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TechnoratiThe unfolding presidential elections are laying bare what the real dangers are in the new American condition. They come not from our political divisiveness, economic uncertainty or military insecurity - but from our religious character as a people, which, in this case, is not positive. Religious intolerance marks one candidate debate after another - a sweeping denigration of Islam. And it is going to backfire.
The code word "Islamofascism" has become a staple of rhetoric. It braces the talk not only of pundits, but of all the major Republican candidates - from the tough guy at one end, Rudy Giuliani, who lambastes Democrats for not using the word or its equivalent, to the "nice" candidate at the other end, Mike Huckabee, who defines Islamofascism as "the greatest threat this country [has] ever faced."The pairing of "Islam" and "fascism" has no parallel in characterizations of extremisms tied to other religions, although the defining movements of fascism were linked to Catholicism - indirectly under Benito Mussolini in Italy, explicitly under Francisco Franco in Spain. Protestant and Catholic terrorists in Northern Ireland, both deserving the label "fascist," never had their religions prefixed to that word. Nor have Hindu extremists in India, nor Buddhist extremists in Sri Lanka.
In contrast to the way militant zealotries of other religions have been perceived, there is a broad conviction, especially among many conservative American Christians, that the inner logic of Islam and fascism go together. Political candidates appeal to those Christians by defining the ambition of Islamofascists in language that makes prior threats from, say, Hitler or Stalin seem benign. The point is that there is a deep religious prejudice at work, and when politicians adopt its code, they make it worse.
The Democrats gain little by shaping their rhetoric to appeal to the Republicans' conservative religious base, but a readiness to denigrate Islam shows up on their side, too. In last week's debate, moderator Brian Williams put to Barack Obama a question about Internet rumors that claim he is a Muslim. The tone of the question suggested that Obama was being accused of something heinous. He replied with a simple affirmation that he is a Christian. He did not then ask, "And what would be wrong if I were a Muslim?" Had he done so, it seems clear, he would have cost himself votes in the present climate.
The present climate is my subject. In recent years, the public realm has been invaded by a certain kind of narrow Christian enthusiasm, made up partly of triumphalistic self-aggrandizement (exclusive salvation), and partly of the impulse to denigrate other religions, especially Islam. This phenomenon has been centered in, but not limited to, evangelical fundamentalism. The United States cannot have a constructive foreign policy in religiously enflamed regions like the Middle East, northern Africa or South Asia if the American presence in such conflicts is itself religiously enflaming.
Thus, how could the United States advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process if its government upholds, however implicitly, the Christian Zionist dream of a God-sponsored Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean? Where is the two-state solution then? How, for that matter, is the traditional American commitment to the Jewishness of Israel advanced if the Christian Zionist vision of ultimate Jewish conversion to Jesus is achieved?
The issue is larger. The intellectual and moral paralysis of all major candidates from both parties on the subject of the war in Iraq is mainly a result of their religion-sponsored imprisonment in the Islamofascism paradigm, whether they use the word or not. By emphasizing that the goal of Muslim terrorists is to wage what John McCain calls a "transcendent" war against "us," candidates miss the most important fact about the conflicts in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world - that militant Muslim zealots are primarily at war with their own people, most of whom they regard as decadent apostates.
As Muslim scholar Reza Aslan observes, Osama bin Laden's attack on the World Trade Center was more aimed at generating a war of purification within the house of Islam than a war of conquest against "the far enemy" in the West. That strategy worked, sparking exactly the belligerent reaction he wanted, because America's uninformed, religious prejudice toward Islam was predictable. What Bin Laden could not have imagined was that he would find like-minded partners-in-conflict coming to power in Washington, advancing his religious war, every bit as sure of God's sponsorship as he.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company
35 Comments so far
Show AllMUSINGS, IAN MCGARRETT: Interesting comments. Thank you.
The idea of Islamofascism, linking disparate elements in some grand conspiracy theory is the same sort of feverish nonsense that propelled the commie hunting mythology of the 1950's. The narrative is plainly the fantastical notions of a bunch of sycophantic "thinkers" whose job it is to construct these myths. They are the evil flatterers who have the ear of the weak prince.
That is, middleground, if you believe in the official story of 911 as told to us in the MSM that Bin Laden did it.
"Osama bin Laden's attack on the World Trade Center was more aimed at generating a war of purification within the house of Islam than a war of conquest against "the far enemy" in the West."
