The media have been abuzz in recent weeks condemning the Islamofascism Awareness Week, held last week on college and university campuses across America. The event was organized by former communist turned conservative activist, David Horowitz, and his Freedom Center.
This event was marked to create awareness about the danger of Islamic extremism and terrorism, the oppression of women (polygamy, honour-killings, and genital mutilations) and persecution of minorities in Islamic countries, and the fanatical Jew-hatred among Muslims, etc.
Horowitz’s Freedom Center also takes aim at the American left, who have made the educational institutions into exclusive fortresses of their propaganda, impregnable to contrary views. He also accuses the left of forming an unassailable alliance with dangerous Islamists, who will make every effort to destroy the very ideals ― secularism, democracy, liberalism, human rights, and rights of homosexuals, etc. ― which they hold dear.
Looking at what is happening in Islamic countries, Horowitz is not at all wrong about his apprehensions of what would transpire when Muslims become dominant in western countries, which they will at least in Europe by 2050. Horowitz rightly regrets that the left is staunchly against his campaign, when they should be on his side. I think it is the left who should take the lead in this awareness campaign.
The major focus of criticism of Horowitz’s Islamofascism Week is that the term, Islamofascism, tends to lump all Muslims together as fascists or terrorists. FOX News Channel anchor Alan Colmes, told Horowitz that "The words, the phrase ‘Islamofascism' is hate speech. It equates an entire religion with fascism.” Although it became popular after President Bush once uttered it, the term "Islamofascism" was coined by secular Muslims to describe the murderous ideology and activities of the Islamic radicals in bloody, civil war stricken Algeria.
Horowitz, however, has been at pains trying to explain that he does not put all Muslims in the same basket. Instead, his message is targeted at a segment of Muslims, who use a fascistic and violent strain within Islam. He went on to explain in an interview that although not all Italians were fascists in the 1930-40s, Italian fascism was still a widely accepted phrase. Italian fascism did not mean that all Italians were fascists. So, it is groundless that Islamofascism lumps all Muslims together as fascists. But neither of his detractors, the Muslims and the leftists, would ever listen.
The result turned out just as expected. The left on campuses ganged up with the Muslim Students Association ― founded, according to Journalist Joe Kaufman, by the militant Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood ― to disrupt the Islamofascism Week talks. They created disruption and chaos in most campuses making it impossible for Horowitz and his fellow speakers express their views.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Les Slater
This article is nothing but racist supporting a racist David Horowitz and his 'Islamofascism Awareness Week'.
Let's take one point by Alamgir Hussain here:
"Let us now have a brief look at what Muslims have brought to the West. In November 2005, Muslim youths in France rioted and vandalized cars, homes and properties for weeks, leading to even death of an elderly man."
I remember that quite well.
2 - Dave Nalle
Les, I don't think it can be considered racist since being Muslim is not a race. There are blond haired, blue eyed muslims in the Balkans, oriental muslims in China, polynesian muslims in the Philippines, etc.
As for your 'memories' of rioting in France, I suspect that neither you nor Alamgir are eyewitneeses of that rioting and its scope. I've got a friend who lives in France, however, and he says that the riots which started in 2005 have basically never ended. That those neighborhoods remain lawless, with regular riots and outbreaks of violence and property destruction and that the problem is getting worse and incidents more frequent.
And those north Africans are of arab/berber descent, if you think this is a skin color issue.
dave
3 - Les Slater
"I don't think it can be considered racist since being Muslim is not a race. There are blond haired, blue eyed muslims in the Balkans, oriental muslims in China, polynesian muslims in the Philippines, etc."
Those in question were mostly of North African descent. There were very few blond, blue-eyed of those people.
In any case there is nothing to do with fascism here.
