Perhaps Scott McLemee could explain how Islamofascism is different from German fascism, i.e. Nazi ideology. Would it have been helpful to play nice with the Nazis during the 1930s?

Hans Gesund, at 8:20 am EST on November 28, 2007

Phobias versus common sense

Decent, honest people like Scott McLemmee scare the living hell out of me. They live in a world that is unrecognizable from what I’ve seen happening with my own two eyes every single day since Munich in 1972.

I am leaning toward Barack Hussein Obama for President. The reason? Mr. Obama has clearly stated that he would go after Osama bin Laden, even if that means going into Pakistan without Musharaf’s approval. That is what should have happened rather than the Iraqi Fiasco, and we should have done it with an Islamic military strike force.

feudi pandola, at 8:50 am EST on November 28, 2007

pay closer attention, please

Hans Gesund seems to miss the point entirely. Of course there are differences between jihadis and Nazis, but even if they were exactly the same, it’s irrelevant. Because the article isn’t by any stretch arguing for “making nice” with jihadis. It’s arguing for not playing into their hands by alienating the rest of the Muslim world. Please pay attention—the vast majority of Muslims are not jihadi terrorists. But if we treat them like they are, a few more will be recruited, and many more will become sympathetic to jihad. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Kevin Stanley, at 9:25 am EST on November 28, 2007

To Fight Terrorism, Fight US Imperialist Terrorists

The purpose of the Bush regime’s invasion of Iran and Afghanistan was to seize control of what Daniel Yergin called “The Prize,” the greatest treasure on earth — Mideast petroleum reserves.

The 9/11 attacks were only the excuse. Since such events had been foreseen by elite groups such as the Hart-Rudman Commission — which also advised the creation of a “Homeland Security” department to deal with them — some have speculated that the Bush Administration either engineered 9/11 or permitted it to happen. Though they are certainly unscrupulous — evil — enough to have done so, I doubt they are competent enough.

Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaida, and Islamic Fundamentalism generally have benefitted from American imperialism in the Mideast. As Mr McLemee points out well, they will also benefit from the anti-Muslim racism being spread by the US and, in a small way, by Horowitz’s antics.

Does American imperialism in the Mideast benefit by spreading hatred of Muslims? There’s a real disagreement over this question.

Zbigniew Brzezinski thinks it is completely harmful to US interests. Those on the racist Right, including Zionist and Right-wing Republicans, think it’s beneficial. Nobody denies, though, that it is harmful to Muslims in the US.

So the dispute is within the elite over how best to frame an ideology to justify US imperialist control of Mideast oil, and a permanent US military presence in Iraq and elsewhere.

Islamic Fundamentalism is bad? Sure it is!

Worse than Jewish Fundamentalism? Read Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel by the late Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky to see how powerful these fanatics are — far more powerful, given Israel’s military and political might, than Islamic Fundies any day.

Worse than Christian Fundamentalism? Watch the movie “Jesus Camp” some day. But it is no news to say that this is an evil, Right-wing, crypto-fascist movement. The US government has been pushing it in Latin America for thirty years now, simply because the “Liberation Theology” of a small minority of Roman Catholics has dared to promote reforms for super-exploited workers and peasants, and thereby cut into the profits of their employers. Christian Fundamentalism IS Fascism!

If the Christian and Jewish Fundies were for women’s rights, they’d fight for equality for women in their own movements. Forget it! Both Jewish and Christian Fundamentalism are sexist to the core, just like their Islamofundie “brothers.” You can’t fight fascism with more fascism and have anything but fascism as a result.

The Republican Party is based on racism and closely aligned with openly fascist organizations. Without the anti-Black “solid South", which they took over when the Democrats reluctantly supported Civil Rights in the ’60s, Republicans would be a marginal party in national politics. President Reagan consolidated ties with the World Anti-Communist League (read: pro-Nazi, pro-Nationalist Chinese fascists, real mass murderers) during the ’80s.

Horowitz is a pipsqueak without influence by himself. His influence is that he is fully backed by the same right-wing foundations — those of Richard Mellon Scaife, for example — that back other Right-wing efforts. These same Right-wing forces are very influential in the Republican Party and the mass media. This gets Horowitz his publicity, without which he’d be insignificant. Horowitz has NO followers. His “Students for Academic Freedom” is simply the Young Republicans under a pseudonym.

