Rosen: Defending 'Islamofascist'

Published September 22, 2006 at midnight

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What I like the best about the term Islamofascism is that it calls a spade a spade. It's not some wishy-washy euphemism. It pinpoints and accurately describes this century's greatest threat to humanity. It combines intolerant religious zealotry, that's the "Islamo" part, with ruthless totalitarianism, that's the "fascist" part.

The enemy isn't terrorism, per se. That's a tactic, not a cause, and a universal one at that. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was a terrorist, but he wasn't an Islamofascist. Klebold and Harris, the Columbine killers, were terrorists, but not Islamofascists.

A Rocky Mountain News letter to the editor from a Boulderite (where else?) took issue with my defense of the term in a recent column. I'll stand by it. The letter writer argued that fascism is best used to describe Hitler's brand of "authoritarianism" and his "support" of "private enterprise" ("aka corporatism" as the Boulderite termed it, a buzz word for anti-capitalist lefties with an affection for socialism). I'd say that Hitler was more of a totalitarian than an authoritarian, and that he wasn't content to "support" private enterprise, he wanted to control it - along with everything else.

Intellectually lazy leftists tend to throw around the term "fascist" gratuitously. They use it childishly as an epithet for people or policies they just don't like. Ronald Reagan was an advocate of limited government. He said government was the problem, not the solution. He didn't want to control business; he wanted to decontrol it. Nonetheless, irrational leftists called him a fascist.

Perhaps reserving the term fascist for American conservatives that he doesn't like, the aforementioned letter writer offered his personal preference for the term "theocracy" rather than Islamofascism. He then went on to outrageously equate the likes of Osama bin Laden with James Dobson and conservative Christians.

James Dobson never flew an airplane into the World Trade Center. And his Focus on the Family organization doesn't train suicide bombers to kill innocent Muslim women and children. I've never heard Dobson call for the death of non-Christians, simply because they're non-Christians, nor does he want to outlaw other religions in this country or change the Constitution to make the president subservient to the church.

The comparison is absurd. Christian missionaries seek to convert others through persuasion and good deeds. Islamofascists force conversion at the point of a sword.

Theocracy is a legitimate term in some contexts, but an insufficient one to describe Islamofascists. The Vatican, for example, is a theocracy, but a benign one, not an intolerant, militant, aggressive force. Christians may believe that those who don't accept Jesus will be denied entrance to heaven, but they don't also want to kill them - not these days anyway. The current generation of Islamofascists are wholesale murderers.

Along with 9/11, examples of Islamofascist acts include the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, attacks on Danish embassies in response to newspaper cartoons of Muhammad, the ritual slaughter of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, and the recent calls for the assassination of Pope Benedict XVI because of remarks he made at a scholarly conference in Germany to which some Muslims took offense. In the 21st century, civilized people don't murder others for what they say. Islamofascists do.

President Bush and others have made it abundantly clear on repeated occasions that Islamofascism is not synonymous with Islam. Islamofascism is a radical subset of Islam. Just as Earth First! terrorists are a radical subset of environmentalists. Not all Muslims are Islamofascists, but all Islamofascists are Muslims. Al-Qaida is Islamofascist, as are the Taliban and the extremist Wahhabi sect.

An essential question is just how widespread is Islamofascism within the Muslim world of more than a billion followers? Is it 500 million? Is it 100 million? Is it only a small minority, but one that has intimidated and cowed the Muslim "silent majority" into submission or acquiescence? If so, that "minority" may be large enough, and committed and destructive enough to instigate a world war.

Which takes us to the other essential question: What, if anything, is the respectable Islamic world going to do about cleaning up its own house? Where's the modern-day Martin Luther of Islam? Who will lead the Islamic Reformation and avert a worldwide confrontation that could kill tens of millions? If there are any prominent, powerful candidates, they've certainly been keeping a low profile for the last couple of decades.

Mike Rosen's radio show airs daily from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA. He can be reached by e-mail at mikerosen@850koa.com.

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