The Islamofascism Ideology

Najeh Shahin
2008 / 1 / 21

Introduction: in praise of Marx
Communism was not really appreciated sufficiently neither in the Arab World nor in the countries of Muslim population majorities. I could even claim that all religions must consider Marx a saint. For Marx was one of the very important forces that pushed Europe -and especially the U.S.- to rediscover the beauties of religion. One of the greatest presidents of the U.S. regardless of his relative ignorance when it comes to politics – for all great presidents are enemies by instinct to culture and intellectuals including political culture- put it very nicely when he said that the decisive difference between “us” and “ them” is that we believe in God, they don’t. Hence the sacred family, that that President Ronald Reagan, had created with the Saudi’s and their illegal kid Osama Bin Laden. A Jordanian communist who had a good sense of humor had a public debate with two members of the Muslim Brotherhood found it completely impossible to communicate with them. He told me: They think that Marx had nothing in mind but to chase the Muslim God with a heavy stick. In occupied Palestine some of them thought they can cooperate with the Israelis “people of the book” against the atheist Palestinian communists. But who can remember those happy days of love among all believers against the bad followers of Marx. Marx, the ghost was everywhere in the cities of the East and the West and the orchestra was playing the same melody of war against the horror of communism which was culminated with the happy conclusion of the disappearance of the ghost. Suddenly everybody started to lament the absence of the enemy. Everybody felt his life void of meaning and the search for meaning was to take place. People cannot live without magic. And the enemy should have been created if it was not really affordable. Wael Altaghlibi (in the Arab pre-Islamic epic) felt unrest because of the lack of identity. He wanted to be different from other tribes. What could he do? He thought: The limit of my geography is the sound of the barking of my dog. So the dog’s barking defines the place. But still he wanted to tell how different he is from others so he gave himself a new name, Kuleib (the little dog). He was a genius for he could construct his identity in a positive way. His grand children in Baghdad AlMua’tazilah failed to give God a positive identity so they said it’s much appropriate to tell what god is not. The remaining is God. The funny thing is that God came very close to nothingness.


The rediscovery of the enemy
But luckily, indeed very luckily, the enemy was there for all: For Europe with its versions, the U.S. -and even Israel- and for Arabs and Muslims as well. Have not they engaged in a prolonged war all over history south and north the Mediterranean? I guess it needed only some good memory to recall all the enmity of the past. And there the game started. All the players were ready to start at the whistle of some imaginative invoker. Saddam was there. And he had nothing to do after his last bloody adventure that lasted eight years against Iran. Politics, economic interest, history, ideology…everything was available. One needed only the will to unleash the magic bullet, and good news: the neoconservatives were there to pick it and set out for a new phase of war against the new-old enemy. The crusade war has to be continued.
On the other side of the globe those victorious people who could defeat the Soviet empire and to put an end to the “Red” menace, was preparing themselves to conquer another superpower. Never has it been so vivid like this. They are destined to build the kingdom of God on the ruins of the Western hypocrite civilization.
And in Europe and the U.S., after the victory that has been achieved against the communist fascism the world couldn’t live for long without some fascists to tell the kids some stories about before going to bed. One cannot keep telling old stories about Italy and Germany, after all who can remember Hitler? It’s a turn of a century and a new child must be born. The old days of Franco were over. There are not many who can recall that everybody was enjoying his sexual party without feeling any guilt for the slaughter of the elected government in Spain. And when the victory of the “free world” was attained, simply nobody remembered Spain. Marx of course would smile sarcastically and say: That’s what I’m trying all the time to say, but you do not believe me; they are all fascists. It’s only me who made them look nice and when I departed, you could see the difference.
Marx has left the city and that was end of the party of history. Liberal democracy is the happy end of the Hollywood movie directed by Fukuyama. On the other side of the street stood Huntington to warn us, wait a minute people, there is still the clash of civilization. And the White House juggled with joy: Oh yea, what did you say? Could we have a war against the Arabs, the Muslims? Of course it is worthy; for they have oil and they are barbaric people and they are healthy. They can stand our missiles for a while.( They are unlike Africa which is according to the second Bush a nation torn by aids and civil war) .So let’s start the game of constructing the new-old enemy.
