The Muslim world took huge offense when President Bush used “Islamic fascists” to describe the 24 jihadist British Muslims arrested on charges of plotting to blow up trans-Atlantic flights.

“Call them criminals, call them fascists, call them terrorists,” many Muslims said, “but please leave Islam out of it, for it is a religion of peace.”

The word “Salaam” means peace in Arabic. But though “Islam” is derived from the same root as Salaam, it means “submission,” not peace.

Indeed, the Koran and the Hadith, the collection of conversations about the Koran, are all about “unquestioning submission.” This is stressed so heavily that no discussion, interpretation, or dissent of any kind with regard to the text of the holy book or what is said to have been the prophet’s commentary on it is permitted.

A Muslim basically has two choices in life: Take refuge in secularism to escape this literal straitjacket and become a barely tolerated cousin who has strayed from the righteous path; or adhere to the code of behavior and become a “soldier” of a militaristic faith that sees itself in perpetual war with infidels.

Unlike Christianity and Judaism, which have undergone major reformations since their inception — even full rebellions — Islam is still a 14 century young faith: intrepid, vibrant, and unbending.

The historical dispute between Shiite and Sunni Muslims since the dawn of Islam has never been about any sort of reformation, interpretation, or divergent intellectual views over the holy texts. It was a fight over entitlement, about which is the legitimate heir of the Prophet Muhammad’s mantle. The Shiites insist that their line of succession was usurped and their historical leaders, Imam Ali and Hussein, were assassinated to prevent them from taking charge.

In Shiite Islam, the mullahs wear black turbans to indicate they can trace their lineage directly to the prophet. Those who cannot establish this pedigree wear a white turban.

In Sunni Islam, kings and emirs have attempted to establish the same ancestral system, with the kings of Morocco and Jordan maintaining until recently that they are part of the prophet’s lineage.

In Saudi Arabia, the royal princes came up with their own formula to demand submission based on Koranic precepts. There, rulers of the realm are accorded total submission and are referred to as “Walley Al-Amr, which translates roughly as “the father figure” or, more aptly, “daddy.” The Wahhabi religious establishment that shares power with the royals produces the religious rationale for this submission through interpretations of Koranic text. It follows that the ruled are no more than children who must not question the wisdom of elders.

In Islam, notions of loyalty based on selfless service, patriotism, achievements, and leadership, let alone more practical or pragmatic considerations, are nonexistent.

Things in the Muslim world evolved toward revolutionary fascism starting the late ’70s, with the advent of various jihadist movements and the resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood.

When Osama bin Laden and his no. 2 in Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, burst onto the Sunni Muslim scene in 2001, they presented themselves as interpreters of the prophet’s directives, which they translated as nothing less than a never-ending call to jihad against infidels within the Muslim world and outside it.

On the Shiite Muslim side, Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors emerged in 1979 with their notion of “Willayat Al Faqih,” which roughly translates as “the rule of the wise and knowledgeable” and also interprets the Koran as a call to arms.

Thus at the end of the 20th century the two wings of Islam matched each other’s interpretations not with a refreshing shift to progressive thinking but with a meeting of the minds around war, death, sacrifice, and rejection of the West, modernity and its secular concepts, and the material pursuit of happiness and joy.

Islam entered the 21st century with a mind-set of martyrdom and a cult of death and suicide.

The link between Islam and fascism becomes clear once that is understood.

Muslim fundamentalists do not suffer alternative visions. They see their set of Islamic rules as a rampart against anything that smacks of freedom of expression, divergent views, freedom not to worship, and, in general, liberty. In that kind of Islam, fascism is indeed a value.