Six experts discuss the legitimacy of the term "Islamo-fascism"

Christopher Hitchens, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, the author of the new book god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and the editor of the new anthology, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the author of My Year Inside Radical Islam , which documents his time working for the extremist Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, Bruce Tefft, the Director of CRA's Threat Assessment Center, Khalim Massoud, president of Muslims Against Sharia, an Islamic reform movement (and occasional commenter on Smooth Stone) , Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch, Donna Hughes, Professor and Carlson Endowed Chairperson of the University of Rhode Island Women's Studies Program, and Thomas Haidon, a Muslim commentator on human rights, counter-terrorism and Islamic affairs participate in a Frontpage Symposium to discuss, Is the term “Islamo-Fascism” legitimate in terms of defining the enemy we face in the terror war?. Some excerpts:

Hitchens: People like Tony Judt write to me to say in effect that it’s ahistorical and simplistic to do so. And in some media circles another kind of reluctance applies: Alan Colmes thinks that one shouldn’t use the word “Islamic” even to designate jihad, because to do is to risk incriminating an entire religion. He and others don’t want to tag Islam even in its most extreme form with a word as hideous as fascism. Finally, I have seen and heard it argued that the term is unfair or prejudiced, because it isn’t applied to any other religion. This was most recently argued by Patrick J. Buchanan, who asked us how we would have felt if Franklin Roosevelt had described Mussolini, say, as “Christo-fascist”.

Buchanan in his own autobiography describes being raised in a home where the true heroes were Father Coughlin the Jew-baiting priest, General Franco the foe of the Reds and freemasons, and Joseph McCarthy the drink-sodden bigmouth and bigot. That’s why the term “Catholic fascist” or “clerical fascist” used to be so current on the left.

This was to recognize the undeniable fact that, from Spain to Croatia to Slovakia, there was a very direct link between fascism and the Roman Catholic Church. More recently, Yehoshua Leibowitz, editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, coined the term “Judaeo-Nazi” to describe the messianic settlers who moved onto the occupied West Bank after 1967. So there need be no self-pity among Muslims about being “singled out” on this point.

The actual term “Islamofascism” was first used in 1990 in the London Independent by the Anglo-Irish writer Malise Ruthven, who was writing about the way in which traditional Arab dictatorships used religious appeals in order to stay in power. The expression has some respectable antecedents. In his book, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa, published by Princeton in 1965, the German scholar Manfred Halpern (himself a refugee from the Third Reich) employed the term “Islamic totalitarian” to characterize the mingled worship of a heroic past with the mobilization of “passion and violence”. Perhaps you suspect Halpern of undue sympathy with Judaism or Zionism? Very well, then, consider Professor Maxime Rodinson, one of the most intransigent critics of the state of Israel. In an exchange with Michel Foucault in the late 1970s, on the subject of the nascent Shi’a theocracy in Iran, Rodinson writing in Le Monde alluded to “a certain type of archaic fascism” taking the form of “an authoritarian and totalitarian state whose political police would brutally enforce the moral and social order.” I didn’t know about all of these for-runners when I employed the term “fascism with an Islamic face” to describe the assault on civil society on 11 September 2001, and to ridicule those who presented the attack as some kind of liberation theology in action. “Fascism with an Islamic face” is meant to summon a dual echo of both Alexander Dubcek and Susan Sontag (if I do say so myself), and in any case it can’t be used for everyday polemical purposes, so the question remains: does bin-Ladinism or Salafism or whatever we agree to call it have anything in common with fascism?

I think yes. The most obvious points of comparison would be these. Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind (“Death to the intellect! Long live death!” as Franco’s accomplice General Mola so pithily phrased it in a debate with Miguel de Unamuno). Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons) and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined “humiliations”, and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader-worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression, especially to the repression of any sexual “deviance”, and to its counterparts: the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence, and burn books and destroy museums and treasures.

