… and I’m not taking it anymore

What’s the point of politeness when we are suffocating in lies? Here’s an e-mail I’ve sent to the Bush guys at Powerline:

You write: “I confess that I hadn’t realized the extent to which Islamists have terrorized Bangladesh.”

Among the jihadist Muslims whom we’re concerned about, can you please point to any who describe themselves as “Islamists”? If you can’t, then please have the simple intellectual honesty to stop using a term that does not describe anyone in the world.

When we opposed Nazism, there was a Nazi party that was running Nazi Germany. When we opposed Communism, there was a Communist party that controlled the Soviet Union and half of Europe. BUT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “ISLAMISM” AS DISTINCT FROM ISLAM. “Islamism,” in the sense of something different from Islam, is a term made up BY Westerners FOR Westerners to avoid speaking the ugly truth about ISLAM, because they are afraid that if they speak the truth, they won’t be able to think of themselves as “nice,” “tolerant” people anymore. They are afraid that the West would actually have to defend itself against its mortal enemy, instead of playing footsie with it.

As long as you guys are so dependent on transparently false euphemisms such as “Islamism,” you should not call yourselves “Power Line.” You should call yourselves “Fear Line,” as in AFRAID TO SPEAK THE TRUTH.

Lawrence Auster

Readers who are as fed up as I am with “Islamist” can do something about it. Every time you see some columnist say, “Islamist,” write to him or her (you don’t have to be confrontational the way I was with Powerline) and say something along these lines:

“In your column you referred to the ‘Islamists’ who flew planes into the World Trade Center or the ‘Islamists’ who blew up trains in Madrid or the ‘Islamists’ in London who are calling for the destruction of the West or the ‘Islamists’ who are terrorizing Bangladesh. Do the people you’re talking about actually call themselves ‘Islamists’? The answer is no. Then why do you call them that? In fact, among all the Muslims who are waging jihad on us, can you indicate any movement or organization or party or religious body that calls itself ‘Islamist’? If you can’t, then why do you call people ‘Islamists’ who don’t call themselves that?”

If enough people wrote such letters, we could drive this phony word out of our public discourse. The same goes for the even more ludicrous term, “Islamofascist.”

To be clear on this, it is true that various Muslims occasionally refer to themselves as “Islamists,” in the generic sense of someone who believes in Islam and thinks that it is important, just as a person who believes strongly in democracy is a democratist. But in the Muslims’ own usage, there is no particular connection between the word “Islamist” and jihadist, violent Islam.

Mark D. adds:

You’re quite right, the use of “Islamist” is absurd.

The use of the word is not intended to describe any reality outside the speaker; rather, it’s a projection of the [liberal] speaker’s need to preserve his illusion that “Islam is a religion of peace,” or in general that all religions and all cultures are alike [i.e., liberal at heart].

To a liberal, there is no such thing as an alien, or an alien culture, or an alien religion. Quite simply, to preserve his liberalism, a liberal must deny the very concept of “alien.” Thus, we hear the mantra, even from Republicans, that “we are a nation of immigrants,” which is a clever, manipulative way to package the maxim that there is no such thing as an alien.

Within the liberal understanding of the world and human nature, the very notion of “alien” is an immoral subjective judgment of the speaker/thinker that reveals deep fascistic tendencies that can only lead to genocide. To a liberal, the term “alien” expresses, in language, the will to power to dominate and even exterminate the “Other,” and is therefore politically and morally illegitimate.

The result is that, in relation to the Western liberal world, there are no aliens, no alien cultures, nor any alien religions. To even entertain the notion that such things exist is apostasy, and reveals a deep streak of fascistic genocidal tendencies [“You’re a Nazi!”].

To the liberal West, in assessing Islam and its terrorists, there can only be madmen, anti-social exiles from the peaceful center of Islam, fanatics and lunatics and desperate “victims.” Hence, the invention of the liberal term, “the Islamists,” who have “hijacked” Islam to express their perverse ambitions or their “radicalism” or their “desperation.” This understanding then leads to various liberal policy responses: In the case of John Kerry, Islamic terrorism is a law enforcement issue, and to George Bush Islamic terrorism is a symptom of social and political deprivation. Both of these policy responses stem from the same liberal understanding.

The right-liberals [i.e., conservatives] are most egregious in this use of “Islamist.” I suppose they fear if they spoke according to facts and the proven record, they would be accused of “racism,” or “bigotry,” etc., just as they were so accused during the Dubai Ports fiasco. And who accused them of racism and profiling and bigotry? A Republican administration!

In this case, one small word—Islamist—is a reflection of the entire liberal worldview, and the increasingly bizarre mental straightjacket imposed by that worldview.

Igor writes:

I despise the word “Islamist,” almost as much as I dislike the word “Wahhabi,” but I despise the word “Islamofascist” the most. Lay Westerners are at a loss when it comes to studying different cultures because we expect all of them to be “just like us.” We take it for granted that every culture respects women, separates church from state, grants equality to all its minorities, and has a respect for the rule of law. Islam has none of these features. And by talking about the ideology of “Islamists” instead of the ideology of “Islam,” one disregards the political component of Islam. Qutb did not present “Islamism” but “Islam” as a rival to democracy and communism. This has been a common trend in Islamic history, whenever an infidel power seems to be threatening the ummah, the automatic response is to make society more Islamic. Qutb was just another revivalist in the long line of others like him, nothing particularly special. The “ism” was added because he lived in a time of many “isms” like captialism, socialism, and communism; so naturally Islam needed an “ism” to distinguish the political from religious. However, most were unaware that before Ataturk’s program that such a distinction was never made, and even now the distinction is rarely made at all. The others before Qutb were not called Islamists but revivalists with good reason because their “religion” provided their political ideology for them.