Is Horowitz a racist? Of course! His blog has printed pro-Nazi and racist authors like James Lubinskas many times. As for his personal beliefs, who knows what they are? (Are we supposed to believe what he says?) And who cares? If you’re going to work with the Republican Party, you have to befriend racists and fascists — period!

So the “Islamofascists” — Islamic Fundies — and “Islamophobiafascists” — the Republican Right and their Christian and Jewish Fundie puppets — are brothers, even twins. ALL of them support super-exploitation of working people here and abroad; imperialist conquest and theft, as in Iraq.

But who is the biggest danger? The US rulers, by far, whether Republican or Democrat is in power.

Under President Clinton the Iraq embargo killed 1,000,000 Iraqis, mainly children. Since Pres. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, another 1,000,000 Iraqis have died as a direct result of the war. This out of a population of about twenty-five million persons.

It’s another American Holocaust (there have been others: the Native Americans; Africans captured for slavery). Both Clinton and Bush, Republicans and Democrats, are responsible for this horrendous acts, the worst mass killings since Hitler.

Just as the American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq is aggression:

* Like Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland. But worse, since Germany and Poland did have serious territorial disputes.

* Like the Soviet invasions of Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979). But worse, since these were closely related to Soviet security. Hungary had invaded the USSR in 1941 and killed a million Soviet citizens. The CIA was sponsoring the anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan, as Brzezinski revealed to Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998.

We need to get rid of the system — capitalism — that perpetuates these horrors.

Grover Furr, at 9:30 am EST on November 28, 2007

What I was envisioning — I agree that I didn’t spell this out adequately, only because I took for granted that others would intuit my meaning — was not something in the hands of any particular group of students or faith, but rather a scholarly examination of Muslim history, theology, and geography, a sort of teach-in that would be multidisciplinary and serious, mainly in the hands of informed scholars but also involving Muslim and non-Muslim student and community voices, as well as a broad range of right-wing and left-wing voices. I meant something in the true eclectic and intellectual tradition of the university: critical exchange, not boosterism or apologetics.

Christopher Phelps, Department of History at The Ohio State University, at 10:15 am EST on November 28, 2007

It is my daily habit to read IHE, including Scott McLemee’s column. This morning, I trolled down the page and read the comments, some of which were sensible, some nonsense.

Then, I saw the post from Grover Furr which accurately defined the issues and offered historical context. Particularly insightful was the reminder of the Clinton era embargo which “...killed 1,000,000 Iraqis, mainly children.”

In the wake of the carnage since the US invasion of Iraq, it has been “easy” to lose sight of: 1) the fact that the US-sponsored carnage in that country pre-dates the invasion; and 2) the rationale for the invasion has to do with geo-political advantage connected to control of petroleum resources and their markets.

Leo Parascondola

Leo Parascondola, at 11:00 am EST on November 28, 2007

We are often told that Islam is a “religion of the sword”; the wording above is (1) “Muslims have to be more forthcoming in explaining and denouncing theologically-based violence. Limply condemning it or equivocating it to others’ misdeeds is a cop-out, and yet we see that all too often from Muslim groups” and (2) “Few brave Muslims will stand up and question the foundations of their own religion...,” the latter assuming that indeed “theologically-based violence” is among the “foundations” of Islam.

Let me point to an important response to that charge, one that is also a “denouncing [of] theologically-based violence,” the “Open Letter to the Pope,” signed by some of the Islamic world’s most respected religious authorities and scholars and written in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture at Regensburg on September 13, 2006, at:http://ammanmessage.com/media/openLetter/english.pdf). A follow-up message, “A Common Word Between Us and You,” “addressed to the leaders of all the world’s churches, and indeed to all Christians everywhere,” is also well worth the reading, at: http://www.acommonword.com/.

Richard E. Hennessey, Director of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Merrimack College, at 11:10 am EST on November 28, 2007

Beyond the names

Who are the book authors? Well ..

