Islamofascism

Background and origins Meaning and history of the term The term "Islamofascism" is defined in the New Oxford American Dictionary as "a term equating some modern Islamic movements with the European fascist movements of the early twentieth century". Historian Robert Paxton has countered the use of the term entirely, considering it as an inappropriate use of the word fascism to describe Islamic extremists. Ruthven doubts that he himself coined the term, stating that the attribution to him is probably due to the fact that internet search engines do not go back beyond 1990. gives an analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and argues that such Islamic movements were an obstacle to the military regimes who were in his view representatives of a new middle class capable of modernizing the Middle East. Young Egypt Party A more direct combination of a pro-Islamic and nationalist agenda, inspired by Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist movement and government, was the Young Egypt Party, a political party that operated between 1933 and 1953 within Egypt. Post World War II After nationalizing the Suez Canal in 1956, pan-Arab nationalist Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser incensed United Kingdom's Prime Minister Anthony Eden, who reportedly told American President Dwight D. Eisenhower that Nasser was a ‘Hitler’ or ‘Muslim Mussolini’. Advent of Islamism In 1978, as Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution in Iran was gaining momentum, and intellectuals in France and elsewhere in the west were displaying enthusiasm for it, Maxime Rodinson, a Marxist scholar of Islam, pushed back, arguing that political Islamization in Iran and other places in the Islamic world was encouraging "a type of archaic fascism" where the state would enforce totalitarian moral policing and where Western-imported nationalism and socialism was recast in religious terms, eliminating their progressive side. Historically, foreign assaults on the core Islamic world—by Crusaders, Mongols, and Western imperialists—had led to impoverished masses reacting against their Westernized elites for their lack of traditional piety. Popularisation after the September 2001 attacks Origins of the popularization The term used much more broadly in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Khalid Duran is often credited with first using the term "Islamofascism" to characterize Islamism, generally, as a doctrine that would compel both a state and its citizens to adopt the religion of Islam. Neo-conservative journalist Lulu Schwartz is regarded as the first Westerner to adopt the term and popularise it in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center. In an article in The Spectator, Schwartz used it to describe the ideology of Osama Bin Laden. She defines it as the "use of the faith of Islam as a cover for totalitarian ideology" and alleges that various Islamist movements shares fundamental ideological features of fascism. Accounts differ as to who popularized the linkage. President George Bush used the term Islamofascism briefly in 2005 during his presidency, and clarified that it was distinct from the religion of Islam. According to Safire, author Christopher Hitchens was responsible for its diffusion, while Valerie Scatamburlo d'Annibale argues that its popularization is due to the work of Eliot Cohen, former counselor to Condoleezza Rice, an influential neoconservative at the time. It circulated in neoconservative circles for some years after 2001 and the war on terror. After the arrest of Islamic terrorists suspected of preparing to blow up aircraft, Bush once more alluded to "Islamic Fascists". Criticism Use of the term has met with criticism. According to Fred Halliday, it was used to intimate that either all Muslims, or those Muslims who spoke of their social or political goals in terms of Islam, were fascists. In 2002, cultural historian Richard Webster stated that British interference in the early 20th century engendered a virulent anti-Semitism generally unknown to Islam, and Western writers such as Andrew Sullivan mischaracterized the "response of militant Islam to the continued interference by the West in Muslim affairs" as Islamofascism. Katha Pollitt, stating the principle that, "if you control the language, you control the debate", remarked that while the term looked "analytic", it was emotional and "intended to get us to think less and fear" more. David Gergen, former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, commented that the phrase "confuses more than it clarifies", for "Islamic fascism has no meaning" in the Arab world. Hitchens also stated that it was another form of what left-wing analysts considered clerical fascism, and applicable to certain extremist believers of multiple religions. after then President George W. Bush talked about being at war with "Islamic fascists" in an August 2005 speech. The phrase was dropped from the president's vocabulary almost as quickly, according to Sheryl Gay Stolberg, after provoking a storm of protest from Muslims. A number of Republicans, such as Rick Santorum, used it as shorthand for terrorists, Ismael Hossein-zadeh criticized Bush's use of the term, calling it "offensive and inflammatory and, therefore, detrimental to international understanding and stability". He insists on a definition of fascism as "interventionist policies on behalf of corporate interests" during economic crisis, which require a "corresponding package of political fascism" that cracks down on civil liberties and democratic controls to manage unrest. He writes, "Radical movements and individuals of the Muslim world maybe called fundamentalist, populist, nationalist, or terrorist; but they cannot be called fascist", believing that the label itself served fascist corporate interests in the US who stood to benefit from "wars of aggression." 