The Essence of Islam
Edward Said has noticed as early as 1981 that “… there is an assumption that Islam can be characterized limitlessly by means of a handful of recklessly general and repeatedly deployed clichés.”(Said, 1981, p.xi) But this was almost three decades ago and the world has become more liberal since those difficult moments of the cold war. The new wave of theoretical books is probably different because they go directly to read the Islamic philosophers and sometimes they read them in Arabic.
Had I seen the devil incarnated, I would not have been more amused and terrified than discovering that Abdullah Azzam was after all a philosopher. But Shanl Shay thinks that he is “one of the prominent philosophers who advocated the Jihad way” (Shay, 2007, p.6) By comparison, I think that General Abu Zeid has a good chance to get the certificate of being a prominent philosopher. Azzam was a professor at the Sharia College at the University of Jordan and he organized demonstrations demanding the urgent closure of the department of philosophy because it’s against Islam, it encourages students to embrace communism, atheism, western thought, Arab classical heretics and the stuff. He was infamous for a small book which he wanted to have the effect of a manifesto so he entitled it “The Red Cancer.” Of course it’s self-evident that the book was dedicated to alarm people against communism. The basic theme is about the immorality of communism and how communists in particular could have sex with their mothers…etc. That man was a friend of the U.S and not the Palestinian or Arab people who noticed him advocating the holy war in Afghanistan whence Beirut was besieged by the Israeli’s in 1982. Almost everybody in the Arab world –but of course this is an exaggeration because he was never that well-known character- especially his fellow citizens in Palestine and Jordan took him to be an American if not an Israeli agent, but all this is beside the point. The important thing is that the man has no reputation what so ever as a writer or a scholar. He is only remembered –if any- as one of the founders of the Jihad in Afghanistan. To be in American celebrated scholarship a prominent philosopher is something that I doubt he ever dreamt of.
One might think that things in general are better than this but some survey could not help me to think this way. George Michael introduces Jamal Eldin Al Afghani as a “darwish” (a religious sophist)who was obsessed with religion.(Michael.2006,p.35) That primitive “darwish” could notice as early as the 1870’s the need for some Southern League. He did not care whether they are Muslims or Buddhists or whatever. I guess Renan was not unreasonable when he described him as a great atheist “sheikh”. But since Michael wants to find fanaticism in every given person, data, and situation, he can dismiss these things and focus his attention on any pages of Afghani’s life or books that might help to form the picture of Islamofascism. That’s why – as everybody does these new brave days- he hurried to the shades of Sayed Qutb. Islam is what it is because of what it has been and what it had been. Here Qutb can help a lot. With his high voice and blind heart to history and reality he forgets that his writings are the result of the years of prison. And he forgets that he had almost very little time to get an idea about the complicated diversity of the Islamic heritage. Michael prefers to take the man at his word, and so yes why not? Let us consider him the sole and legitimate representative of Islam. Qutb is not as Samir Amin has claimed a syndrome of a crisis rather than a solution; he is for Michael the man you can call to tell you why you have those blind Islamic fascists. Qutb is a sufficient reason for what happens in the south excluding Latin America. However, I don’t know if he is also a necessary condition for all the fanaticism that took place in the world post communism. But for Michael he is so important. “His critique [Qutb’s] of Jews and the state of Israel would provide an intellectual framework for Middle Eastern anti-Zionism.” (Same refernce, p.44) Jesus! One should conclude that if it were not for Qutb then the Arabs – and particularly the Palestinians- would have fallen in love with Zionism, for that’s after all the reasonable thing. However the writer should consider that after the death of Qutb life could not but go on for another year to witness the Israeli marvelous defeat of the Arab world which resulted in a shock to “the entire Muslim world” (p.52) I could not help laughing at this junction, for who, what, which, where and all the wh questions that Muslim world which was shocked? Was it Suhartu the American’s friend foe of communism who slaughtered more than a million of his people shocking the whole humanity without any resentment on his part or the American administration? Was it the Turkish military democracy or the Shah of Iran? The year of publication is important. It’s 2006 and one can depend on the effect of time against man’s memory. However, it’s useful to remind Michael that the Muslims, particularly the disciples of Qutb were more than happy with the defeat. Not only because Nasser is the executer of their beloved Qutb, but also because it was a tough lesson from the almighty God that one should not depend on those filthy people like Nasser and the communists. Mohammad Mutwali Sharawi one of the prominent “philosophers” – at least far more prominent than Azzam- of modern Islam said he prayed thankfully to God because He defeated the filthy tyrant Nasser. No, all this is not applicable because simply the Muslim world is essentially one homogenous world. George Habash of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was among the people shocked by the defeat, but unluckily he is Christian. So what? Everybody in the Middle East or in the Muslim world (for sometimes they are used interchangeably by American writers) is a Muslim until s/he proves the opposite. However, it’s not easy to prove it according to my personal record at the Philadelphia international airport.