Gartenstein-Ross: Hitchens draws an excellent analogy between Fascist and jihadist ideology, and offers a competent rebuttal to various pundits’ objections to comparing the two. However, the question Jamie posed is not whether “Islamofascism” is an appropriate polemical term, or whether it is fair to compare militant Islam to Fascism. Rather, he queried whether the term is “legitimate in terms of defining the enemy we face in the terror war”; indeed, some commentators now use the term this way. My contention is that as a definitional term applied to the enemy, “Islamofascism” is too imprecise and in some ways counterproductive.

Massoud: I define fascism as a totalitarian political ideology with an element of superiority. German fascism’s criterion of superiority was race. Islamic fascism’s criterion of superiority is religion. Otherwise both ideologies are practically identical.

Mr. Gartenstein-Ross says "use of the term 'Islamofascism’ makes it more difficult to work alongside moderate Muslims, who almost uniformly bristle at the phrase." I couldn't disagree more. As long as the user of the term makes a clear distinction between Islam and Islamofascism, moderate Muslims will not be offended by the term. And the ones who are offended are not moderate. In fact, moderate Muslims were the first to widely use this term to describe radicals in Algeria who murdered more than 100,000 of moderate Muslims.

Click here to read the entire article.

What are the links between domestic violence, misogyny and Jihad?

Front Page interviewed Jeffrey Denning, co-owner of Liberty Protective Solutions, LLC, a private security consulting company, and who was a former police officer, SWAT team leader and Federal Air Marshal. Denning believes

...that one of the reasons ethically and civilly-minded societies fail in their approach to stop or predict terrorism at the tactical level is because we try to place our moral value system on an amoral enemy. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t do a proper threat assessment unless you can really get into the mind of the terrorist. These men and women aren’t superheroes; they are people. Sure, that sounds plainly obvious, but I believe most of the free world has a misconception of what a terrorist is and what one can do.

Denning also believes that they "do not hate us because we’re rich or free, or even because we might appear collectively arrogant. They don’t attack us today solely based on our foreign policy, the Christian Crusades, or in the case of Israel , because of a land dispute. Those things play a part, but when you really begin understanding Islamic terrorism, it goes much, much deeper than that. "

Here's the clincher, folks, and it turned a key for me. Denning says:

The more we understand terrorists the greater their vulnerability becomes. They are strengthened by their own anonymity. And we give them power by labeling them as some difficult to understand entity. We empower them unintentionally by calling them terrorists. We mustn’t confuse a tactic with a vulnerable and angry human being with weaknesses. Words like jihadist, holy warrior—mujahideen or mujahidat—and al Qaeda don’t show who they really are. Abu Mushakil, literally the father of trouble, seems more accurate.

If we made fun of them or occasionally taunted and humiliated them, that might help destroy the mystic of these criminals who use terror tactics. What, are they going to hate us more? I don’t think so. But joking a bit may ease our fear of them on some level. I could tell you some funny and totally stupid things terrorists have done. Most of them could be put in for the Darwin Awards or the world’s dumbest criminals. If we could really understand terrorists, if we could speak with them face to face and learn about them, we’d lose our sense of fear towards them entirely. And, it would shock us at how foolish we were to ever embolden them with any sort of power.

{...}

The truth is there’s a huge similarity between domestic violence, misogyny and terrorism on a bigger scale. Interestingly, I have read letters from stalkers who want to kill their victims. Not a few read like this: “If I can’t have you on earth, we’ll both be in heaven together.” These stalkers, like many terrorists, have a homicide-suicide type mentality. The allure of an Islamic terrorist seeking intimate relations in the afterlife is also evident.

Moreover, when a female is murdered in a domestic abuse relationship, she is often left naked and exposed—almost like a sadistic sexual punishment. And when it comes to these so-called terrorists, sex crimes and their associated terror acts seem united.

