IN A LIVE BBC interview recently, I called Hizbullah “Islamo-fascists.” The interviewer said nervously, “That’s a very controversial description.” I replied that it was merely accurate. She brought the interview to a swift close.
But how else should one describe a military machine that marches under the banner of a demagogic leader who seeks above all to kill Jews? ~William Shawcross, The Jerusalem Post
Now, let’s see: demagogic leader, military machine, killing Jews…what prominent historical figure might Muslims look to who fits that description? Hint: it aint Hitler. But Mr. Shawcross provides a perfect example of an old leftist recycling anti-fascist language to describe specifically Islamic jihadis. Why else would we need to add the fascist to Islamic, except that we are working on the assumption that the problem isn’t something to do with the terrorists’ being Islamic but with their fascistic methods? European media coverage may well be going out of its way to avoid connecting the London plot with Islam, which is a ridiculous and enervating bias that prevents their audience from understanding the nature of the threat, but using clapped-out rhetoric about a political movement that effectively died 61 years ago is no more illuminating and reflects a confusion about the nature of the enemy almost as profound and dangerous as European denial about the threat of Islam from within.
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August 15th, 2006 at 9:07 am
jsinger008
O.K., O.K. — there are Muslims inspired to wage violent jihad against the West by Mohammed and the Koran. So why aren’t all Muslims signing up for the violence? Why do some in fact interpret the Koran differently and suggest it is wrong to kill in the name of their religion? Or who never worry much about jihad in foreign lands? If Islam is the problem, you have millions of Muslims through their actions and words who say you are wrong. How do you explain their understanding of Islam? I’m open to the idea that the Islamic religion is on a collision course with the West, but millions of practicing Muslims seem to disagree and go about their lives happy to assimilate modern Western ideas into politics, science, and daily life.
August 15th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Daniel Larison
I have been meaning to get to your other comments on this point. Your questions are all good ones, and you are thinking along precisely the same lines I am in my posts on occupation:
http://larison.org/2006/08/04/occupation-does-have-something-to-do-with-it/
http://larison.org/2006/08/15/occupation-does-have-something-to-do-with-it-ii/
You are entirely right that there are millions (indeed hundreds of millions) who do not go in for any of this, and certainly quite a few of them who even deplore it. To the extent that they sympathise with these methods, it is because they believe them to be an understandable response to specific policies. This is why more Islamic terrorists come from certain countries rather than others. They flourish in those zones of the Islamic world that are in conflict or under occupation, which tells me that occupation and intervention are the guaranteed worst ways to respond to the problem.
The reason why I keep bringing things back to Islam itself is, first, because Islamic terrorism does not derive from some distorted or “hijacked” form of the religion but comes from the standard, authoritative, normative sources of Islam and finds justification in the central texts of that tradition. That hundreds of millions do not follow through on these aspects of their religion is very good, but that these elements are present and the basic inspiration for the specifically Islamic nature of this fanaticism seems to me to be hard to get away from. I also want to keep stressing that this is a form of real Islam we are fighting (no, it is not the only form, but it is a substantial form with a prominent tradition in Islamic history), not a mere ideological twisting of the “religion of peace” but an expression of the logical conclusion of Islamic justifications of religious violence. Furthermore, I want to keep stressing that we are talking about Islam and not some nonsensical Islamofascism because the latter does not exist and to use such language suggests that people really think we are refighting WWII, which guarantees that we will lose, because it means that we have no idea what sort of fight we are in.