Islamofascist Awareness

During this week, a rare series of events will occur on college campuses across the US. Instead of speakers who condemn the West and apologize for Jihadism, a series of speakers (some serious such as Robert Spenser, others extreme such as Ann Coulter) will discuss “Islamofascism.” This simple exercise in free speech has elicited a firestorm of protest on the campuses in question. At its core is the use of the term: “Islamofascist.”

“Islamofascism” describes the Jihadist movement as exemplified by Osama bin Ladin’s al Qaeda. Many publications on the Left avoid the term and, in fact, rarely use the adjective "Islamic" to describe a terrorist or a terrorist-related movement. The reason, they state, is to avoid painting an entire religion as extreme.

But in emphasizing this politically correct restriction, are the MSM and other publications bending the truth? Christopher Hitchens believes they are:

Does Bin Ladenism or Salafism or [or Jihadism or Islamism] whatever we agree to call it have anything in common with fascism?

I think yes. The most obvious points of comparison would be these: Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. ("Death to the intellect! Long live death!" as Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual "deviance"—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.

Fascism (and Nazism) also attempted to counterfeit the then-success of the socialist movement by issuing pseudo-socialist and populist appeals. It has been very interesting to observe lately the way in which al-Qaida has been striving to counterfeit and recycle the propaganda of the anti-globalist and green movements.

It’s interesting to note that the same outlets who refuse to use the term "Islamofascism" have no trouble parroting propaganda from terror-apologists such as CAIR when they call anyone who criticizes extreme elements of Islam as “Islamophobic.” If CAIR can equate legitimate criticism with Islamophobia, I and everyone else should feel very comfortable equating “a cult of murderous violence that exalts death,” a movement that is misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and much more, as “Islamofascist.”