28.11.2002
Betrayal of progressives
The left urgently needs to reassess its relationship to the new global recompositions of islam and abandon attempts to construct united fronts with certain forms of islamist organisation where, to use the old phrase, we march separately and strike together. At the recent Socialist Alliance executive committee meeting Martin Thomas of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty moved a motion which noted, amongst other things, that within the Stop the War Coalition, the SA should argue against future anti-war activities being co-sponsored with the Muslim Association of Britain (Weekly Worker November 21). Marcus Ström of the CPGB supported this motion on the grounds that the "MAB was the political representation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. The Muslim Brotherhood represents alien and hostile class interests to the working class". Marcus correctly argues that by relying on such reactionary forces "we retreat from the politics of contesting reactionary political islam" and abdicate our responsibility to support secularist and radical voices within the muslim community both here and abroad. So what is this political islam and where does it come from? Whatever the islamophobes and islamists might argue, islam is not a static, unified bloc of unchanging texts and practices. Islam as a faith has been constantly recomposed and modified. Since the 1960s, however, the world has witnessed the ascendancy of one particular form of islam - a political islam which presents a civilisational alternative to that of both communism and capitalism and which seeks to eliminate secularism, liberty and any vestiges of enlightenment thought. Its explicit task is the reformation of the worldwide community of muslims, the Umma, and the construction of a global islamist state, the Khilafah. It is totally incompatible with our vision of social progress and, no matter how much it constructs itself as an alternative to a barbarous imperialism, it is a backward, reactionary, clerico-fascist attempt to build a militaristic theocracy on the corpses of the working class, women and youth. The emergence of one victorious theocratic state would signal world-historical necromancy - a profound defeat for the global proletariat. The programmes of groups such as Al-Muhajiroun, Hizbut Tahir and Jamaat-I-Islam make them unacceptable as partners in united fronts, but the repulsive ideas they have are also articulated within the MAB and other supposedly softer organisations. One glance at the recent Inspire newspaper, specially published for the September 28 Stop the War demonstration, is enough to confirm that contemporary islamist doctrines are a central part of some elements in the MAB and they may in the future become more clearly articulated in programmatic and political terms. One of the gravest dangers of political islam is its ideological project of eliminating what it perceives as decadent, European modes of thinking. There have been extensive debates within political islam about the islamisation of knowledge and the replacement of scientific rationalism by what it calls sacred or islamic science. Islam is first and foremost a written religion - practices, observances and ideas are extensions of the holy doctrine of the Quran and the secondary elaborations of the Hadith, the medieval commentaries on the original text. One of the central projects of political islam is to extend the Quranic conception of knowledge into new terrains in a way quite different from traditional islam. Traditionally islam has rested on the submission of the individual conscience to the written text. Political islam is engaged in an enforcement of the doctrine in a radical and highly modernised manner through political compulsion and violence. Islam has always been many things - a philosophy, an eschatology, a religious civilisation, a polity at times - but the contemporary enforcement of that polity and the destruction of secularism and what it perceives as one of its central civilisational rivals, Marxism, is a project of barbaric violence. It is a violence perpetrated against any dissident forces and we cannot cooperate with the allies of forces who are trying to exterminate independent working class politics across the world. The necromancy of political islam is demonstrated in a point made by Caesar Farah - the traditional conception of an "all-encompassing complex framework of theological reference" is transformed from a theology to a polity which is totalitarian in its intention (C Farah Islam: beliefs and observances New York 1994, p2). It is more than retrogression - traditionalist islam has over the centuries been a byword for tolerance and the perpetuation of all kinds of knowledge inherited from classical antiquity and the orient. That project is profoundly different from those Taliban (ironically meaning seekers after knowledge) who tortured and murdered anybody who would not subscribe to their barbarous project of resurrecting a fascistic, theological state, which would never have been countenanced in traditional islam. For the islamists it is not just that secularists, enlightenment rationalists and so on are simply ideological antagonists - they are perceived as much more than this. Political islam was born as a reaction to islamic modernism and secularism and sees the extermination of this mode of thinking as its central ideological, military and political mission. The reimposition of 'the sacred' as a political force serves the purpose of turning progress and science into crimes. Many islamists are for the enforced reacceptance of the Ptolemaic universe, the elimination of 'European' medical knowledge, and the destruction of alternative theological enterprises, amongst other things. The construction of mythical lineages to the past serve to create profoundly new kinds of islamic states as a response to modernisation and imperialism for, of course, at the root of these movements are real economic and political struggles and particularly the fragmentation of traditional societies and ideological certainties. We also have to be clear that the Marxist response to this should avoid islamophobia at all costs. The Rushdie affair in the late 1980s and early 1990s consolidated a long-standing racist discourse about British muslims. The idea that all muslims were for the burning of books was a central motif in this - a stereotype that the islamists have been only too willing to foster and extend. Islam in Britain has always been incredibly diverse, largely because of the original geographical diversity of British muslims. Most derive from former colonies of the British empire and because of their experience of that imperial project have an understandably ambivalent relationship to that imperial history: these histories are now entwined, in islamism, with newer conceptions of Zionism and US imperialism. One interesting aspect of the Rushdie affair was that those perpetrating the book-burnings were not actually political islamists at all, but representatives of the Barelwi prophet worshippers who are perceived by Deobandi islamists as little better than