Part One of Two
by Andrew G. Bostom
Cliff May deserves credit for his recent National Review Online column “The New True Believers.” May dares to associate – however indirectly, and in the end, I am afraid, inadequately – those he terms, using layers of prophylactic rhetorical separation from orthodox Islam, either “militant jihadists,” or “Islamists,” and their movement as “militant Islamism,” – with Hitler, and his “movement,” i.e., Nazism.
May’s inchoate effort should be applauded for its attempted illustration of any possible ideological nexus between Hitler’s Nazism and Islam. But ultimately, the associations he makes – the “ability to nurse grievances and stoke ambitions,” Germans/Aryans as a master race, and the concordant supremacism of “militant Islamism,” and, invoking Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer,” generic “fanaticism” – ignore much more intimate, if uncomfortable to acknowledge, doctrinal and historical connections between ancient Islam and modern Nazism, upon which I will elaborate.
Diana West has summarized how the prevailing usage of the term “Islamofascism” obfuscates critically relevant truths:
“Islamofascism” is a made-up word that draws a politically correct curtain over
mainstream, traditional Islam, in effect shielding the religion and its tenets
from scrutiny when considering what drives our jihadist enemies – as they are
the first to declare.
My discussion introduces a doctrinally and historically relevant context if the currently much abused term “Islamofascism” is to be understood and employed appropriately, acknowledging the direct nexus between Islam, pre-modern despotism, and modern totalitarian ideologies.
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Pertinent Links:
1) Islamofascism? Hitler, Muhammad, and Islam
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