After the shock of the 1967 war which establishes some of the background for the following Islamic fascism there came the “Yom Kippur war” -One can notice the very “neutral” entitlement of events - but the happy event for me is that since “Yom” is the same in Arabic and Hebrew and Kippur is very similar to Arabic “Gafoor” so I can tell the story of the title. But why doesn’t one call it simply the 1973 war? – Which “bolstered the statue of Islamists”? Why? No answer. However, after that we face the OPEC oil embargo that also bolstered the Islamists. I guess this line of thought is no less mystical than the religious one.
There is a real need to essentialize every given phenomenon to be exclusively Islamic, and thus Michael can read the Iranian revolution (ibid. cf. p.55) from the right beginning as an Islamic one. There is no need to see the wide contribution of a variety of factions and ideologies in the popular movement that covers almost two years. However, Khomeini could finally take over power but this is another story. Hezbollah all the time introduces itself as a resistance movement against Israel, but Michael is not the man to be deceived by what people say about themselves. He knows that (p.57) “The chief aim of Hezbollah is the establishment of Islamic state in Lebanon.” But is not this a bit difficult? Is not this after all Lebanon? However, the writer does not find any contradiction in the Party’s ties with such Marxists like Nelson Mandela (is he a Marxist!), Daniel Ortega, and Fidel Castro. But of course since all of them are Marxists and fascists and above all terrorists so no wonder they can cooperate despite the seemingly differences between them. Hezbollah in particular has had the terrorist history against U.S. Oh not on Sep.11 it was in Lebanon in 1983 against innocent American soldiers who were in a humanistic mission there. But one cannot deny the beauty of Michael’s discourse when he mentions how (p.62) after humiliating defeats by Israel, Muslims could luckily defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Those same Muslim losers could defeat the Soviet Union. Needless to say that he is not fair at all when it comes to his country’s (U.S.) contribution, for it was really basically the victory of his country in both cases, but since he is so humble and self denial he prefers not to claim it.
In Michael’s discourse everybody could be identified with everybody. It’s a very liquid identity and since one is a Muslim then he could be any other Muslim. That’s the only way I guess that validate the linking of Hezbollah (the Shiite party with its Marxist taste as Michael himself notices) to Bin-Laden. Nasrallah, dozens of times, has described Al-Qaeda of being blind and a force of darkness. Nevertheless Michael is a cunning man: There is a link, some hidden mysterious link between them. However, if we just go after Nasrallah we probably would find evidence. Probably there is a need to “liberate” Lebanon, a task that was part of the Jewish state homework in the summer of 2006.
But to be a fascist, it is not enough to have relations with communists or to be Anti-American. There is another element that one should not fail to notice. That’s anti-Semitism. Not only that all modern Arabs and Muslims are anti-Semitic but the Quran was and is anti-Semitic before and after the birth of the term anti-Semitism in the 19th century. Despite the fact that the Jews were not particularly in a bad position in the Arabic-Islamic world through its long history (perhaps the opposite is more credible) the Quran hatred of the Jews and moreover the strange hatred of Palestinians and Arabs toward the Jewish state is a robust evidence of the anti-Semitism of the Arabs and the Muslims. (Ibid, cf pp.72-74). No one can protest by mentioning the Christian Arabs who hate Israel because unluckily Christians also in Europe did hate Jews.

