Author: Frank Devine
Publication: News.com.au
Date: August 25, 2006
URL: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20241125-5007146,00.html
It's a pity US President George W. Bush spoke
of Islamic fascists in connection with the failed plot to booby-trap passenger
aircraft heading for the US from London.
Islamo-fascist is catchier: it's only one
word, is easier to say and holds promise of developing the acronym IF (pronounced
eye eff). We may even borrow from communism's epithet bank and refer to Islamo-fascist
hyenas.
Al-Jazeera devoted an hour to discussing Bush's use of his phrase. Viewers
who called in said they were infuriated. Tough. Bloggers have disputed the
legitimacy of connecting Islam and fascism.
Personally, I consider Islamo-fascist among
the most useful of the present neologisms, acceptably accurate in its portrayal
of our enemies and filling an awkward gap in English vocabulary.
It's not even particularly neo. The idea is
believed to have surfaced in a 1979 Washington Post editorial that described
the Ayatollah Khomeini as an Islamic fascist.
The first use of Islamo-fascist was probably
made by the English newspaper The Independent in 1990.
The Oxford English Dictionary is rather stuffy
about fascist. First it sends you away to fasci, which it defines as "groups
of men organised politically in Sicily in 1895".
Back at fascist, it points you to Italian
nationalists gathered together to oppose communism, then to the Partito Nazionale
Fascista, led by Benito Mussolini from 1922 to 1943. Finally, the OED concedes
that fascist can loosely describe any form of right-wing authoritarianism.
Merriam-Webster lets in more light with its
definition: "A political philosophy, movement or regime that exalts nation
and often race above the individual and that stands for centralised autocratic
government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe social and economic regimentation
and forcible suppression of opposition."
Hezbollah, al-Qa'ida, Hamas, Jemaah Islamiah,
the Taliban and the Government of Iran, to name a few of our Islamic foes,
fit comfortably under the Merriam-Webster umbrella. None of the usual labels
such as terrorists, Islamists, fundamentalists, jihadists, militants, Muslim
radicals or insurgents is adequately descriptive of specific
Islamo-fascist groups or of their common purpose
- to damage and, ideally, destroy Western society - and their identical murderous
tactics.
Not having a name to call enemies who describe
us as satanic puts us on the back foot.
Writing in The Guardian after the foiled London
plot, Max Hastings declared, for instance, that "Bush's belief in a worldwide
Islamist conspiracy is foolish and dangerous. (He) sounds more like the Mahdi
preaching jihad against infidels than the leader of a Western democracy. He
is indifferent to the huge variance of interests that drives the Taliban in
Afghanistan, insurgents in Iraq, Hamas and Hezbollah fighting the Israelis."
But even Hastings finds need for a collective
label and refers to "violent fundamentalists". Not all Muslim fundamentalists
are violent, however, and the violent are not necessarily being faithful to
the fundamental principles of Islam.
A much less effete Englishman, William Shawcross
- who had the machismo to write a biography of Rupert Murdoch against his
subject's express wishes - called Hezbollah Islamo-fascists during a BBC interview.
"That's a very controversial description,"
the interviewer exclaimed. She ended the interview almost immediately.
But Shawcross kept the motor running in a
subsequent column: "Don't (people) know that the Iranian president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, the eager seeker of nuclear weapons, considers the destruction
of Israel an Iranian priority? Or that Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah has said
he wished all Jews would gather in Israel so that they could all be destroyed
at once? Or that among the prisoners Nasrallah demands that Israel release
are men arrested after rejoicing in smashing out the brains of Israeli children?"
American historian Paul Berman has pointed
out that "when fascism arose in Europe in the 1920s, '30s and '40s, similar
movements cropped up in the Arab world. While different from their European
counterparts" they had "similar mythology and paranoia: a cult of
hatred and a cult of death".
One such movement was the Muslim Brotherhood,
originating in Egypt with the mission of creating a unified Muslim theocracy.
According to Berman, the Brotherhood "schooled many young radicals",
among them Ayman al-Zawahiri, now the No.2 man and reputedly the brains of
al-Qa'ida.
It appears that before President Bush spoke
of Islamic fascists, aides ran the idea past the professor of Middle East
studies at Johns Hopkins University, Fouad Ajami, a Shi'ite Muslim who saw
no harm in the phrase: "There are people waiting to be offended. They
want to be offended. They're eager to be offended."
Calling somebody a fascist is undoubtedly
intended to give offence. But it doesn't seem to break John Howard's bones.
It offends only those caught clearly in the act of emulating the sinister
founders of fascism.
In London and, I understand, in Sydney, demonstrators
who purported to be turning out for Lebanon displayed banners declaring: "We
are all Hezbollah now."
Should this not have read: "We are all
fascists now"? Would they consider a rewrite?
