“Islamofascism”? Introduction

Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 225-241 “Islamofascism”? Introduction Stefan Wild (guest editor) University of Bonn 1. Origin and Development of a Term e term “Islamofascism” has gained ground in the last few years and has even made it into respectable dictionaries. e usefulness of the term is, however, severely contested. is special issue of Die Welt des Islams collects a number of essays on “Islamofascism” and on its under- lying political assumptions. Scholars of different backgrounds have attempted to set this term in its European, US American, and Middle Eastern contexts and to evaluate its analytical value. ere were two disconcerting reactions when I initially confided to people that I was busy collecting essays on the topic of “Islamofascism”. e first and least expected one was a cordial congratulation that I had finally seen the light and brought myself to call a spade a spade and Islam a fascist religion. It seemed difficult to make the quotation marks and the question mark in the title “Islamofascism”? audible. e second reaction was an impatient groan preceding the anguished question whether it was really necessary to flog a dead horse and to devote more than 300 pages to an evidently politically biased and polemical term. e third reaction was friendly, and as this was the majority reaction I took heart and was encouraged to go ahead. e result is this thematic issue. When “Islam” is discussed in current scholarly discourse, it has become fashionable to insist that neither glorification of Muslims and Islam nor Islamophobia are in order. ere is an element of laudable political correctness in this. e nicest instance I know is the two- volume set edited by orsten Gerald Schneiders. e first volume deals with “Islamophobia. When the Limits of Critique Become Blurred”, © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/15700607-201200A1 226 S. Wild / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 225-241 the second bears the title “Glorification of Islam. When Critique Becomes a Taboo”.1 e authors of the essays collected in this issue have certainly strived to avoid phobia as well as glorification of Islam. We do not claim to have ended the debate on “Islamofascism”, but we do hope to have given it a nudge into the right direction. And, of course, we have been keen on coming to grips with a complicated issue that cannot be addressed by simplifying it. We strove to avoid a black-and-white- approach and opted for the color gray. Terminology is rarely innocent and often implies more than what it says. erefore, close attention should be paid to the rhetorical, performative, and contextual function of the term “Islamofascism”. In this case caution is doubly relevant because “partisanship is almost always just beneath the surface of most writing about the Middle East”.2 1a. Fear of Islam and Fear of the West e creation of the term “Islamofascism” links Muslims with Fascists and Islam with National Socialism. It became used on a wider scale toward the end of the second millennium, roughly concurrent with the term “Islamophobia”, and it was invented and mainly used in the US and in Europe. ere were at least four major issues that understandably created fear of certain groups of Muslims outside and also inside the Muslim World: 1. e Islamic Revolution in Iran and the creation of the Islamic Republic (1979). e revolution with its massive human rights abuses, the hostage crisis in which militants took over the US embassy in Teheran (1979-1981), and the emergence of a clerical dictatorship in Iran changed the Middle Eastern landscape. In the Iran-Iraq war (1980- 1988), out of fear of Iranian expansion and dominance, the US mas- sively armed and supported Iraq. During the war Henry Kissinger 1) orsten Gerald Schneiders (ed.), Islamfeindlichkeit. Wenn die Grenzen der Kritik verschwimmen, Wiesbaden 2009, and id. (ed.), Islam-Verherrlichung. Wenn die Kritik zum Tabu wird, Wiesbaden 2010. 2) Jeffrey Herf in a review of Gilbert Achcar, e Arabs and the Holocaust: e Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, New York 2009 in: e New Republic 1 November 2010..

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