enshrouded the lower part of my beloved Manhattan that sunlit morning, I wrote in a first-response article for a London paper that it was as though Charles Manson had been made king for a day.
Of the various later reactions, which included a suddenly exaggerated faith in a government that had demonstrated itself as almost inconceivably unfit for the elementary constitutional mandate of “securing the common defense,” as well as a paranoid subcultural spasm that immediately suspected government collusion with the attackers, a frequently heard one was a warning against demonizing “the Other.” On this reading, Osama bin Laden was not to be categorized with that simplistic (but somehow indispensable) word evil but was to be regarded in the light of a nemesis. In his words and actions we were supposed to detect a reproach to our contentment and arrogance, and a reminder that many millions of people lead lives of immiseration and oppression. His claim to speak for Islam or for all Muslims might be contested, but the religion itself was an expression of deeper yearnings that needed to be sympathetically understood. On no account—and this imperative was put forward by President Bush as well as by many liberals—were the less tender elements of his doctrine to be used as a critique of religion. A hitherto marginal propaganda term, “Islamophobia,” underwent a mainstream baptism and was pressed into service to intimidate those who suspected that faith might indeed have something to do with it.
It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of a moment, and to personalize or “objectify” them in the figure of one individual. Yet ordinary discourse would be unfeasible without the use of portmanteau terms—like “Stalinism,” say—just as the most scrupulous insistence on historical forces will often have to concede to the sheer personality of a Napoleon or a Hitler. I thought then, and I think now, that Osama bin Laden was a near-flawless personification of the mentality of a real force: the force of Islamic jihad. And I also thought, and think now, that this force absolutely deserves to be called evil, and that the recent decapitation of its most notorious demagogue and organizer is to be welcomed without reserve. Osama bin Laden’s writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself.
At the time, I wrote that the attacks on our civil society and institutions were an expression of “fascism with an Islamic face.” This involved a back reference to Alexander Dubček’s definition of Czechoslovak reformist communism as “socialism with a human face,” and to Susan Sontag’s echoing irony in calling martial law in communist Poland “fascism with a human face.” Obviously, these allusions can’t be preserved in every reiteration, and so a slightly vulgarized version—“Islamofascism”—got into the language and was briefly used by the White House before being dropped on the grounds of cultural sensitivity. (I have heard it argued that one would not blacken another monotheism in this way. Nonsense. In the 1930s the expression “clerical fascist” was in common use on the left, to describe the sympathy of the Vatican for reactionary and violent movements like those of General Franco in Spain, Ante Pavelić in Croatia, and Father Jozef Tiso in Slovakia. To this day, the papacy continues to struggle for a form of words that conveys an apology for its actions and inactions during that period.)
Overused as the term “fascism” may be, bin Ladenism has the following salient characteristics in common with it:
· It explicitly calls for the establishment of a totalitarian system, in which an absolutist code of primitive laws—most of them prohibitions—is enforced by a cruel and immutable authority, and by medieval methods of punishment. In this system, the private life
Of the various later reactions, which included a suddenly exaggerated faith in a government that had demonstrated itself as almost inconceivably unfit for the elementary constitutional mandate of “securing the common defense,” as well as a paranoid subcultural spasm that immediately suspected government collusion with the attackers, a frequently heard one was a warning against demonizing “the Other.” On this reading, Osama bin Laden was not to be categorized with that simplistic (but somehow indispensable) word evil but was to be regarded in the light of a nemesis. In his words and actions we were supposed to detect a reproach to our contentment and arrogance, and a reminder that many millions of people lead lives of immiseration and oppression. His claim to speak for Islam or for all Muslims might be contested, but the religion itself was an expression of deeper yearnings that needed to be sympathetically understood. On no account—and this imperative was put forward by President Bush as well as by many liberals—were the less tender elements of his doctrine to be used as a critique of religion. A hitherto marginal propaganda term, “Islamophobia,” underwent a mainstream baptism and was pressed into service to intimidate those who suspected that faith might indeed have something to do with it.
It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of a moment, and to personalize or “objectify” them in the figure of one individual. Yet ordinary discourse would be unfeasible without the use of portmanteau terms—like “Stalinism,” say—just as the most scrupulous insistence on historical forces will often have to concede to the sheer personality of a Napoleon or a Hitler. I thought then, and I think now, that Osama bin Laden was a near-flawless personification of the mentality of a real force: the force of Islamic jihad. And I also thought, and think now, that this force absolutely deserves to be called evil, and that the recent decapitation of its most notorious demagogue and organizer is to be welcomed without reserve. Osama bin Laden’s writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself.
At the time, I wrote that the attacks on our civil society and institutions were an expression of “fascism with an Islamic face.” This involved a back reference to Alexander Dubček’s definition of Czechoslovak reformist communism as “socialism with a human face,” and to Susan Sontag’s echoing irony in calling martial law in communist Poland “fascism with a human face.” Obviously, these allusions can’t be preserved in every reiteration, and so a slightly vulgarized version—“Islamofascism”—got into the language and was briefly used by the White House before being dropped on the grounds of cultural sensitivity. (I have heard it argued that one would not blacken another monotheism in this way. Nonsense. In the 1930s the expression “clerical fascist” was in common use on the left, to describe the sympathy of the Vatican for reactionary and violent movements like those of General Franco in Spain, Ante Pavelić in Croatia, and Father Jozef Tiso in Slovakia. To this day, the papacy continues to struggle for a form of words that conveys an apology for its actions and inactions during that period.)
Overused as the term “fascism” may be, bin Ladenism has the following salient characteristics in common with it:
· It explicitly calls for the establishment of a totalitarian system, in which an absolutist code of primitive laws—most of them prohibitions—is enforced by a cruel and immutable authority, and by medieval methods of punishment. In this system, the private life
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