To "Islamo Fascist" or Not To "Islamo Fascist"

National Review Online has a fascinating and important symposium on the use of the term "Islamo-fascism."

I have been meaning to blog about this for some time. First off, I have used the term on several occasions in the past. But I have always been uncomfortable with its usage, with my usage of it. It strikes me as lazy and intellectually dubious. However, it also serves to function as a sort of shorthand reference to a phenomenon for which it has proven remarkably difficult to establish a useful title. I sometimes think simply "Jihadists" would be best, but that too would be inaccurate in its own way.

As a general rule, we have not had to establish names for our enemies -- Nazis called themselves "Nazis," fascists "fascists," communists "communists," and the National Party openly embraced "Apartheid." These thus became labels that we did not impose on others, but rather that they used to describe themselves. Such terms thus had the benefit of being accurate and useful, inasmuch as there was little confusion, and if they became shorthand for evil, that was a result that came about as a consequence of specific actions, behaviors, and ideas. This, incidentally, is what makes the noxious tendency on both left and right to invoke Stalin and Hitler, "Nazi," "fascist," and "communist" as epithets most problematic.

My views toward the NRO symposium participants tend to favor the stance of Andrew McCarthy (a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies -- I hope my own affiliation with FDD does not color my views), though all of the contributors make salient points. I like Judith Klinghoffer's assertion that the use of the word "fascist" seems trite and also tend to agree with her that Tony Blair's term "reactionary Islam" might be the best we have, even if it is still inelegant.

I would like to see us come up with a better phrase, name, or label, simply because I find the fascist analogy almost always to be sloppy and even dangerous. This is a tough enough issue without burdening it with all sorts of historical baggage. I imagine, however, that like the phrase "war on terror," we will continue to struggle with nomenclature here because this is such a different context from anything we have faced in the past, even if the issue of terrorism has been with us for some time, a history that does have much to teach us.