Is Hindu nationalism in India a kind of fascism? Osama bin Laden, the Bush Doctrine of preemptive force, Le Pen phenomenon in France, Saddam’s deposed regime — fascist? Is Islamic fundamentalism ‘‘Islamic fascism”? Or could it be, as George Orwell wrote a few years after the end of World War II, that ‘‘the word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’’’? This week in the THE NEW YORK TIMES, Alexander Stille was plotting the use and indiscriminate use of the term. Ever since September 11, he said, ‘fascism’ has made a comeback of sorts. Scholars disagree on the essential attributes of fascism. But the NYT suggested it may still be possible to draw up a broad checklist. The Baath party may not make it, for instance. The party established single-party rule, dictatorial leader in command, crushed internal dissent, combined nationalism with elements of socialism. But, a scholar pointed out, fascism is ‘‘a malady of failed democracies. there can be no authentic fascism before democracy, or outside societies whose citizens are deeply engaged in mass politics.’’ Many experts on European fascism, the NYT pointed out, consider it inaccurate to apply the term to societies in the Middle East that have little experience of democracy and ‘‘whose modes of governance spring from a different matrix’’. But the term is used nevertheless, straddling differences and contrasts. The NYT suggested it has to do with the failure to find a new vocabulary for new kinds of domination. Different Islams THE ECONOMIST surveyed Islam and the West. ‘‘September 11 seemed to pit Islam against the West. But the main fight is taking place within the Muslim world’’, argued foreign editor Peter David. Over 16 pages, he bravely chipped away at the impatient, often politically motivated idea of the monolithic ‘‘Islamic World’’. To take a look at Muslim populations in all their miscellaneous sprawl and unruly scatter. The survey framed both impulses: The search for a coherent and continuous narrative as well as the urgent need to resist it. It harked back to the ideas of Sayyid Qutb — a literary critic in the 1930s and 1940s — who wrote books offering a clear cut choice: ‘‘either to observe the law of Allah in its entirety, or to apply laws laid down by man of one sort or another. That is the choice: Islam or jahiliyya.’’ It quoted western scholars on Islam, such as the influential and controversial Bernard Lewis who insists that most Muslim countries are still deeply Muslim, in a way that most Christian countries are no longer Christian. But the ECONOMIST cast its vote for caution against the catch-all theory and easy generalisation. It is futile, it said, to theorise about the essence of a faith whose essentials are so hotly contested. Political Islam is merely sinking its roots into ‘‘the debris of broken promises and shattered hopes’’ of Arab nationalism and democratic institutions. The politics of Islam takes different local forms in different countries. And it is filling the space left vacant by the throttling of a credible secular opposition to the dictator or king. What is more, democracy may not be the instantly useable answer to the problem, warned the ECONOMIST. It may lead to a vote for Islamists: ‘‘One man, one vote, one time’’. What, then, is a poor superpower to do? In answering that question, the ECONOMIST drew a far more limited canvas for America than is currently in vogue. Of course, America should defend itself from the likes of al Qaeda, and it should speak up for democracy. But. America, said the magazine, should ‘‘beware of stepping into somebody else’s argument about the true meaning of Islam, and of assuming that democracy must be Islam’s opposite’’. These arguments are for the Muslims to resolve, it said, in their own way. Arab predicament As if on cue, MustafaAlrawi, managing editor of the weekly IRAQ TODAY, Iraq’s first English language newspaper, wrote of a ‘‘Pan-Arabism, dead in Baghdad streets’’. The commentary seemed instant confirmation of one of the ECONOMIST’s warnings — that ‘‘it is possible to exaggerate the pull of the umma. the Islamic world is like the rest of the world in that a lot of its politics is local’’. Alrawi posed a question: Now that Iraq may be opened up to a UN role, and Arab nations could finally be involved in that country, should Iraqis rejoice? His answer was a categorical ‘no’. To him, evidence on the ground suggested that the population does not regard the absence of Arab involvement as a bad thing at all. ‘‘The truth is that most Iraqis would prefer to have a US-dominated force in their country, over an Arab one. The grim reality, one particularly hard to hear for those Arabs who felt they were supporting their Iraqi brethren when demonstrating against war, is that most Iraqis don’t want to have anything to do with them’’. Alrawi argued that Iraqis are resentful of constantly being told to take second place to the Arab Cause. Saddam ‘‘played the Palestinian card for all it was worth. Iraqis saw other Arabs benefit from the Baath regime, while they were left to suffer.’’ P.S.: In an interview to the NEW YORK TIMES, the Dalai Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, prominent advocate of nonviolence, said that it may be necessary to fight terrorists with violence. And that it was still ‘‘too early to say’’ whether the war in Iraq was a mistake. ‘‘I feel only history will tell’’ he said.
