Islamism is Indeed Fascism (March 31, 2008)

Islam can be a religion of moderation, of peace.

If the majority of the one billion Muslims were not moderate and supported al-Qaeda, the Western World would be simply overwhelmed in spite of its technological, military and financial superiority. One billion radicals, martyrs, terrorists, Jihadists and their supporters would quickly reduce the world to ashes in their nihilistic violence.

For a clash of religious cultures to be averted, perhaps 10-20% of the Muslims worldwide must be totally reeducated; and this is not a matter of modest slow gradations. The anti-West, anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda taught daily in the kindergartens and schools, universities and mosques and which permeates the media throughout the radicalized Muslim world is so complete, so undifferentiated, so extreme and so rooted in uniform conformity that only a total remake, a redefinition of these institutions, can have any hope of reversing this perversion of truth, this immoderacy, this disinterest in co-existence.

Islamism and Fascism are particularly symbiotic, having many striking similarities.

Just as when we may criticize Nazism, we are not being anti-German.

When we may abhor Radical Islamism, we are not being anti-Islam and certainly not prejudiced against the majority in the Muslim world.

Western civilization allows us varying perspectives, differentiated opinions and the exquisite luxury of viewing any religion, any culture in all their multitudinous colors, values, expressions, qualities and realities.

Both Radical Islamism and Nazism see the world in stark black and white; in particular both have exhibited the deep-seated will to exterminate the Jews. In fact the Islamist's doctrine goes further, believing their redemption and the eagerly awaited end of the world will only arrive when there are no Jews left in the world. Apocalypse and its doomsday are central to the spirituality of Jihadists, the Ahmadinejad's of the world and thereby they express their fascistic purity.

They both discriminate against homosexuals and would exterminate them. They would not live comfortably with others of different beliefs, opposing cultures, varying politics and would consistently attempt to destroy those of difference until a uniformity, a universal commonality was obtained that matched the Sunni Wahhabist or Shiite extremes; with even all less extreme variations of Muslim beliefs, especially those of moderacy, eventually expunged.

Both believe they are the finest community, the superior race, god's perfection and personification on earth - all else pales into insignificance by comparison, all others are of little value except as perhaps the Nazi's Untermenchen, the Islamist's Dhiminis, all third-class citizens with necessarily slave-like mentalities, existing and working only for the common good of the superior ones and those chosen to interpret the exclusive immutable and unchangeable truths of their preeminent beliefs.

Western societies are substantially deficient at fighting this fascism, at combating even more so Islamism which thrives universally with its amorphous and insidious presence on every continent, in most countries.

If the radical leftist, if the liberal (for whom all cultures, all beliefs are equivalent) appeaser, if the current media, all existed in the late 1930's, then perhaps Roosevelt would not have declared war on the Nazis (Germany had at that time not yet attacked America). And even if he had, these opposing forces would have made it impossible to prosecute the war, what with the hundreds of thousands of GI's dead, with the millions of German civilians dead, with the ultimately 50 million victims of WWII. Within the context of modern politics and propaganda, these casualties, especially amongst the non-combatants, would have caused the war effort to be destroyed and with it the ability of the Western World to contain Nazism and eventually defeat it.

There would have been democracy in Europe, no Jews left in those countries and certainly no nascent state of Israel.

America would have probably survived, but in a much reduced and weakened form, beset continually by the expansionist aims of the Nazis and perhaps the USSR, fighting ever since for its isolated survival.

Western societies are not well designed to understand these evils or eradicate them. We are designed to invent Penicillin, the Internet, expand tolerance, peace and prosperity, and extend the beneficence of freedom to all individuals replete with unlimited rights and choices.

We tend to view the world of Islamists through Western lenses with eminently Western rationality. That is why we constantly appease, donating money to the Hamas' university in Gaza, protecting via America's vast military umbrella the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, allowing enormous sums of money to institute and maintain radical Islamic religion and education worldwide including Madrassas and Mosques throughout Western Europe and the USA. That is why, in our rational and reasonable attempt to appease those who hate us, those who would destroy us, we in fact strengthen them. We motivate them further as they cannot be reconciled to our existence, they cannot be appeased by our signs of weakness and conciliation, our inconsistent variabilities.

We institute sanctions not worthy of the definition. We initiated a powerful invasion of Iraq and failed to finish it decisively, failed miserably to follow that miraculous removal of Saddam Hussein with a rebuilding of Iraqi society with all its attendant moderate and democratic judicial, educational and governmental institutions. We failed to ensure the participation of the Iraqi majority from the start and facilitate their ultimate control of their own destiny. We needed to be a proactive facilitator and not an occupying power. The jury as they say, is fortunately still out.

Iran is of course another twist in the story, another mirror the West cannot see, dare not see, lest it lose its freshly minted New World innocence, its hard won naivety.

Martyrdom is exalted in Iran.

They view annihilation of Israel and themselves in return, positively. They will attack Israel as soon as practical and do not take into account the logical eventuality of their own destruction. Their particular heaven awaits all their martyrs. In fact they welcome such retaliation, believing it will draw the Muslim peoples closer to each other, encourage riots in every Arab street, cementing their anti-West views and actions, furthering the interests of the Islamists. They realize Muslims are now too divided and for the necessary war between the Muslim world and the Western world to take place, catalytic events like 9/11 and Iraq are absolutely required. Bin Laden understood well the results of 9/11 and its military insignificance and yet hoped for a strong Western reaction to inspire Jihadists worldwide.

The Islamists enjoy the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq as they see these wars as breeding grounds for their protégés - they calculate that the Western world has not the resilience or the patience to fight wars of attrition and that they will get mired in the media casualties and political swamps of a long, painful and drawn out conflict.

The Islamists understand well the Harry Reids and Barrack Obamas of the world and believe it's only a matter of time when America will leave and the Jihadists will then establish Islamic States in Iraq and Afghanistan; states which will serve as a launch pad, as an historical pretext to initiating terrorist attacks in Europe and the USA on their way to establishing a worldwide Caliphate, which is always and remains central to their everyday preoccupations.