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Islamofascism

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"Islamofascism" is a controversial political epithet. It is a neologism intended to mean "an Islamist form of (neo-)Fascism" or, conversely, "a (neo)-Fascist version of Islamism". It has come to be used by some non-Muslim journalists, politicians and academics to refer to those Islamist movements that are perceived to have neofascist or totalitarian characteristics. Critics view the term as propaganda and as profoundly insulting to Muslims, because fascism is a word with negative connotations. Some argue that fascism is solely a feature of Italian history, and distinct from any modern-day political movements outside Italy. Others argue that there are contemporary religious neo-fascist movements. However, while some movements self-describe themselves as "Religion-based" or "Islamist", few today will refer to themselves publicly as "fascist".


Origins

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

Examples of use in public discourse

  • "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." Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
  • " 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.

Criticism of the use of the term

Some commentators regard the term "Islamofascism" as offensive. "Islam is a sacred term to 1.3 billion people in the world ... To combine it with the word "fascist" in one phrase is a desecration and a form of hate speech," according to Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. "Are there Muslims who are fascists? Sure. But there is no Islamic fascism, since "Islam" has to do with the highest ideals of the 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?"

Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi has objected to the term "Islamofascism" as unfair to Italian fascists of the 1930s and 1940s, who Berlusconi described as "more benign" than those movements characterized as "Islamofascist."

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. The conservative Catholic journalist Joseph Sobran wrote, "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."



See also

References

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