© 2006, TMS
Russian version
It's fascism — and it's Islamic
- Информация о материале
- Автор: Victor Davis Hanson
Jewish World Review Sept.
7, 2006 / 14 Elul, 5766
George Bush recently declared that we are at war with "Islamic fascism."
Muslim-American groups were quick to express furor at the expression. Middle
Eastern autocracies complained that it was provocative and insensitive.
Critics of the term chosen by the president, however, should remember
what al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist Muslim
groups have said and done. Like the fascists of the 1930s, the leaders
of these groups are authoritarians who brook no dissent in their efforts
to impose a comprehensive system of submission upon the unwilling.
Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to kill any American they could find,
and then tried to fulfill that vow on Sept. 11. Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah
bragged that "the Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from
them" — and then started a war. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
promises to "wipe out" Israel, and is seeking the nuclear means to do so.
Sharia law and dreams of pan-Islamic global rule fuel their ambitions.
Once again, they seek to fool Western liberals through voicing a litany
of perpetual hurts. Like the Nazis who whined about the Versailles Treaty
that ended World War I, and alleged maltreatment of Germans in the Sudetenland,
for years Islamists harped about American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia,
the U.N. embargo of Iraq and the occupation of Gaza and Lebanon.
But when each complaint was settled, another louder one sprung up;
these grievances, it turned out, were pretexts for a larger sense of victimhood,
jealousy and lost pride. And appeasement — treating the first World Trade
Center bombing as a mere criminal justice matter or virtually ignoring
the attack on the USS Cole — only spurred on further aggression.
Islamic fascism is also anti-democratic and characteristically reactionary.
It conjures up a past of Islamic influence that existed before the supposed
corruption of modernism. Like Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, who sought to
recapture lost mythical Aryan, Roman or samurai purity, so Islamic fascists
talk in romantic terms of the ancient caliphate.
Anti-Semitism is a tenet of fascism, then and now. But so is a generic
hatred for unbelievers, homosexuals and blacks. The latter are slurred
in the Arab media, while homosexuals were rounded up under the Taliban
and the Iranian mullacracy.
"Mein Kampf" sells well under its translated title "Jihadi." President
Ahmadinejad recently suggested in a sympathetic letter to the German chancellor
that the Holocaust was little more than an "alibi" used by the victors
of World War II to keep the defeated down.
Even now, it is hard to distinguish the slurs against Jews ("pigs and
apes") used in the Middle Eastern media from the venom of Joseph Goebbels'
propaganda. Goose-stepping and stiff-armed salutes at Iranian and Hezbollah
parades are conscious imitations of past fascist armies.
Some object that the term "Islamic fascism" is too vague to encompass
the differing agendas of diverse groups such as the Wahhabis, al-Qaida
and Hezbollah. But just as racist German Nazis found common ground with
Asian supremacists in Japan, so too the shared hatred of the West trumps
the internecine rivalries of present-day Islamists.
The common denominators are extremist views of the Koran (thus the
term Islamic), and the goal of seeing authoritarianism imposed at the state
level by force (thus the notion of fascism). The pairing of the two words
conveys a precise message: the old fascism is back, but now driven by a
radical fundamentalist creed of Islam.
Others object that fascism conjures up images of past huge armies,
and thus exaggerates only a moderate threat from today's ragtag jihadists.
But Iran is seeking a bomb far more powerful than anything Hitler had at
his disposal. About 2,400 Nazi V-1 buzz bombs in World War II reached their
London targets. Nearly 4,000 Katyushas hit tiny Israel in about a month.
And the petroleum of the Middle East is the lever by which the Islamic
fascists hope to overturn an oil-hungry world.
In contrast, the fuzzy "war on terror" is the real inexact usage. The
United States has never fought against an enemy's tools — such as German
submarines or the Soviet KGB — but only against those who employ them.
Other groups today use terror — like narco-dealers and Basque separatists
— but this war at this time is not against them.
The real problem is not that "Islamic fascism" is inaccurate or mean-spirited,
but that this identification earns such vehement disdain in Europe and
the United States. That hysteria may tell us as much about the state of
a demoralized West as the term itself does about our increasingly emboldened
enemies.
An introduction to MAOF
Haim Goldman
Haim Goldman
Dear Friends,
Would you believe that the undersigned has anything in common with
-- Professor Victor Davis Hanson (Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University),
-- Dr Charles Krauthammer, (Washington Post, Time, The Weekly Standard),
-- Caroline Glick (Deputy Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Post),
-- Jonathan Tobin (Executive Editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent).
Amazingly, the editors of the MAOF website decided that the missives of the undersigned are worthy of translation and posting along the articles written by these distinguished authors.
The first letter was published without the consent of the undersigned.
However, after thorough examination of the laudable attitude of MAOF and of the excellent contents of the website, the undersigned had most graciously granted his permission for publication of his missives in both English and Russian.
“Analytical Group MAOF” [1] is an organisation founded about ten years ago by Russian-speaking Jewish intellectuals. The attitude of MAOF is definitely pro-Zionist -- unambiguously and unapologetically.
One of MAOF’s primary purposes is providing information and analysis about Middle-Eastern and world affairs as well as about Israel’s history, values and dilemmas. In addition to extensive publication activity in various media, MAOF also organises excursions and seminars. While the vast majority of the contents of the MAOF website is in Russian, texts originally written in English are provided in the original [2] as well as in Russian.
There are arguably about 250 millions of Russian-speakers worldwide and many of them do not read English. The indisputable motivation for the author’s permission was to grant those millions of disadvantaged people the grand benefit of reading the author’s ruminations. If the author is ever maliciously accused that his tacit motivation for authorising the publication was his craving to be listed along with the above-mentioned distinguished writers, his plea will definitely be “nolo contendere”.
The editors of MAOF expressed their gratitude by granting the undersigned a privilege that no other author got – the opportunity to review and correct the Russian translation before publication. The original letters of the undersigned are at [3] and their Russian version is at [4]. At of today, only two letters are posted but several other letters are pending translation.
You are kindly ENCOURAGED TO RECOMMEND the MAOF website to your friends and colleagues worldwide, particularly those who speak Russian. Those who do not enjoy the benefit of proficiency in the exquisite Russian language can find many thought-provoking and inspiring articles about Middle-Eastern and world affairs in the English section [2].
Sincerely,
Haim Goldman
28.10.2006
REFERENCES:
[1] http://maof.rjews.net
[2] section.php3? sid=37&num=25
[3] authorg.php3? id=2107&type=a
[4] authorg.php3? id=2166&type=a