4 - Nancy
A cursory reading of any translation of the koran or Qu'ran or however it's spelled, quickly reveals the entire fabric of Islam to be interwoven with the theme of non-tolerance of, & condoned - if not outright mandated - violence toward non-Muslims. Throughout that work, & the closely entwined Hadith, Mohammed repeatedly inveighs against anyone who does not or will not or has not accepted Islam & his authority. He further repeatedly spends long passages and pages issuing curses, dire predictions, threats, and blatantly incites all good Muslims to discriminate, attack, & even kill non-Muslims. I think there is only one (1) passage in which he says something even vaguely tolerant of non-muslims, a passage which is usually trotted out as proof of the tolerance of Islam, when it is in fact almost unique in all the Quran for it's tolerance.
This is no religion of peace and tolerance, by any stretch of the imagination, no matter how it's twisted and turned. At bottom it teaches that it is not only OK, but absolutely a requirement to destroy non-muslims and/or their societies. If you want to be a 'good' muslim, that is.
5 - handyguy
Nancy, that's really over the line and grossly inaccurate. The violent extremism of the Islamists is based on an interpretation of the Quran that most Muslims, now and historically, would find outrageous.
You can selectively quote from the Old Testament and from the history of Christianity to make equally questionable cases about the intolerance of Jews and Christians toward non-believers. What you would be describing are intolerant minorities [who may have gained political or military strength at various times], not the religions as a whole.
It doesn't help the discussion of an issue as incendiary as this one when you pour lighter fluid on it in the form of your ill-conceived post.
6 - handyguy
The examples the author cites of "what Muslims have brought to the West" are offensively misrepresented.
The youths in France are certainly reacting to economic stagnation and yes, to racism. [France is not exempt from ethnic intolerance.] They don't represent a 'fascist' movement. But they could be fertile ground for recruitment by more political Islamists. A good reason to try to reach out to them and make their prospects and lives more promising, instead of calling them names.
When those of us who are not of the Right speak out about the hateful rhetoric employed in this article and by people like David Horowitz, the reaction is to speak of "the Left" defending Islamists.
I am not defending the criminal behavior of Islamists. But I do stand up for portraying the situation accurately and with all the shades of gray acknowledged. The black/white us/them rhetoric gets us exactly nowhere.
7 - Dave Nalle
Those in question were mostly of North African descent. There were very few blond, blue-eyed of those people.
My french teacher in high-school was a blong haired, blue eyed Algerian ex-pat who was a Muslim. North Africans are NOT as a group considered 'black' africans.
In any case there is nothing to do with fascism here.
I agree that the term is poorly conceived, but it seems to have caught on so it's hard to dislodge. I'd prefer a term like Islamocrats, which is certainly more accurately descriptive.
Dave
8 - Alamgir Hussain
handyguy:"The violent extremism of the Islamists is based on an interpretation of the Quran that most Muslims, now and historically, would find outrageous."
"The youths in France are certainly reacting to economic stagnation and yes, to racism. [France is not exempt from ethnic intolerance.] They don't represent a 'fascist' movement."
--
Of course, France, and any western country for that matter, is racist and intolerant -- but only to Muslims, not to immigrants of other faiths of the same color and race.
Violent Muslims behavior more resembles the actions of Prophet Muhammad, who during the 8 critical years of his prophetic mission, kept himself completely busy attacking one non-Muslim communities one after another curving out his kingdom of Medina calipahte. He had understaken 78-100 raids and wars during those few years according to his biographies. His last words in death bed was: let no other religion than Islam remain in the Arabia. Quran agrees too: fight until religion is Allah's alone [Quran 2:193].
Of coure, Muhammad did not know the interpretation of Quran as Handyguy would have it. Go to Saudi Arabia and say this -- you will see how lovingly the followers of the religion of peace treat you.
Historically! Muslims were almost going to overrun Europe in 732 if not luckily for Europe, repulsed by Charles Martel and the effort continued unabated well into 17th century when the Jihadists were at the Gates of Vienna for the second time in 1683. Their faiulre saved Western Europe, after much of Eastern Europe had fallen to Islam.
In 1676, when they attacked Valyona in Esatern Europe, they herded away 400,000 people, the young women in particular, as slaves.
In 17th century, Polland came under Ottoman Jihadi attacks nearly 20 times (last attack in 1694), in which they carried away about half a million slaves.
