On “Islamo-Fascism” ☀
An excellent post from squashed on usage of the term “Islamo-Fascist”:
Janet Albrechtsen wrote in The Austrailian, that the language police are oppressing her when they tell her to stop calling people Islamo-Fascists. She argues that the people she’s describing self-identify as Islamic and claim to speak for Islam. And their actions are decidedly fascist. Isn’t she simply calling it as it is?
Yes and no. There are many phrases she could choose—and if there wasn’t anything else at stake, I would tell her to have a ball. But when an extreme, vocal, and dangerous minority claims to speak for the entire religion, bolstering their claim helps them. In simple words, Ms. Albrechtsen is helping the terrorists and is too dim to realize it.
Let’s try a different example. We have a number of hate groups here who claim the label “Christian Identity.” They are white supremecist. We call them hate groups or white supremecists—because we’re not going to allow them to claim the mantle of Christianity. We don’t want to make people sympathetic with them. And when people attack them or criticize them, we definitely don’t want people to think Christianity is under attack. In the same way, we don’t want anybody to think the people speak for Islam—particularly in a country that is heavily Islamic and has largely rejected the terrorists. Al Qaeda would love for people to view it as the leader of Islamic resistance against the oppressive West just as our Christian Identity people would love to be the head of Christian resistance to whatever they see themselves resisting. “Islamo-fascist” plays into their hands neatly.
If Ms. Albrechsen doesn’t care about hurting people’s feelings or making them feel culturally marginalized, that doesn’t make her a particularly nice person—but the stakes are (comparably) low. But perhaps she can find a way a way to hurt and marginalize people without doing the extremists’ work for them?
Islamofascism is a coined propaganda word with the purposeful intent to inflame. It makes no sense — the Islamic fanatics who the label refers to are not advocates for fascist political programs. Their loyalties are to a fundamentalist view of religion, not to nationalistic supremacy. As Squashed points out, it’s not a constructive term; and at worst marginalizes an entire group for the actions of a few.
Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg on the oddness of describing theocracies as fascist:
But like “terror,” and “evil” before it, “Islamic fascism” has the effect of reducing a complex story to a simple fable. It effaces the differences among ex-Baathists, Al Qaeda and Shiite mullahs; Chechens and Kashmiris; Hezbollah, Hamas and British-born Asians allegedly making bombs in a London suburb. Yes, there are millions of people in the Muslim world who wish the U.S. ill, and some of them are pretty creepy about it. But that doesn’t mean they’re all of a single mind and purpose, or that a blow against any one of them is a blow against the others. As Tolstoy might have put it, every creep is creepy in his own way.
Another take from Chris Crawford, that I even like better:
Islamofascist is a word whose use characterizes Islamophobes. It’s a nonsensical word, because the Islamic fanatics to whom the word is applied are not at all fascist: their political program has little in common with fascism. I suppose that the term is applied in the general sense of “bad”. They could just as aptly have used Islamocommie or Islamobutthead.
These people will regale you with tales of Islamic evil. They love to talk about the ugly history of Islam: massacres, decapitations, and so forth. Of course, they ignore the fact that Christianity has an even uglier history. Once Muslims had conquered a country and wiped out opposition, they were much more tolerant of other religions than Christians ever were. There is nothing in Islamic history to match the periodic pogroms by Christians against Jews. Nor was torture a common feature of Islamic jurisprudence. Islamic law required some pretty ferocious penalties of those convicted of crimes, but there was nothing on the scale of the sadistic torture of suspects that was so common in Christianity. And during the Crusades, the Islamic treatment of Christian noncombatants was much less barbaric than the Christian treatment of Islamic noncombatants. But the Islamophobes won’t tell you about that — they probably don’t know.
They also love to provide blood-curdling quotes from the Koran in their attempt to prove that Muslims are out to enslave the world. The historical fact that Muslims have been on the defensive since about 800 AD (with the big exception of the Turks) seems lost on the Islamophobes. Again, compared with the imperialism practiced by Christians since 700 AD, the Islamic world looks almost pacifistic. Christians have mounted a lot more invasions than Muslims have. And certainly if we look at the twentieth century, the story is depressingly clear: Muslims having their lands taken from them, their governments and borders decided by Christians, and being massacred in huge numbers. Despite all the talk about Islamic terrorism, vastly more Muslims have died at Christian or Jewish hands than the other way around. That’s a historical fact.
The Islamophobes are on slightly stronger ground criticizing the backwardness of Islamic culture. Yes, they treat women badly. Yes, the very notion of honor killings is repugnant. Yes, their legal and political systems are medieval. So what? That’s their business. They find Western morals every bit as repugnant as we find theirs.
The Islamophobes are also somewhat justified in their fear of terrorism, although their fear is all out of proportion to the danger imposed by these people. The total number of Americans killed by terrorists since 1980 is far less than the numbers killed by cars, guns, ladders, roofs, boats, or airplanes. The images of the Twin Towers have been burned into the brains of the Islamophobes, but the facts of risk in America belie their fears.
If Islamophobes were merely quaint fools, we could smile indulgently, but these people don’t stop at being stupid — they want to translate their stupidity into policy! They want strong action taken against Islamic countries — which of course would only reinforce the fear among Muslims that the American War on Terror is really a War on Islam. And such an effort will surely backfire. There are a billion Muslims on this planet. If you wish to make war on a billion people, you better get used to the idea of losing.
And that’s about enough banter on Islamofascism and Islamophobia for one day.
