Thursday, August 10, 2006

Are they Islamic fascists or not?

This blogger says "not."

The reason it’s inappropriate to describe Islamists as fascists is simple: They’re not statists. To Muslims, including that subset of Muslims I call Islamists (see below), a state is at best a temporary thing, performing certain administrative, organizational, or ideological tasks. It has no independent significance, as it does in, say, the Christian tradition. (“Render unto Caesar” and all that.) Islamists aren’t trying to create a state in which all the parts work as one; their ultimate goal is a stateless world in which everyone worships Allah. Read up on Islam if this seems strange to you.

I tend to disagree. That may be the face they are presenting to the rest of the world, this stateless Islamic world, but have you seen one radically Islamic nation do away with the state yet? No, and you never will. The real face of radical Islam is one of a fascist Islamic state with religous leaders at the head, but really more similar to fascist governments than his portrayal lets on. Power is power, irregardless of religion.

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