WASHINGTON (ABP) — President Bush's use of the term “Islamic fascism” to describe the conspirators in a foiled London airline bombing plot echoes many conservatives who have employed versions of the term in recent years to discuss Islamic-based terrorism.
But Bush's use of the phrase — in a sound byte repeated on scores of international news broadcasts — raises it to a new prominence, prompting experts in Islam and international relations to question its accuracy, descriptiveness and usefulness.
Some say Bush's use of the term accurately describes neither Islam nor fascism.
Bush used the term Aug. 10 in remarks to reporters shortly after British officials exposed an alleged plot by British citizens of Pakistani descent. The conspirators were accused of planning the simultaneous bombing of several airliners en route from London to the United States.
“The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation,” Bush said.
It was not the first time Bush has used the term “Islamic fascists” — or related terms such as “Islamic fascism” or “Islamofascism” — but is likely his most prominent use of the terminology to date.
Conservative commentators have used the terms regularly in the context of discussing the “war on terrorism” that Bush and other world leaders have declared since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.
Several Republican members of Congress have used the term regularly to refer to everything from the Sept. 11 attackers to the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein. Conservative media personalities, such as radio host Michael Savage, also regularly employ the term.
But both Islamic groups and some experts in religion and international affairs have criticized the term, saying it is neither accurate nor helpful.
Immediately after Bush's Aug. 10 remarks, the leader of a prominent U.S. Islamic civil-rights group sent Bush a letter complaining about his use of the term. Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, condemned the president's “use of ill-defined hot-button terms,” which Ahmed said “feeds the perception that the war on terror is actually a war on Islam.”
None of the groups seeking to take over governments and impose Shari'a, or Islamic law, on entire populations, describe themselves as “fascist.” The term fascism originally referred to the nationalist, authoritarian political movements that rose to prominence in Germany and Italy during the 1930s, ultimately prompting World War II. Fascist governments sought to subsume all institutions — educational, religious, social — in a devotion to the government of a nation and its supposed national ideals.
Thus, in Nazi Germany, government leaders ultimately began to control the Protestant churches, blunting their ability to challenge the state.
The threat from militant Islamic movements and states, such as Iran, is different, according to critics of the “Islamofascist” terminology.
“There is no sense in which jihadists embrace fascist ideology as it was developed by [1930s Italian dictator Benito] Mussolini or anyone else who was associated with the term,” said Daniel Benjamin, a national security expert for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in a BBC article on Bush's use of the phrase. “This is an epithet, a way of arousing strong emotion and tarnishing one's opponent, but it doesn't tell us anything about the content of their beliefs. The people who are trying to kill us, Sunni jihadist terrorists, are a very, very different breed.”
Since World War II ended, the term “fascism” increasingly has been used to describe any government, movement or action deemed too authoritarian or heavy-handed.
But that doesn't mean that would-be totalitarian Islamist movements are the same as classical fascism, according to one political science professor at Wellesley College.
“Fascism is nationalistic and Islamicism is hostile to nationalism,” said Roxanne Euben. “Fundamentalism is a transnational movement that is appealing to believers of all nations and races across national boundaries. There is no idea of racial purity as in Nazism.”
“Islamicists have very little idea of the state. It is a religious movement, while fascism in Europe was a secular movement,” she wrote in a 2003 New York Times article. “So if it's not what we really think of as nationalism, and if it's not really like what we think of as fascist, why use these terms?”
But Bush, in a 2005 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, said terms aren't as important as combating the philosophy behind radical Islam and attendant terrorism.
“Islamic terrorist attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane,” he said. “Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism. Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision — the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.”
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