“Islamic Fascists” vs. “Islamic Millenarians”

The events of today and yesterday [Foiled liquid explosive plot vs. airliners] are additional evidence that we are faced with an ever more complex struggle between the West and sectors of the Islamic world. The situation is grim and no easy solutions present themselves. The fact that the plotters were of Pakistani origin is a particularly ominous sign in that if profiling will be used by law enforcement and by everyday people an additional billion plus people from the Indian subcontinent will now fall under suspicion. This will not make the world a happier and more trusting place.

In some sense, the ultimate target of this type of aggression or attempted aggression is the spirit of international cooperation that animates peaceful world commerce, the UN and other multinational institutions. The undermining of a universalist (not the religious kind) and anti-racist worldview could not be achieved more effectively than by this type of terror plot. This is probably not the conscious goal of the Islamic militants who plan these type of things but they certainly have no regard for this spirit and these efforts.

President Bush, who does not have a great deal of patience with subtleties of language (though some of his advisors probably more so), has adopted the phrase “Islamic fascists” from the lexicon of some, usually conservative/Christian right commentators. It seems as though “terrorists” and “radical Islam” have at least temporarily taken a back seat.

What is right and what is wrong with the phrase “Islamic fascists” or the even more negative sounding “Islamofascists”? Let’s first divide the discussion into two parts: connotations (what is implied with the word or phrase) and denotations (actual meaning of the word or phrase).

Connotation(s)

“Fascist” in English connotes “destructive political villain”, “political bad person” and “enemy” because of the legacy of world war II. It also connotes “anti-Semite” as the most notable Fascists during WWII were the anti-Semitic Nazis. It is a pejorative epithet to all but the most perverse racists and extreme rightists in the English language world as it is throughout Europe.

• Disadvantage 1: For those outside the Western industrial countries to take this word in other than simply invective or an insult.
• Disadvantage 2: For those who are part of the Western world, the invective component will rule over any consideration of its meaning. The underlying message they will receive will be “we are being called upon to (once again) hate” these people.
• Advantage 1: the connotations alert people to the potential for evil if for some reason they had not already understood that destructiveness was afoot.

Denotation(s)

Fascist comes from the Latin “fasces” a bundle of sticks that allegedly reinforced an axe handle so it would not break though it was also an ancient symbol of authority. Benito Mussolini, the inventor and first European fascist dictator revived the word and symbol to describe how if Italians stuck together they would be stronger. Fascist ideologies are usually overtly secular but with quasi-religious elements. They call for a transformation in society along racialist or nationalist lines. They almost always involve a strongman who is heralded as like a messiah. Fascism involves setting the national group above other national groups and ethnicities, often involves an aggressive war or persecution of “foreign” elements in the body politic and sometimes an imperial effort to subjugate neighboring nations. The notion of the political collectivity as a body is particularly strong in fascism as are biological metaphors for negative and positive phenomena.

In an earlier post, I have highlighted how fascism can be viewed as a modern form of millenarianism though I am not alone in calling attention to this continuity between religious millenarianism and the quasi-religious variety that might be called fascism or in somewhat altered form, left revolutionary movements and regimes as well (Maoism, Stalinism, Pol Pot).

• Advantage 1: the Islamicists appear to have a mystical notion of a pure Islamic nation or Umma, which agrees with the fascist ideal of the clean national body.
• Advantage 2:the Islamicists have a fascination with or at least few inhibitions in using ultra-violent and, they seem to hope, humiliating attacks on those whom they consider to be their enemies. Fascists also use violence and humiliation of opponents and out groups to achieve a feeling of dominance.
• Advantage 3: Fascists often called upon a higher level of self-sacrifice (often hypocritically) for the good of the nation than the representative democracies which they scorn (this was particularly obvious in the case of the Japanese kamikaze). Islamicists seem to call for a still higher level of self-sacrifice than fascists did which contrasts markedly with the rational calculation of self-interest which is assumed in capitalist democracies.
• Disadvantage 1: Fascists are/were worldly, largely secular, and sometimes reveled in amorality, cynicism and consciously fetishized power while the Islamicists think of themselves as religious and highly moral, though their morality contains a positive relationship to violence and humiliation of non-Muslims/apostates.

As the above discussion suggests there are significant problems with the connotation, i.e. the implications of the use of the phrase “Islamic fascists” that probably interfere with people both in the West and in the Islamic world (which is also now in the West, too) from processing the more productive aspects of comparing Islamicist militants with Italian, German or other fascists. In the area of denotation, once the use of the word as epithet has been overcome, the fascist label is fairly enlightening. Unfortunately 95% of people will not be able to evaluate or get beyond the name calling aspect.

Now, how does the designation “Islamic Millenarian” stack up with “Islamic Fascists”? First what are the descriptive advantages and disadvantages to using “Islamic Millenarian” in the same format as above:

Connotation(s)

There are currently no popular connotations to using the word “millenarian” as it is used mostly in theological and academic historical contexts. The connotations of the word for theologians or those with historical interests are that “millenarian” connotes “crazy”, “low-class” or “irrational” but at the same time, within religious contexts, millenial beliefs cannot be disposed of entirely as they help make up the fabric of the stories of the major religions.

• Advantage 1: no popular connotations
• Problem 1: theological connotation of being a somewhat populist, low-class, irrationalist form of religion…”not high church”. Another way to summarize it is “You’re supposed to believe these things, but don’t believe them too much”.

Denotation(s)

As reviewed in previous posts here millenarians believe that we are entering a period that is close to some great historical/supernatural event that has spiritual significance. The present corrupt order is challenged by a new prophet or prophetic group and a new age is about to dawn that will banish the old order and usher in a golden age or an “end of time”. Millenarians make strong distinctions between believers and non-believers and will often act aggressively against those who do not believe as they see them as either insignificant or agents of the opposition in the “final battle” between good and evil. As you see, the millenarian stories are deeply ingrained in the major monotheistic religions as they are in the secular/ancient mythic story structure that we find very satisfying.

