See, this is what discourages me, just a little. Why should we be happy calling our enemy something other than what they are?
Isn't calling them fascists just an invitation to an irrelevant debate and worse, a failure to face up to reality?
What are we saying? That calling them fascists makes them sound worse than they are?
I believe calling them what they are is as bad as it gets. So why not just call them what they are? What is to be gained by calling them fascists?
From George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946 It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because out thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.......................The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. .................. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.....
Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism?
The jihadis, the term you prefer, are quite fascistic. Esp. in their desire for the imposition of their sick Sharia law. You can call them jihadis, I use that term myself, but I would not discount entirely that jihad can be used as a term for "self-struggle", although I don't know enough about Islam to be sure that is accurate.
It is silly to say we are in a war against Islam, the Islamofacists abuse and murder of their brother and sister Muslims around the world demonstrates that. It may become a war agasint all of Islam, but we are not there yet.
I think Islamo-fascism describes them quite well. The Nazis were fascists, but they also had weird paganistic ideas, although I doubt the average German had much truck with that quasi-religious aspect of Nazism. But again, I really don't know for sure.
And the Muslims do not "worship" Mohammed, just as Roman Catholics do not "worship" the Virigin Mary or the Saints.