"Don't say 'what,' say 'pardon', dear"

The SFGate reports that the Bush Administration has been advised to be careful when referring to Al-Qaeda and other extremist movements of an Islamic bent. They've finally figured out that using words like 'jihad', 'mujahideen,' 'jidadist,' etc might accidentally give legitimacy to these movements that plan horrible things against civilians by engaging them on their terms.

Well shucks. They just figured this out??

On the list of 'banned' words for official use is the stupid term "Islamo-fascism"-- did anyone ever think to ask what that was supposed to mean before they just accepted the term like sheep? It's a propaganda term, nothing more, nothing less.

Since this is one of my personal words of ire that these clowns have coined, let's discuss it a bit.

If we break the word into its parts, we get Islamo- and fascism. The first part is easy: it's a prefix that shows a connection to Islamic culture or faith. It has the same meaning as Islamic, and could be used in contexts like, Islamic art, Islamic jurisprudence, but when a noun is being created, so maybe someone would come up with Islamo-art for an exhibition... (oh the joys of language!) Fair enuff.

Fascism. More tricky. It's a type of political system, that came to be famous in the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, eventually leading to the European part of World War II. Its philosophy can be described as embracing "anti-rationalism, struggle, leadership and elitism, socialism and militant nationalism." (Heywood 1992, 216) Think Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Horthy's Hungary and you've got (various kinds and degrees of) fascism.

How the hell does that describe Al-Qaeda? AQ might have some elements of fascism, but it is primarily a fascist organization? Is it motivated by militant nationalism? I think not.

AQ is a violent religious extremist group with geopolitical goals. They take aim at the west for supporting (often dictatorial) regimes in the Muslim world, wanting to remake those societies along Islamic lines, albeit a very severe strand of Islam. In some ways, they make valid criticisms of these countries; their downfall is in their extreme violence and brutality. If they were a political party and advocated peaceful change, no one would pay them much mind. (But, oops, in those countries, there are no/few independent political parties so there's no way for potential AQ-types to promote peaceful change... maybe that's the real way to defeat them...)

Islamo-fascism is, at best, a spin on the popular meaning of fascism, merely an ill-liberal worldview. At its worst, it's cheap propaganda for fear-mongering and making the unthinking, blindly-following masses afraid and, therefore, rally around you to "protect" them. We've been had, fellow Americans. Well, most of us have, anyway.