Celtic Bard: Blog

I want to extend my thanks to all of those who responded to my posting about the Islamofascism e-mail. Nearly all of them were fully supportive and the one or two that were supportive but understanding of the e-mailer did so in a thoughtful and respectful manner. It is gratifying that so many took the time to read the posting and respond in a way that also showed that more than just me have thought about this subject over the last decade or so. Thank you.

Now, I had thought my postings here were done for a while, at least until I had something to post on FS and SOL. And then I read my e-mail yesterday night and sat composing a response for two hours. I will post the e-mail and the response but first a word. I am usually gratified by the responses sharing my work with the world sends my way and try to be appreciative, as I know it takes time out of people's lives to read my stuff and respond to it. Time that could be spent doing much more important things. So my responses are always as genuine, dosed liberally with humility and gratitude, as I can make them. You deserve that much for giving me your time. However, when something like this comes my way and pushes as many buttons as it does, my response is not humble nor is it particularly grateful. Some may take in my response and be offended, and for that I apologize. I merely answered an e-mail full of assumptions and a rather condescending tone from the place that lived through growing up knowing the Russians could come over the East German border at any time and be shooting me within hours or minutes and watching nineteen lunatics destroy nearly three thousand lives for a cause as barbaric as that of Crusaders slaughtering Arab villagers in the Holy Land or Roundheads butchering Roman Catholics in Ireland. A lifetime of being interested in history and an adulthood spent being fascinated by politics, especially international politics, also came into play in my response. Was it a little much? Perhaps, perhaps not. But I took my time to respond fully to the e-mailer's points and added some of my own as well as some things which I have thought about from time to time over the years. I also had plenty of time to not send it, especially since I won't have sent it until after I finish this post and others, and I still thought the writer deserved my honest and frank reply. I tried to keep it as respectful as I could while still making sure the writer knew how the e-mail was taken by me. I guess if it was a little much, you can let me know. By the way, I kept the e-mailer's name out of things out of respect for their privacy.

E-Mail:
"Islamofascism" is a nonsense term coined by
propagandists to manipulate public opinion.

Islam is a religion.

Fascism is "a political philosophy, movement, or
regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts
nation and often race above the individual and
that stands for a centralized autocratic
government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe
economic and social regimentation, and forcible
suppression of opposition"

The LAST thing Islamists want is a state
government supplants religion as the primary force
in society.

The LAST thing fascists want is a bunch of clerics
running around challenging their authority.

The last thing the people who coined the term want
is for you to actually think about what it means
or does not mean. They just want you to attach the
negative associations you have with fascism to the
negative associations you have with Islam.

Islamic THEOCRACIES can be very repressive. Most
theocracies put their religious values ahead of
civil rights...

You just look like a dupe when you use a nonsense
term to describe something that does not exist,
Islamofacism.


Response by Me:
While I appreciate those who read my work and reply to my blog postings, I must say that this e-mail has, like no other, brought me the closest to wanting to intellectually smack someone who has written to me. The tone assumes ignorance of geopolitical and historical realities as well as the use and power of words. Having lived on the front lines of the Cold War and through the War on Terrorism in its first phases, and having studied and been a student (not the same thing by the way) of history and politics, I know full well what I mean and am talking about when I use the term "Islamofascism." Unlike your rather narrow definition of fascism, I have studied and seen the effects of the Era of Fascism in its fullest historical bloom. Even were I to take your definition as the only one, I would still apply it to many of the sects of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, especially those that gave rise to the regime in Iran and those who look to al-Qaeda as the standard-bearer of a philosophy that "exalts" the idea of a pan-Islamic and imperialistic Caliphate, embraces the ideology of the cult of personality embodied in their "Great Leader," views non-Muslims as inferior and worthy of destruction, scorns and destroys works of art, literature, and academia that do not fall in line with their beliefs and the rigid rules those beliefs set down regarding art and expression of ideas, would use economic repression and oppression as tools of state, and kills (not merely suppresses) opposition.

I know that was a bit of a run-on sentence so let me take them one at a time. The stated goal of many of those to which I would apply the label of Islamofascist is the establishment of a pan-Islamic Caliphate (adhering to their own brand of Islam, of course). While I do not ordinarily study things I think of as being bad ideas, one does pick up a lot habitually watching the C-SPAN, History, and Discovery Channels, and reading this and that.

