Islamo-Fascism in the Time of Nazis

Considering the current controversy and debate over the term "Islamo-Fascism", it is interesting to read that such an association was noted over 60 years ago - at a time when Fascism was still a political force in Europe. As Jawarhalal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, noted in his semi-autobiographical history of India, The Discovery of India (1946), written during his internment at Ahmednagar Fort prison camp from 1942 to 1945:

"I had made a close study of Nazi methods of propaganda since Hitler's rise to power, and I was astonished to find something very similar taking place in India. A year later, in 1938, when Czechoslovakia had to face the Sudetenland crisis, the Nazi methods employed there were studied and referred to with approval by Muslim League spokesmen. A comparison was drawn between the position of Sudetenland Germans and Indian Muslims. Violence and incitements in speeches and in some newspapers become marked. A Congress Muslim was stabbed, and there was no condemnation of this from any Muslim League leader; in fact it was condoned. Other exhibitions of violence frequently took place.

I was terribly depressed by these developments and by the general lowering of the standards of public life. Violence, vulgarity, and irresponsibility were on the increase, and it appeared that they were approved of by responsible leaders of the Muslim League. I wrote them and begged them to check this tendency, but with no success." (pp. 310-1)

"There was a regular rampage on the part of members or sympathisers of the Muslim League to make Muslim masses believe that something terrible was happening and that the Congress was to blame. What that terrible thing was nobody seemed to know. But surely there must be something behind all this shouting and cursing, if not here, then elsewhere. During by-elections the cry raised was, "Islam in danger," and voters were asked to take their oaths on the holy book to vote for the Muslim League candidate."

All this had an undoubted effect on the Muslim masses. ..." (P. 311)

Unlike Nehru, most of us do not have first-hand knowledge of Fascism with which to compare political Islam. Even if we did, modern-day political correctness works to prevent us from making this link.

Islam + Fascism?

Two recent articles highlight the need to be clear about the nature of the threats facing the world from radical Muslim ideologists, or what Christopher Hitchens rightly terms Islamofascists. Rejecting criticism that this term is ahistorical (fusing ideologies from different eras) or unjustly singles out one religion, Hitchens defends the term:

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 Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) 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; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.

Interestingly, he does not shy from noting that Islamofascism, while a right-wing and religious movement also regularly appropriates the language of the Left.

Fascism (and Nazism) also attempted to counterfeit the then-success of the socialist movement by issuing pseudo-socialist and populist appeals. It has been very interesting to observe lately the way in which al-Qaida has been striving to counterfeit and recycle the propaganda of the anti-globalist and green movements.

No doubt this - combined with a desire to see the collapse of the US and the Western capitalism that it represents - explains in part why many in the Left have secretly rooted for a group whose game plan and values they would normally excoriate. Sadly, these generally well-meaning and liberal leaning people, do not realize to what extent their support and inability to confront this threat endangers all that they hold dear. Worse, it sacrifices to totalitarianism precisely those who the liberals think they are helping.

As Bernard Lewis recently noted, Islamofascism is first and foremost a threat to Muslims in the same way that both Bolshevism and Fascism were a threat to their societies. Unfortunately, it did not take long before these ideological "deformations" threatened the rest of the world as well. (See article in The Sun)

Hitchens echoes this and points out that both radical Islam and Fascism:

...evidently suffer from a death wish. It is surely not an accident that both of them stress suicidal tactics and sacrificial ends, just as both of them would obviously rather see the destruction of their own societies than any compromise with infidels or any dilution of the joys of absolute doctrinal orthodoxy.

Characteristically, Lewis is even more blunt:

"It's misleading to say we are engaged in a war against terrorism," Mr. Lewis said. "If Churchill had told us that we were engaged in a war against submarines and war craft, we'd be in a different world today. Terrorism is a tactic, it is not the enemy."