More on the “Islamo-fascism” fallacy

(Also note that comments have continued to be posted in the thread, “What is Islamo-Fascism Week really about?”)

I gave in and read a article by Christopher Hitchens at Slate (there is also a excerpt from it at LGF followed by many comments) in which he defends the term “Islamo-fascism.” The piece seems learned, but is sophomoric. It is slick ignorance parading as deep knowledge. Echoing an unfortunate Tony Blankley editorial in the Washington Times a year ago, Hitchens lists various obvious similarities between jihadism and fascism: violence, power-seeking, anti-intellectualism, nostalgia for lost glories, worship of a leader, hatred of Jews, etc., and for him these parallels prove that the words “Islam” and “fascism” are legally married. Aside from the fact that Fascist Italy did not become anti-Jewish until it aligned itself with Nazi Germany, which spoils the anti-Semitism angle (but what’s a historical error between anti-Islamo-fascist allies?), Hitchens’s catalogue of correspondences entirely misses the things about jihadism that are not like fascism. More seriously, it completely ignores the unique Islamic doctrines, institutions, and history that made and still make Islam what it is. It is a disgrace that respected so-called intellectuals presenting themselves as reliable voices on the jihadist threat persist in looking only at some of Islam’s secondary traits and refuse to consider that religion’s organizing and generative principles.

The basic problem is that Islam, being sui generis, can only be properly understood in its own terms. To explain jihadism as a type of fascism is to explain Islam in terms of something other than itself, and so is fundamentally to misunderstand it. The Islamic rules of war and truce, the Islamic rules of dhimmitude, the Islamic rules of marriage and sexual relations, the Islamic rules concerning treatment of apostates, are neither based on nor analogous to any Western belief system; they are, as Andrew Bostom points out over and over, uniquely Islamic. But Western intellectuals love their non-Islam theories of Islamic extremism, because they don’t want to bother learning about any subject that is truly non-Western and that does not fit into their familiar concepts. If they can describe Islam as “fascism,” they feel satisfied, confident that they have now comprehended Islam and that they know how to deal with it. We’ve defeated fascism before, they tell their readers, and we can do it again. And so they trot out yet more false analogies, to World War II and to the Cold War (though there the analogy is to Communist totalitarianism rather than to the Fascist kind) which are delusive and dangerous because they don’t portray Islam as it actually is.

How ironic that these anti-jihad intellectuals unanimously express high praise for Robert Spencer, but none of them seems to take seriously what Spencer actually says. And how sad that Spencer never challenges them on their fallacies. Yes, he explains, over and over, what he himself thinks is the source of jihadism, namely Islamic doctrine, but (as I gave an example of recently here and also mentioned here) he never tells his fellow conservatives point blank that their non-Islam theories of Islamic extremism are wrong. And so they remain free to continue in their errors.

With the establishment conservatives not seeking intellectual clarity on the Islam question, and with their top expert on the subject, who knows better, not demanding it of them, the anti-“Islamo-fascism” movement remains a conceptual mishmash, an incoherent mixture of “the problem is Islam” and “the problem is fascism,” of civilizational defense and global liberationism, of conservative and liberal, of true and false.

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Stewart Woodruff writes:

In reading your discussion of the “Islamo-Fascism” fallacy, I was struck by the similarity to a doctor treating the symptoms of a disease, not the root cause. In many ways, it is the secondary traits of Islam, the “violence, power-seeking, anti-intellectualism, nostalgia for lost glories, worship of a leader, hatred of Jews, etc.,” which pose the immediate threat to the West. Our conservative “doctors” respond to these attributes, and propose treatments, as though they are the problem, rather than as mere symptoms of the root cause, which as you correctly state are the unique Islamic doctrines and institutions that generate these symptoms. The trouble, of course, comes when you treat only the symptoms, thus often achieving unpleasant and ineffective results that may kill the patient, and at a minimum prevent the patient from seeking effective treatment until it is too late. When it comes to the defense of the West, we are at the stage of leeches and electroshock.

Now, to extend the analogy, the question comes up whether our “doctors” truly don’t understand the root causes, or whether they ignore the root causes because they don’t feel they have an effective medicine. It appears to be a bit of both, depending on the doctor. Fortunately, you and a few others have developed the “Germ Theory”; we now just have to spread the word. Teach the open-minded doctors, discredit others, and wait for a few of the old guard to succumb to old age, and we’ll be there. I just hope the patient outlives his inept doctors.

Hannon writes:

Hitchens entirely misses the crux of the issue when it comes to the rationality of the term “Islamo-fascism.” Offering only a trite and, as you note, unsound comparison of traits superficially shared by fascism and jihadism, he does not address whether this term satisfies the requirement of describing the threat we are facing. He fails to characterize the greater problem altogether and only perpetuates the notion that jihadism (“Islamo-fascism”) is a magical anomaly somehow related to Islam itself.

It seems to me that this common failing among otherwise intelligent men can only represent a reluctance, either personal or professional, to express what the non-liberal commoners already know: Islam is not benign even minus its terroristic elements. As I see it the jihadists are currently the white-hot leading edge of the faith, charting new territory (in modern times) and dragging the rest of the umma along with it and gathering more radical operators and sympathizers every day. Differentiating “radical Islam” or “Islamo-fascism” from a “moderate Muslim majority” becomes a pointless and obsolete game of labeling.

Even more obvious than this basic observation is the fact that Islam, in any incarnation, has nothing to do with fascism in the Western sense. Is it not absurd in light of Islam’s faith-based totalitarianism to say that it contains a “fascist” faction? What advantage comes from separating the religious and political components of an entity that is virtually all-incusive? The pundits must stop feigning ignorance of Islam’s holistic, absolutist aspects that are the essence of the religion and cover all of secular and religious life for Musims, from flossing to suicide bombing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 26, 2007 01:17 AM | Send