He states that the term refers to present-day jihadists. These individuals and "movements should be treated as Islamofascist, first, because of their congruence with the defining characteristics of classic fascism, especially in its most historically-significant form – German National Socialism.”
Schwartz continues: “Islamofascism [like Nazism] pursues its aims through the willful, arbitrary, and gratuitous disruption of global society, either by terrorist conspiracies or by violation of peace between states."
He believes the analogy holds true in that the resentful middle classes, frustrated in their aspirations and anxious about loss of their position characterized the Italian middle class and the German middle class. He is on good historical grounds here but he continues that the frustrated middle class is congruous with Al-Qaida based on it is in the Saudi, Pakistani, and Egyptian middle classes. I don't know enough about these middle classes to make a comparison with pre-World War II Italy and Germany but I can suspend judgment for the moment. Hezbollah is said to be another parallel because the growing Lebanese Shia middle class believes itself to be the victim of discrimination. In all four examples, this is grist for the mill, I simply don't know if the claim is credible.
Both fascism and Islamofascism are imperialistic: granted.
Both are totalitarian: granted.
Both are paramilitary: granted.
Schwartz states: “I do not believe these characteristics are intrinsic to any element of the faith of Islam.” I believe this is the case.
He rightly points out where the largest contingent of pro-Islamofascist forces are to be discovered in: "the army of apologists for radical Islam found in Middle East Studies departments on American campuses." American campuses are inundated with apologists, that much is true. Rarely will an American academic be heard denouncing violent Islam.
However, Schwartz writes optimistically:
I believe Islamofascism will be defeated by Saudi Sufis, Shias and other non-Wahhabi Muslims, who are pressing King Abdullah to break the official links between the Wahhabi clerics and the monarchy; anti-Wahhabis in other Gulf states; Iranian reformist intellectuals and Sufis; Iraqi Shia opponents of the Khomeinist state system in Iran, and Iraqi Sunni enemies of Al-Qaida; Algerians and Egyptians who survived Islamist terror; Balkan Sufis and traditional Hanafi Muslims confronting Wahhabi infiltrators; Turkish Alevis opposed to the Sunnicentric AK party regime; Sufis and traditionalists in West Africa, Sudan, Kurdistan, Central Asia, and southeast Asia, and the brave opponents of Wahhabis, other takfiris, and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Western help is crucial in this war, as in earlier wars against tyranny.
Islamofascism will not survive due to grass-roots oppositional forces. The West is crucial to this war against tyranny.
There are native forces against Islamofascism, Western sources are secondary. He writes:
The left and liberals long ago ceased to advocate for such people, and instead placed all their confidence in the Western academic elite, i.e in themselves and those who aspire to become like them. Academic leftists, yearning for the ‘60s, are as repellent as old rock stars; they are to politics what Mick Jagger is to pop music – pathetically believing they are immortal. I am sorry, but I do not eat that bread.
Stephen Schwartz is the Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, DC and author of the bestselling The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role In Terrorism (Doubleday).
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