This leads me to believe that said Caliphate would look something like the Islamic Republic of Iran's government, with the clerics on top and a front man as the "President" that the people get to vote for in "fair" elections but has no true authority of his own, only authority given to him by the clerics. Such veneers of choice are the hallmark of totalitarian governments the world over, including fascist governments where there were votes and somehow the fascists still managed to take over, despite not getting a majority at the polls.

This is where the concept of "one man, one vote, one time" sort of rears its ugly little head and what people fear every time an Islamist party comes to power in the Islamic world. Every Islamist movement seems to hold up one man as being the receptacle of all the holy wisdom of Allah. Whether it be Iran and its Ayatollah, the PLO and Yasser Arafat, al-Qaeda and Usama bin Laden, or so many others, they embrace the kind of cult of hero worship seen under Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco.

A state would not replace religion under Islamofascism; religion is the state in a way not even theocracies like Tibet or the Vatican ever dreamed. The closest analog is probably the Pharaoh being venerated in Ancient Egypt.

And little needs to be said of the respect these people have for life. Death is a tool to be used often and with as many going down for the cause as possible, be they non-Muslims or simply Muslims who do not espouse their particular brand of Islam. Destruction of art, literature, intellectual works, and those who practice them is also a hallmark of both this more modern movement as well as those who originated fascism eight decades ago. Whether they be cartoonists expressing political beliefs, movie-makers and animators doing the same, authors being critical of them, or centuries old statutes carved by those of another faith, all are subject to threats, assassinations, and destruction.

As for opposition and economics, the mere selection of targets for their death and destruction should suffice to show that: moderate leaders of Muslim nations, clerics who stray from the fold or follow differing tenets, academics urging peace and strength in the face of terror, oil refineries and pipelines, strategic waterways through which world commerce flows, air traffic and mass transit, night clubs and tourist destinations in countries dependent on tourism, the World Trade Center. Tools and targets not dissimilar from lessons the Nazis tried to teach with their pogroms, Kristallnacht being the most notable example, where businesses and places of worship were targeted in order to pound the message of the fascists home. The only intellectual pursuits lauded by those who espouse this kind of ideology are studying religion/philosophy and subjects that can be used to build weapons in the pursuit of more efficient means of killing their enemies and making more of them. Ask a nuclear scientist in Iran how free he is to go where he wants and do as he pleases. The answer will be not very and anything that makes the regime think he is disloyal will be a danger to himself and to his family and friends. Similar things would have been said of rocket scientists and nuclear physicists in Nazi Germany. The same could be said of a jihadist who actually thought about the nonsense he spouted in his suicide video and decided to live or the friendly journalist who had second thoughts about regurgitating Islamist propaganda. The same would go for the Lebanese parliament member bucking the Hezbollah party line or Afghan village headman backing the coalition against the Taliban.

I guess the bottom line is that I have thought about this subject. I have watched militant Islam over the past thirty years. I have contemplated where their ideology fits into the scope of human lunacy and depravity. I have compared it to other theocracies, authoritarians, totalitarians, dictators, and absolutists. And with that contemplation I have found that those who murder innocents with as much joy and ruthlessness as those who are called Islamofascists (by myself and others) in the name of their ideology and their political goals for the last three decades and more are right to be compared to those who killed innocents in the name of their ideology and political goals almost eight decades ago. It does not make me look like a dupe for thinking so or using such a term. What it does is make you look like one of those who seem to find every reason under the sun not to call a spade a spade. It is a form of political correctness and propaganda that is going to get some of us killed be-cause the rest of us are trying to keep everyone safe despite you instead of with your help.

I suppose more could be said, but why? If you are still reading this by this point you probably already get my point and if you aren't you never would anyway.

CB

Too much?

Since I have had lots of alone time with the computer of late, here is another new posting, this time for Future Distorted. I know a lot of you have thought I abandoned that one, but I simply have not had any inspiration to work on it for the past year or so. Today I finally got the time, quiet, and need to finish the chapter that has been languishing unfinished for so long. So, here is Chapter Four of Future Distorted. Enjoy!
Just for those of you who keep tabs on this stuff, Chapter Four is like Chapter One in that there is no difference between the FS version and the SOL version. The differences will come up usually only when there is a scene like the sex/murder and rape scenes in Chapters 2 and 3 respectively.