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/art...i?file=/c/a/2007/11/11/INQGT6RB4.DTL

http://clarkandlevy.com/

Yes, Scott, the young bumblers at Michigan State proved that the Public Education Monopoly is no vaccine against sloppy thinking.

After all, with Stalin apologists blaming the Bush/Clinton dynasty for everything and “critical thinking” actually donations to the Democrats (G. Will) — what else would you expect?

News-flash: that part of the U.S. known as fly-over land (e.g., Michigan) is one of the most welcoming places in the world. Dearborn, Mich. has the highest percentage of Arabs outside the Middle East (e.g., foot-baths at the University of Michigan-Dearborn).

But to paraphrase David Letterman — ooh, one beheading on the Internet can ruin the whole thing.

Joe, at 12:40 pm EST on November 28, 2007

Grover Furr states that “We need to get rid of the system — capitalism — that perpetuates these horrors.” What’s the alternative? Communism? I, for one, have spent several years living under Communism, so I know all too well the horrendous fear it engenders among those unlucky enough to be under its sway. And let’s not forget the 150 million or so killed by Communist regimes in the last century. Comparatively speaking, capitalism is a piker. Marxism and Communism are, in essence, quasi-religions with no basis whatsoever on science. If, as Rhonda Flame states, “capitalism is an inherently exploitive mode of production,” I say—would you rather live in North, or South, Korea? Who wouldn’t have wanted to try to stop the dominoes of Communism seeing what happened in China with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution?

It’s interesting that “Diogenes” posts anonymous ad hominem attacks. Isn’t this supposed to be a forum for intelligent discourse? I challenge Diogenes to make some statements that might actually change my mind, rather than resorting to simple name-calling. It might help if Diogenes’ real name was posted. This is not Egypt or Iran, after all, where simple blog postings can earn tortures that make waterboarding look like a refreshing dip in a pool.

As for Christopher Phelps’ suggestion about an “Understanding Islam Week,” well—it’s sadly naive. There is today no public forum that I am aware in any way related to the Islam that allows public criticism. There was, for example, a recent proposal to start a Dutch Council of Ex-Muslims. As described at www.johannhari.com:

“Their manifesto called for secularism – and the end to the polite toleration of Islamist intolerance. As [the ex-Muslim would-be leader, Ehsan Jami] put it: ‘We want people to be free to choose who they want to be and what they want to believe in.’

Ehsan was immediately threatened with death. He was kicked to the ground outside the supermarket. He was grabbed in a street with a knife put to his throat. He can’t afford to be glib about the risk: he remembers the daylight decapitation of Theo Van Gough on the streets of Amsterdam. Yet instead of rallying to Ehsan, his party condemned him. The Dutch Vice-Prime Minister Wouter Bos said they disapproved of an organisation that ‘offends Muslims and their faith’.”

In essence, fundamentalist Islam has found that political correctness forms a wonderful cover for allowing them to promote a way of life that is completely antithetical to everything that modern liberals believe in. (Unless, of course, you believe things like Ahmedinejad’s statements to the effect that there are no homosexuals in Iran.) It is unfortunate that many on the left seem so blinded with hatred of Bush, Republicans, and big business that they are willing to close their eyes to activities that bode far worse for humanity and for their own ideals.

The real problem is that there are some individuals who, by their innate characteristics, are innately duplicitous and amoral. These individuals exist in small percentages in every society and every social structure. But if the social structure has little or no internal set of checks and balances, there is no way to rein these individuals back. Capitalism has at least a modest system of checks and balances. Communism doesn’t, and neither do the political structures of Islam.

My book about these amoral individuals, “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend,” argues precisely this point. You may not like the book’s conclusions regarding some individuals’ innate characteristics, but you’d have to rebut the endorsements of neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and psychologists from places like Harvard, Columbia, Berkeley, King’s College London, and University of Michigan to do so.

