Danish Cartoons and Moderate Islam: Reader Responses

Several readers have written in response to my recent essay on the Danish cartoons and moderate Islam, and after conversing with one, I'd like to reprint his words, along with my own commentary. Straight from the Comments section comes this letter from reader Verdant:

I don't believe the problem is Islam or Radical Islam. The problem is fascism.

As you allude to in a portion of your article, much of Islam currently exists in a fear society. In a fear society, physical strength, as opposed to democratic values, is ascendant. Physical strength, through intimidation, prevails, and is eventually idolized and worshiped, initially by younger idealstic generations but eventually be a majority of the population. This worship ostensibly takes the form of extreme nationalism, racism, religiousness, etc. but it is fundamentally bottomed by a powerful group-oriented narcissistic fervor that produces an overwhelming feeling of superiority coupled with anger in the affected group. This feeling of superiority overwhelms what often were previous feelings of inferiority felt by members of the group caused by actual physical events, and is perceived as a catharsis or transformation in the identity of the previously downtrodden group. The problem is that most members of the group, even apostates, at least secretly badly wish for and want the emotional release and identity reversal, even if those members rationally know their ostensible cause is immoral.

Islam is therefore not the problem in my opinion. Radical Islam is simply a form of fascism. Like Nazism, which a form of facism based on the narcissistic ideals of racist nationalism which dehumanizes members of other races, Radical Islam is based on the narcissistic ideals of religious nationalism which dehumanizes members of other religions. The problem is that stopping fascism requires destroying it. And destroying fascism requires inflicting sufficient pain upon it adherents that they become disabused of the notion that they are superior. Once fascism has reached a level of infection within the populace, its destruction can only be accomplished by force. Iran is becoming close to that level of infection and may have indeed reached it.

To summarize...any religion or philosophy can be twisted to accomodate fascism. Islam is simply the current superficial carrier of the fascist disease. The secret is to recognize the disease and not confuse it with its current manifestation.

TheSolidSurfer.com responds: Verdant, thank you for writing. I fully agree with your analysis on how fear societies fascistically emerge, and as you point out, they are sadly very difficult to stop without using military force. Hopefully we can reform Iran before it reaches this point; from all indications, we have only a short window of time before the military option becomes necessary. American support of Iranian opposition groups in the coming weeks and months will be essential to the hope for a peaceful democratic revolution.

At the same time, while I agree with you as well that any philosophy or creed can be twisted towards fascism, I also believe that some religions by their very nature are far more susceptible than others. And Islam appears to fall squarely into this category. As Pope Benedict recently remarked, for example, Islam greatly differs from both Judaism and Christianity (and, indeed, from almost all other religions) in that it believes its holy book (the Koran) was written without human assistance and is hence unadaptable to new situations. (Contrast this, for instance, to Judaism's Torah, which has always been accompanied by an Oral Tradition that elaborates how the written scriptures can continually apply to a changing world.) The result is that unlike practitioners of other faiths, observant Muslims live by a set of 7th century mores that naturally clash quite heavily with modernity. Unable to adapt, they react by building up anger in the manner you describe, and in the worst cases this has lead to fascism where they lash out at more successsful societies (i.e. everyone else).

Notice that other religions have not turned fascistic; the world's other prominent faiths (such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism) have also interpreted their core texts in light of modernity and resultingly have none of the Muslims' pent-up anger. Indeed, the only modern comparisons to radical Islamic rage have been that of the Nazis and Communists; unable to cope with their failed political and economic systems, they too turned to attacking more successful others (such as Jews and Westerners).

In summary, then, while we disagree over the source of the Islamists' fascism, we both know that it is a great danger to the world and must be fully defeated. Thanks again for the letter, and I appreciate the welcome contibution to the site.