I've been thinking a lot lately about the term we use to describe the enemy. While I'm quite sympathetic to the usefulness of the term in "consciousness-raising" events such as David Horowitz's Islamofascist awareness week (a web site), I'm not persuaded that "Islamofascism" is the right term. My doubts were reinforced by Richard J. Neuhaus' reflections on Norman Podhoretz's World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. While Fr. Neuhaus is not entirely unsympathetic to Podoretz's polemic, he finds neither the label "Islamofascism" nor "World War IV" very helpful (largely because Americans can't be persuaded that the Cold War was WW III).
Bernard Lewis has compellingly argued some contemporary Arab-Islamic radicalism was influenced by fascism in the twentieth century. We would do well to remember that Hamas approvingly cites from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in their charter. But emphasizing the link with fascism tends to obscure or downplay other historical, religious and theological origins of the "extremisms" of people like bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood etc. After all, Salafism and Wahabism were quite "radical" and "extremist" religious ideologies long before "fascism" entered the picture. Muslims didn't have to borrow anything from twentieth century totalitarian ideology to impose dhimmitude on Christians and Jews, or the death penalty for apostasy under Sharia (Islamic law). The term "Islamofascism" might give the impression that Islam was incapable of producing radical movements all by itself, entirely apart from twentieth-century Western ideologies. It might even encourage the idea that prior to the totalitarian ideas it adopted from fascism, Islam was a "religion of peace," an Islamic version of American Quakers or Mennonites, whose religion was hijacked by fascist ideologies.
So, if not Islamofacism, then what? Fr. Neuhaus suggests "Jihadism is better as a term derived from the terrorists' own vocabulary and self-understanding," and calls our attention to a First Things article he wrote in November 2006. It is worth quoting in its entirety:
So what is the name of the enemy? A lot of candidates have been proposed and employed in the last five years: Islamic fundamentalism, Islamofascism, Islamic totalitarianism, Islamism, terrorism, or simply extremism. Islamism, as distinguished from Islam, is used by many scholars, but it is a subtlety that will elude most people. Fundamentalism is an American Christian phenomenon with a very specific history that has nothing to do with Islam. Terrorism is a means employed by the enemy, but it does not name the enemy. And extremism is a generalized pejorative naming nothing in particular. References to fascism and totalitarianism have a fine hawkish ring, and there are indeed some parallels between what we faced in Nazism and communism and what confronts us now, but the dissimilarities are much greater, beginning with the role of religion in the new challenge. So what is the name of the enemy? I suggest that the most accurate term is Jihadism. The definition is not difficult to understand: Jihadism is the religiously inspired ideology that it is the moral obligation of all Muslims to employ whatever means necessary in order to compel the world's submission to Islam. Those who support that ideology are Jihadists, and that is exactly what they say they believe. They describe themselves as Jihadists, and there is no reason why we should impose upon them a name-fascist, fundamentalist, etc.-from our Western and distinctly non-Islamic history. It will be objected that in the Qur'an, jihad can also mean peaceful spiritual struggle. That is true, as it is true that those Muslims who believe jihad means peaceful spiritual struggle are not the enemy. "Jihadism." Say it five times and it comes easily. It has the additional merit of being accurate. It is good to see that this terminology is gaining some traction in our public discussions. [AS1]
The key here is "religiously inspired ideology." Ironically, the term "Islamofacism" may let non-jihadist Muslims off the hook too easily. The jihadists claim to be inspired by what they understand to be the proper reading of classical Islamic sources: the Koran and the Hadith. They claim to be true and faithful Muslims apart from the taint of non-Islamic ideologies such as fascism. They claim to be the true reformers of a wayward Islam. The task, then, of non-jihadist Muslims (what some might call "moderate Muslims," another not entirely satisfactory term) is to tell us and the larger part of the Islamic world why the religious inspired ideology of the jihadists is NOT authentic Islam. That is not likely to be persuasive simply by calling attention to certain similarities between jihadism and particular 20th century ideologies, or to further implausible claims that their radicalism is rooted in those foreign (to Islam) ideologies.