2008 Homeland Security memo In April 2008, the Associated Press reported that US federal agencies, including the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, were advised to stop using the term Islamo-fascism in a fourteen-point memo issued by the Extremist Messaging Branch of the National Counterterrorism Center. The memo states: "We are communicating with, not confronting, our audiences. Don't insult or confuse them with pejorative terms such as 'Islamo-fascism,' which are considered offensive by many Muslims." From 2014 to 2017, "journalists, bloggers and some academics" used the term to "equate" radical Islamism (particularly ISIS) with fascism, but by 2018 the term Islamofascism had "largely disappeared" from use in the world of policymakers in the US and other Western countries, according to Tamir Bar-on. ==Perspectives of Islamists on fascism ==

Islamist thinkers themselves have often denounced the idea that Islam does or should have any connection to Western ideologies like fascism. Since Islamists seek to unify the religion of Islam (for example, the establishment of a pan-Islamic state such as ISIS) rather than the unification of people based on their ethnicity or nationality, Islamists such as Hassan al-Banna have problems with nationalism. In his manifesto Milestones, the Islamist theoretician Sayyid Qutb emphasized his belief that Islamists should never "propose similarities" between the Islamic and non-Islamic "system or manners" (including political systems): Qutb was mainly interested in the ideologies of democracy, nationalism and socialism that dominated his country and much of the Muslim world at the time since by the time his manifesto was written (1964), World War II was over and fascism was a defeated ideology. He was adamant that there is no compromise to be made: Hassan al-Banna on nationalism The anti-Islamic writer Hamed Abdel-Samad states in his book "Islamic Fascism" that Al-Banna's organization, the Muslim Brotherhood "had always eulogized the principles of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini". Al-Banna compared pan-Germanism with pan-Islamism, but clarified that "it is not permissible to allow the racist factor to overpower the belief factor". The Muslim Brotherhood received a £5,000 payment from Nazi Germany in August 1939 to spread anti-British messaging, but any further relationship was terminated by the beginning of the war. Ayatollah Khomeini on fascism Writing during World War II, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini criticized Adolf Hitler and the Nazi takeover of Poland, calling it "unjust and evil," and writing that "This Hitlerite mentality ... is one of the most poisonous and heinous products of the human mind." After the Iranian Revolution, in an interview with Oriana Fallaci in the New York Times, Fallaci asked him about the "fanaticism" of some of his followers, the totality of the control which he had over the country, and the fact that "many people call you a dictator". Khomeini rejected the claim that his movement was fascist, saying that it was "unjust and unhuman to call me a dictator" and saying that "Fascism and Islamism are absolutely incompatible". Impact of Julius Evola on Islamism Julius Evola (1898–1974) was an Italian philosopher and fascist writer who also had a high opinion of Islam and its future as a world power. He wrote many books and articles on tradition and modernity, supporting reactionary and traditionalist ideas. In Metaphysics of War, Evola comments on the philosophy of war in the Hindu, Islamic and Western traditions, describing the idea of jihad in Islam. In Evola's description of Islam, he praises its traditional morality and clear social roles. Evola characterized Islam as "a tradition at a higher level both Judaism and the religious beliefs that conquered the West." Evola's esotericist beliefs and praise of Islam have led Frank Gelli to accuse him of being a crypto-Sufi. Evola has been cited as an influence of the Russian Islamic activist Geydar Dzhemal. In Revolt Against the Modern World, Evola writes Evola predicted a resurgence in Islam following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, saying: Tunisian Hezbollah militant Fouad Saleh cited Evola during his trial, reading passages from Revolt Against the Modern World. ==Journalistic perspectives==

The American journalist and former Nixon speechwriter William Safire wrote that the term fulfilled a need for a term to distinguish traditional Islam from terrorists: "Islamofascism may have legs: the compound defines those terrorists who profess a religious mission while embracing totalitarian methods and helps separate them from devout Muslims who want no part of terrorist means." Malise Ruthven opposed redefining Islamism as "Islamofascism," a term whose usage has been "much abused". The Islamic label can be used for legitimizing and labeling a movement, but ideology must be distinguished from the brand name associated with it. The difference between Islamic movements and fascism are more "compelling" than the analogies. Islam defies doctrinal unification. No particular order of government can be deduced from Islamic texts, any more than from Christianity. Spanish fascists drew support from traditional Catholic doctrines, but by the same token, other Catholic thinkers have defended democracy in terms of the same theological traditions. ==Scholarly perspective==

