You might want to include the end of that sentence: "...in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products."
This confirms the, imo, common-sense position that no, oxidation is not just a slow fire. A fire is a specific type of oxidation process that involves the production of significant light and heat. In other words, it is only true that oxidation is a slow fire if one adopts a definition of fire that is significantly different from its ordinary usage.
A fire releases the "heat, light and various reaction products" that it does because of the speed of oxidation. It's obvious even from the snippet I posted that slow oxidation is not actually a fire.
Yes, but aluminum oxidizes rapidly yet this oxidation process does not produce significant heat and light. So in this context, the independent heat/light requirement makes a difference!
Fire is a phenomena whereby a fuel is combined with an oxidizer to make a new product in a manner that releases heat (ie: an exothermic redox reaction).
Rusting of metals fits that bill since heat is in fact released (just a super tiny amount and rather slowly), so it's _technically fire_ - although fire more commonly implies the rapid release of copious amounts of energy as part of the process.