What is "Islamism" in Arabic, please?

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jun 19, 2008 at 15:07

What Dr. Pipes writes is quite interesting, stylistically impeccable and worth reading. But I have repeatedly found out that the comments on Dr. Pipes' views tend to be much more exciting, revealing and closer to reality. So I'm waiting for a number of devastating criticisms of this variant of what Dr. Pipes has proposed in his previous article "Radical Islam vs. Civilization" which has duly produced so much resistance and refutations.

Basically, all the arguments against Dr. Pipes' recurrent will-o'the-wisp are to be found there. In Dr. Pipes' parlance there is "good Islam" versus "bad Islam" which Dr. Pipes baptizes "lslamism". All of it seems to be hardly borne out by reality though. For me "Islamism" is a totally Western invention, impossible of existence in dar-al-Islam. How would we translate this Islamically so queer semantic construction into Arabic? What is the Arabic for "Islamism" as opposed to "Islam"?

"Submission to a bad master" as contrasted to "submission to a good master" whereby both masters are essentially the same one Allah? "Islamism" sounds good, almost scientific with this fine Greek "-ism" ending like in "HitlerISM", "LeninISM", "MaoISM", "globalISM" ...Yet a good sound and a fine meaning don't produce any existing object yet.

I just wonder of some non-utopian Islam where there is no paradise for Moslem jihadists, where the bloody rules of the Quran are seen by the ummah as antics of an aging illiterate gangster, where the Quran with its commands to humiliate, kill and rob infidels are seen as meaning their opposites and their Allah-given validity is questioned on the basis of their primitivism and non-sensicality.

If anyone has ever seen, heard of or known of such an Islam, please notify me and most of us poor kafirs who are so tired of believing things without ever seeing them. You can't expect us to behave like Moslems who believe any nonsense they are told as long as it's told from high above.

>Thus defined, the needed response becomes clear. It is two-fold: vanquish Islamism and help Muslims develop an alternative form of Islam. Not coincidentally, this approach roughly parallels what the allied powers accomplished vis-à-vis the two prior radical utopian movements, fascism and communism.<

Another recurrent idea in Dr. Pipes' efforts to find analogies to something which has few and widely unknown parallels is likening Islam to fascism and communism. Even if fascism and communism were to some extent utopian movements there is but shallow similarity between them and Islam! What is more, this similarity is misleading in my eyes! Fascism existed for 12 years, Soviet communism for 70 while Islam is 1400 years old and as rabid as ever.

Fascism and communism were European movements born out of Europe's unparallelled disasters and tragedies of 1914-1918. What disasters and tragedies prompted Muhammed to start conquering Arabia and exporting his tribal war and his death cult into Persia and Byzantium? Communism and fascism were a violent response to the collapse of the old Enlightened Europe. What Enlightenment crumbled in Arabia around A.D. 622? Both were not religious movements with communism deeply opposing religion.

What sort of Lenin was Muhammed? ( One difference - Lenin could read and write. Muhammed couldn't.) Where are the dreadful experiences from the hell in Flanders Hitler had lived through between 1914-1918, seeing his fatherland betrayed and shuttered by a revolution and Versailles? ... To just name a few differences that stand in the way of this too easy analogy.

Now as far as real history (not its pop culture version) is concerned, fascism was defeated only because the West allied itself with communism (who captured Berlin in 1945?) while communism was defeated through the unholy alliance between the US and Islam in Afghanistan. Now if the monster let loose by the US in Afghanistan has turned against its former benefactor, it's time to find some reliable ally like China, Russia or India instead of boasting of doubtful victories and building castles on historical quicksands.

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