The following, with reference to my post on the debate about the roots of Islamist terror, is just in from Scott Talkington, an officer of the National Association of Scholars:

While I usually agree with Pipes, in this case I think his insistence that we distinguish Islamism is somewhat misguided, not so much by his knowledge of Islam (which is far more extensive than mine), but by his historical and philosophical knowledge of fascism. He says:Few historic or philosophic connections exist between fascism and radical Islam. Fascism glorifies the state, emphasizes racial “purity,” promotes social Darwinism, denigrates reason, exalts the will, and rejects organized religion – all outlooks anathema to Islamists.If fascism were precisely as he describes above we’d have to find a different categorization for much of Spanish and Latin American fascism, much of which is explicitly corporatist and religious (the Christian Phalange under Franco, for instance). In addition, the primary strain of Sunni Wahhabi/Salafist ideology (and it is an ideology, not just a religion) was heavily influenced by the European counterenlightenment, from which Qutb borrowed (without attribution) many components of his teachings. In fact, I can’t think of a single term that’s more accurately descriptive of the enemy we face than Islamofascism or Islamic Fascism, except possibly to the extent that some forms of fascism are merely authoritarian. However, there are probably some forms of Islamism that are merely that. The ruling faction in Turkey, for instance, may be sufficiently “mild” that it can even tame authoritarian compulsion. I think what most of these kinds of criticisms are missing is the insight that radical political ideology is a close substitute for radical religion, and it can become extremely misleading to construct a false boundary between the two. (Consider Robert A. Pape’s distorted analysis of Jihadist suicide aggression as non-religious, for instance, simply because it’s similar to the suicide aggression of the Marxist Tamil Tigers.) The two are entirely capable of merging. Indeed, in the phenomenon I call Totalitarianism 3.x, they already have. This is the “next generation” of an old enemy.