As far back as 1979, Michael Ledeen, a scholar specializing in Italian history, called e Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini a “clerical fascist.” Like the European fascists, Khomeini was a supremacist. But whereas the Nazis waged a war for German domination of Europe, Khomeini looked forward to a war that would spread Islamic rule throughout the Middle East and beyond.
Back in 1942 Khomeini wrote: "[T]hose who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. … Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!"
Khomeini's successors may soon have not just swords but also nuclear weapons to help them pursue their vision. Osama bin Laden's ambitions are the same though he dreams of Sunni rather than Shia sheiks ordering infidels to convert or die.
Also influenced by fascist ideas were the Baathists, a 20th century movement calling for Arab supremacy and domination. Though people think of Baathism as secular, one of its founders, Michel Aflaq, said: “Islam is to Arabism, what bones are to flesh.” Baathism is the ideology espoused by Saddam Hussein and by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad -- even as he has forged a close alliance with the Khomeinist rulers of Iran.
For these and other reasons, it is justifiable to call such ideologies fascist -- or Islamic fascist or Islamo-fascist or neo-fascist. It's also accurate to describe them as Militant Islamist or radical Jihadist.
In his speech this week, President Bush said, too, that the war in which America is engaged is not a “clash of civilizations” but a “struggle for civilization.” Perhaps that suggests another way we might characterize the ideology against which free nations are struggling: It is barbarism. There have always been barbarians at civilization's gates. Maybe it's time we accepted that, and resolved to fight them – wherever they are and for as long as it takes. Maybe we have to make up our minds that, difficult though it will be, on our watch the enemies of freedom – whatever their ideology -- will not prevail.
Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.