I'd have more sympathy for Niall Ferguson's view -- actually, as he expressed it, it sounded more like a stray thought -- that Islamism is a successor to Communism if I thought it could somehow lead us to serious consderation of a real historical legacy, the one the Soviet Union left in the Middle East (using that term broadly to mean everything from Afghanistan eastward to Algeria).

Such consideration is long overdue. Today we are used to thinking of the Arab-Israeli conflict as an ineluctable fact of life, but in fact it was encouraged and fueled for decades by Soviet arms and diplomatic support, and had nothing like its current connection to radical Islam. The resemblance of the internal security regimes of such nations as Syria and prewar Iraq to that of the Soviet Union was most likely not a coincidence, and Soviet impact on Afghanistan is surely too obvious a thing to ignore.

In fact, most of the Middle Eastern nations said by President Bush to be lacking in freedom because American policy had in earlier years emphasized stability instead were, during those years, Soviet clients rather than American ones. The principle threats to stability were then revolutionary movements and governments supported by Moscow, which sought assiduously to align itself with Arab aspirations or at least with Arab hatred of Israel.

Yet today we are accustomed to historical discourse on the Middle East that proceeds as if the Soviet Union never existed. Much of the Soviet history in the Middle East happened before George Bush stopped drinking, so he may not remember it, but I can't think what excuse a public intellectual like Ferguson would have for glibly linking Lenin to bin Laden without noting all the steps in between.

Ferguson's statements certainly don't jibe with what The Looming Towers says about radical Islam's historic relaionship with Communism (i.e., they violently loathed it).

It may be that they dislike the anarchy of capitalism and the decadence that comes with it. So I guess in that way they are more like Communists than fascists. But like fascists, they look backward to a purer time, a golden age. The Nazis with their ancient German mythology and the Italians with their dreams of Roman empire seem similar in some ways to Islamists' longing for the Caliphate.

Certainly radical Islamism is like both Communism and fascism in it's view of individual freedom as decadent and wrong.

I also don't see the Marxism/Islamism connection. Aren't Marxists fundamentally opposed to religion, the sine qua non of Islamic terrorism? I also doubt a bin Laden or Zarqawi would sympathize with subjugating jihad to a class struggle.

Furthermore- Dan's point that we should consider radical Islamism as a sui generis phenomenon is on the mark. This may seem absurd, but the "sample size" of totalitarian movements remains rather small.

I agree that radical islamism is its own thing and needs to be understood and addressed accordingly, rather than trying to force it into some mold into which it does not fit.

However, there are some common traits between radical islamism today, fascism, and communism which are worthy of discussion. I would have to say the most important commonality would be the influence of romanticism on all three ideologies. Specifically, romantic notions of the past, or the future, related to a dissatisfaction, or hatred, of the changes in society wrought by industrialization. This is particularly relevant in understanding why leftists in the west have become, in a sense, fellow travellers with violent, anti-liberal radical jihadis. It is the common link of romanticism and dissatisfaction with industry (and especially science) which bridges the gulf between these groups.

Actually, what Ferguson is saying about the ideological relationship between communism and political islamism, and the kinds of people it attracts, is directly convergent with the views and research of Giles Kepel and Olivier Roy, both distinguished historians of modern political islamism. Many of the theorists of islamism have fairly explicitly drawn on marxism and even leninism in the formation of their critiques and their solutions (look, for instance, at the work of Qutb and the Ayatollah Khomenei, for instance; or see Kepel's Jihad: On the Trail of Political Islam). Roy's book Globalized Islam makes, in much greater detail and with substantial research, the point that European muslims have been in many cases brought to sympathy with Al Queda (et al) through the same kinds of ideas and desires that once took people to marxism. So it's not true that there's no evidence of the claim, indeed, its not even novel to Ferguson.

