First, visit our symposium today, where I am one of the dimmer lights. Second do read Roger Scruton’s somewhat off topic but penetrating discussion of Islamofascism in the Wall Street Journal. Steven Schwartz, has useful thoughts as well.

Second: What I like about Scruton’s piece is that it raises the humorlessness of Islamism. Whether that makes it fascist seems debatable, but it’s supremely relevant. Ideologies usually don’t have a sense of humor, but ideologues who don’t should be distrusted.

Third: Which brings me to a point raised quite a bit in the symposium by yours truly and others, the term Islamic Fascist is useful because it narrows down who we are talking about to the murderous, humorless thugs who want to impose their dark vision on the rest of us. It’s worth noting however that the humorless imams of Islam don’t see it that way. Many Middle Eastern editorialists denounced Bush’s statement as an affront to all Muslims. Syrian and Saudi newspapers interpreted – or pretended to — Bush as calling all Muslims fascists. Apparently “Islamic” cannot be used as an adjective without being categorical. I guess we can never speak of “Islamic plumbers” without fear of being misunderstood as saying all Muslims snake clogged toilets for a living. See point two.

Fourth: I suppose what bothers me the most about this whole debate is the underlying assumption that if it’s fascist it must be bad. Don’t get me wrong, I think fascism is bad. But what cannot be forgotten is that Islamism is bad no matter what name we use for it. In contemporary discourse, particularly on the left, the word “fascist” is completely unconnected from its historical and philosophical meaning. It’s a scare word. It’s as if the Hollywood vision has become reality and self-described fascists actually chose to be the villains of the 20th century, like the Legion of Doom. The Islamic world is guiltiest of all, considering how they routinely conflate Zionism and Nazism.

Indeed, one gets the sense that the reason the Islamists and their kinda-sorta fellow travellers in the West object so strenuously to the term “fascist” is that it will close off any chance they have to complain about “root causes,” colonialism, Zionism, support for dictators and the rest. Once one side has been declared fascist, all excuses are null and void; they’re the bad guys.

This is infuriating. Let’s say that scholars unearthed some writings from Mussolini, Giovanni Gentile and even Hitler, which “proved” Islamists were Fascists. What would that change? Words aren’t things. The Islamists cut off peoples heads, slaughter civilians as policy, crush dissent, oppress women, Jews, Christians, and yet, what it takes for some people to see them as evil is the abracadabra word “fascism”? Come on. Call them IslamoNerfherders, they’re still just as evil. A rose by any other name, and all that.