One cannot agree with this statement which sounds somehow ludicrous. Carroll's analysis prior to this seemed quite fine but it's a mistake to think or want to believe that BenLaden's attack on the US was not personal. It was motivated by US middle east policy as Muslims throughout the world, foreign correspondents, and BenLaden himself have made clear. It is time to take that fact for granted and act accordingly or else Muslims at large and the US will never come to terms with their antagonism.
America is a fascist dictatorship, a police state armed with Tasers. But with wonderful PR.
Only an infantile fool would believe something like this. Someone with no real experience in the world to know the difference between opression and choices you don't agree with.
This article stops short of identifying the other key link in the rhetoric. The hard right that has had a nice run here lately has a simple formula:
Muslim = Terrorist
War on Terror and war on Islam are the same thing in the minds of these hard right "thinkers." They believe that Muslims are compelled as a matter of faith to convert or eliminate all religious rivals by whatever means. That makes every Muslim a terrorist, so the thinking goes, simply by religious affilitaion.
One wonders if a declaration of victory in the war on terror would only be advanced by these conservatives if Islam were eradicated entirely from the Earth.
Of course, it's not enough just that all Muslims want to eliminate everyone else. They also are irrational. Time and again, leaders such as Reagan discount all non-violent solutions on grounds that the entire area operates on irrational principles which cannot abide any diplomatic approach.
Words are merely conceptual labels that may be used to clarify or distort "reality".
And in the world of political rhetoric, language is almost always a smokescreen or a tool of manipulation.
If corporate fascists and their political puppets want to kill a particular group of people and steal their resources, it is useful if the victims are first placed in the category of "evil".
Then, the imperialist war criminals become the good guys and their military gunmen are heroes !
dcbeltway,
Never have visited any, though I'd like to see the Pyramids, etc. in Egypt. Tunisia (http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/middle-east-and-north-africa/north-afri...) looks like the sort of place where loose canons get Abu Ghraib'd.
No, for all it's troubles there's only a couples places I'd rather be than the US. For instance, New Zealand or Scandinavia.
What's not to like about James Carroll? Like me, he is a Catholic married to a Jew. We've come to terms with cultural differences in religious backgrounds. Unlike me, he has a military family background, and he had to work through the tragedy of the Vietnam War and what it did to the country we both call home.
Having said that, I think he buys a picture of 9/11 which is much more about words and ideas than about forensic evidence. I doubt that he has much of a feeling for engineering or business or that he mixes it up with the hard-nosed elements there. He doesn't have a "Spidey sense" about being conned, because it isn't his world.
The laying of the blame on Osama bin Laden for 9/11 has a lot to dispute in it, but the upper levels of the zeitgeist, who blow the winds of politics, are not going there. Their academic debate is at the level of philosophy (and physics) being the handmaidens of theology, as in the middle ages. These are demagogic times, in which the populace is manipulated through myths.
Like the muddy Charles River, a bottom is hard to find through all the shifting mud. But that is the way they like it, because it gives them fictional players to shake before the public. That is what is important: public response, not truth.
I suppose things will go on like this. I do not suppose that reality matters to these riders on the wind. It would be a better time if they attached their rhetoric to reality, but apparently this would result in some public hangings and burnings of the witches who defy the authority of the same elite which sent us on the nth Crusade.
I would prefer a Reformation.
Paul Bramscher have you ever visited any Muslim countries? Morocco and Tunisia are wonderful places to live and I enjoyed my visit to both places. The Emirates is also pretty nice. I have never been to Turkey but would probably love to live there. Malaysia is also quite spectacular they say. I have a friend who grew up in Kazakhstan and that country is also quite nice. The Islamic world isn't a monolith its very diverse in both religious practice, culture, ethnicity, and pretty much everything else.
Islamofascism is an interesting, albeit misleading term.
At a recent campaign rather provocatively proclaimed as ``Islamofascism Awareness Week'' that was held across university campuses across the US, David Horowitz and a slew of extreme right wing figures attempted to ``educate'' the public about the dangers - perceived or otherwise of what they called ``Islamofascism''.
The trouble is that the term is not just provocative and insulting to the sentiments of a fifth of humanity. It is also the inherently nebulous nature of the term itself, as the Islamofascism Awareness Week itself proved.
When speaking and denouncing Islamofascism, the speakers were in essence condemning three different groups of people. The first are jihadi terrorists committed to murdering and maiming innocent people to punish them for the injustices - perceived or otherwise of their respective governments. The second are Muslims who oppose, disagree or condemn, with varying levels of fervor the policies of the Western world and those of the US in particular. The third, interestingly, and paradoxically enough, are the liberal leftists in the West and the United States in particular that disagree and oppose the policies of the Western world that they feel are inherently unjust and contradictory to basic values of decency, justice and fairness.
The first group of people are the likes of Bin Laden and Zawahiri et al. The second include the majority, to some extent or the other of all Muslims, including, but not exclusively those that live in the West. The third include a whole slew of Western intellectuals such as Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan, Kucinich, etc etc. These people have little in common save for the common denomination of being opposed to policies such as the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories, the invasion of Iraq, toppling of Muslim regimes that fail to take their cue from the West ( remember Mossadegh in Iran ? ).
So here is the trouble with the term Islamofascist - it encompasses a huge variety of heterogenous groups - Westerners and Easterners, Muslims and non Muslims, liberals and conservatives, and perhaps most disturbing of all, murderous terrorists and law abiding citizens intent on no harm.
Even when one sets aside the inherent injustice of lumping such an incredibly diverse group of people into the same catagory, the fact remains, in order to effectively deal with the very real threat of global terrorism - religiously motivated or not, a better term than the nebulous ``Islamofascism'' must and will have to be coined.
The ultimate fallacy of ``Islamofascism'' is that as a term it serves to obfuscate rather than educate the public about the otherwise genuine threat of terrorism.
This is a great article but the Corporate control of the US media including CNN means that any point of view like this one which is contrary to the interest of the megacorporation will never reach the minds of the american people. Any analysis by stations like CNN now include only Republicn or Democratic "Strategists" or Mega- Media "Experts".The problem is that All these parties are puppets of Big Business which includes the Military/Industrial Complex.
Media however is vulnerable to a boycott of their advertisers.
Contact Wolf Blitzer of CNN at
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4.html?2
and let them know you will not purchase products from their advertisers unless they present a fair and ballanced analysis including reports about topics like: US Debt from uncontrolled war spending, Borrowing $ from China to fund the war, Over one million Iraqi civilians killed (Lanet Study, etc.....
PS Fox News being the worst offender!!
Paul Lozowsky
Islamofascism is directly linked to the 1930's when the Nazi's and the Arab world worked together to defeat the Jews and Britains hold on the Middle East. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem joined with Hitler and the Nazi's as did the Muslim Brotherhood and all of the Arab countries. It is well documented. Hezbollah and Hamas still use the Nazi salute. Do a google search on the grand mufti.
Islamofascism is a word designed to take the focus off of American Fascism. Very clever but also deluded.
GDE: I wonder where in Israel I can get a Ham and Cheese Sandwich? On Saturday? In a Internet cafe? Where I can curse YHVH openly? As I seduce a married woman and loot her husbands bank account?
Religions can be classed by ritual, or by practice of beliefs of the way to live with others. Rampant in the US are "Christians" who fail to heed the teachings of Jesus. Similarly, Israel is run by "Jews" that refuse to obey the Covenant between God and the people led by Moses. Radical Islam falls in this category, it is about power and not religion.
Fact of the matter is that several Islamic countries today host governments wholly incompatible with democratic principles, equality of the sexes, free thinking, freedom of expression, even harmless political satire/humor. Any of the three chief middle-eastern religions (Judaism, Christianity or Islam), when taken to its orthodoxical extreme, is the antithesis of democracy.
Lost on the "right" (I despise left/right terminology) is the reality that Bush couldn't care less about human rights. His propaganda machine (Fox, Limbaugh, Hannity, fundamentalist churches, etc.) slams countries like Iran, but turn a blind eye with regard to Saudi Arabia or Dubai, and the fact that Desert Storm's whole purpose was to restore an Islamic oil monarch back to the throne.
I can't name a single Islamic country I'd personally care to live in. But by the same token, it's ludicruous for Bush to suggest that he's concerned about "fascism".
Thanks Habitat Vic, my husband of 25 yrs is Turkish, European side of Istanbul. Persons that have never even read the Qur'an have no idea, Ibrahim, Moses, Adam, Jesus all are Prophets according to Muhammad, Jihad has become a word that is not Jihad, it has nothing to do with people strapping bombs to themselves and taking out a city block. Allah, Muslim murdering Muslim, not allowed, you are not a Muslim according to the Qur'an if you do this. That is why Usama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Taliban, PKK, PJAK they are not followers of al-Islam, no they are not Muslim.
Local yokal news today, Editorial pg guy said "The Jihadists know they can operate with impunity because the Dems won't use force. If these defeatists....in power during WWII I'd be writing this letter in German!" Jihadists still a common word used by persons that advocate the illegal invasion of others countries, ergo we are still a bunch of terrorists and it even is in print, voilà ! People, as we all have witnessed, actually do not trust what their eyes are seeing, it is so unraveled and descimated they cannot wrap their heads around what is reality any longer.
Moon Raven, I am sorry but that is untrue. My daughter is Turkish, Sunni Muslim, blonde and blue eyed like her dad and myself, so Turks are not Arabs, they come in all hues and some look Asian, Mongol, yeah? Some are brown skinned with brown eyes many hues. So I beg to differ, my daughter was tortured post 9/11 because she is Muslim, that simple. People are horrid, as well as uneducated. They chose to harm a petite young women because of her religion. Many are unaware of Ataturks Turkiye, he told girls in school in Turkey " The best thing you ss females could do for your country is to become well educated and on to University, you will occupy positions of your choosing and this will make Turkey a greater Country." Gender equality in Turkey, Absolute separation of church and state. You are not allowed to wear a head scarf to school because it's a government building. It is what it is.
l read an article in the local paper saying one of Bin Laden's sons wanted to act as a peace maker. the thing that was weird was that the included picture looked like many of the illustrations of Christ Hmmmmmm!
*grumble*
we didn't go far enough when we burned the Whitehouse in 1814...
Galen,
Yes, Canada is the world's largest exporter of uranium (see my earlier link). Canada is also the US's largest import of oil, despite not being in the world's top ten overall oil producers (a result of selling nearly 80% to the US).
The US owes Canada a sincere thank you.
Conservatism is the biggest impediment to democracy.
It wasn't the house of Islam that was the primary focus of bin Laden's attack, it was the House of Saud. America made itself a target because it hypocritically backs a repressive and brutal regime. Bush and his cronies underestimate their Saudi allies. The Saudi princes are not the dim-witted religious zealots that the Bushites assume but skilled manipulators. Look at how they made their puppet Bush dance and beg.
It's ALWAYS about race.
Ideology and religion are just masks for that.
Hey Curmudgeon! Nice to see you back!
And right on target with your comment!
Thank you, Liberty, for your attempt to clarify the truth behind the hate rhetoric.
FYI - one of the main reasons that Christians disliked Muslims during the Crusades is enlightening, One of the Cusaders told his Muslim counterpart during a peace negotiation: " You treat your prisoners and women too well".
Remember in those times prisoners and women had rights and priveleges not granted to those classes in the West. Prisoners and women were to be treated only as 'property' at the whim of their owner.
We have a conservative fascism problem not an Islamofascism problem.
Natew is correct Islam is considered a threat because Islam is against interest, debt, and excessive ursury. In America the majority of us are all indebted to the banks and the Central Bank aka the Federal Reserve (which isn't even Federal). Much of the developing world is in debted to the World Bank and IMF and other loan sharkers. Europe is indebted to the their own Central Bankers. The Islamic world is not indebted and on moral principle is against the very concept of excessive debt. Iran for instance does not have a Central Bank. Afghanistan and Iraq did not have Central Banks before the wars and guess what now they have them. The Islamic world also has vast amounts of energy resources oil, gas, uranium etc which the West wants. Finally, the Islamic world is considered an enemy of Zionism because Islam is egaliterian and for equality of all races and people along with justice whereas Zionism emphasizes choseness and justice for some but not for others (go read the Talmud). Judaism in contrast to Zionism emphasizes justice and the Torah just to be clear.
So there you have it.
Anybody who considers themselves a liberal better watch out for the new "conservative" use of the fascist label: liberal fascism!
That's right (or is it Right?). Conservapedia and Goldberg have now connected Bush-the- 1st's "L" word with the fascist taint.
(I believe Goldberg's Mommy was the Right-wing publishing tycoon who shilled Linda Tripp into wearing a wire in order to secretly tape Monica Lewinsky's True Love Confessions.)
Leave it to the Right to project their actual ideology and political program on to the loyal opposition.