I think it's a bit misleading to link radical islamist thought with Marxist thought. Undoubtedly, there are similarities, but to say that Osama's brand of islamism is "Lenin + the Koran" is an overstretch. Off the top of my head, here are the similarities:

1. Both have made claims to be transnational, while the specific conflicts coalesce around issues relevant to the people involved (extremism in Europe would seem to be motivated primarily by social justice issues, while Middle Eastern jihadist thought revolves around Israel).

2. Both are, in some sense, reactions to the spread of capitalism. The difference is that Marxism specifically defines itself against religion, whereas radical islamist thought revolts against many of the same things (alienation, the atomization of society) because they are a threat to religious life and the religious community. Put another way, both are concerned with the disentegration of "the community," although they define the community differently.

Setting aside those two striking similarities, the differences are enormous. Marxism has an explicitly defined post-revolutionary state-centered political program (as articulated by later Marxist thinkers) whereas islamism is still in the "pulling down the oppressor" phase. Of greater relevance for non-Muslims is that Marxism puts forward the idea of a community of humankind, while Islamist thought is primarily concerned with a community of Muslims.

Finally, I'd like to point out that the merger of Marxism and Islam is scarcely new. Even though it's chronologically absurd to say this, Cleveland points out in his History of the Modern Middle East that Islam has some rather Marxist leanings inherent in both the Koran and the body of Koranic law. This is specifically mentioned in the section on the Iranian Revolution, when it talks about how Khomeini usurped the political support of Marxist/Islamist student groups in his quest for power.

If one can speak of an ideological market, I think it'd be fair to say that Islamist thought and Marxist thought compete against each other, and that Islamist thought is the successor to (in the Middle East) and services the same demand as (again, in the Middle East/Muslim community) Marxism.

I have two problems with Ferguson's suggestion that radical Islamism is a descendent of Marxism, based on the notion that both are internationalist and anti-capitalist. Marxism, although internationalist, is class-based. "Workers of the world unite" is a very different appeal than "Muslims of the world unite." Second, fascism, in its basic appeal to the disaffected, in many ways is as anti-capitalist as Marxism is. Nazis were, after all, National Socialists. Industry was not supportive of fascism as a superior economic model, but as a bulwark against communism, and the corporatism of fascist countries could be rigged in favor of large industrialists.

Adrian makes some excellent points. Here is a 3rd similarity between Marxism and Islamism for your consideration. They are both populist movements and vehicles for an ambitious lunatic to grab power. I don't believe that Stalin was a true Marxist any more than Osama bin Laden is a true Muslim.

I think TMD is right. Warmed-over Leninism is a meme picked up by lots of would-be revolutionaries. You poli-sci types should be able to explain how much of Leninism is itself an amalgam of revolutionary rhetoric in the 19C.

So all the comments about "but gee, al-Qaeda *hates* Communism" are missing the point. Lenin's revolutionary writings have lots of "procedural" application that's independent of the "substantive" content of Marxism-Leninism. (Indeed, the weakness of the latter is notorious, right?)

People in Egyptian flats or Pakistani caves, wanting to convince themselves that they're the vanguard of the future, would naturally turn to Lenin-style thinking.

N.b. as well that Osama is not an intellecutual, by a long shot. Zawahiri comes closer, & would've picked up in Egypt a smattering of period revolutionary ideology, which is inevitably going to have lots of recycled Lenin.

Ferguson should stick to the 19th Century.

"Can anyone provide anything close to hard data to support Ferguson's contention that, "to an extent people underestimate here, the appeal of radical Islamism extends beyond Muslim communities"? That statement strikes me a very easy to say and very difficult to substantiate."

Victor Davis Hanson made a rather cogent argument in NRO recently on the parallels between Islamism and fascism. Here's a link:

http://tinyurl.com/mbb74

One essential characteristic of fascism people skirt over is the faith in one's race and nation. Whether you are a member of the master race is determined by birth, not by allegiance.

Under radical Islam, membership is open to anyone prepared to accept its ideological tenets whether you are a white American, a Pushtu-speaking Pakistani or a Turk. Radical Islam explicitly rejects the notion of nation-states and the division of the world into different races -- anathema to any fascist.

