meaningless. Such a character was disposed to embrace authoritarian ide-
ologies that allowed an “escape from freedom”, yet assured subjugation to
authority. Their understanding of early twentieth-century. Fascism now pro-
vides us with beginnings of a heuristic framework to reveal key elements of
contemporary Islamist movements and their extremist ideologies. The Frankfurt
School’s analyses of alienation, domination, authoritarianism, character, and
Reason yet provide a powerful theoretical understanding of political extrem-
ism cloaked in religious garb.
As shall be argued, however different classical Fascism and its contempo-
rary clerical forms, however irrational their logics of and goals of moral
renewal through subjugation to “higher powers”, these anti-modernisms share
underlying similarities and common themes. In their attempt to understand
the rise of Fascism, these scholars first pointed out how political economic
crises intersected with social character, how authoritarian dispositions facil-
itated the obedience to authority and how that authority, in command of the
means of then modern information technologies, extolled anti modernisms,
found scapegoats for blame and extolled violence to enemies. In each case,
leaders resurrected a mythological Golden Age and promised its restoration.
While much has been written on the rise of Nazi Germany and the more
recent ascent of the rise of the Christian right, Critical theory has had less to
say about the rise of Islamism, political Islam, as “clerical fascism” (Berlet,
2005). As will be argued, while on the one hand, the embrace of Islamism
provides individuals with a variety of emotional gratifications, at the same
time, xenophobic hostility to foreign “infidels” and collective barriers limit
modernity and purposive rationality that might ameliorate the stagnation,
poverty and backwardness that engender Islamisms.
In the following chapter, I will argue that 1), Islam grew and its Caliphate
prospered, in part due to its Shariah-based commercial law, backed up by its
armies. But 2), such laws created “limits to growth” and the “backward” bar-
barians to the North, embracing evidentiary-based law, capitalism and an
ascetic “inner determination” in sacralized vocationalism, began to overtake
the Caliphate and eventually colonized much of the Muslim world. 3) Between
traditional barriers to modern rationality, and various expressions of colo-
nialism and neo-imperialism, despite various (subverted) attempts at mod-
ernization, most Islamic societies have remained autocratic, economically
stagnant, patriarchal and intellectually backward. 4) As a result of ressente-
mentto the West and enduring domination, Islamisms have flourished and,
From the Caliphate to the Shaheedim• 287