User:Chalst/islamofascism

This page hosts a list of people who have claimed,or who have had claimed on their behalf, to have coined the term Islamofascism. There's a veritable industry around the warblog domain devoted to coining and attributing political epithets, hence the confusion, hence this page. The term's usefulness and fairness is very much in dispute, I won't go into that here, though, except to note the strenuously anti-Islamist Daniel Pipes avoids the term.

The names of the claimed coiners, grouped by degree of confidence, then ordered by earliest claimed specific usage of term:

Verified usage

Malise Ruthven authored an article '"Construing Islam as a language" that appeared on 8 September 1990 in The Independent on 8 September 1990 in the Faith and Reason series. LexisNexis link (suscription only):

Nevertheless there is what might be called a political problematic affecting the Muslim world. In contrast to the heirs of some other non-Western traditions, including Hinduism, Shintoism and Buddhism, Islamic societies seem to have found it particularly hard to institutionalise divergences politically: authoritarian government, not to say Islamo-fascism, is the rule rather than the exception from Morocco to Pakistan.

Thanks to User:Dannyno for this lead.

Stephen Schwartz (journalist) in The Spectator (1828) from its 22 Sep 2001 issue, in an article titled "Ground Zero and the Saudi Connection" (Original is subscription only, syndicated at UPJF). The contents of the Spectator issue circulated electronically at least two days before the issue date.
Andrew Sullivan has often been claimed to have coined the term, but the first known occasion he used the term was on 20 Sep 2001 citing Stephen Schwartz's Spectator article [1].
Christopher Hitchens is claimed by many to have coined the term, indeed google-depth research suggests he is most widely believed to have coined the term. In fact he mostly avoids the term, consistently preferring the terms theocratic fascism and fascism with an islamic face (the latter term he used in Against Rationalisation, The Nation, appeared on web 20 Sep 2001, though note the title of his follow-up Of Sin, the Left & Islamic Fascism, The Nation, appeared on web 24 Sep 2001). He used "Islamo-fascism" when answering questions in Andrew Sullivan's Book Club on 2 Nov 2002, however. I'd be interested in hearing of other occasions he used the term: just edit this page, please!
On Little Green Footballs on 2 Mar 2002 by Robert Crawford [2]: not an actual claim to have coined it, but observed to be before Michael Savage's book came out, below [3].
Mark Steyn used the term first in a Spectator column They want to kill us all from 19 Oct 2002; he didn't claim to coin the term but it has been claimed on his behalf. Article syndicated Hindunet.

Unverified usage

Maxine Rodinson is claimed by Martin Kramer to have coined this term in a front-page Le Monde opinion arguing against Michel Foucault's infatuation with Khomeini's Iranian revolution [4]. See also Roger Scruton [5].
Khalid Duran in an article for the Washington Times: claim by Albert Scardino in Guardian of usage "long before September 11 2001". [6]. LexisNexis search shows the terms "islamofascism" and "islamo-fascism" not being used in any articles in the Washington Times between 1981 and 2000, and only once in 2001, in an article by Mona Charen in October 2001 (cf. Victory for bin Laden, already?).
Michael Savage (commentator) claims to have coined the term, which he first used in print in his book Savage Nation in Jan 2003. He used the term in radio broadcasts before then, apparently in Oct 2002, and probably earlier as well. I don't know of any searchable transcripts of his radio shows, in any case the usage is likely to be long after Schwartz's usage.
- I know this is mere anecdotal evidence, but I began listening to the man's show around February 2001, and he was using the term then. ALKIVAR™ 20:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I've been listening to Michael Savage since the Fall of 1997 and he was using it then (though not as much). After the 1998 Kenya and Tanzania bombings, he was using it very often to describe the threat that Al-Qaeda posed.

Thanks for the comments, and sorry to sound suspicious, but I'm not convinced. If it helps, I wouldn't trust my own recollection from so long if I couldn't recount an excerpt of what he said. I've emailed Savage, see if he has anything to say. --- Charles Stewart^(talk) 21:07, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Verified usage

Unverified usage

See also