Islam and Neo Fascism
One of the noteworthy things about the Islamofascism phenomenon members is that they can establish a sort of crazy mentality among their followers to the extent that they can go as far as sacrificing their own lives. It’s completely not understandable how any rational human being can do this, hence the difficulty of understanding those people who simply show willingness to die so as to inflict death on others. A Hezbollah s militant remarks: “The Americans pretend not to understand the suicide bombers and consider them evil. But I’m sure they do. As usual they are hypocrites. What’s so strange about saying: (I’d rather kill you on my own terms and kill myself with you rather than be led to my death like a sheep on your terms?) I know that the Americans fully understand this because this is exactly [emphasis added] what they were celebrating about the guy who downed the Philadelphia flight on Sep. 11” (Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, 2007, p.64). These are simple direct words uttered by some militant. So perhaps the only answer that could be given to him as like this: “Hey poor thing! But who is going to kill you or do any harm against you. In fact we – if one chooses to quote Shimon Peres- want you to be a happy and prosperous neighbor.”
But nobody actually pays attention to what that soldier or even lay Arab man might say. When a figure like Dennis Ross who introduces himself in each occasion as an expert in the Arab and or Muslim mentality would explain everything about the behavior of the Middle Eastern people, then one can understand them easily. Ross asserts that there is some thing irrational about Islam and Hezbollah. Hamas in particular (quoted by Levitt, 2006, p.ix) cannot change its goals because it’s a division of the Muslim Brotherhood. Politics is not worth mentioning. It’s substantial for Hamas to be anti-Semite but Hamas makes use of some tricks for it “…has demonstrated that it can hurt Israel, when, in the eyes of the Palestinians, [only in their eyes] the Israelis have been hurting them” Levitt (Ibid, p.7). He also blames Hamas because it “directly contributes to the rapid anti-Americanism spreading throughout the region.” (ibid, same page). The invasion of Iraq is not to be considered. It’s all about Muslim inherent and instinctual hatred of democracy and America. Aristotle is still a dominant figure in town. His principle of identity, eternal identity is the key to understanding things. Without his brilliant principle it’s difficult to establish such a beautiful theoretical construction. However one must always remember Bernard Lewis for his deep understanding of “The Roots of Muslim Rage” where he found his scapegoat in democracy and jealousy. The sad thing is that such a childish rhetoric is written by a man of the rank and reputation of Lewis. And the reasonable thing comes from smaller (very smaller) writers like Michael Hirsch who says explicitly in his essay “Bush and the World” (4/7/2005) that all the states and continents especially our allies in Europe must understand that we have the right to behave as the master of the world because actually our military might justify this. It’s not in their interest to contribute to the resistance against the American hegemon because they will lose our sympathy. However Bush is harsh in his ways but basically what he does is correct. One can argue that even the American hyper power has its limits but this is beside the point. The nice thing is that the man is aware of the American needs to expansion and he is honest to the extent of recognizing the real plot instead of engaging in the mythology of the clash o f civilization and the stuff.
Said thinks that there is a problem with “Covering Islam.” however; I think that the real problem is in covering liberal democracy, capitalism, and Americanism. Anybody who stands against these “values” would be classified as a fascist, a fanatic, a terrorist, and though sometimes this is applicable – you can apply it especially to the U.S. post Sep.11- but the dilemma is that a state, a party, a mere individual could be labeled that way just because the American empire interests do not tolerate any real questioning. A. James Gregor in (The Search for NeoFascism, 2006) regards China after Moe, and The Russian Federation fascist states, anti-Semitic and chauvinists (cf., p.174). This perhaps could count for regarding everybody or almost everybody a fascist. But the writer is not lacking in creativity and novelty for he introduces a very “useful” term in the disputed topic of fascism, that is; Middle Eastern Neo fascism. Actually I admire the man for his authenticity in getting rid of the strange story of the Middle East and North Africa (however it will be somehow odd and boring to speak of the syndrome of fascism in the Middle East and North Africa). So in his view both Arab Asian and African countries becomes one unit, that’s the Middle Eastern Neo fascists. It applies to everybody there for merely being in such an area, one is infected with the epidemic of neo fascism. It’s only Israel who could be excluded because of its democracy and tolerant laws that consider all human beings equal and considers any child born in the air or the sea or the land an Israeli except unluckily if he is Palestinian and happened to have left the country for some vague reason during or in the aftermath of the birth of the only democracy and non-fascist state in the Neo-fascist Middle East.
