Islamofascism

"Islamic fascism" (first described in 1933), also known since 1990 as "Islamofascism", is a term drawing an analogy between the ideological characteristics of specific Islamist movements and a broad range of European fascist movements of the early 20th century, neofascist movements, or totalitarianism.

Quotes

• In 1984 Said Amir Arjomand, an Iranian American sociologist at SUNY–Stony Brook, also pointed to “some striking sociological similarities between the contemporary Islamic movements and the European fascism and the American radical right….It is above all the strength of the monistic impulse and the pronounced political moralism of the Islamic traditionalist and fundamentalist movements which makes them akin to fascism and the radical right alike.”
  • Saïd Amir Arjomand, “Iran’s Islamic Revolution in Comparative Perspective,” World Politics 38, no. 3 (April 1986): 383–414. in Ibn, Warraq (2017). The Islam in Islamic terrorism: The importance of beliefs, ideas, and ideology. ch 2

• There is no sense in which jihadists embrace fascist ideology as it was developed by Mussolini or anyone else who was associated with the term. . . . This is an epithet, a way of arousing strong emotion and tarnishing one’s opponent, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the content of their beliefs.
  • Daniel Benjamin, "Bush's language angers US Muslims", BBC, 12 August 2006. Quoted in "Islamofascism" at Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR).

• The pairing of “Islam” and “fascism” has no parallel in characterizations of extremisms tied to other religions, although the defining movements of fascism were linked to Catholicism–indirectly under Benito Mussolini in Italy, explicitly under Francisco Franco in Spain. Protestant and Catholic terrorists in Northern Ireland, both deserving the label “fascist,” never had their religions prefixed to that word. Nor have Hindu extremists in India, nor Buddhist extremists in Sri Lanka.
  • John Carrol, "Islamofascism's ill political wind", The Boston Globe, January 21, 2008. Quoted in "Islamofascism" at Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR).

• That same thing which they call fascism when they wrongly attribute it to Hindu Rashtra, is effectively accepted in the case of a Muslim Rashtra, such as Pakistan. I at least have never heard any of them refer to Pakistan as fascist.
  • Elst K. Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

• Any use of Islam to develop supremacist ideas, which are political in nature and subjugate people who are not from that philosophy, is fascism. Fascism involves whipping up people under a certain order by employing non-state actors to implement policies of supremacy, whether it is the concept of Aryan supremacy in Germany or Italian Blackshirts. Islamofascism is a new form of fascism where the religion is implemented and used as a political tool to implement the goals of a worldwide caliphate, in which the Muslims will rule supreme and non-Muslims will either have to submit by paying a tax or convert or die. The Muslim Brotherhood, Jamat-i-Islami, Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, SIMI, Taliban, Al Qaeda or ISIS, they are all different shades of the same animal; a worldwide Islamofascist ideology.
  • Tarek Fatah: Breaking Down Jihadi Terror . Interview with Manish Pant- Mar 22, 2015, Interview [1]

• [Islamofascism is] a completely misleading concept. In fact, there’s virtually no overlap between the ideology of Al Qaeda and fascism. It’s just a way of making us feel that we’re the “greatest generation” fighting another World War, like the war our fathers and grandfathers fought. You’re translating a crisis symbolized by 9/11 into a sort of pseudo-World War II. So 9/11 becomes Pearl Harbor, and then you go after the bad guys who are the fascists, and if you don’t support us, then you must be an appeaser.
  • Niall Ferguson, "Insights for Contemporary Policies", Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley’s “Conversations with History” series, 10/19/06. Quoted in "Islamofascism" at Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR).

• We can now return to the NCERT guideline which proclaims that the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in medieval India shall be regarded as political rather than religious. There is no justification for such a characterisation of the conflict. The Muslims at least were convinced that they were waging a religious war against the Hindu infidels. The conflict can be regarded as political only if the NCERT accepts the very valid proposition that Islam has never been a religion, and that it started and has remained a political ideology of terrorism with unmistakable totalitarian trends and imperialist ambitions. The first premises as well as the procedures of Islam bear a very close resemblance to those of Communism and Nazism. Allah is only the predecessor of the Forces of Production invoked by the Communists, and of the Aryan Race invoked by the Nazis.
  • S. R. Goel, The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1982)

• Does Bin Ladenism or Salafism or 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...
  Technically, no form of Islam preaches racial superiority or proposes a master race. But in practice, Islamic fanatics operate a fascistic concept of the “pure” and the “exclusive” over the unclean and the kufar or profane. In the propaganda against Hinduism and India, for example, there can be seen something very like bigotry. In the attitude to Jews, it is clear that an inferior or unclean race is being talked about ... This makes it permissible, it seems to me, to mention the two phenomena in the same breath and to suggest that they constitute comparable threats to civilization and civilized values.
  • Christopher Hitchens Defending Islamofascism It’s a valid term. Here’s why. By Christopher Hitchens , Slate, Oct 2007 [2]

• There isn't actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it's not an ideology; it's a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t.
  • Paul Krugman (29 October 2007). "Fearing Fear Itself". The New York Times.

• The word 'Islamofascism' never had any meaning, except as a catch-all for whatever regimes and groups the word's users wished to make targets for military action. Hitchens is also well known for his tendentious misunderstandings of all forms of religion, likening theism to a supernatural totalitarian regime and attributing all of the crimes of political totalitarianism to religion. It was therefore appropriate that he should promote the term 'Islamofascism' since it defines a religious movement in the language of secular totalitarianism.
  • Daniel Larison (19 November 2007). "Term Limits". The American Conservative. American Ideas Institute.

• "When Nehru returned after a brief visit to Europe in 1938, he was struck by the similarity between the propaganda methods of the Muslim League in India and the Nazis in Germany: 'The League leaders had begun to echo the Fascist tirade against democracy... Nazis were wedded to a negative policy. So also was the League. The League was anti-Hindu, anti-Congress, anti-national... The Nazis raised the cry of hatred against the Jews, the League [had] raised [its] cry against the Hindus.'"
  • B.R. Nanda: Gandhi and His Critics, OUP, Delhi 1993 (1985), p.88. Quoted from Elst, K. Was Guru Golwalkar a Nazi ?, 1999. [3] also in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism".

• I argued over ten years ago that one could label the beliefs of the Islamic terrorists—or even Islam, tout court—fascist, in a precise way.
  • Ibn, Warraq (2017). The Islam in Islamic terrorism: The importance of beliefs, ideas, and ideology. ch 2

• I have nothing against the people. I don’t hate Muslims. But Islam is a totalitarian ideology. It rules every aspect of life — economics, family law, whatever. It has religious symbols, it has a God, it has a book — but it’s not a religion. It can be compared with totalitarian ideologies like Communism or fascism. There is no country where Islam is dominant where you have a real democracy, a real separation between church and state.
  • Geert Wilders "Who Says Islam Is Totalitarian?". National Review Online (2009 interview with Jeff Jacoby). 19 October 2010.