Meredith Aach, Week 12, Terrorism, Further exploration of "Islamofascist", Reflective Post

With all this discussion about the term Islamofascist, I wanted to do a bit more exploration of the term. This term has been used in a variety of ways, but more generally used to describe radical Islams. Whether this term is appropriate for this use is hotly debated among academia and other experts on Islam As Gabe showed, the term comes from the combination of two terms, however, I see what Will is trying to argue as well. Although it may seem accurate to describe "radical Muslims" as "islamofascists", this may be oversimplifying the issues at hand.

Furthermore, Newspaper columnist Joseph Sobran has said: "Islamofascism is nothing but an empty propaganda term. And wartime propaganda is usually, if not always, crafted to produce hysteria, the destruction of any sense of proportion. Such words, undefined and unmeasured, are used by people more interested in making us lose our heads than in keeping their own."

I think what the criticism of this term is pointing out is that there are causes of terrorist acts that cannot be simplified with a term because the situation is much more complicated than a reference to historical fascism.

Eric Margolis agreed: "There is nothing in any part of the Muslim World that resembles the corporate fascist states of western history. In fact, clan and tribal-based traditional Islamic society, with its fragmented power structures, local loyalties, and consensus decision-making, is about as far as possible from western industrial state fascism."

However, academia and the public discourse is full of terms that are supposed to define broad concepts. The term islamofascist is not saying that radical Islam is exactly like historical fascism, but instead drawing parallels between them; however, perhaps there has been a tendency to label everything before looking at the issues more deeply. I think instead of arguing about terms, we need to look at the underlying assumptions that determine both sides of the arguments. Yes, we shouldn't base policies or our opinions on broadly defined and unmeasured terms, but we also do not need to play the game where we argue about terminology.