Fascism in this reading is not necessarily related to Islam, or to a particular regime. So it is highly probable that its source is ethnicity, for Middle Eastern basically is applied to Arabs. Nasser is no different from Mussolini (p.169) because both of them wanted to recapture the territories of the past empire: Mussolini those of Rome and Nasser the Arab world. Gregor fails to notice that the majority of the Arabs were enthusiastic (still they are) to Pan-Arabism while Mussolini wanted to colonize what had been once the territories of the Roman Empire.
Still the Middle Eastern neo fascist world is an Islamic one. Nasser and Khomeini are interchangeable. Deep in the background of the regimes of Nasser and Assad (same page) you find Islam. No mention to the severe fight at least in the very aggressive case of Syria where the Assad regime for good or bad used the artillery against the forces of the Muslim brothers when they were still freedom fighters supported by Israel and Jordan the allies of the U.S. in the neo fascist Middle East. Very smoothly (p.173): “The pictures of Khomeini took place of those of Nasser…” without any word about the differences at least between the Shia and the Sunni. If Hezbollah with its charismatic leadership and smart media and political rhetoric and brave struggle – at least form the Arab’s point of view- cannot till this moment avoid the whole spectrum of the difficulties being a shiat party, how Khomeini could replace Nasser with a hundred of differences between the two men and regimes is a mysterious puzzle. But everything should be done to create the new fascist Middle East especially that the new democratic Middle East promised by the American secretary of state Condoleezza Rice did not make a lot progress particularly because of the Hezbollah fascism and terrorism against the Israeli tanks and soldiers. If the material reality is not capable of achieving the empires goals soon enough the discourse is less resistant. The writer (p.180) goes as far as regarding Khomeini a pupil of Mawdudi and Qutb. I can imagine the rage and resentment felt by the Shia scholars when comparing them to the Sunni. One just needs to imagine the way Hezbollah thinks of the Muslim brotherhood to tell how much insult implied in comparing a great Ayatollah to Qutb. No wonder that Gregor concludes that (p.183) “The Islamic Republic of Iran was in identifiable measure [emphasis added], animated by their [Qutb, al-Banna…] ideas”. Shia was“quietism” before they discovered Qutb and Muwdudi. I guess one needs to read the history of Shia time and again because before reading Gregor one thinks naively that the history of Shia was that of the permanent revolution against the Sunni domination. However, after the revelation made by Gregor one has to reconsider one’s position.
Al-Qaeda and Neo Fascism
Ironically enough the study of Islam was always meshed with much consideration that made it especially after the OPEC embargo an explicit political sphere rather than academic one. Said went as early as 1980 to say that “Virtually nothing about the study of Islam is “free” and undetermined by urgent contemporary pressures.” (Said, 1981, p.135) I think that nothing more applicable to our contemporary study of Islam more than the fact that it’s very now being conducted under urgent and very strong pressures to justify what’s going on in the political sphere. When the Twin’s terrible explosion took place Jaberi a prominent Arab contemporary thinker – though I tend to think of the word prominent twice after its application to Azzam- said that U.S. should hit back very soon in order to prevent its people from thinking why this happens to them. The U.S. did not disappoint the man, for the hit back was intensive and severe not only in the military sphere but also in the ideological and media sphere: a great hurricane of articles, books, TV interviews and movies started to “analyze” this fanatic, irrational, not understandable phenomenon of the people who committed the terrible thing. The “real” story did not need all those “brilliant” and intensive efforts. It was somehow easier but the concealing of the basic plot is the secret of that ongoing game. Let’s for ever try in vain to grasp the reality of those Islaomfascists and we will, day after day, find that we need to extinguish them, all of them. If we choose to read things without much exaggeration Mohammad-Mahmoud –though his name does discredit him- quotes a head of the anti-Bin Laden unit at the CIA saying: “The September attacks were not apocalyptic onslaughts on western civilization … The attacks were acts of war and had limited goal, which were achieved; intellectual honesty forbids describing them as efforts to destroy such unquantifiable things as our freedom or way of life!” (op.cit.p63). However, I won’t buy the man’s idea that it was an act of war for war had some established traditions, but at least the man is completely right to say that those who committed have any thing in mind but destroying the western civilization and the stuff. Several times Osama Bin-Laden made it explicit that what he wants is that the west leaves “us” alone. And to take this in the broad sense of the word one does not need to be a fascist or a fanatic Muslim –or even a fascist communist- to think this way for it looks that most the people of the Arab world do support this. However, this makes them vulnerable to being classified, all of them as fascists.