All right ladies and gentlement, I finally got most of the technical issues sorted (NOOK came up with a new minor one but I am ignoring it). That being said, you can now find the announcement on my external blog http://jmfhildebrandt.livejournal.com/. As I have mentioned, I would write it here but I don't want to step on the rules the webmaster laid down so I will just direct you to my other blog. I much appreciate it and thanks for the patience and support.

On another note, look for Chapter 15 of Enter the Darkness sometime tomorrow. It will be submitted today so it should be up tomorrow by the latest. Enjoy!

OK, not the announcement I was hoping to make today. Instead, two bits of unrelated news. The first is that I hit a technical snag with my anthology (see my external blog for details-http://jmfhildebrandt.livejournal.com/). This means the announcement I talked about last time will be delayed at least a day or two while I reformat stuff for the people at Barnes & Noble's NOOK division.
Second bit of news is posting schedule related. I have finished the next chapter in Enter the Darkness and should have it up by the end of the weekend. It needs re-reading and editing and then it will be ready to submit. For those of you who have been with me on that one from the beginning, we are nearing the end of that story. I figure another three chapters or so should do it. For those of you now screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" calm down! Enter the Darkness was only ever meant to be an origin story for a character much older than Alexa was when I began that story. To help your hyperventalation, know that the next book in Alexa's tale was already started when I got smacked up side the head with an anvil by my muse. For a little flavor, here is a taste of how In the Darkness Falling begins:

Chapter One
The Week That Wouldn't Die!

January, 1994

Splat! "Eeewww! You have got to be shitting me!"
This was the capper on the week from hell!
Literally! As I stood there spitting brains and skull and what passed for blood in Gorgons, I was trying to remember the last time I killed something this messy. I was literally scraping the insides of the Gorgon's skull off my face after a twenty minute fight during which the damned thing managed to slash open my torso and cut the tendon connecting my right thumb to my wrist, making that hand almost useless for the foreseeable future. I was once again going to have to go begging to the Order to get myself patched up because there was no damned way anyone else in my life was going to understand six parallel cuts running diagonally across my midriff.
And what the hell was a Gorgon doing in England in the middle of winter anyway?!
Gorgons live in the Med region. What was this one doing lurking about London, sending out its minions to kidnap pretty young boys from old blue blood families? About the only thing that worked this week was me finding them alive and releasing them into the caring arms of a monk who would see that they got back home with a minimum of questions about me. Then came the hunt for the leader of this little circus and damned if I wasn't shocked all to hell when I spotted the scale in an alley not far from this reeking cesspit of a warehouse. A quick stop to a pay phone for some advice and then a detour to a place that sold high end sunglasses.
The warehouse was in a lovely little spot in London my foster father Eoin, Baron of Spencer, his chief of security Ambrose Devlin, and even Eoin's son William had always warned me not to go into without Eoin-level security or Eoin would be trying to explain all of the dead thugs that would come out of the woodwork to try to grab me. Most of these warehouses were nothing more than huge shells that filled and emptied of cargoes of various legitimacy on a regular basis. The criminals decided what got stored there and the unions decided who worked there and since both intermarried with one another, they were pretty much the same thing. When I tracked the scale's owner to one of the more rundown warehouses and quickly disabled the four Humans guarding the outside, I opened the side door, trying to keep the foggy and misting outside evening air where it belonged. I lurked around, taking out two more Human guards until I located the Gorgon.
There was very little cargo in the warehouse and the lighting was dim, so I could make out very little about her. I donned the new glasses and I was ready.
Until the war hammer I was using splatted her skull like an overripe melon. I was literally covered in the slimy ooze that seemed to serve as her blood. It was an almost rosy syrup consistency and the only consolation was that the damned stuff didn't get in my eyes thanks to the three hundred pound sterling, high mirror finish, high UV protection shades I picked up before hunting her down.

I am torn between saying that book will be posted and saying it will only be published. I guess I will see how things go when I wrap up Enter the Darkness. That is all for now. Check back in a day or two for more news.