Barb Oakley, Associate Professor at Oakland University, at 12:40 pm EST on November 28, 2007

origins of the term “islamofascism”

The organizational and ideological similarities between fascism and fundamentalist/jihadist movements was first drawn by Professor Manfred Halpern of Princeton University. In 1963, Princeton University Press published Halpern’s Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa. For years, this book was the basic text in the field, and included the only academic treatment of Islamism, which no one much cared about at the time. Halpern labeled it “neo-Islamic totalitarianism,” and this is how he described it:

“The neo-Islamic totalitarian movements are essentially fascist movements. They concentrate on mobilizing passion and violence to enlarge the power of their charismatic leader and the solidarity of the movement. They view material progress primarily as a means for accumulating strength for political expansion, and entirely deny individual and social freedom. They champion the values and emotions of a heroic past, but repress all free critical analysis of either past roots or present problems.”

Halpern continued:

“Like fascism, neo-Islamic totalitarianism represents the institutionalization of struggle, tension, and violence. Unable to solve the basic public issues of modern life—intellectual and technological progress, the reconciliation of freedom and security, and peaceful relations among rival sovereignties—the movement is forced by its own logic and dynamics to pursue its vision through nihilistic terror, cunning, and passion. An efficient state administration is seen only as an additional powerful tool for controlling the community. The locus of power and the focus of devotion rest in the movement itself. Like fascist movements elsewhere, the movement is so organized as to make neo-Islamic totalitarianism the whole life of its members.”

At the time, Halpern was a central figure in Middle Eastern studies, and his book—reprinted six times—appeared in every syllabus for the next fifteen years. His critical analysis of Islamism very much cut against the grain, at a time when Cold War strategists ardently wooed Islamists as allies against communism.

In his discussion of the similarities between fascism and jihadist totalitarianism, Halpern pointed especially at the Muslim Brotherhood. Forty years later, the Muslim Brotherhood is the ancestor both of Hamas and al-Qaeda.

The term “Islamofascism” is thus perfectly respectable in its scholarly background, and had predictive validity when one examines the ideology of Hamas and al-Qaeda. The ONLY reasons this term is objected to now with such virulence by the left is out of (a) misguided multiculturalism and (b) hatred of Bush: if THAT MAN used the phrase, it must be the work of ignorant yahoos.

And though Hezbollah is Shia not Sunni (as the MB, Hamas and al-Qaeda are) those of you who find this discussion of the intellectually origins of “Islamofascism” too obscure or complicated can simply google-image “Hezbollah + salute” and see what you come up with. It will all be clear to you then.

Ethan II, at 1:05 pm EST on November 28, 2007

To Barb Oakley

Your book sounds fascinating. I want to read it. See also Martha Stout, _The Sociopath Next Door_. She argues that sociopathic behavior is more “enabled” in western democracies than in Asian societies, as I recall. See also Joel Bakan, _The Coporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power_.

To me, the key phrase from Rhonda Flame is that “we should be researching democratic modes of production.” I read her as saying that capitalism is only partially democratic: the farther down the social ladder from the ruling oligarchy the less democratic it is. In capitalism democracy is, as Noam Chomsky has said, “a game for elites.”

I think Bush and company may represent an anti-democratic impulse even among such elites. That’s for author Naomi Wolf to spell out.

I think it’s sad that we’ve been—I daresay—indoctrinated to believe there is no better alternative to capitalism. The only alternative to which our minds have been trained to default are the Communist dictatorships that arose in the 20th century.

See Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, _The Political Economy of Participatory Economics_ (Princeton UP, 1991) for an alternative to both the limited democracy and “leftist” despotisms. Our limited democracy, remember, puts the middle class in a grim, though blind, relationship with exploited to super-exploited peoples, to child and sweatshop labor, the trashing of the planet. The human race can’t figure out a better way to live and work, as a whole?

I therefore echo Flame’s call to alternative research. It’s one thing to complain about what’s wrong. The question is what do we want? The “Parecon” model is just a suggestion. But it’s such a thorough, well-thought out suggestion that it may be a quite pathbreaking way to start thinking and acting our way out of the impasse: capitalism versus Soviet-style, or Eastern Despotism-style models of dominance, oppression, and violence. The context of both systems in the 20th century, I take Flame to be arguing, creates anxieties, resulting in dogma and religious cultism. It’s perhaps a useful context. I don’t think it helps to see only the violence and terrorism that somebody else is doing as though it’s just an unconnected intrusion of evil against the relative innocence of “our side.”

