Although I don't write about it often, I do, from time to time, ponder the War on Terror and my thoughts about it in public.Without having actually searched my archives, I can be fairly confident in saying that I've never used the term "Islamofascist." This is because I do my very best to not be an idiot. If, as I do, you read a number of "conservative" blogs, you see the term a lot, and you almost immediately know that the bloggers in question have no idea what the term means, if anything.
The fact is that "Islamofascism" doesn't actually mean anything at all. It's a phrase that the Bush White House conjured up to invoke Hitler, which Americans love doing whenever they find someone in the world that they don't like. It's actually kind of adorable in its own way. I've always been uncomfortable with the phrase, if only because I'm not actually retarded. My putting it that way will almost certainly upset a number of people who have been friendly to this blog, but there you have it.
"Islamofascist" is actually an oxymoron, sort of like "democratic republic" or "progressive conservative." That is to say that it's an amalgamation of terms that have no business being together, but tend to make the more jingoistic among us smile. As you might have noticed, I'm not especially jingoistic. My life would have been much easier if I was, and I'd be a way more popular blogger.
Fascism, for my younger and more ignorant readers, denotes a political system that was very popular in the 1930s and 40s. Armbands were usually involved, as were shaved heads and cool mustaches. From a fashion perspective, few political movements were as stylish as fascism.
As a general rule, fascism involved a command economy that married a big government with big business. It differed from communism only in that it guaranteed profits. Imagine, say, the AIG bailout writ large, but with a great many more guns and secret police, and you'll understand it.
While fascism often used religion as a tool to achieve and retain power, it was a means to end. Any reading of the history of the Catholic Church in the 1920s will explain that you. Vatican City became its own state only because the fascist Benito Mussolini let it. However, when religion impeded fascism, fascism ground religion into the dust. That was certainly true of the Catholic Church in Hitler's Germany. Fascism as a philosophy relies entirely on the power of the state.
Fundamentalist Islam has no interest in the state. In fact, the very idea of a nation-state is repugnant to them. They believe in a caliphate, which is little more than a provincial system bound by religion. It is important to remember that the Islamic fundamentalists are stuck in a time before the nation-state even existed. For that reason, they can't be anything-fascist because the term simply doesn't apply. It would be like calling someone who isn't Hu Jintao a "market-communist" before last September, when everyone became a "market-communist."
Most Muslims don't subscribe to this philosophy, which explains why Indonesia hasn't annexed Malaysia or the southern Philippine islands. If Iran wanted to seize the Shia provinces of Iraq, it could do so almost unopposed, and possibly through democratic means. Doing so would fulfil a religious interest, but not a state interest, as the response of the rest of the world would be overwhelming. In every single Islamic country in the world, the state interest overrides the religious interest, and does so every time.
Islamists, on the other hand, are willing - indeed even eager - to sacrifice the state in the name of religion. Like many modern Western "conservatives", they are far more interested in the propagation of "God's will" than they are in national survival. Therefore, it is impossible for them to be fascists. Being an "Islamofascist" is much like being a Catholic abortionist. You might think that you're both, but the philosophies collapse under one another.
Furthermore, the term "Islamofascist" implies that its adherents only murder unbelievers, when the opposite is true. The beheading of an infidel seems be like Showtime at the Appolo, happening only once in a while and only when the cameras are rolling. The Islamists, however, murder roughly 1,000 other Muslims for every infidel. Proper fascists, acting in state interest, would never behave that way, if only for reasons of efficiency.
While it's true that Islamists and fascists share a dislike of Jews, so did most country clubs in the American Midwest prior to 1980. That dislike, however, wasn't the cause of any of those things existing. Fascism, radical Islam and golf courses would all have existed even if the Jews never did. Anti-Semitism has never been a central facet of any of them. Italy, after all, was fascist without killing very many Jews, and the Italians actually sat down and invented fascism.
Terms and phrases aren't really important until you want other people to think that you know what you're talking about. Then they're sort of important.
That's why you'll rarely - if ever - see the phrase "Islamofascist" in this space. It's not that I'm overly sensitive to people's precious little feelings as much as it is my desire to be accurate. Being an Islamofacist isn't all that different from being a slutty nun - not impossible, but highly improbable.
Instead, I use the words "Islamist", "jihadi" or the favorite of Robert Bear and David Kilcullen - who are paid to know about such things - Takfiri. As a term, "Takfiri" is the most accurate of all, and therefore, the one I'll use most often in the future.
In a pinch, "murderous cocksuckers" will do, though.
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