Robert Pape had an article a few months back when he noticed that most of Hezbollah's suicide bombers were communists. It is also well known that in Iran the communist party supported the revolution.

Its not clear that a Marxist would consider Islam to be an opiate of the masses in the same way that Christianity is. After all where is "turn the other cheek"

VDH doesn't make a cogent argument. His argument, boiled down a great deal, is as follows:

A) Mussolini, Hitler and Tojo were fascists.

B) Mussolini, Hitler and Tojo lied.

C) Mussolini, Hitler and Tojo invoked a mythological past of race, nation or people to legitimize themselves.

Conclusion: Islamists do B and C, therefore they must be A.

In order for that argument to even approach validity, it must also be true that ONLY A does B and C. This is not the case, therefore the argument is invalid.

Finally, he commits the cardinal sin of War-on-Terror punditry and argues that because it was fruitless to speculate on the number of people who supported Hitler/Mussolini/Tojo, it is likewise useless to speculate on the number of Muslims who support/resist radical Islamists.

Except for the fact that the fascist gov'ts of the mid-20th century had a monopoly of violence within their territories, had territories to begin with, and had advanced propaganda machines and/or secret police. In short, they had a much better means to compel obedience and silence dissent than issuing statements on webpages. If you honestly think an Al-Q statement has the same power as an order given to the Gestapo, you are lost to the discipline of history.

Far more interesting is the proposition, raised above, that marxism and islamism share a procedural similarity: that they are both transnational ideologies that emphasize resistance to the established order through violent means, and thus appeal to a similar body of people despite their significant substantive differences.

I think that's a pretty hard point to dispute, given the number of "marxist" movements that have sprouted over the years, only to reveal themselves as just another crazy resistance movement.

I'd also like to hear more about the role of romanticism in all three schools of thought (fascist, islamist, marxist). Has there been anything significant written on that subject?

Marxism has an explicitly defined post-revolutionary state-centered political program (as articulated by later Marxist thinkers) whereas islamism is still in the "pulling down the oppressor" phase. Of greater relevance for non-Muslims is that Marxism puts forward the idea of a community of humankind, while Islamist thought is primarily concerned with a community of Muslims.

Adrian is right about all this, but I wonder how important it is. Islamism doesn't have a well-articulated "after the revolution" program, but we can be ninety-plus percent sure that it will involve an elite group which will rule in the name of the people, and which will not allow anything to happen that contradicts the current line--which in practise guarantees state-centered, else how do you enforce it?

And while Islamism is only concerned with the community of muslims, it quite specifically aims to make everyone muslims, which will, of course, create a community of humanity--succeeding (in their eyes) where Marxism failed.

Hitler, like the Buddah, was a vegetarian. I trust this makes the need for immediate action against the global threat of radical fundamentalist Buddism apparent to everyone.

Ominously, Chelsea Clinton is reported to be a vegetarian, as well . . .

All hail Drezner who has pulled the rug out from this bumper-sticker nonsense with one sentence: "Maybe, just maybe, radical Islam is a kind of sui generis phenomenon that would be best understood on its own terms."

Smell that? The fresh breath of Reason.

Two quick thoughts:

1) Maybe, just maybe, radical islam is a kind of sui generis phenomenon tha would be best understood on its own terms rather than desperately trying to glom it onto secular totalitarian ideologies of the past;

Dunno.

When you dig past all the 'communist = athiest' verbiage and compare what Marx actually said with religious texts, there are some notable similarities. In brief, you've got prophets, you've got a paradise, and you've got predictions of an impending- and inevitable- apocalypse. What you don't have is much in the way of testable hypotheses- communists basically take the economic pronouncements of their leaders on faith.

While I do not think the comparison is a perfect match, I don't think it is a category error, either. There is no reason we can not look to what we have learned in combating totalitarian ideologies in the past for ways and means by which to combat the totalitarian ideology we have to deal with in the present. Obviously, not everything that worked on the Nazis or Soviets will work on the Jihadis... but some will.

