Because many people have been reading this essay lately, I have decided to reprint it. I have linked it to a YouTube video, as I did originally.
DEFINITION – Fascism: …As a rule, fascist governments are dominated by a dictator, who usually possesses a magnetic personality, … and rallies his followers by mass parades; appeals to strident nationalism; and promotes suspicion or hatred of both foreigners and “impure” people within his own nation, such as the Jews in Germany. Although both communism and fascism are forms of totalitarianism, fascism does not demand state ownership of the means of production, nor is fascism committed to the achievement of economic equality. In theory, communism opposes the identification of government with a single charismatic leader (the “cult of personality”), which is the cornerstone of fascism. … [Source: Dictionary.com]
With the death of Hitler and the defeat of Nazi Germany, most people thought that the world had been rid of fascism. Today, however, we cannot be so sure, because there is evidence aplenty of its revival. These days, many people talk of another form of fascism in particular: Islamofascism. Some people believe this term to be apt for the radical religio-political movement based on Islam, which is currently spreading through the world like wildfire; others, especially Muslims, find the term insulting and demeaning. Who is right? Are the infidels right to be shocked, disgraced and indignant, or are infidels right to use the term to point out to the unsuspecting the dangers we face. Why? Even the President of the United States of America himself, George W Bush, has used the term in public when referring to the antics of Al-Qa’eda and its determination to cultivate mayhem throughout the free world.
When we refer to Islam and radical Islam, we have to be careful not to confuse people. In this politically correct world, a world in which nobody seems willing to upset ethnic groups and people of other religions, it has become customary to dance around the truth so as not to offend. Therefore, our politicians have become accustomed to speaking in riddles, when clearer, more appropriate language would serve the needs of the electorate far better.
In times of danger, clarity of thought is essential. Prevarication serves no-one’s best interest in the long-run. Prevarication might well buy us some time; but it certainly doesn’t solve issues for the long-term good of the nation, for the long-term good of our civilization.
Let’s take a look at the real Islam…
The real Islam is exclusive in the extreme, just as Nazism was. It tells the believers – the Muslims throughout the world – to kill the unbelievers, to kill the infidels. This cannot be disputed, since it is there in black and white in all versions of the holy book of Muslims, the Qur’an.
They [the infidels] but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of God [Allah] (from what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks. – Al-Qur’an, Al-Nisa’ (Women), Surah IV, 89 (Translation by A Yusuf Ali)
And then we have the following:
… When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. … – Al-Qur’an, At-Tawba (Repentance), Surah 9, 4 (Translation by N J Dawood)
These exhortations are also redolent of Nazism. They are certainly as violent and brutal and cruel.
These are the words of the founder of Islam or the words of Allah, according to your viewpoint and according to where you stand on the matter of Islam being a great and authentic religion. Muhammad certainly managed to make those who submit to Allah feel superior and exclusive, since Muslims are considered (by Muslims) to be superior to all other human beings. They are, after all, Allah’s ‘chosen people’, just as the Aryan race was the superior race in Hitler’s Germany. This is surely another similarity between these two ideologies.
There is no doubt about the fact that Muhammad was a 'great' and magnetic personality. This is quite indisputable, since were he not to have been so, then Islam would surely have died out long ago. But don’t all fascist movements rely on a magnetic personality to lead the followers, to lead the masses, to lead the people who cannot think for themselves? Think of three great examples of the twentieth century: Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. All had quite magnetic personalities: people just had to watch them and listen to them and their rants.
The fact that Muhammad died more than fourteen hundred years ago makes no real difference, since his personality is no less magnetic today than it was when he roamed the sands of the desert. His words are still harkened unto by 1.4 billion people worldwide, and we are still counting.
Muhammad must surely rank as the dictator par excellence, since his words were clothed in a deity. Hitler, when he was sitting in his Bunker with Eva that day in 1945, when he was contemplating biting that cyanide capsule and plucking up the courage to shoot himself through the temples, must surely have regretted with every fibre of his being that he hadn’t been smart enough to clothe Nazism in a deity, just as Islam had been about fourteen hundred years before. How much more successful Hitler might have been!