Any how Islamofascism could not be simply Bin- Laden or Qaeda because this makes the enemy very trivial and in a sense the war should have been over exactly after the very devastating and easy victory in Afghanistan. How could the “epic” go after that to Iraq? And still no one can tell for sure what the other targets are going to be. Because of that there should be that strange mixture of Nasser, Qutb, Khomeni, Nasrallah, Habash, and even Arafat who only yesterday was awarded the Noble prize for making peace with his “brave partner” –to use his words- Isaac Rabin.
In such atmosphere comes “al-Qaeda” “The Many Faces of an Islamist Extremist Threat” (2006) a report of the house permanent select committee on intelligence, to tell people the secrets of the war waged by Islamists against the West and the U.S. in particular. Al-Qaeda and al-Zarqawi “work to create a Muslim state under a new Caliphate.”(p.6) I’m happy that the report did not continue to reveal that Zarqawi was the candidate for the “caliph” position because people in the so called Middle East would have thought that the world is completely dominated by insane people. But let’s pretend that this sort of kidding has had some sort of sense, why should the U.S. a great non precedented hyper power bother itself with those plans of the states and rulers in the Middle East? Secondly even if Zarqawi (the Nasser or probably the Rashid and Averros incarnation of the moment) was about to establish his Islamic caliphate, why should he fight U.S.? The report does not engage in logical games and in stead goes directly to warn people (p.7) of homegrown terrorism in the U.S. However, this comes to silence the weak voices that resist the fascist (see? everybody can use the magic term) violations of human rights at home. It is funny that one can be a fascist in order to fight against fascism.
The Popular Discourse
The more popular version of truth is always deeper and wiser despite the fact that it looks simpler. Here there is no need to start with the history of things or what ever. You just invite Qutb to the party of 9/11 and start shouting: Catch the fascist, here he is, hey people follow him before he escapes (the way they do in Cairo with street pick-pocket thieves). Guy Raz (Why Islamofascism May Create New U.S. Enemies, http://www.npr.org/templates. accessed 3/12/07) thinks that many people find it appropriate to refer to Islamist radicals as fascists because they “aim to impose their ideas on other people.” But if this is enough to classify some agency as a fascist, then perhaps it’s easy to classify most people as such since even the best democracies in the world tend these days to impose at least their liberal views on others. How else could we describe the new obsession in countries like Denmark and Holland who tend to test people on their views to check whether they fit as citizens in those countries? According to the writer, Richard Perl -who is well-known for his love of war as a means to impose democracy- does not prefer the term Islamofascism because it’s an “emotive term” but he believes that Western countries today are in a situation similar to that of the past when they fought against the totalitarian countries. I was impressed by the analogy because actually I think the same: we are living in a moment very similar to 1939 when Hitler started to invade other countries without any respect to any values or giving any thoughtful excuse or giving any consideration to the League of Nations. Unlike the current situation there were people to stop him. Today U.S. seems very hungry to wage permanent wars despite the opposition of the international community and even the American citizens. If the definition of imposing one’s views on others is applicable to all people and not only Islamists, then perhaps U.S. does fit with the definition of fascism. But this is beside the point because in principle no one can bring U.S. to the court for it’s above all sorts of laws. The point here is to show how the popular game of ranking Zarawi, Bin-Laden and other Islamofascists to the level of the Nazi Germany or the communist Soviet Union is not exclusively the job of some web net writers or even a few extremist from the right. It’s the official position of the state represented by its president the apocalyptic figure George W. Bush whom many people think that he believes himself to have a sort of religious mission. Almost two years ago in a speech before the National Endowment for Democracy (Oct., 6, 2005) he expressed his concerns about the danger of Zarqawi to the whole world. Without trying to be funny or the stuff he considered “Islamic terrorism” the main and only enemy in the twenty-first century. I remember one Sheikh in Ramallah told me: “I wanted to tell him, wait you exaggerate, you must reconsider China.” Even that Sheikh was able to be more realistic when it comes to politics than the president of the leading country in the free world.