In Afghanistan, a country never colonized, the Muslim king was conducting yearly attacks at night on its only still non-Muslim (Hindu) province of Kaffiristan in the middle of 19th century to capture slaves and plunder the wealth.
Muslims must go to fight Jihad at least once in a year, advised Imam Ghazzali -- the second greatest Muslim after Muhammad. Of course, Muhammad was going on Jihadi wars about one per month.
9 - Dr Dreadful
I don't think jihad was the main motive for Ottoman imperialism in 1683. Seems to me there was a far more materialistic side to it.
Also, 'jihad' does not necessarily mean holy war.
10 - handyguy
Dr. Hussain [rather like 'Dr.' Nalle] picks individual sentences out of context and then smothers them with 'facts' to make it appear that he is winning the argument. When, in fact, he is avoiding the points I raised.
The subtitle of his book is "Separating Myths from Reality." Yet he seems determined to keep propagandistic myths alive about "the Left" and its alleged defense of Islamism.
We live in a dangerous world, yes. It is not made less dangerous by phony scholarship and propaganda. We do indeed need to separate the myths from the reality. We need to do it honestly and completely, without leaving out the parts that don't support our rigged theses.
11 - Alamgir Hussain
Dr Dreadfu: "I don't think jihad was the main motive for Ottoman imperialism in 1683. Seems to me there was a far more materialistic side to it."
I agree. But exactly the same applies to Prophet Muhammad's Jihad of 78-100 raids and wars between 623 and 631 in which he conquered infidel territory, plundered their wealth, slaughtered, enslaved and exiled them en masse. The prettier of the female captives went to his harem.
Like Handyguy, you too will agree that Prophet Muhammad had misunderstood and misinterpreted the Quran. Someone of you good folks need to make this one point clear to Muslims. Then all the on-going misinterpreted jiahd problems in the world will the over.
12 - Les Slater
"Whatever name you give them, these are all acts and signs of fascism with no doubt."
Just because he says so? The term fascism should be taken more seriously than is currently in vogue. Much of the shit he is effusing has been said about Blacks in this country at various times. Much of what he and the likes of Horowitz are being said about immigrants in general, not with the religious angle, but with evoking fears that a ‘foreign’ culture will take over. It is nothing but reactionary.
It is good that the Islamofascist awareness week was a failure. All that is left is the whining of these reactionaries.
13 - SFC SKI
It's almost amusing that so many are busy arguing about whether the issue of militant extremists acting in the name of Islam is racist or fascist that they ignore the problem of the militant extremists entirely.
Some of the same people who will ignore the actions of these militants as being caused by other than religious reasons are probably of the same opinion that Iraq and Afghanstan are failures because they fail to curb the actions of religious extemists there.
Keep arranging the deck chairs, mind the deck being slippery when wetted by icy water.
14 - Les Slater
“Some of the same people who will ignore the actions of these militants as being caused by other than religious reasons are probably of the same opinion that Iraq and Afghanstan are failures because they fail to curb the actions of religious extemists there.”
Despite the weaknesses and crimes of the Afghanistan Saur Revolution in 1978, it was secular and declared all laws, except the secular, null and void. One of the reforms they instituted was education for girls.
The education for girls and other reforms, like the land reform, brought brutal opposition by the landlords and clerics, the most reactionary forces in Afghan society. This was subsequently organized by the Mujahedeen. It was Jimmy ‘Human Rights’ Carter and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski that began to covertly fund and supply arms for the Mujahedeen terror. It was only AFTER such U.S. intervention that the Soviet Union intervened.
It was the U.S. and its imperialist allies that brought the reactionaries to power in Afghanistan.
15 - moonraven
Look guys, it is always about MONEY.
Religion and race are just the propagandistic tools used to implement wars--which are all about MONEY.
And now I see we have [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] Nancy, who has never been anywhere near any Muslims or Muslim countries, pontificating on the Koran!
What next?