“Wahhabi” is problematic because it makes the lay infidel believe that if it wasn’t for those darn Saudis, then Islam would be fine. No, no it wouldn’t. How tolerant was the Ottoman empire without the Saudi influence? How tolerant was the Mughal empire without the Saudi influence? Even before al-Wahhab, when non-Arab Muslims went on hajj to learn more about Islam they still became fanatics. Indonesians would often go on hajj during their early history. Look into it, see what happened when they came back and what it meant for the infidels in their country. The problem wasn’t the Saudis, who weren’t on the scene yet, nor was it al-Wahhab. It was full Islam, true Islam, as taught to the non-Arab Muslims by the Arabs, the ones who understood it the best and who correctly recognized any form of syncretcism as biddah (innovation). Wahhabism is part of the problem but even if it were eliminated, infidels would still be in trouble. There are many divisions in Islam but the differences lie in the personal practice of Islam, not the political structure. That is the one thing that is not compromised among different schools. It shouldn’t concern us infidels if this type of Muslim lets his woman go outside of the house unescorted by a male relative (how progressive!), what should concern us is if this type of Muslim believes that infidels should live as dhimmis in a Muslim country, and they all do.

“Islamofascist” is the most absurd term I’ve heard in a long time, and I’m not surprised that it came from the pen of Christopher Hitchens. After all, he wouldn’t want to offend his Precious Palestinians by calling them fascists, when in reality, that is what they are. It is impossible to separate Islam from fascism. It is a fascist ideology with a master people (the Muslims) and the inferior peoples (everyone else). Every minute action is documented and either approved of or forbidden, questioning the ideology and the founding book is forbidden and punishable by death, leaving the movement is punishable by death, and minorities and women are subjugated like in all fascist societies. Ibn Warraq does a splendid job of explaining this concept in his essay “Islam, Middle East, and Fascism.” Perhaps Hitchens could give us an example of Islam, that is recognized by both the Sunni and Shia orthodox that does not have fascist tendencies. He won’t because he can’t. The best he could do would be to find some unrepresentative “secular” Muslims who are not praciticing, but that’s just not good enough I’m afraid. “Islamofascist” is truly an Orwellian term and it’s ironic that Christopher Hitchens coined it.

I disagree with what Igor says about fascism—I think Islam has nothing to do with fascism, and we only confuse the issue by trying to join them. I like everything else he says, though.

A reader writes:

Whilst it should be challenged, I don’t think “Islamism” is as counterproductive as you say.

Here are some points in the term’s favour:

(1) “Islamism” is a good intermediate step, pointed enough for (mainstream or neo) conservatives but with just enough wiggle room for liberals. It is certainly an improvement on “terrorism” and “Islamic terrorism.”

(2) It encompasses more than just terrorism, as its users apply it to the political aspect of the Islamic religion, too, which helps draw attention to this less well known part of it.

(3) Though Muslims rarely refer to themselves as Islamists, when less informed people attempt to find out just what an Islamist is, they cannot but realize that it means someone who adheres to a pure form of Islam, which, ideally, would lead to the realization that it’s the entire religion of Islam that is the problem.

(4) Essentially, the term is applicable to anything that Muslims do contra the West: whether it’s blowing up trains, protesting cartoons, seeking to introduce Sharia courts or laws, taking offense at pigs on coffee mugs; “Islamism”-izing these actions leads, again, to the seemingly inescapable conclusion that Islam itself is the problem.

Ultimately, I agree that we’ll have to start talking simply about “Islam” (minus the -ism) if we are to achieve anything. But all the same, it’s worth keeping things in perspective: only a couple of years ago we were still hearing “terrorism” (as though it had nothing to do with Jihad or Islam), now it’s much more common to see the actions of problematic Muslims attributed to their proper Islamic roots. Hopefully, it will not be too long before the realization hits that Muslims are problematic, period.

LA replies:

While the reader makes some good points, I don’t think overall that the use of the term Islamism represents progress toward the truth. Our description of our enemies was never limited to “terrorists,” except in President Bush’s formulation of a war on terror. There have always been in circulation phrases such as Islamic fundamentalism, militant Islam, radical Islam, as well as, perhaps a bit more recently, Islamism and Islamofascism. Certainly Daniel Pipes popularized militant Islam after 9/11. In my view Islamism represents a step backward from militant Islam. Militant Islam means Islam, acting militantly; it’s not something separate from Islam, while Islamism suggests that this is something distinct from Islam.

Howard Sutherland writes:

Great post. As an all-encompassing, hermetically sealed religious and social code, Islam has no need of fascism. Fascism only arose in Christendom after we had lost our faith. From our point of view, Islam is far more dangerous than fascism.

By the way, I got the Peter Finch photo from a friend who uses it on his laptop. After I posted it, he wrote:

That’s great. It is the best possible use of the Howard Beale photo. One can just see him shouting out to all who will listen—”It’s crazy, it’s insane you maniacs to believe these lies!”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 22, 2006 11:51 PM | Send