IMO, it would be prudent to try refining the wheel before deciding it is necessary to re-invent it.

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Ferguson's statements certainly don't jibe with what The Looming Towers says about radical Islam's historic relaionship with Communism (i.e., they violently loathed it).

Correct me if I have misunderstood, but I don't think that what he is saying is that the Jihadis are buddy-buddy with the Marxists. What he is saying is that they're both totalitarian (not necessarily fascist) ideologies that loathe the decadent capitalist running-dog west, and that various members of both movements have discovered that common ground.

I see more than a little evidence to support that point of view.

Many people have noted the sympathy hard-left groups like ANSWER have for jihadi causes. If these guys hate each other, why do they keep showing up at each other's protests, and why don't these protests degenerate into Marxist vs Muslim riots? Is it the enemy-of-my-enemy thing, or something else?

It may be that they dislike the anarchy of capitalism and the decadence that comes with it. So I guess in that way they are more like Communists than fascists. But like fascists, they look backward to a purer time, a golden age. The Nazis with their ancient German mythology and the Italians with their dreams of Roman empire seem similar in some ways to Islamists' longing for the Caliphate.

There are parallels, yes... but I dunno how seriously we should take this one. Pretty much every group out there thinks that doing what they say should be done will result in a better world at some point in the future.

..and that includes the capitalists who keep promoting the representative-government thing.

;-)

Certainly radical Islamism is like both Communism and fascism in it's view of individual freedom as decadent and wrong.
-RWB

Dunno. If there's anything that stands out about radical islamism, it's how poorly it's organized. One would think that an ideology that despised individual freedom would have a more rigid organizational structure. Or are they just incompetent?

Just thinking out loud, but one Islamist group did 'control' a nation-state, the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Any extrapolative value in trying to figure out what kind of economic regime they imposed?

Cheers,

As the Communists used to say back in the old days, "It is not an accident" that the World Trade Center was the prime target on 9/11. Bin Ladenism is indeed rather nicely summarized as "Lenin + the Koran." Google "U.S. Competitiveness in the Global Financial Services Industry" for more. Al Queda knew exactly what they were attacking. Bin Ladenism is one more "ism" in a long line of rationales as to why the many should be controlled by a few. The control freaks borrow from one another. Mussolini started out as a Socialist. Nasser's and Saddam's Arab Socialism borrowed heavily from 1930s Europe. The idea that somehow there are nice, firm walls between "religious" and "secular" control ideologies is a peculiar (and absurd) American conceit. As they say in French, "any pretext (for us ruling them) is good." Also note that many of the Arab Socialist ideas for actually running economies and societies came via French Stalinist intellectuals and advisors -- the Sorbonne effect. If memory serves, Michel Aflaq, the Baath founder was there, and I saw the transmission belt personally in North Africa. The marriage between Islamism and Leninism (not exactly Marxism) has been in the works for a very long time.

As the Communists used to say back in the old days, "It is not an accident" that the World Trade Center was the prime target on 9/11. Bin Ladenism is indeed rather nicely summarized as "Lenin + the Koran." Google "U.S. Competitiveness in the Global Financial Services Industry" for more. Al Queda knew exactly what they were attacking. Bin Ladenism is one more "ism" in a long line of rationales as to why the many should be controlled by a few. The control freaks borrow from one another. Mussolini started out as a Socialist. Nasser's and Saddam's Arab Socialism borrowed heavily from 1930s Europe. The idea that somehow there are nice, firm walls between "religious" and "secular" control ideologies is a peculiar (and absurd) American conceit. As they say in French, "any pretext (for us ruling them) is good." Also note that many of the Arab Socialist ideas for actually running economies and societies came via French Stalinist intellectuals and advisors -- the Sorbonne effect. If memory serves, Michel Aflaq, the Baath founder was there, and I saw the transmission belt personally in North Africa. The marriage between Islamism and Leninism (not exactly Marxism) has been in the works for a very long time.