[lbo-talk] Social Liberal Origin of "Islamofascism"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Pat Morrison writes in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs:
"[John C.] Hagee [founder and pastor of the 18,000-member
non-denominational evangelical Cornerstone Church in San Antonio,
Texas] coined the term 'Islamofascist' at CUFI's [Christians United
for Israel's] founding conference, [the Rev. Donald] Wagner noted,
'and within a week [President] Bush was using it, then [former
Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld'" ("The Dangerous Potent Elixir
of Christian Zionism," April 2007,
<http://www.wrmea.com/archives/April_2007/0704058.html>)

But Hagee didn't coin the term "Islamofascist."  Stefan Durand traces
the term back to historian Malise Ruthven's 1990 article in The
Independent, and so does William Safire.  (CUFI wasn't founded until
February 2007.)  In the article Ruthven put it this way:

     Nevertheless there is what might be called

     a political problem affecting the Muslim world.

     In contrast to the heirs of some other non-Western

     traditions, including Hinduism, Shintoism and

     Buddhism, Islamic societies seem to have found

     it particularly hard to institutionalise divergences

     politically: authoritarian government, not to say

     Islamo-fascism, is the rule rather than the exception

     from Morocco to Pakistan.

Whether or not they think it's a good idea to resort to the term
"Islamofascism," I bet that a majority of social liberals in the North
take the same view of Islam that Ruthven spells out above.  It is
common among them to see Islam as more inimical to pluralism in
particular or modernity in general, and more conducive to
authoritarian government, than other religions, much the same way that
they thought, and probably still think, that communism was more
conducive to authoritarian government than other political ideologies.

 On that ideological premise of Islam as totalitarianism, social
liberals do not differ from Christian Zionists, who merely put an
apocalyptic Christian spin on it.  As socialists and communists of the
North have largely become social liberals, I expect an increasing
number of them to follow this premise to its logical conclusion.
There is thus no significant ideological brake inside the North on the
so-called War on Terror.

<http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2006/11/DURAND/14115>
Archives  — Novembre 2006
Un cadre idéologique pour la « troisième guerre mondiale »
Fascisme, islam et grossiers amalgames
par Stefan Durand

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

La paternité du néologisme « islamo-fascisme » a été revendiquée dans
l'hebdomadaire néoconservateur The Weekly Standard par le journaliste
Stephen Schwartz (1), qui collabore par ailleurs à un site Internet
très controversé, FrontPage magazine, de David Horowitz.

Toutefois, n'ayant utilisé le terme pour la première fois qu'en 2001,
ce n'est donc pas Schwartz qui a inventé l'expression, mais
l'historien Malise Ruthven en 1990, dans le quotidien britannique The
Independent (2).

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

(1) Cf. son article du 17 août 2006, « What is "islamofascism" ? ».

(2) 8 septembre 1990 : « L'autoritarisme gouvernemental, pour ne pas
dire l'islamo-fascisme, est la règle plutôt que l'exception du Maroc
au Pakistan. »

<http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/01/news/edsafire.php>
Language: Islamofascism, anyone?
William Safire The New York Times
Published: October 1, 2006

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The first use I can find is in The Independent of Sept. 8, 1990:
"Authoritarian government, not to say 'Islamo- fascism,'" wrote Malise
Ruthven, "is the rule rather than the exception from Morocco to
Pakistan."
--
Yoshie