An open letter to Tony Blankley

Tony Blankley is, of course, the editorial page editor of the Washington Times, and the author of The West’s Last Chance?, a book about what Blankley in that book frequently calls the “Islamist” threat, though now he seems to prefer calling it the “Islamic fascist” threat.

Dear Tony,

I am disappointed by your August 12 editorial in which you support President Bush’s adoption of the false and confusing term “Islamic fascists” to describe our enemies, and by your further defense of “Islamic fascists” Sunday morning on the McLaughlin Group.

How ironic that this euphemistic phrase “Islamic fascists” is being attacked by Muslims, by the left (Eleanor Clift), and by the anti-war right (Patrick Buchanan) as a smear on all Muslims, when in reality the intent and effect of “Islamic fascists” is to say that Islam is not the problem, only “Islamic fascists“ are the problem. In other words, so hyper politically correct are we today, that a politically correct term that shies away from properly identifying our enemies is considered a smear on our enemies. A further irony is that being attacked for smearing Muslims will lead the users of the “Islamic fascist” label to imagine that they are being hard-line, when in fact they are avoiding speaking the truth about our enemies.

I agree that “Islamic fascists” is closer to the truth than Bush’s earlier term (and still his main term), “terrorism,” because it at least brings Islam into the picture, and so may help move the discussion forward from the realm of total euphemism to the realm of half euphemism. Yet it is still a ridiculous description. Fascism is a 20th century European ideology. Islam has been around since the 7th century. The Islamic agenda to impose the totalistic rule of Islam on the whole world has nothing to do with fascism. It’s what Islam has been striving to do, with a good deal of success, for 1,400 years.

Please tell me this: Was Muhammad an Islamic fascist? Or was he simply a Muslim? Of course, even you wouldn’t call Muhammad, the founder of Islam, an Islamic fascist, because that would be patently absurd. But if Muhammad was not an Islamic fascist, then today’s jihadists are not Islamic fascists either, since they are devout and strict followers of Muhammad, of the Koran, and of the authoritative Islamic law as it has existed since the 8th century. They are hard-line Muslims who follow the jihadist core of the Islamic religion.

If you don’t want to call our enemy simply “Muslims,” or “Islam,” since that seems too sweeping and smears the “moderates,” then I suggest calling our enemies “jihadists.” That is an accurate term, since it simply means people who support jihad, which, by the way, means all serious Muslims.

Larry Auster

After waiting a few days and getting no reply to the above e-mail, I again wrote to Tony Blankley asking him if Muhammad was an Islamic fascist. He has still not replied.

A reader suggested that perhaps Blankley did not reply because he found the question confusing. How could Muhammad, the founder of Islam, be a Muslim? So perhaps the question that should be posed to people who use the “Islamic fascism” term is this: The thing that Muhammad founded, was it Islam, or Islamic fascism? The interlocutor will not be able to deny that Muhummad founded Islam. Then we only need to point out that all the things that the interlocutor is attributing to “Islamic fascism” come from Islam itself.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 15, 2006 03:01 PM | Send