16 - Les Slater
Money is a fetish. From SparkNotes:
"The word fetish refers to any object that people fixate on or are fascinated by and that keeps them from seeing the truth. According to Marx, when people try to understand the world in which they live, they fixate on money"who has it, how is it acquired, how is it spent"or they fixate on commodities, trying to understand economics as a matter of what it costs to make or to buy a product, what the demand for a product is, and so on. Marx believed that commodities and money are fetishes that prevent people from seeing the truth about economics and society: that one class of people is exploiting another. In capitalism, the production of commodities is based on an exploitative economic relationship between owners of factories and the workers who produce the commodities. In everyday life, we think only of the market value of a commodity"in other words, its price. But this monetary value simultaneously depends on and masks the fact that someone was exploited to make that commodity."
17 - troll
...nice quote Les...but leave that toe fetish out of this you kinky boy
18 - Muslims Against Sharia
Muslims Against Sharia congratulate David Horowitz FREEDOM CENTER and Mike Adams, Tammy Bruce, Phyllis Chesler, Ann Coulter, Nonie Darwish, Greg Davis, Stephen Gale, David Horowitz, Joe Kaufman, Michael Ledeen, Michael Medved, Alan Nathan, Cyrus Nowrasteh, Daphne Patai, Daniel Pipes, Dennis Prager, Luana Saghieh, Rick Santorum, Jonathan Schanzer, Christina Sommers, Robert Spencer, Brian Sussman, Ed Turzanski, Ibn Warraq and other speakers on the success of the Islamofascism Awareness Week.
Islamofascism (or Islamism) is the main threat facing modern civilization and ignorance about this threat is astounding. We hope that this event becomes regular and reaches every campus.
A great many Westerners do not see the clear distinction between Islam and Islamism (Islamofascism). They need to understand that the difference between Islam and Islamism (Islamofascism) is the same as the difference between Christianity and Christian Identity Movement (White Supremacy Movement).
Original post
19 - Dave Nalle
It was the U.S. and its imperialist allies that brought the reactionaries to power in Afghanistan.
Which you seem to think means that we must repeat the same mistakes over and over? Why can't we learn from the errors of one era and act more wisely in the present as a result?
Dave
20 - Baritone
Moon,
Nancy may be fat or not, she may be pontificating or not, but she is, nevertheless correct. The Koran has numerous references concerning intolerance of non-believers and the violence that should be committed against them. Apostates are, perhaps even more reviled.
I don't suggest that most Muslims actively adhere to those strictures, but when push comes to shove - which is apparently happening - what side do you suppose they will come down on?
B-tone
21 - Les Slater
#19 Dave,
“…you seem to think means that we must repeat the same mistakes over and over?”
The U.S. government was not motivated by supporting any religion, or by any sense of ‘democracy’. It was a pure case of class interests. It was the landlord regime it was supporting over any encroachment to their property rights.
All so-called religious conflicts in modern times have a class root to them. All Muslims in advanced capitalist countries are oppressed. Some religious minorities see their religion as a means to liberation. The problem however, is the class system that oppresses them. Islam is not the problem. It is capitalism.
Les
22 - Baronius
Interesting article. Fascism can mean a lot of different things, but it usually includes nationalism, militarism, and corporatism. Islamofascists aren't nationalists at all. The reliance on military force, yes. And the economies of a lot of Muslim states have that characteristic blend of government and industry. So fascism isn't a bad description.
The odd thing is, fascism and Islamofascism share anti-Semitism. But there's no reason that fascism has to be anti-Semitic. It just worked out that way. Many Islamofascists praise the Nazis and/or deny the Holocaust. So they're strengthening the mental association between the two.
But what about "shariaist"? Would that term be offensive to moderate Muslims? International sharia is the real agenda of the Islamic terrorists, so why not call them shariaists?
23 - Dave Nalle
Wow Les, your thinking seems to employ the wayback machine. Maybe that's appropriate with muslim countries which are also living in the past, but I thought that by now the entire 'class struggle' paradigm had been pretty thoroughly discredited.
It certainly makes your statements seem bizarre enough that they read like they're imported from an alternate reality.
The U.S. government was not motivated by supporting any religion, or by any sense of 'democracy'. It was a pure case of class interests. It was the landlord regime it was supporting over any encroachment to their property rights.