However, Daniel Mandel has a different opinion. He thinks that the president’s use of the term has at least the merit of reminding the world democracies of the threats that are so similar to those of the 1930’s. (http//www.hnnn.us). In fact he does face no serious difficulties to show that Islamists are fascists. For they have in common the anti-Semitic syndrome. However, the problem with the 1930’s is that people did not under stand that the meaning of anti-Semitism is fascism-how could they? “…the Jews stand for better or worse as eternal representatives of that which totalitarians wish to destroy.” The causal link is established as such between anti-Semitism and fascism. After “science” has successfully defined and determined the basic essence of fascism, what one needs now to complete the argument is to show that Islamists indeed are anti-Semitic. With Mandel there is no need to suffer with books. You just watch TV to see how Iran’s leader is going on Hitler’s steps to eliminate the state of the Jews. Not to mention Nasrallah and Hamas. Hamas of course is the worst of them because it has it in its charter: The elimination of Israel and (it looks that he read the charter) particularly article 15. However, in article “7” Hamas dedicates itself to the murder of the Jews. [Not the Israeli’s or the Israeli occupant or the occupation soldiers’]. End. Corollary: No time to waste, the war should start right now against all Islamofascist. However, this exactly what the Judaist Fundamentalists think. In a book printed twice in 2003 in the U.S. A Jewish writer –Saa’di Grameh- explains that the Jews are the secret of goodness and that the goyim are the evil opposite. It’s though beautiful how the author inverses the Nazi ideology upside down by saying that the people of Israel –meaning the Jews not the state of Israel- are superior to all other people but the worst of all the goyim is the German people. (www.kannanonline.org)”1” Like in Mane there are two opposites evil and goodness but in the author’s case goodness is identical with the Jews. However, war against goyim is inevitable even against the best of them, the Arabs who are some how human animals because they are the offspring of Ishmael. Of course the rest of humanity is mere animals who deserve no rights.
Sometimes the rhythm is so strong but lacking the previous logical beauties. One of them goes to include Islamic countries as such. “It doesn’t matter that Islamo-fascist countries have no freedom, no civil liberties, no women’s rights, no science, no art, and are controlled by billionaire oligarch who pay the clerics to keep their people under control; that they are part of the are part of the revolutionary struggle against America is all that is required to receive the moral approval of the pacifist.”(http//www.sourcewatch.org) Nawal elSaadawi would go crazy about the last sentence for in fact the “Islamic fascist country of Egypt” has banned the Arab women’s organization due to its protest against the Gulf war 1991. But this is of course beside the point, the issue here is that I could not tell whether the features mentioned are the characteristics of the Islamic fascist countries or they are merely extra footnotes about those fascist countries to make them look even uglier.
Santorum the republican previous senate who lost the late elections in Pennsylvania share the previous vision of the danger of Islamo-fascism. During his campaign he behaves as though he was going for presidential elections. I wonder how an imaginative character could lose. He said he was sorry that Bush had dropped (did he?) the explicit description of Islamist Fascism. (http//www.pittsburghlive.com) The people should know the difficult war America is facing. “I think we’re facing the greatest threat this country has ever faced” (ibid). For him it’s Iran who is the principal enemy in the war on Islamic fascism, because Iran is plotting to conquer the Islamic world then the Christian one. The man is no doubt creative but he lacks some logical training, for Iran needs then to ally with the U.S. for the time being to get rid of the common enemy Osama Bin Laden, then it becomes possible to carry out the rest of the plan. However, with the theorists of Islamo-fascism logic which is necessarily a pre-Aristotelian one the identity could be any thing indeed there is no identity. Had Santorum given up the one Islamist fascist identity, he could claim himself a post structuralist. But unluckily he adopts his presidents duality of the camp of goodness, democracy, and freedom and that of evil, Islam, and fascism. Just to show how similar the two men are I’ll quote the president in his famous speech at the National Endowment for democracy. He describes the motifs of the terrorists (radicals, fascists, and jihadists, all the same as the president said in this same speech): “First, these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions.” (http//www.whitehouse.gov)Of course everybody in the Arab world believes in the second part of the claim. That is, U.S. is the enemy of the Arab people’s dream. But for the first part one can notice the similarity of this logic to that of Santorum. Because America stands for democracy they don’t want to see it in the broader (?)Middle East

After all: Is it a fascist world?
