The Goodfriend File

Mark E. Goodfriend, LAW OFFICES OF MARK E. GOODFRIEND, 16255 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 1008, Encino, California 91436-2317; Tel: (818) 783-8866, Fax: (818) 783-5445, Email: markgoodfriend@yahoo.com

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Is "Islamic fascism" an oxymoron?

Not according to Emanuele Ottolenghi:

Radical Islam has been rightly labelled as fascist, not only because much of its roots lie in the West, but also because it acts like a totalitarian ideology, whose main aim is to create a new world order based on an Idea, the triumph of which justifies the murder of anyone who stands in the way


Characteristics of traditional Fascism which do not seem to fit include "right-wing" and the supremacy of political/secular ideology and the nation-state, but "experts" asked by The National Review mostly agree that the term is appropriate. Although not as mellifluous as "Islamofascism," how about "fascistic Islam," in contradistinction to "tolerant Islam", with the emphasis on the type of Islam rather than the type of terrorism (especially since all or virtually all terrorism is reprehensible, and substantially all terrorists today are Muslim) ? As usual, one of the best discussions is by Daniel Pipes, who concludes that:

The use of Islamic fascists should be seen as part of a decades-long search for the right term to name a form of Islam that is recognizably political, extreme, and often violent. I have already confessed ... that I am on my fifth term (having previously used neo-orthodox, fundamentalist, and militant, and now using radical and Islamist). While Islamic fascists beats terrorists, let’s hope that a better consensus term soon emerges. My vote is for Islamists.

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