No. The US government is not a 'class' and was never in a position as 'landlord' in Afghanistan. Our involvement in Afghanistan was political in nature, part of our adversarial conflict with the Soviet Union, a conflict which had zero to do with class. Within Afghanistan, as with most Muslim countries, trying to apply the idea of class struggle is also ridiculous, because they are tribal societies and don't have classes as such. Afghanistan is, in fact, a model of tribal societal structure and demonstrates how completely inappropriate marxist theory is to such a society.
All so-called religious conflicts in modern times have a class root to them. All Muslims in advanced capitalist countries are oppressed. Some religious minorities see their religion as a means to liberation. The problem however, is the class system that oppresses them. Islam is not the problem. It is capitalism.
Rigid class systems are largely incompatible with modern free market capitalism, so this makes very little sense. It seems much more logical to include Islam as part of the problem, since as a religion it preaches submission to class and social order. The name Islam MEANS submission. It's the core of the religion. How can you ignore that? I agree that some Islamic societies have become over stratified, but that's a result of power politics and the breakdown of tribalism and has little or nothing to do with capitalism. Capitalism is the primary force for the breakdown of class and the creation of opportunity in most Muslim countries.
Dave
24 - Baronius
Dave, kindly do not tap the glass. This species was once dominant throughout Asia and Europe, but is now endangered. The few remaining are kept in captivity on college campuses, although there are some reports of sightings in Vermont.
25 - Les Slater
“No. The US government is not a 'class' and was never in a position as 'landlord' in Afghanistan. Our involvement in Afghanistan was political in nature, part of our adversarial conflict with the Soviet Union, a conflict which had zero to do with class.”
Then you say: “they are tribal societies and don't have classes as such.”
As such? Marxism never limited itself to highly developed capitalism or even to embryonic capitalism . Class society started long before capitalism. Have you heard: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Afghanistan does indeed have a class structure. At its core are the land owners. Even Russia in 1917 was not primarily a capitalist state. It was primarily a feudal monarchy. Capitalism was limited to a few urban centers and the capitalist class did not hold the reins of government. Class analysis was not only applicable there but necessary to organizing the revolution.
“Rigid class systems are largely incompatible with modern free market capitalism…”
Rigid? Only to a degree. Capitalism itself broke down the absolute rigidity of the feudal system. This is the basis of the capitalist’s claim to it being free. But the rigidity does still exist. Today the greatest hope of many is to marry into a higher class or win the lottery. Of course there is the opportunity of making it big in sports or music. To many the path is crime or politics, or is that redundant.
Some do make it by investing. Much of that it seems was not a few hustling mortgages to those who had no chance of affording them. And it wasn’t just the sleazes in the ghetto office. It seems much of the investment banking community lined up at the trough. Many a CEO has been shown the door lately.
Class structure in decaying capitalism is becoming more rigid. The distribution of wealth is becoming more lopsided.
“It seems much more logical to include Islam as part of the problem, since as a religion it preaches submission to class and social order. The name Islam MEANS submission. It's the core of the religion. How can you ignore that?”
So, class is an issue. The same can be said of the Catholic hierarchy during Luther’s time. Wasn’t the primary issue the peasant’s forced submission to the landlord with the church’s complicity. The church not only preached submission but modeled their hierarchy after that of feudalism. The rise of Protestantism rose hand and hand with that of capitalism. To the Protestant communion is with God and God only, no one in between. With capitalism there is only one God, the market.
“Capitalism is the primary force for the breakdown of class and the creation of opportunity in most Muslim countries.”
This is true, but only true in pre-capitalist countries. In Iran it is the capitalists that rule. There the creation of opportunity for the masses is in opposition to capitalism. It is the capitalists there that use religion to keep their population in check. The real culprit is the capitalist class and not the Islamic religion.
This is also true in the U.S. and other developed, and imperialist states. Religion is used by the ruling class as a whole to keep people divided and ignorant. Again, it is not the religion, but those with class interests to defend.
And, B.T.W., I never said, nor do I believe, that the U.S. government is a class. I also never said that the U.S. was a landlord in Afghanistan. I said they supported the landlord class.