Is Islam Fascist ? The answer is of course a resounding yes, though you can play with the meaning of the word 'Fascist' to make it fit whatever doctrine you wish to rail on about. The 'Fasces' were originally an emblem of Imperial Rome – a bundle of sticks wrapped around a 2 headed axe. It signified the power of the state and the Imperium through the collectivity. In other words the individual was subsumed into the communal and the Imperium was uber alles. Fascism as a word was revived by Mussolini and his cult of the National-Socialist state. In modern Fascism the cult of the state was pre-eminent, based on nationalist-emotionalism, myths, legends, lurid propaganda, and racial or at the very least social purity and harmony. The cult and its supporters were deemed superior. Everything else was inferior.

Fascism is very much Communalism, and is manifested in Communism, National Socialism and regimes in which Authoritarian power is wielded to extol and extend 'national values', 'national prerogatives' and 'national greatness'. Typically a cult, which might be a political party, or a group of thugs, runs the Fascist-Communalist state. The individual is reduced to nothing. The commune is to be exalted as the cult of the Fasces pursues its aims.

Robert O. Paxton, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, defined Fascism rather well in his book The Anatomy of Fascism:

A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood 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.

Paxton's definition boils down to a few essentials:

1. Fascism is a political project which is formed to reverse a perceived decline. [Islam – check]

2. It is violent and bloody. [Islam - check]

3. It is a cult, in which the cult must be obeyed by all who are ruled by the cult. [Islam - check]

4. The cult employs myths of purity and greatness, of the race, or state in question. [Islam - check]

5. Ideals around rationality, democracy, individualism, and freedom need to be abandoned. [Islam - check]

6. Following the plan and diktats of the cult are the individual's only responsibilities. [Islam - check]

Paxton's identification of Fascism as a mass movement, premised on some absurd idea of 'purity' and on violence, is certainly correct. It is indeed the cult uber alles. One can go further of course in refining what is a Fascist movement. In a 1995 essay titled "Eternal Fascism",[link] the Italian writer and academic Umberto Eco  adopts a detailed list of Fascist ideological components. For Eco, Fascism is not a coherent political program per-se, but a set of organizing principles specific to the culture in question: He lists 14 main features of the Fascist program

• "The Cult of Tradition", combining cultural syncretism with a rejection of modernism (often disguised as a rejection of capitalism). [Islam - check]

• "The Cult of Action for Action's Sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science. [Islam - check]

• "Disagreement Is Treason" - fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action. [Islam - check]

• "Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants. [Islam - check]

• "Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups. [Islam – check – though it was the robber class and the lower classes which were preached to]

• "Obsession with a Plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often involves an appeal to xenophobia or the identification of an internal security threat. [Islam – check, see the Jews and Christians]

• "Pacifism Is Trafficking with the Enemy" because "Life is Permanent Warfare" - there must always be an enemy to fight. [Islam - check]

• "Contempt for the Weak" - although a fascist society is elitist, everybody in the society is educated to become a hero. [Islam – check, Jihad is mandatory]

• "Selective Populism" - the People have a common will, which is not delegated but interpreted by a leader. This may involve doubt being cast upon a democratic institution, because "it no longer represents the Voice of the People". [Islam – check, church and state are merged]

• "Newspeak" - fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning. [Islam – check, lying is mandated in Islam]

Eco's list is an extension of Paxton's observation that Fascism is the communal elevated over the individual. Eco has certainly picked up some tenets of Fascism theology: lies as facts [Newspeak]; external enemies to be feared and attacked; a general xenophobia; hatred of the weak; pacifism as immoral and hence Jihad and war as 'heroic'; uncritical thinking and acceptance of the fascism program by the mass; mass populist politics [which involve massive socialization to buy support]; and the syncretism of local culture with Fascist aims.

Two aspects are missing from the above. The first is the simple fact that the Fascist ideology, quickly mutates into a theology – propagated by a leader. Muhammad, Hitler, Lenin, Mao – their theological movements would never have developed without the dear leader who led the effort. Leadership of the Fascist theological movement is thus mandatory. All Fascist cults deify their founders. This was true with Hitler, with Stalin's attempt to deify Lenin and with the Chinese preoccupation with Mao's words and deeds encapsulated in his little Red Book – an artifact still revered even today. Moslems of course venerate Muhammad as the perfect human – a man who murdered, led 80 odd military campaigns, raped, plundered and had 15-25 sex slaves. He seems a very odd choice as history's 'perfect man'. Muslims cannot draw, criticize or discuss Muhammad. They must simply accept his 'greatness' and 'purity'.

The second missing attribute is the theological. Paxton and Eco's characterization of Fascism leads to the obvious conclusion that the Fascist movement itself becomes a theological doctrine. The cult and its demands become 'divinely' inspired, are a 'dialectical inevitability' and are supported by the winners. Nazism was the fulfillment of Aryan-Nordic dialectical superiority. Russian Communism was to be victorious since 'capitalism' was dialectically doomed to weakness, failure and revolution leading to Communism. Islam is the 'last' divine revelation superseding Judaism and Christianity, with a duty to Jihad and the establishment of world-rule under the Al-Lah thing's purview. If one analyzes any Fascist cult you will see the following:

1. The founder's words are 'divine' and must be followed. [Islam – check, see Muhamamd]

2. The Fascist cult is dialectically assured of victory through either historical determinism or divine sanction, or both. [Islam – check]

3. A hierarchy of power is quite clearly established with cult Mandarins of a certain race, belief, or relationship to the founder, as the most powerful men in the hierarchy. [Islam – check, Arab Moslems are the best of the best]

4. Civil and individual liberties are to be curtailed since they will oppose many of the cult's belief systems, demands and propaganda. [Islam – check]

5. The Fascist cult always produces a handbook of action, doctrine and what the individual must do to properly submit himself to the cult. [Islam – check, see the Koran]

6. The Fascist cult can never be challenged. [Islam - check]

7. The Fascist cult, through the example of the Dear Leader, merges church and state into one theocracy. [Islam - check]

8. No change or innovation is allowed within the theocratic Fascist state, unless sanctioned by the ruling cult, its handbook, or the Dear Leader. [Islam - check]

If we view the definition of Fascism, Paxton's and Eco's list of attributes and the real world merger of church and state within the Fascist state; we can clearly see that Islam is the prototypical Fascist cult par excellence. Islam matches every single characterization of what constitutes a Fascist state. There can be no dispute by any reasonably objective and intelligent person, that Islam is NOT Fascist. It most certainly is. So an interesting question is this: since Islam IS Fascist, what does that say about Westerners who support and coddle the cult of Muhammad ?