{...}

I don’t think that Islamic extremists have begun hating their own women more in recent years. I think we may have just uncovered some of the irregular abuses and horrible atrocities that have been occurring for years. Since 9/11 we’ve tended to speak up a little more and shed some light in the dark corner. Like abusive relationships are often done in secret, the same could be said of the abuses against women within Islam. Generally speaking, all of them are debased and devalued. Devaluing women is a cultural thing with them. It’s terrible and horrible. It’s sad.

Just the other day I overheard a co-worker and good friend of mine talk about his experiences as a corrections officer and policeman. He was telling someone about the many transsexual men in prison. He said that when they get confused about their own sexuality they often become engaged in violent and bizarre crimes.

That encapsulates much of the reasons why Islamic terrorist-criminals do what they do; they’re confused. Many of them are homosexual. They hate women and yet they wish for 72 black-eyed virgins? As Dr. Kobrin teaches, “for Islamic male dominated terrorist groups, the female is sexually terrifying.” She’s absolutely right. Moreover, she teaches that they subconsciously hate their own mothers and that’s one of the reasons they act out. That’s almost the antithesis of my situation.

Lastly, they dehumanize us. That’s one of the reasons it was so easy for the mob in Fallujah , Iraq to mutilate, and then hang from the bridge, the immolated carcasses of the three U.S. government contractors in March 2003. Remember, they danced and cheered and smiled? I can’t even imagine the worst of all neighborhoods doing that. But, then again, I can because I’ve seen the evil that people are capable of.

Click here to read the whole interview. Click here to visit Jeffrey Denning's blog.

'Germans Will Have to Go on the Offensive'

An excerpt from an interview with best-selling Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid who discusses the recent Taliban attacks on NATO troops in Afghanistan and the elusive prospects of lasting peace in the Hinda Kush, via Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Rashid, was the recent suicide attack against German troops in Kunduz (more...) the start of a new series of attacks in the north of Afghanistan?

Rashid: The Taliban are increasingly playing a political game with European members of NATO that are not on the front line. We saw how brilliantly the Taliban manipulated a government in the case of Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo. And I think we will see a stepping up of attacks against all of these countries that have strong domestic opposition to the deployment in Afghanistan.

SPIEGEL: Up until now, the Germans have beleived their their plan for reconstruction, which puts them closer to the people, is working better than the strategies of the Americans and British. Were the Germans just naïve?

Rashid: I think the whole concept of NATO countries carrying out construction while trying to avoid fighting is now a thing of the past. No matter what the policies may be of individual countries, all are at the war's frontline. And in order to prevent other suicide attacks, the Germans will have to go on the offensive to root out Taliban groups in Kunduz.

Evidence of WMDs in Iraq and Syria

Last evening or I should say overnight, Michael Shrimpton, a barrister specialising in national security and intelligence law, was interviewed by Art Bell for more than two hours on Art's radio show, and Mr. Shrimpton gave compelling evidence that not only were WMDs in Iraq prior to 2003, they were covertly shipped out of the country via railroad and other methods into Syria. Not only that, Shrimpton also cited evidence how France and Germany were complicit in the development of the WMDs for Iraq by being providers of weapon-grade yellow-cake and other nuclear materials. If you will remember, Saddam used French-made artillery and helicopters to dump gas on the Iranians and his own people.

The audio of the entire interview will be available later today and is accessible to StreamLink subscribers for just pennies.

Art Bell, who typically suspends his disbelief when it comes to aliens and ghosts, had a difficult time buying into Michael Shrimpton's solid evidence. I did not.

Many of us bloggers posted several articles back in 2003 and 2004 about the satellite imagery proof positive evidence of WMDs being transported into Syria. With the United States pronouncement several months before our actual invasion into Iraq, this timeframe proved to be an excellent window for Germany, France and Syria to enable Iraq to offload her WMDs.

Today I decided to research again the articles that were published some years ago by major media outlets, like the Washington Post, which used to link to its own U.N.: Weapons Equipment Missing in Iraq article, but it no longer exists on their site.

However, the Washington Post made sure that articles that embarass the Bush and the Blair administrations still exist. See this. Good editing of your archives, Washington Compost. You've certainly earned your nickname.