The widespread use in mass media of the term "Islamofascism" has been challenged as confusing because of its conceptual fuzziness. A number of scholars and thinkers, such as Michel Onfray, Michael Howard, Jeffrey Herf, Walter Laqueur, and Robert Wistrich have argued that the link between fascism and Islam/Islamic radicalism is sound. :"It has more in common with the Bolsheviks and the French revolutionaries than it does with militant Muslim nationalist groups such as Hamas and Hizballah. To talk about Jihadism as Islamofascism is to misunderstand both Jihadism and fascism. Historians like Niall Ferguson dismiss the word as an "extraordinary neologism" positing a conceptual analogy when there is "virtually no overlap between the ideology of al Qaeda and fascism". Some scholars have compared the tactics, conspiratorial thinking, and recruitment styles of white supremacists and radical Islamic terrorists, asserting that while they have different ideologies, they have "structurally very similar modes of thought". Walter Laqueur, after reviewing this and related terms, concluded that "Islamic fascism, Islamophobia and antisemitism, each in its way, are imprecise terms we could well do without but it is doubtful whether they can be removed from our political lexicon." Support and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2014). According to the authors, there is a nexus between Nazism and Islamism and the vector would have been Amin al-Husseini (left). Some of the liberal public intellectuals accused (by Tony Judt) of being supporters of the concept following the 9/11 attacks are Adam Michnik, Oriana Fallaci; Václav Havel; André Glucksmann, Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier, David Remnick, Thomas Friedman and Michael Walzer. Manfred Halpern, the first major thinker to characterize politicized Islam as a fascist movement, called it "Neo-Islamic Totalitarianism" in his classic 1963 study The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa. The French Marxist Maxime Rodinson described Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood as a "type of archaic fascism" whose goal was the establishment of a "totalitarian state whose political police would brutally enforce the moral and social order." and that the Palestinian cause had become "part of the Islamofascist jihad against the West." The sociologist Saïd Amir Arjomand has argued that since 1984 (at least in Iran) Islamism and fascism share essential features, an argument he made at some length in his 1989 book The Turban for the Crown; The Islamic revolution in Iran. and journalists for being "ahistorical and simplistic" (Tony Judt): "politically biased and polemical" (Stefan Wild); and for being used in "right-wing circles ... to help spread the alarming notion that all Islamists—ranging from the Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias of Iraq to Osama bin Laden to the mullahs of Iran to angry Palestinians—are part of a single, terrifying threat on the order of Nazi Germany" (by The Week); While Islamic Fascism has been discussed as a category of serious analysis by the scholars mentioned above, the term "Islamofascism" circulated mainly as a propaganda, rather than as an analytic term after the September 11 attacks on the United States in September 2001, but also gained a foothold in more sober political discourse, both academic and pseudo-academic. Many critics are dismissive, variously branding it as "meaningless" (Daniel Benjamin); a "figment of the neocon imagination" (Paul Krugman); and as betraying an ignorance of both Islam and Fascism (Angelo Codevilla). Tony Judt, in an analysis of liberal acquiescence in President George W. Bush's foreign policy initiatives, particularly the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq, argued that this policy was premised on the notion there was such a thing as Islamofascism, a notion Judt considered catastrophic. In his diagnosis of this shift he detected a decline in the old liberal consensus of American politics, and what he called the "deliquescence of the Democratic Party". Many former left-liberal pundits, like Paul Berman and Peter Beinart having no knowledge of the Middle East or cultures like those of Wahhabism and Sufism on which they descant authoritatively, have, he claimed, and his view was shared by Niall Ferguson, latched onto the war on terror as a new version of the old liberal fight against fascism, in the form of Islamofascism. In their approach there is a cozy acceptance of a binary division of the world into ideological antitheses, the "familiar juxtaposition that eliminates exotic complexity and confusion: Democracy v. Totalitarianism, Freedom v. Fascism, Them v. Us" has been revived. Christopher Hitchens was also criticized by Judt, as making unhistoric simplifications, to justify use of the term. ==See also==