• Advantage 1: Islamicist militants and the prophetic leaders they listen to seem to animated by a politico-religious ideology that sees the return of a hallow past or Umma in which Islam is returned to a prior blessed state
• Advantage 2: Islamicists are motivated religiously or at least view politics largely through the veil of religion, unlike fascists.
• Advantage 3: Clerics or men who portray themselves as particularly pious Muslims play a leading role in most Islamicist militant groups.
• Advantage 4: The extremity of and susceptibility to appeals to self-sacrifice is closer to pre-rational religious notions than to a rationalist or quasi-rationalist ideology.
• Disadvantage 1: “Fascist” emphasizes use of violence while millenarians are not necessarily violent as they can also withdraw from the corrupt order and hope for supernatural intervention. In addition, the historical development of fascism in an area of sophisticated weaponry means that the violent means that they are associated with in our memory is more similar to the medieval or peasant instruments of violence that one would associate with “millenarians.
• Disadvantage 2: Fascists as they are part of the modern instrumental, power-oriented world, would and can resort to subterfuge to achieve their ends. One thinks of millenarians as being so involved in their mythic world as not to be able to hide their beliefs.

Conclusion

In our comparison between these terms, it appears that in terms of the ACTUAL MEANING of the words that both “Islamic Fascists” and “Islamic Millenarians” that both are descriptive of how a range of Islamicist militants behave and how they might be thinking. Each term adds something to our understanding of what is going on.

There is however a BIG disadvantage in using the “Islamic Fascist” label outside a specialist or academic setting: “fascist” is a form of invective in the West and suggests the re-creation of a warlike opposition between the West and Islam with geographical fronts like WWII. The repetition of the mistake made after 9/11 with the fight against Al Qaeda was where the US and Britain showed a preference for viewing the war in terms of a conventional military confrontation when Al Qaeda was able to wrap itself in sympathetic Muslim populations and stoke it’s popularity even as it lost military assets. What was missing from the US and British strategy was an appreciation of the cultural, moral and religious elements of the struggle as well as the difficulty in fighting what became essentially a guerilla war. The invasion of Iraq was the most egregious expression of the failure of this policy.

So how can we best describe the opponent or the animating ideology of the opposition?
The term should have the following characteristics:

1. Should be accurate
2. Should be motivating for both sides to oppose the turn towards violence but also to allow for defense of the actual interests of the parties involved
3. Should be connotatively fairly neutral allowing the actual meaning to be absorbed

We can resolve some of the disadvantages of the “Islamic Millenarian” label more easily than those of the “Islamic Fascist” epithet for the simple reason that it is easier to absorb by both sides. It is not so much a form of invective and might cause some rethinking on both sides about how to approach each other.

One of the ways to discuss the Middle East situation is then as follows, making a distinction between a Millenarianism as a discourse and individuals who hold millenarian beliefs. Also I will use the modifiers “anti-Western”, “violent” and the distinction “overt/covert”:

“Anti-Western Islamicist millenarianism helps stoke and complicate political and economic struggles for power and resources in the Middle East. Leaders of political struggles and political groups are often religious figures or those who defer to religious figures as ultimate authorities. The Islamicist millenarian ideology enobles, inflates and transposes local conflicts onto outside non-Islamic influences that may or may not have a role in the actual complaints of everyday Muslims. Dangling the return to a golden age of Islamic rectituce and Sharia rule, the millenarian ideology makes the struggle one between good and evil, between natives and powerful, corrupt foreign powers of either Christian or Jewish religion.”

“Individual Muslims have varying levels of involvement or non-involvement in the upswing in millenarian thinking and activity in the Islamic world since the 1979 Iranian revolution. There are millenarian clerical leaders who also function as military strategists in a war against the perceived and actual corruption of local regimes and of regional powers like Israel and global powers. Other millenarian clerics do not have an active strategic role but inspire others to take up arms in the struggle against the West.”

“In this modern or semi-modern context, millenarianism takes on a different form in different people. Some are committed to violence, which gets liturgical support in certain parts of the Koran, while a vast majority of other Muslims are more inclined to passively assent to or allow the millenarian political forces take over and redefine the political and social issues. As the millenarian ideology is oppositional, there are also covert and overt states in expressing the ideology. Muslims who live in non-Muslim dominated societies are more likely to covertly hold millenarian beliefs if they hold them at all. Also those who are in opposition to the local authorities in Islamic-dominant society might also only covertly express their millenarian beliefs. In madrassahs, in Iran and certain sectors of Iraq are places where overt millenarian beliefs can be expressed.”

“Therefore talk of Islamic/Islamicist fundamentalists, radicals, fascists will hide some of the subtlety of the phenomenon. Instead to discuss ‘violent anti-Western Islamicist millenarianism in its covert and overt forms’ is more enlightening if just a wee bit longer to say. When violent anti-Western Islamicist millenarians shield their beliefs but plan an attack they often turn to terrorist activities. Despite the modern nature of the weaponry or tactics they may use or hope to use are also part of a longer tradition in which millenarians have acted without regard for their own safety or without regard for intermediate or longer term political objectives. The fight against these violent anti-Western Islamic millenarians is difficult because their tactics encourage the start of a culture war rather than a political struggle for power and resources which could ultimately be solved by negotiation and/or conventional armed conflict paired with negotiation.”

So does that sound like an accurate description? I think it does better than most. I believe if this conceptual array is adopted in Western political rhetoric, it will bring forward a more intelligent engagement with the problem and may even strengthen moderate elements in Islamic-dominant countries

Zoon

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