Influential analysts equated fundamentalist Islam with communism and fascism
Evidence
Or consider Daniel Pipes, a perfervid anti-Muslim whose main characteristic is that as an Orientalist he “knows” Islam for the appallingly dreadful thing that it is. He delivers himself of some reflections in a “think” piece published in the Fall 1995 issue of The National Interest under the modest title “There are No Moderates: Dealing with Fundamentalist Islam.” Nowhere in the piece does he absolve radical Islam — which he does not bother to define, but which his title lets us assume is the same as the non-radical variety — of its real nature which, he tells us right off, is “closer in spirit to other such movements (communism, fascism) than to traditional religion.” A little later, he develops the analogy further: “While fundamentalist Islam differs in its details from other utopian ideologies, it closely resembles them in scope and ambition. Like communism and fascism, it offers a vanguard ideology; a complete program to improve man and to create a new society; complete control over that society; and cadres ready, and even eager, to spill blood.” — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 17
Categorization
- XREF: Shows the Cold War framing being projected wholesale onto Islam, connecting to the author’s broader critique of media coverage. — connects to: Neoliberal theorists conflated communism with Islam as an orientalist enemy. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 125
Related
- Neoliberal theorists conflated communism with Islam as an orientalist enemy. (similarity 0.85)
- The term fundamentalism is wrongly treated as nearly synonymous with Islam (similarity 0.82)
- Anti-Islam polemics are mainstream, not fringe, and aimed at policymakers (similarity 0.82)
- Western ideological camps all reduce Islam to a scapegoat (similarity 0.78)
- Essentialized views of Islam make any Islamic reform a betrayal of the essence (similarity 0.78)