CNN posted this article alongside NewsMax posting this one. But the Washington Post published this one.

The Guardian did at one time but no longer links to Polish Troops Find Sarin Warheads in Iraq, but you can find the same article on USAToday here and on FoxNews here. Fortunately, this article Nerve gas used for first time against coalition does still exist at The Guardian, but you better hurry. Referrals from Smooth Stone might make the Arabists there scurry and cover their dirty tracks.

Art Bell claimed during the interview that he did not see one article that described the movement of WMDs out of Iraq into Syria.

I post the following links to prove otherwise:

From Associated Press, U.N.: Weapons equipment missing in Iraq, available on MSNBC

From Geo-Strategy Intelligence Brief, Duelfer: 'A lot of material left Iraq and went to Syria', available on WorldNetDaily

From FrontPageMag, Where the WMDs Went, still available there,

From NewsMax, Iraqi Documents Show Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties, originally published on CNSNews.com,

From NewsMax, Powell: Bush Right to Assume Iraq Had WMDs

From NewsMax, Warner: New Report Backs Iraq WMD Claims

Now, on July 21, 2004, UPI published "Nuclear arms reportedly found in Iraq" and it was cited on every one of these sites, but the article no longer exists on UPI's pages.

The NY Sun still has its link to Saddam's WMD Moved to Syria, An Israeli Says

FrontPageMagazine still links to the Butcher of Basra, an interview with Ali Ibrahim Al-Tikriti, a southern regional commander for Saddam's Fedayheen in the mid-to-late 1980's.

Surprisingly, the Telegraph still links to Saddam's WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief

NewsMax links to Lab Tests Could Link Saddam's Missing WMDs to Jordan Plot

Larry Elder's interview with John Loftus, Iraqi WMDs, Now in Syria, is still alive.

WorldNetDaily still has Saddam's WMDs are in Syria

NewsMax links to Gen. Tommy Franks: Iraq Had WMD in 2003

The ScotsMan links to Saddam bankrolled Palestinian terrorists, but nobody cares when a Jew gets blown to bits, because the Jew-hating savages over at Daily KOS believe we deserve it.

MensNewsDaily still links to Syria and the WMD Shell Game

WorldNetDaily, forever loyal to its readership, links to Saddam's WMD have been found and The Heritage Foundation still has links to Syria-ous Problem.

There is no doubt that the mainstream media outlets, those raggy tabloids which deleted their links to their own published pages which document WMDs in Iraq and Syria, have fallen for
the trumped-up concoction of superstitions and deceit which is Islam, merely because the world was cursed by having its main energy source located under the feet of muslim savages.

By the way, did you know that France buys oil from Iran at $12 a barrel? Talk about dirty players.

Let's not forget the Democrat Quotes on Saddam Hussein's WMD Before the War.

In Saddam’s Gifts, which is an ABC News page that no longer exists, but which is cited on Right Voices, we learn that

An Iraqi newspaper has published an extraordinary list that contains the names
of prominent people around the world who supported Saddam Hussein’s regime and
were given oil contracts as a result.

More from Right Voices in How Much Does Appeasement Cost in Oil?:

These are the people the US was to wait for a permission slip from? They said that Bush was in it for the oil…for the special interests in Halliburton and their contracts — that Big Oil was pushing the war on Iraq.

See how easily these appeasers are able to look the other way in the face of human atrocities of the Saddam kind? When they are given gifts of money and big oil contracts - - it’s amazing how the cost of human life, at the hands of that brutal dictator and his men, can seem so paltry.

Among those names are:

Russia
The Companies of the Russian Communist Party
The Companies of the Liberal Democratic Party
The Russian Committee for Solidarity with Iraq
Head of the Russian Presidential Cabinet
The Russian Orthodox Church

France
Charles Pasqua, former minister of interior
Trafigura (Patrick Maugein), businessman
Ibex
Bernard Merimee, former French ambassador to the United Nations
Michel Grimard, founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club
France was the second-largest beneficiary, with tens of millions of barrels awarded to Patrick Maugein, a close political associate and financial backer of French President Jacques Chirac.

