> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Wojtek Sokolowski
> More specifically, I am not debating fine points of islamic theology or
> philososphy - i am merely claiming that islam is currently being used by
> essentially fascist forces as a mobilizing ideology in the same way as
> German or Italian nationalism was used half a century ago...
Except Islam is not a nationalist movement in the same way and for that very reason has a multiplicity of uses: opposing secular dictatorship in Egypt and Algeria and (successfully) in Indonesia, combatting capitalist attacks on the poor in countries like Turkey, criticizing government corruption in Pakistan, creating a radical anti-peace political alternative in Palestine, and yes creating theocratic facism in places like Afganistan.
> So yes, crowds chanting islamic slogans on the streets of cairo or teheran
> are the equivalent of the brown shirts in munich or nuremberg - they are
> the storm troopers in the hands of fascist regimes.
Ah but my point was that such chanting is a very individual act for many Islamic folks. Reading Koran verses is a form of individual prayer and as often resists government communal dictates as support communal action. Travelling in the Middle East, walking the streets, and visiting the mosques does not give you the feeling that the resurgence Islam is one of mob-run fascism but of a multiplicity of endeavors and choices befitting a complex social development. There are those who cloak their fascist actions in Islamic clothes, but most social justice advocates in the region use similar cloaks for their arguments.
The point is that defending Russian or Serbia suppression of minority Islamic populations in the name of defeating Islamic "fascism" is a cure that looks a heck of lot like the disease it is suppose to end.
> >in the United States, the greatest danger to civil liberties is inflated
> fears
> >and xenophobia against Islam. Fears of Islam have been used to deny civil
> >liberties to a host of people. Frankly, the anti-Islam fears look more like
> >McCarthyism than anti-fascism.
>
> Good point. However, I do not think that such fears originate in
> xenophobia - after all, few people outside the chirstian fundamentalists
> circles fear buddhism or confucianism. The fear of islam, like the fear of
> nazism, is grounded in the deeds of its followers.
Like what? The death count of all Islamic terrorist actions against Westerners is miniscule. Timothy McVeigh by himself probably killed more Americans than all the Islamic terrorists combined over the last generation (and I include the Beirut bombing). Iran is not a wonderful regime and the Iraq-Iran war was hardly admirable, but is hardly out-of-step with European-based bloodshed of this century or more recent non-Islamic bloodbaths as in Angola.
How to explain the anti-Arab, anti-Islamic bias is complicated and is a combination of Said's analysis of Orientalism, Christian fundamentalist views that Islam is obviously a bigger theological competitor than Buddhism, and the political recognition that Islam is harnessed to real economic resources such as oil that can challenge Western power.
> Moreover, I do not see any anti-islamic hype in the us that would even
> remotely resemble the level of anticommunist hysteria. If anything, islam
> is treated with benign paternalism as compared to ardent anticommunist
> crusades, even though there is not a single case of a *democratic* regime
> overthrown by a communist insurgency, and no instances of left wing
> terrorism against public at large.
First, explicit US anti-terrorism law now makes you more likely to be deported for being a fundamentalist Islamist than for being a communist. If anything, you have the rules reversed. The US Communist Party is treated as a benign joke by the powers that be, but active radical Islamic groups are treated instantly as dangerous malefactors that need to be monitored and investigated. When the Oklahoma City bombing happened, they didn't spring to investigate Communists but immediately pinned the actions on Islamic groups that had recently held a convention in the city.
Talk to any immigrant rights advocate facing a deportation hearing and they would much rather explain an affiliation with a communist party than with a radical Islamic group.
As to your empirical argument, there are hardly any democratic regimes that have ever been overthrown by an insurgency of any kind - democracies have almost universally fallen to coups and insiders with access to the military, Chile '73 and Czechoslovia in the late 40s being obvious examples on either side of the Cold War. It is notable, however, that dictatorships in countries like Algeria have suppressed democratic elections where Islamists won popular mandates. In that, anti-Islamic ideology has increasingly become a handmaiden of dictatorship in the region.
That a heavily Islamic-backed democracy movement in Indonesia has terminated a dictatorship is a hopeful sign that this anti-democratic use of bias against Islam is eroding. There are plenty of movements with Islamic elements that are repugnant, but they should be condemned for those repugnant elements, not because they are Islamic.
And the justification of the attacks on Chechyna citing the latter's Islamic character is exactly the dictatorial method one should fear. That Putin, a man of the security services, is riding the issue to the Presidency is a classic authoritarian fascist tactic. Notably, in neither Kosovo or Chechnya is there an identifiable Feurer-style figure, but in both Serbia and now Russia, there are singular leaders who used attacks on a religious minority to stabilize their power. Just as Weimar social democracy gave way to racist scapegoating and war, so too did formerly socialist-minded Yugoslvia and the Soviet Union give way to racist scapegoating in Serbia and Russia. These latter developments seem much more alarming revivals of fascism than anything in the Islamic world.
-- Nathan Newman