Does Islam qualify so far, according to our dictionary definition, to be classified as a form of fascism? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
We are then informed that fascist dictators rally their followers by means of mass parades. Well, we cannot say with any certainty whether Muhammad did this. In all probability, he did not, since Islam, in the days of the Prophet, was in its infancy, and there would have been too few followers to rally. What we can say, however, is this: In the modern world, the dictators of the Islamic world have no difficulty whatsoever in getting rallies together on the streets of their cities. Often times, they are genuine; yet at other times, the numbers in the rallies are made by ‘rent-a-mob’. Either way, we must decide whether Islam passes this next test of a true strand of fascism. You decide!
Then we are informed in the definition that fascism appeals to strident nationalism. Well, there is no doubt that Islam is an Arabo-centric movement, worldwide. When praying, all Muslims must face Makkah (Mecca), and this takes place five times a day for the pious and faithful. One is certainly not allowed to ignore the Arab world if one is an adherent of the ‘religion’ of submission that is Islam. Added to this, of course, we have the Ummah, which is the community of Muslims throughout the world. When one enters the fold of Islam, when one becomes a follower, when one submits to the ‘will of Allah’ – some would say the arbitrary ‘will of Allah’ – then one joins the ‘nation’ of Islam worldwide. In this sense, can we not conclude that Islam is a form of extreme ‘nationalism’, a form of Islamic nationalism, a 'nationalism' that transcends geographical borders and frontiers?
Then we are told that fascism promotes suspicion and/or hatred of foreigners and impure people. Well, can we not conclude with the copious and available evidence that we have that Islam is certainly exclusive, since anyone who is not a Muslim is treated as inferior, and actually unclean, as in Kafir (pl. Kufar). The term used in Islam is Naji for such an unclean and unsavoury person. Does this remind you of the way that the Nazis thought of Jews and gypsies and homosexuals and Slavs and Russians? Nazis called them Untermenschen (unclean sub-humans); Muslims call them Najis (unclean disbelievers living in a state of Jahiliyyah, a state of pre-Islamic chaos), people who are unworthy of the human condition.
One other thing that Nazis, in particular, had in common with Muslims was this: They both hate(d) the Jews; both groups are deeply anti-Semitic. This, of course, is true to this very day. Mein Kampf, Hitler’s infamous book written whilst he was incarcerated, the title of which means ‘My fight, or my struggle’ (a title which bears a striking resemblance to the term Jihad, if you hadn’t noticed) was replete with anti-Semitism. One can but wonder why this very book is such a bestseller even to this day in countries in the Middle East, and even in Turkey. The book is an endless source of fascination to Muslims.
Fascism is a form of totalitarianism, but then isn’t Islam a form of totalitarianism, too? Fascism doesn’t demand state control of the means of production; but then Islam doesn’t either. Though it does have its own economic principles, economic principles which are neither capitalist nor socialist, economic principles and theory which are simply Islamic. This theory of economics demands neither state-ownership of the means of production nor does it demand equality among the faithful. But Islamic thinking certainly does call for infidels to be treated in an inferior manner, to be treated as dhimmies, or protected people who are not afforded the same rights as those who have submitted to Allah’s will.
Jews in Nazi Germany were made to wear a yellow star to mark them out from the crowd. Non-believers in an Islamic country, according to the ‘Pact of Umar’, are also subjected to similar indignities. Here we have another similarity.
The cult of personality, we are told, is the cornerstone of fascism. Do you think that Islam measures up on this score? Does Muhammad qualify? Was Muhammad charismatic enough? Has Muhammad passed the test of time? Can we conclude that Muhammad is the Gestalt which can truly be described as the non plus ultra of Gestalten, the non plus ultra of personality cults.
Whether ‘Islamofascism’ is a justified and apt term or indeed a calumnious one to describe what we are witnessing around the world today as Islam becomes ever more resurgent is for you, the reader, to decide. Do, by all means, think long and hard about this matter, for the future of the free world depends on our getting this right. It depends on our careful handling of this most thorny of contemporary issues.
©Mark Alexander
