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state." — Christopher Hitchens in Against Rationalisation, The Nation 2001.

• "What we have to understand is ... this is not really a war against terrorism, this is not really a war against al Qaeda, this is a war against movements and ideologies that are jihadist, that are Islamofascists, that aim to destroy the Western world." [8] Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

• "[Islamic terrorist] attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane. Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism. Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom." George W Bush, President of the United States speaking before the National Endowment for Democracy, October 6 2005

• "Far too many people on the Left are inclined to make excuses for Islamic fundamentalism. They accept its misogyny so long as it doesn’t target Western women. They accept its fascism so long as it is anti-American fascism. We now have a Stop the War coalition led by Islamic fascists and Marxist-Leninists, and much of the Left is silent about it. Acknowledging the horrors of Islamic fundamentalism would sully their consciences, which they want to keep clean for the battle against America ... Much of the Stop the War coalition now actually supports a fascist resistance movement and ignores their Iraqi comrades entirely. You have to look back to the Hitler-Stalin pact for a historical parallel. The concept of fascism is being lost. It’s something you hear about on the history channels. But Islamic fascism is still fascism ... Islamofascism has been ripping through the Arab world, often supported by America, and it should be the Left’s worst nightmare. It’s everything the Left has resisted since the French revolution. To equivocate in the face of it would be an absolute abdication of intellectual responsibility ... " — Nick Cohen, The Observer. [9]

• "There's no question that if we were to prematurely withdraw and the march to democracy were to fail, the al Qaeda would be emboldened; terrorist groups would be emboldened; the Islamo-fascists would be emboldened." — George W. Bush, press conference, 21 March 2006 [10].

• "The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation." — George W. Bush, press conference, 10 August 2006 [11].

Criticism of the use of fascism-related terminology

A number of academics, however, disagree with the use of the term fascism in this context. Roger Griffin believes it stretches the term fascist too far to apply the term 'fascism' to "so-called fundamentalist or terrorist forms of traditional religion (i.e. scripture or sacred text based with a strong sense of orthodoxy or orthodoxies rooted in traditional institutions and teachings)." He does, however, concede that the United States has seen the emergence of hybrids of political religion and fascism in such phenomena as the Nation of Islam and Christian Identity, and that Bin Laden's al Qaeda network may represent such a hybrid. He is unhappy with the term 'clerical fascism,' though, since he says that "in this case we are rather dealing with a variety of 'fascistized clericalism.'"

Some argue that grouping disparate ideologies into one single idea of "Islamofascism" may lead to an oversimplification of the causes of terrorism.

"The idea that there is some kind of autonomous "Islamofascism" that can be crushed, or that the west may defend itself against the terrorists who threaten it by cultivating that eagerness to kill militant Muslims which Hitchens urges upon us, is a dangerous delusion. The symptoms that have led some to apply the label of "Islamofascism" are not reasons to forget root causes. They are reasons for us to examine even more carefully what those root causes actually are." He adds "'Saddam, Arafat and the Saudis hate the Jews and want to see them destroyed' . . . or so says the right-wing writer Andrew Sullivan. And he has a point. Does the western left really grasp the extent of anti-Semitism in the Middle East? But does the right grasp the role of Europeans in creating such hatred?" —Richard Webster, author of A Brief History of Blasphemy: liberalism, censorship and 'The Satanic Verses' writing in the New Statesman [12].

According to New York University professor Chris Matthew Sciabarra, writing about the influence of Sayyid Qutb, "(w)hatever totalitarian echoes one sees in the Qutbian vision, there are distinctions that disqualify the usage of the word "Islamofascism" to describe it, or to describe Islamic fundamentalism in general." See Neofascism and religion.

Others argue that movements characterized as "Islamofascist" are dissimilar to fascist movements of the past. According to Roxanne Euben, a professor of political science at Wellesley College,

"Fascism is nationalistic and Islamicism is hostile to nationalism. Fundamentalism is a transnational movement that is appealing to believers of all nations and races across national boundaries. There is no idea of racial purity as in Nazism. Islamicists have very little idea of the state. It is a religious movement, while Fascism in Europe was a secular movement. So if it's not what we really think of as nationalism, and if it's not really like what we think of as Fascist, why use these terms?"

Islamists, however, consider the community of Muslims, or Ummah, as a nation. The use of the term "Islamofascist" by proponents of the War on Terror has prompted some critics to argue that the term is a typical example of wartime propaganda.

"Islamofascism is nothing but an empty propaganda term. And wartime propaganda is usually, if not always, crafted to produce hysteria, the destruction of any sense of proportion. Such words, undefined and unmeasured, are used by people more interested in making us lose our heads than in keeping their own." —Joseph Sobran, syndicated columnist.

See also

• Islamism
• Islamic fundamentalism
• Neofascism and religion
• Islamic extremist terrorism
• Islamophobia
• Clerical Fascism
• Islamic State
• Sharia
• Theocracy
• Neofascism

References

General

• "Islamism is fascism". Salon.com. Retrieved 2006-04-19. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |origdate= ignored (|orig-date= suggested) (help)

Further reading

• A polemical review of Islamic fascism
• Christopher Hitchens says al Qaeda is fascism with an Islamic face
• Christopher in Khaki — criticism of Hitchens by Dave Renton
• CATO Institute evaluates Islamic fascism
• Conservative commentary on combating Islamic fascism
• Andrew Sullivan 'Interview' (satire) from INDC Journal
• The Islamofascist Agenda by Deroy Murdock in National Review
• How the right played the fascism card against Islam — The Guardian (4 February, 2005)
• How “Islamo-fascism” is the pretext for Islamic discrimination — IranianTruth.com (23 October, 2005)
• Video: An interview with Salman Rushdie regarding Islamofascism
• Sayyid Qutb's French connection
• Alexis Carrel and Sayyid Qutb
• The Ummah and das Volk: On the Islamist and "Völkisch" Ideologies
• Islam Under the Swastika
• The Swastika and the Crescent
• "Of Sin, the Left & Islamic Fascism" by Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, September 4 2001
• "1-0 in the propaganda war" by Albert Scardino, The Guardian, February 4 2005
• "President Discusses War on Terror at National Endowment for Democracy", The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, October 6 2005
• "In enemy territory? An interview with Christopher Hitchens" by Johann Hari, The Independent, September 23 2004
• "The Power of Nightmares", BBC, August 3 2005,
• "The Christian Right and 'Islamo-Fascism'" by Dan Jennejohn, CNI Foundation, August 9 2006
• A polemical review of Islamic fascism
• Christopher Hitchens says al Qaeda is fascism with an Islamic face
• Christopher in Khaki — criticism of Hitchens by Dave Renton
• Right-wing Cato Institute evaluates Islamic fascism
• Conservative commentary on combating Islamic fascism
• What is Fascism?, by George Orwell