Syria
Firas Mostafa Tlass, son of Syria’s defense minister

Turkey
Zeynel Abidin Erdem
Lotfy Doghan

Indonesia
President Megawati Sukarnoputri

Spain
Ali Ballout, Lebanese journalist

Yugoslavia
The Socialist Party
Kostunica’s Party

Canada
Arthur Millholland, president and CEO of Oilexco

Italy
Father Benjamin, a French Catholic priest who arranged a meeting between the pope and then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz
Roberto Frimigoni

United States
Samir Vincent

United Kingdom
George Galloway, member of Parliament
Mujaheddin Khalq

South Africa
Tokyo Saxwale

Jordan
Shaker bin Zaid
The Jordanian Ministry of Energy
Fawaz Zureikat
Toujan Al Faisal, former member of Parliament

Lebanon
The son of President Lahoud

Egypt
Khaled Abdel Nasser
Emad Al Galda, businessman and Parliament member

Palestinian Territories
The Palestinian Liberation Organization
Abu Al Abbas

Qatar
Hamad bin Ali Al Thany

Libya
Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem

Chad
Foreign Minister of Chad

Brazil
The October 8th Movement

Myanmar (Burma)
The Minister of the Forests of Myanmar

Ukraine
The Social Democratic Party
The Communist Party
The Socialist Party
The FTD Oil Co.

How much oil does appeasement cost? How many women and children? How much fear? Interests within Russia and France top this list - - two of the top three countries strongly opposed to the loss of their lucrative oil contracts war in Iraq.

Here are photos of satellite images of WMD facilities in Syria. Also, a senior Syrian journalist reports Iraq WMD located in three Syrian sites, here.

JihadWatch still cites a now non-existant article from AFP's Syria tested chemical arms on civilians in Darfur region

NewsMax still has Ex-Official: Russia Moved Saddam's WMD which is posted in full here on TimeBomb2000.com, originally posted on http://www.intelligencesummit.org/

I think you get my point. For Art Bell, an intelligent and inquiring fellow, to claim alongside American fascists who believe the canard that 9-11 was an inside job, that there was no evidence of any articles to suggest that WMDs were hauled out of Iraq into Syria, is just not believable. The evidence exists. It just depends on what side of the Arab love fest you're on.

Liberals and their pro-Islam agenda are ready to toss the Jews - and Americans - into the cage in order to feed the Islamic beast. How long until the American people realize that? Maybe they will realize it the next time we get hit. And we will get hit again.

A Clash of Cultures

From A Clash of Cultures, Interview with Amnon Rubinstein by Ari Shavit:

There is an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that we have to try to end. But one must also see the broad picture. There is a clash between a narrative of enlightenment versus a dark narrative. Islam is not an open society. In the terms of Karl Popper, it is the most closed society conceivable. It is an intolerant society. A well-known professor said not long ago that we have to adopt the values of the Middle East in which we live. I would like to ask him which values he is talking about. About the humiliation of women? About corporal punishment? About the hanging of a homosexual a month ago in a city square in Iran? About the flogging to death of a young homosexual in Saudi Arabia? About the Nazi propaganda in Egypt? I really want to know. What values are we talking about? After all, there is not one Arab state that upholds the values of freedom of expression, human rights and minority rights. And across the Middle East the Arab Christian minorities are disappearing at an appalling rate. No one talks about that. I am not willing to accept a multicultural approach that says that their culture is like my culture. I do not understand how one can talk about cultural relativism in a generation that saw Nazism and Stalinism. Is it really possible to say that all the narratives are equal? That the Nazi narrative is equal to the Anglo-Saxon narrative? That the Stalinist narrative is equal to the narrative of the French Revolution?

Professor Rubinstein, a former Israeli Minister of Education and Communications, is President of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya.