This is pretty sweet. Cliff May just states more-or-less explicitly that the whole utility of "Islamic fascism" as a turn of phrase is that it makes it easier to conflate disparate groups into a single menace. Intriguingly, I think May's Corner colleague Mario Loyola actually makes a good point about all this. In the past, we saw no need to make up names to call our enemies. "Fascist," "Nazi," and "Communist" are all just the terms that Fascists, Nazis, and Communists used to describe their movements. They're perjorative terms today just because people generally don't like Fascists and Nazis and Communists. But to call a Communist a "Communist" is no insult to him and never was. Nevertheless, we seemed to get along just fine.
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Sowing Confusion
01 Sep 2006 07:21 pm
Comments (24)
It's hard to be more breathtakingly stupid than lumping together Sunni and Shia fundamentalists (Torquemada, meet Calvin - I'm sure you'll have lots in common!). But May manages it by saying that this Islamofascism jive is needed because it "clearly conveys to the average person in the West that this is an enemy who must be taken seriously." I think we already know that.
Matt, the reason we don't call them by the name they call themselves is because they call themselves "Muslims." What's your objection to calling them "Muslims"?
Uh, for the same reason we didn't call the Nazis "Europeans"? Because it's over-inclusive? Maybe? Kind of? Just a little?
They didn't call themselves "Europeans", either. They called themselves Aryans, Germans and Nazis -- and so did we. So why not call these guys Muslims, or Servants of Allah, or whatever other terms they use to describe themselves. Oh, I'm sorry -- that would be accurate! "Jihadis" is a term they don't use, but is at least better. But even that is too much, um, like, what they are. What should we call them? Anti-colonialists?
We could start with Qutbists, Wahhabis, Taliban, and Khomeneists.
I was sort of amused by this graphic in Time Magazine a month or so ago. It had this in gigantic letters:
Hezbollah + Hamas [does not equal] Al Quaeda
An entire article trying to explain that these groups do not have the same goals and aren't even allies. Followed by a Charles Krauthammer editorial explaining why the war in Lebanon was 'our war too!'
They need a good lingo but nothing seems to stick. They need to hire someone or maybe make up an acronym. Like KAOS.
"Islamofascists", though absolutely meaningless and a term unknown to political science, just sounds so much more precise and scientific than "bad guys" or "enemies". Besides, the "war on terrorism" terminology is increasingly problematic when allies themselves are adopting terrorist tactics like deliberately targetting civilian populations.
Well, great minds think alike -- I hadn't read TBogg when I made the comment, above, but he puts it much better than I did.
Just quck note to wish you the best of luck in this 'reality-based' weblog, Matt. See you at blogginheads.tv!
It's easy to understand why they have to be disected, given new names that relate to old history. It's the US governments stand on religion.
All Germans were assumed to be Nazis including the ones in the womb. Therefore we could send 1,000 plane loads of HE and turn their homes into piles of rubble while killing as many as possible. Dresden is a stellar examplem of that where there was no military target of any kind.
There are good Muslims and there are bad Muslims. Therefore we must surgically remove the bad Muslims without so much as inconviencing the good ones. Why? Because W said, "go to your churches, temples, synagogues, mosques and pray" in his address to the ntion, 9-11-2001. It also has a little something to do with "compassionate conservatism" and massive support form religion for him. http://www.hoax-buster.org is an eye opener.
"Jihad" has it absolutely right. They call themselves "Muslims". We don't call them that because we think it would be offensive to the many other people in the world who call themselves "Muslims" but who aren't Islmofascists.
So, which is it Matthew? Are you going to let them define themselves? Or are you going to say that their own definition of themselves is offensive, so we should find another definition?
(Hmmm, let's see if their own definition is offensive, shall we? Muslims flew planes into the WTC. Muslims enjoy beheading people. Muslims are terrorists. Do you find any of those sentences offensive? If so, then maybe we shouldn't use the terrorists own term for themselves.)
AYMAN AL ZAWAHIRI: We want to speak the whole world. Who are we? Who are we? Why did they bring us here? And what we want to say about the first question: we are Muslims. We are Muslims who believe in that religion in its broad meaning. As more than ideology and practice. We believe in our religion, both as an ideology and practice, and hence we tried our best to establish this Islamic state and Islamic society.
Actually, the Nazis were rather explicit in their European identity. One reason Nazi soldiers were given freer rein to kill non-combatant Christian Poles but faced more restrictions in killing Christian French were that the Nazi leadership felt there was a connection of blood and ethnicity between the Germans and Western European Christians in general. The name of the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne sought to tie German and French history into a common ethnic European identityt. Using the term European would have been too broad though to be useful, in part because some of our allies (the British, for example) were Europeans. Today, moderate Muslims are our allies.
The Nazis were also the government of Germany who had mobilized the population for their statist purposes. No one would call the German people in general Nazis before the Nazis took political control of the German state and made that stick (before losing the war). Hezbollah is more of a government de facto than de jure in southern Lebanon and only filled in a power vacuum. Hamas does not control the entire Palestinian government and has to wrestle with Abbas and Fatah. Even then, using Nazi as a shorthand for German was still lazy. Back then, such thinking led to policies like the Japanese internment. Why isn't Qutbists acceptable? It's more accurate. Is it that calling someone a follower of the ideas of al-Banna and Qutb doesn't carry the emotional weight for you of calling someone a Nazi?
Actually, that's wrong about the Nazis. The Nazis never referred to themselves as such; it was a shortening of the long German name for the NSDAP done by their enemies. A Nazi might not have gotten massively offended by the usage, but it was intended as a mockery.
"Today, moderate Muslims are our allies."
Right, there's Abdul, and. . . Mahmoud! Don't forget Mahmoud. Well, I mean, he thinks Jews should be killed on sight and all, but he's not calling for the Caliphate or anything, so he's pretty moderate. And then there's, um. . . I'm all out. But Mahmoud and Abdul are pretty good allies.
Look, we should call the enemy the name they call themselves, and it should acquire the emotional weight the enemy's name deserve. Right now, the enemy calls itself Islam. If the enemy is "hijacking" this name for its own dastardly purposes, wouldn't you expect marches in the street. I mean, when America goes to war, and Americans don't like it, Americans march in the street bearing banners that say "NOT IN MY NAME!!!". That's why even our enemy often refers to Iraq as "George Bush's War." Even if too many Americans went along with the Iraq war, enough of us took to the streets and dissented that it's hard to call Iraq "America's War" -- or when you do, you must talk about the tens of millions who resisted it. Where are those tens of millions of Muslims? Why have we never seen a banner in Arabic that says, "Bin Laden, NO! NOT IN MY NAME!"?
Until I see such a thing, I'm going to continue to call the enemy the name it calls itself: Muslim. Mahmoud and Abdul notwithstanding.
Actually, what you call for - people marching and protesting the likes of bin Laden - has already happened. Go ask Jordanians what they think of bin Laden and the recently deceased al-Zarqawi. After 9/11, people in Tehran were arrested for attending vigils to the victims. Muslims worldwide have their own lives to live instead of spending all their time worrying if they are making it clear enough to American conservative idiots that they are not aligned with a movement whose members make up much less than 1% of the umma. Your ignorance is not their fault. Do you spend all of your time marching against McVeigh? How does using the term Muslim as the main term to refer to the likes of bin Laden actually clarify things? It is too broad to be helpful. Bin Laden also probably considers himself to be a human. Should we refer to him as human? Yeah, that'll show him! Way to diss their ideology, calling it human! Go ahead and advocate policies that will result only in further alienating non-American (and possibly patriotic American) Muslims from the US and its policies. The rest of us will actually be trying to win this war. Believe or not, the burden of proof is on the US now.
The Iraq War shows how we are unable to project our military in the Middle East and make results stick without support from the local population. We have to appeal to the umma to continue to reject the likes of Qutbism and possibly come around to more liberal values. Terrorists can terrorize us, but American military force only makes the problem worse unless you have local support. Antagonizing Muslims for no reason is self-defeating. Now grow up, get with the modern world and get real.
I love this confidence -- nay, faith -- that there exists this great Muslim middle to alienate. I'd love to see them. I'd actually love to join their groups, march alongside them. Who is the Muslim Gandhi? How am I "conservative" for not sharing this faith that this Muslim Gandhi exists?
I agree that we shouldn't "antagonize" and "further alienate" Muslims: some of us get depressed when we're alienated -- they kill! So no, in public, I'll say along with the rest of you "Good Muslim, nice Muslim. Love your religion of peace!" But in private, I, as you, know who my enemy is.
Well, at least it allows us to use single pithy words to conflate Cliff May and other noxious substances.
Who is the Muslim Gandhi? How am I "conservative" for not sharing this faith that this Muslim Gandhi exists?
Who is the Christian Gandhi? All I see on the television are the Falwells and Robertsons.
But in private, I, as you, know who my enemy is.
And I'm sure you have lots of nice names for them in private, you sad little man. If you know your enemy that well, then I'll direct you to GoArmy.com. Frankly, I consider pant-pissing joystick-wavers like you part of the problem.
On conflation: the UDF and pIRA had very little in common, so they were called 'paramilitaries'. Not Christofascists.
And I spy a persistent troll. Are you Kevin Drum's Charlie, perchance?
I am not a troll. I just think our tongue-biting about this issue has reached an absurd point.
Are you honestly asking me for examples of moderate or even leftist Christian social reformers who stood against the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents? I'm not even going to dignify that. That's preposterous. I'm an atheist and have no love for religion generally, but it's absurd to suggest that Christianity hasn't inspired people to morally heroic actions (um, let's see: English and American abolitionism, the Red Cross, the civil rights movement, latin-american liberation theology, etc., etc.). What I'm asking for is a single contemporary example of cognate Muslim groups. I'm asking, actually, for even less than that: a single Muslim group whose spoken aim is to decry the violence done in the name of Islam. If you can give me their name, I swear I'm goiing to send them money.
Look, why is it so hard to recognize that Muslim violence arises *from* Islam? Aren't you guys, like me, generally skeptical of organized religion? Don't you think, as I do, that it can often be a source of terrible divisiveness and violence? Isn't it possible that one religion -- the one with bloody borders, whose leadership is annihilationst and imperialist -- might be worse than others? And isn't it just somewhat likely that people who kill in the name of a cause, might be by their deeds, in at least *some* instances, faithful and consistent servants of the cause?
Are you honestly asking me for examples of moderate or even leftist Christian social reformers who stood against the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents? I'm not even going to dignify that.
Tell me what newspapers they write for in the US, and what TV and radio stations they appear on. I thought my point of reference was pretty clear, but you may need extra help here. I presume that you don't consider the profusion of Dobsons and Falwells and Robertsons to prove that there are no Christian campaigners for social justice and civil rights? Funny how they don't get much publicity, isn't it?
Look, why is it so hard to recognize that Muslim violence arises *from* Islam? Aren't you guys, like me, generally skeptical of organized religion? Don't you think, as I do, that it can often be a source of terrible divisiveness and violence?
Ah, the Christopher Hitchens argument: radical organised religion is such a bad thing that it's fine to take the side of, um, radical organised religion in order to deal with it.
So, how are you going to deal with it? Exterminate the brutes? If you want the peace and stability of 16th-century Europe, fine.
Isn't it possible that one religion -- the one with bloody borders, whose leadership is annihilationst and imperialist -- might be worse than others?
If you swallow those particular premises, sure. But in doing so, you're begging the question. (And you're being awfully unfair to Israel in doing so, he joked.)
Right, so you've named, um, not a single organization or individual. OK, thanks for the clarification.
And are you really only aware of the evangelical right? I mean, I'm an atheist and a Jew with virtually no interest in Christianity, but well aware of Marilynne Robinson, EJ Dionne, Barak Obama, John Paul II to name contemporary examples, let alone St. Francis, Henry Ward Beecher, Martin Luther King, Reinhold Niebuhr, Dietrich Bonhoefer, Abraham Lincoln, the missonaries of Chiapas, and so on -- all people who credit their Christian faith for their embrace of morally beautiful causes, causes that do not necessarily benefit Christians. Not to mention the self-effacing missionaries and priests who tend to the poor in anoynymity. These are just off the top of my head. Name me a SINGLE prominent individual who displayed true moral courage -- self-sacrifice for others not like them, courage like the abolitionists displayed -- who credits Islam? In, like, the last six centuries.
Comments closed September 15, 2006.
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Heads in the Sand
President Bush is wrong to inflate the threat religious cults pose by calling them Islamic fascists. Because he does not understand the threat, he's trying to fight a totally new kind of war with a conventional army trapped in another Vietnam. You can't stop a religious cult from killing themselves and murdering others by invading Iraq. Only good intelligence and police work will prevent attacks like those recently thwarted in London. Beyond that our military can only help by chasing them down with small units designed, equipped, and trained for short sudden strikes.
Posted by slowmodemjohn | September 1, 2006 8:36 PM