The president’s speech is an example of the deep commitment towards the values of democracy and human rights. It’s no doubt consistent with the rhetoric concerning the globalization of democracy and human rights that started in the days of Clinton and continued in a higher gear with the neo conservatisms. The strange thing is that the way they talk recalls the rhetoric of Marx and the left Hegelians in general. And what’s funny in this situation that the neo-conservatism utopian ideology does cooperate with the ideology of Huntington and Bernard Lewis who thin that Islam per se is against democracy. It’s Huntington’s essentialist vision of civilization.
It looks as though there is a contradiction. But in fact both camps complement each other. The essentialists recruit the feelings of hatred and refusal against Arabs and Muslims, and the second exports “democracy” by force which proves in a practical way that the “substance” of the Islamic or Arab’s civilization does not fit voluntarily with democracy.
When put in application it’s obvious that it is created after the refuting of previous excuses like the weapon’s of mass destruction and the stuff. When the president claims that the new enemy is as dangerous and horrible as Stalin or Hitler and that peace needs a long war to defeat that enemy. The forms of alliances and content of the struggle are to be determined according to this fanatic exaggerated caricature of the Islamo-fascist new enemy. And since this new enemy is blind and has no meaningful agenda, that’s this enemy wants things like the destruction of America, the West, democracy, progress, and all sorts of beautiful values for no clear reason. In general this enemy is portrayed as an isolated fanatic “elite” that tries to impose its agenda on the peaceful majority of the Muslims and the Arabs. This means that American knights should hurry to the rescue of those hijacked people on the one hand and the values of democracy and human rights on the other.
The enemy thinks that Americans are cowards and the stuff and to invoke the American people’s enthusiasm for the war it’s generally useful to quote Bin Laden and even Zarqawi- before his death- and compare their statement to those of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.
Finally the Islam-fascist discourse does not deny the suffering of people in the Arab world like that of the Palestinians but it’s mentioned as an excuse used by the fascists to manipulate the poor innocent suffering people and recruit them in the criminal attacks and general war against democracy and the free world. Nawal elSaadawi the prominent Arab feminist agrees with the theory of a war against Islamofascism but she thinks that the forces that wage this war is far more fascist and far more a threat to values of democracy and human rights than the fanatic fundamentalist movements. (http//www.democracynow.org) ElSaadwi’s view fits with her fellow citizen’ Samir Amin who always gives dual predictions like those of the Greek prophets: It’s either socialism or barbarism, for capitalism in this historical era can not be anything but barbarism.

.






Works cited:
- Gregor, A James. The Search For Neofascism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- Levitt, Mathew. Hamas. Newhaven & London: Yale University Press, 2006.
- Michael, George. The Enemy of My Enemy. Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 2006.
- Mohamedou, Mohammad –Mahmoud Old. Understanding Al Qaeda. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
- Said, Edward. Covering Islam. New York &Toronto: Random House Inc., 1981.
- Shay, Shanl. Islamic Terror and the Balkans. New Jersey: Rutgers Transaction Publishers, 2007.
- Al-Qaeda: The Many Faces of an Islamist Extremist Threat. Report of the House Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006.
- Hirsch, Michael. Bush and the World, (article), Newyorktimes, 4/7/2005
www.npr.org/templates. accessed 3/12/07)
(http//www.hnnn.us)accessed 4/9/2007
http//www.sourcewatch.org)accessed 4/9/2007
(http//www.pittsburghlive.com) accessed 4/9/2007
(http//www.whitehouse.gov)accessed 4/9/2007
(http//www.democracynow.org)
http://www.kannanonline.org)”








Add comment
Rate the article

Bad 12345678910 Very good
                                                    
Result : 24% Participated in the vote : 35