Islamo-fascism Defined

Many people have quarreled with use of the term Islamo-fascism to define the Iranian regime, Hezbollah, Al Queda, etc. The criticism has fallen into three categories; that it is a lazy description of complex phenomena, that it is racist, and that it is an imposed term on a group that doesn't identify with it.

The fact is that the term has the simple quality of being accurate. Consider the definition of Fascism below, provided by Robert O. Paxton, an award winning Columbia University History Professor:

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

The groups mentioned above clearly fit very nicely into this definition, modified by the cloak of Islamic belief that they wrap their pursuits around; thus Islamo-fascist.

So let's not be afraid to call something as it is. It is not racist as it defines only the fascist variety of Islamic people and it is not lazy as described by the definition above. If anything, those that use the term are guilty of calling people something they don't want to be called. So what! Should we be so sensitive to the purveyors of suicide bombs, that we don't want to hurt their fragile psyche with damaging labels?