It is not to excuse or downplay beheadings, flogging women, or any of the human sicknesses that can occur within contexts of dominance. Just remember, often, the more powerful oppressor is the one with the power to appear less guilty. Any mob boss will tell you that. You climb higher in order to remove yourself to a summit of (apparent) respectability. I think this is, arguably, the position of global financial and corporate institutions. What mayhem are their policies largely causing in the world? And how is the American middle class being insulated from it?

In short, we must take a hard look at our own institutions, considering that our media and our own frameworks of assumptions may create a Swiss cheese of blind spots. And we must be thinking of what we want instead.

Russ Also, at 1:50 pm EST on November 28, 2007

sudden fastidiousness on the Left

1. Over the past 50 years, the term “fascist” has been hollowed out of meaning by the Left until it eventually came to mean whatever the Left had as its target of political and cultural criticism of the moment: Margaret Thatcher; Ronald Reagan; the United States; the Federal Republic of Germany; capitalism; men—whatever.

So WHY this sudden *fastidiousness* evinced on the Left about the term “Islamofascism", which actually has a very respectable intellectual pedigree, as I have pointed out?

2. The posts that say “Oh, but we in the West are very very bad, in fact worse than the Islamic totalitarians” have two intellectual problems: 1. Not every agrees with the premise, in fact few other than Grover Furr (who thinks Stalin was a democrat) do; 2. even if it were true, this amounts to a plea to “change the subject"—which is murderous and barbaric forms of Islam.

A final comment: “the problem is us” types also are depriving radical Muslims of their own “agency” since they are depicted as only reacting against us, so that if WE change, so do they. This is profoundly imperialist and racist as a form of thinking. It DENIES that the radical Muslims possess their own indigenous and very powerful cultural imperatives and momentum—cultural imperatives which have little to do with the specifics of our own civilization and which, frankly, are opposed to the Enlightenment ideals which (we say) lie at the heart of our own culture.

ethan, at 3:45 pm EST on November 28, 2007

To Russ Also:

Thanks for your intelligent comments and criticism. That’s the kind of debate this forum needs. Stout’s “Sociopath Next Door” has terrific descriptions of sociopaths. Sadly, she does advocate looking towards Asia as the solution to sociopathic behavior. I found it shocking that she could have somehow not been aware of, or discounted, the hundred or so million who have been killed within the last century with Mao, Chiang Kai-Chek, Pol Pot, Kim Sung Il, Japanese imperialism, and, most recently, the shenanigans in Burma. Stout’s book, in other words, has all the merits and demerits of typical academic approaches. She’s obviously never lived under a totalitarian Asian regime, and has no idea what life in that environment is really like, so it’s easy to paste a Utopian label on it and say that’s what we should strive for.

Probably like you if you got right down to it, I’m leery of academic “solutions” to social problems. As Stout’s book illustrates, many academics are extremely naïve about real-world considerations. (I’m still shaking my head that Stout’s editor and her colleagues who must have read the book didn’t appear to have noticed anything was awry, either.) The proposed solutions of academics often sound terrific, but in practice can have terrible unintended consequences. Bussing, for example, is a great idea to minimize the consequences of segregation. Unfortunately, the policy has caused massive white flight from cities—worsening the very problem it was to solve. Likewise, “Projects” to get rid of sub-standard housing has instead worsened the situation—many of the Projects built at such tremendous cost are now being torn down.

I have problems with the idea that capitalism is creating anxiety that results in dogma and religious cultism. We’ve had that all through history—today is no different. Remember the Albegensians? Well, not many do, because they’re all long since exterminated.

Anyone who makes it to the presidency, Democratic or Republican, has their anti-democratic impulses. Want to watch the documentary on the path to 9-11? You can’t—the Clintonistas are ensuring that it’s unavailable for showing on television. Every political system is a game for elites. How well I remember the nice stores that the Communist leaders could go to that were forbidden to the masses. I know democracy and capitalism have problems, but as Churchill so famously said: “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.”

Barb Oakley, Associate Professor at Oakland University, at 3:45 pm EST on November 28, 2007