Furthermore, "Islamofascist" is merely a term popularized by right-wingers to encourage fear and discourage rational analysis. If you want to compare the movements of Islamic extremists to fascist movements from the 1920-30s onward to today, let's have that discussion. I'm interested in it. You might convince me. If you do a great job of convincing me I might even be persuaded to refer to these extremists as "Islamic fascists". But "Islamofascism" is pure fear-mongering, a word that twists something deep in the gut. Not only does it imply, as all charges of fascism do, images of death camps, the broken windows of the Night of Broken Glass, and determined men goose stepping through city streets in military uniforms, but the "Islamo" prefix simultaneously Otherizes and insults the perpetrators of the aforementioned fascism. It could never happen here, since Them are Islamo and Us are Christian, but it simultaneously presents them as even more twisted and depraved, denying them so much as the respect of their full religious name: Horror of horrors, they're not even good Christians, like the Nazis were! The term "Christofascism" is merely an attempt to piggyback onto that term, and comes from a similar place in the human heart, I fear.
Let's call them what they are here, where and while productive discussion is possible: different flavors of extremist, possibly fascist extremists, rather than inventing new terms and new frames. If "extremist" isn't up to your tastes, try "theocrat" or "political fundamentalist". I personally like "Dominionist": although it's only a common term on the Christian half of the spectrum, it properly sums up the goals of these extremists: namely, a world in which a very specific God holds dominion over everything in life from worship to law.
Long comment. I should probably spruce it up a bit and crosspost to dystop_theorist.
Personally:
Among that at least 35% and probably more is the senator Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA). The only bill Lynn has ever sponsored is a bill to require the display of the Ten Commandments in the House and Senate. When pressed by Stephen Colbert, all he could remember were three out of ten of the very Commandments he felt were the basis of all morality.
Religion, at least, here has ceased to be about anything meaningfully theological and instead about tribal dominance, "my God can beat up your God". Most telling is one incident on the Disney-sponsored "hot talk" station KSFO. In it, the host, Brian Sussman, pressures a caller to "prove" that he isn't a Muslim by saying that "Allah is a whore". Allah is, of course, used by both Arabic Muslims and Arabic Christians to signify "God", and in either case, the God of the Muslims is as much an Abrahamic God as is the God of the Christians.
Furthermore, "Islamofascist" is merely a term popularized by right-wingers to encourage fear and discourage rational analysis. If you want to compare the movements of Islamic extremists to fascist movements from the 1920-30s onward to today, let's have that discussion. I'm interested in it. You might convince me. If you do a great job of convincing me I might even be persuaded to refer to these extremists as "Islamic fascists". But "Islamofascism" is pure fear-mongering, a word that twists something deep in the gut. Not only does it imply, as all charges of fascism do, images of death camps, the broken windows of the Night of Broken Glass, and determined men goose stepping through city streets in military uniforms, but the "Islamo" prefix simultaneously Otherizes and insults the perpetrators of the aforementioned fascism. It could never happen here, since Them are Islamo and Us are Christian, but it simultaneously presents them as even more twisted and depraved, denying them so much as the respect of their full religious name: Horror of horrors, they're not even good Christians, like the Nazis were! The term "Christofascism" is merely an attempt to piggyback onto that term, and comes from a similar place in the human heart, I fear.
Let's call them what they are here, where and while productive discussion is possible: different flavors of extremist, possibly fascist extremists, rather than inventing new terms and new frames. If "extremist" isn't up to your tastes, try "theocrat" or "political fundamentalist". I personally like "Dominionist": although it's only a common term on the Christian half of the spectrum, it properly sums up the goals of these extremists: namely, a world in which a very specific God holds dominion over everything in life from worship to law.
Long comment. I should probably spruce it up a bit and crosspost to dystop_theorist.