What is interesting to me is that the Stalin-dominated Comintern, at one time, declared Weimar Germany's Social Democrats (the liberal party of that time and place), social-fascists.
It seems our Right-wing is taking talking points from the arch-demon himself: Comrade Stalin.
When will ideological spinners of the US Right find the limits of their shamelessness and obscurantism?
FVHorn: And how many Christians were killed by their co-religonists for not beliving wholeheartedly in a narrow interpretation of their particular flying spaghetti monster?
And the Inqusition was VASTLY populated with raving mysogonistic sexual sadists who were in all likelyhood so deep in the closet they were finding Christmas presents.
Islamofascism is just code for Islam.
Of course, it would not be PC to just come out and say it without the stupid -ofascism attatchment to cover this up. (Just like Bush's bizarre "I support the Dredd Scott decision" in one of his State of the Nation addresses was code for "I support the abolition of Roe V Wade" which he did not want to come out and just say, for pete's sake!) America is more fascist, the repressive Islamic regimes America backs are more fascist, than is Islamofascism. And Christianity is the cradle of "Gott mitt uns" state-church fascism.
But I know that for fundamentalist Christians and Zionist right-wingers, this is really what it's all about; a War with the Unbelievers of Islam. And Barak Hussein O(s)ama is unelectable for national office in this nation now, just for this reason. By the way, if Obama ever were Muslim, or considered to ba a Muslim in his life, he better be careful, as, according to Sharia law, the sentence for Islamic apostasy... and Obama is apostate if once Muslim and now Christian... is still Death. Just ask Salman Rushdie about his own fatwa for execution anywhere anytime, for apostasy. Maybe Islam is fascist, after all.
So isn't religion fun? How wonderful that here at the dawn of the 21st Century we are returning to the Feudal, Religious Dark Ages! Peasantry, pestilence, inquisitons and all!
The term "Islamofascism" is a misnomer by itself if one has a basic grasp of what the two terms encased in the newly minted word mean. Islam, among other things, bans usury and has a notorious antipathy towards business beyond the bazaar. Fascism is corporate dictatorship as defined by Mussolini. The two are incompatible. The term was dreamed up by Republican PR wags to scare a somewhat history and context challenged American public with an all encompassing boogieman name. It was done to obfuscate, especially when one considers how American intelligence, in connivence with the Pakistani ISI, helped birth a lot of the actors now cast as "Islamofascits."
If we are going to be honest, let us aknowledge one thing:
America is a fascist dictatorship, a police state armed with Tasers. But with wonderful PR.
Fascism is defined as having business (corprations in this case) conrtol the government, coupled with rampant militarism and religous extremeism, with internal dissent channeled towards a visible ethnic or religous minority within the country, and an outside enemy identified as being sub-human.
Sound familiar?
Liberty: Quite correct about Islam. I also find it interesting that they (ostensibly) are more open about other religions. I remember how a Turkish friend of mine in college pointed out Christianity's exclusion of non-believers. From the website http://www.religioustolerance.org/islam.htm :
"Those who believe (in the Quran), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians...and (all) who believe in God and the last day and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve." The Qur'an, 2:62
Of course, those words from the Quran do not stop Islamic extremists from castigating (or even killing) non-believers. In a similar way, I've met many Evangelicals who seem seem to ignore the message of love, and kindness to the poor that was preached by the Jesus that I grew up with. They appear to follow a new "Republican Jesus" of greed, intolerance and war.
Sadly, I think the underlying reasons for the promotion of religious (and other) hatreds is that it gives a way for the powerful elite to keep the poor masses distracted. Worked that way for millenia, works that way today.
PS - Liberty; more of the world's uranium comes from non-Muslim countries (though Muslim Niger is fourth; #3 Kazahkstan is 50/50)): http://www.uic.com.au/nip41.htm
Habitat Vic and others: One of the worlds largest sources of uranium is in Canada. I think (I'm not sure) that we are the number one exporter of uranium in the world. Sorry about that.
Soon we'll be hearing about Iranianislamofascists and Filipino Monkey fascists, so why not water down the new GOPathological frame with some fun additions:
Exxonofascists
WallStreetofascists
Moneyfascists
Military Industrial - o - fascists
Hollywoodofascists
and, of course, let's never forget Congressofascists, United Nationsofascists and a revival of Clintonofascists.