I refer to your column titled Religio-fascists in our midst - Welcome to Talibanaysia? by Farish A Noor. It is an interesting piece with the exception of two points.

One of the statements the author makes in the article is that, '(We) need to understand the nature of the problem itself. This problem has a name, and its name is fascism (my emphasis)'.

The 'beast' that the author has chosen to name is inaccurate. There are stark differences between 'fascism' and 'authoritarianism' but he uses the terms interchangeably. Instead of identifying the 'beast', he has, unfortunately, changed its nature to suit his argument.

The salient essentials of fascism are the following:

- fascism is situated in a historical framework of a particular capitalist development i.e. monopoly capitalism;

- its emergence corresponds to a re-organisation of political hegemony following a political crisis within the dominant classes;

- and it is a form of state at the extremities of a capitalist statehood.

It is not an ideology or a mode of conduct as suggested by the author. A strong and interventionist state (etat fort) is neither synonymous with a fascist state nor does fascism evolve linearly or automatically from a strong state. The use of brute force, religion or ideology is instrumental and is not an end in itself.

Thus the growing popularity of inferences to 'religio-fascism' or 'Islamo-facism' may be easy to deploy (especially in this day and age where there is a war conducted against Islam) but it is never functional nor constructive.

Similarly, labels and references to the Taliban or 'Talibanaysia' when describing the state of religious affairs here are never useful. The formation and emergence of the Taliban is a phenomenon with geopolitical and historical specifics.

It is also perplexing that the author chooses to gloss over history when it comes to analysing the state of Islam in Malaysia. One should not attempt to conceal the fact that it was the former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohammad who sanctioned the Islamic-revivalist project, and it was he who changed the concept of Islam in Malaysia from that of the official religion of a nation to one of an 'Islamic state' in 2002.

PAS will always be an easy target. We must not only understand and examine the nature of a problem, but find the courage to speak the truth to power.