pagans. Over recent years the islamists have made significant gains amongst young people in the muslim community in Britain. Real displacements and frustrations lead for many to an identification with islamism. Contemporary islamism is a false solution to real distress and contradiction - but unlike islamic traditionalism it is profoundly modernist in orientation. Its ideological necromancy is a method to drive a bridgehead into the future. As Olivier Roy points out, "For fundamentalism it is of paramount importance to get back to the scriptures, clearing away the obfuscation of tradition. It always seeks a return to a former state; it is characterised by the practice of reading texts and a search for origins. The enemy is not modernity, but tradition, or rather, in the context of islam, everything which is not the tradition of the Prophet" (O Roy Islam and resistance in Afghanistan Cambridge 1990, p5). This is why a reactionary political islam is so dangerous - it is attempting to stake its claim on the future which belongs to the working class. This radical programme of the islamists entails firstly a conception that a total war - sometimes open, sometimes hidden - exists between the muslim Umma and the 'west' and its ideologies. Secondly, its programme entails the compulsion for muslims to construct an islamic state as a divine imperative. Thirdly, that the holy struggle against the enemies of islam is both a collective duty and one imposed upon individual muslims by god and their earthly representatives, the islamists. Finally, a central element of contemporary political islam is the withdrawal of tolerance from christians, jews and secularists. This is profoundly different from the programme of traditionalist islam and, of course, many muslims who are attracted to secularism and humanising assimilation from below. As Ernest Gellner once pointed out, this programme, stands for an "irreversible reformation" across the world with unparalleled effects (E Gellner Postmodernism, reason and religion London 1992, p15). It is this programme Marxists stand against and condemn - its acceptance would entail the utter destruction of the project of human liberation. We do not stand against and condemn islam and there are many from the muslim communities of the world who are sacrificing their lives to sustain that social struggle against islamism. No religion, as Fred Halliday has remarked, "is a set menu of moral, political and social behaviour "¦ If those within it seek to justify their actions by reference to a particular traditional authority, this is a choice, not a necessity, and often conceals what is in fact an innovation or completely new departure under the guise of a return to some imagined past" (F Halliday Islam and the myth of confrontation London 1996, p114-115). Islam is not an essentialist, unchanging totality. It is composed of all kinds of contradictory tendencies - some progressive, some deeply reactionary. By siding with the fundamentalists like the MAB, we are betraying those progressive forces within the muslim communities of Britain and elsewhere. By lining up with the MAB we are irresponsibly undermining the struggle of activists like Farooq Tariq in Pakistan against the islamist Lashkar Tayaba who have done very well recently. The articulation of clerico-fascist ideas in this contemporary, modernist islamist movement means that we cannot stand with them in common actions. There is no possibility of a united front with those willing to capitulate to a programme so reactionary and dangerous to the global working class. We must continue to talk to individuals and groups and we must constantly affirm that islamism is not islam, but a radicalised product of Zionism and imperialism. Of course, islamism was often bankrolled by US imperialism in order to undermine the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. But the supersession of imperialism, in the aftermath of the defeat of the Soviet Union and its allies does not lie in the hands of the ascendant forces of the islamists, but with our project of human self-emancipation. Martyn Hudson In favour Proud to march with muslims In voting in favour of the motion put by Martin Thomas, I believe that Marcus Ström made a political mistake. Thankfully the motion was defeated by the votes of the other members of the SA executive. Marcus makes the accusation that in allowing anti-war demonstrations to be endorsed by the MAB, the left is displaying "inverted islamophobia", and goes on to argue that since the MAB is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and is therefore representative of the "right wing" of the muslim community, the MAB is "to the right of the Justice and Development Party that has just taken power in Turkey". Yet he conspicuously does not argue that the MAB is a fundamentalist or clerical-fascist organisation, which in my book is the real dividing line determining whether or not it is permissible to engage in any kind of joint mobilisation. Marcus appears not to be prepared to push his position to its logical conclusion, with his statement that, "There was no suggestion that future demonstrations of the Stop the War Coalition exclude the MAB". But surely, if the MAB is considered too reactionary to be an endorser of anti-war demonstrations, then its supporters are also too rightwing to attend an anti-war march? To say one without saying the other is self-contradictory and nonsensical. The MAB is not a fundamentalist or terrorist organisation. Indeed, it has made clear that, more forthrightly than some elements of the Socialist Alliance itself, it regards such actions as the September 11 suicide hijackings in the USA as "atrocities" and "criminal acts" which are to be "condemned", the works of "bands of fanatics". These clear statements signify to me that, despite the fact that there are elements around it who may not agree with these sentiments, the MAB is a non-fundamentalist muslim organisation that it is perfectly principled to make practical agreements with to mobilise against the Bush/Blair war drive. Its politics, to be sure, are pretty conservative and, as is laid down by the Quran itself, it seeks a society based on Quranic law. This is something, obviously, that socialists cannot countenance and seek to combat by means of the class struggle and the arguments of scientific socialism. But these are mainstream beliefs of the islamic religion itself - to regard those religious currents that seek such a society, even when those beliefs are to be fought for in an avowedly peaceful and legalistic way, as beyond the pale is effectively to write off all who adhere to what are fairly mainstream beliefs in one of the great world religions. The logic of the position put forward by Martin Thomas, and unfortunately voted for by Marcus, is that these religious beliefs alone, and not merely a programme that fights for them by terroristic/fascistic methods, should be grounds for exclusion of people from the anti-war movement. This to me seems to conflict with a Marxist view of religion as in part reflecting a distorted reaction to oppression, or, as Marx put it, "the heart of a heartless world". To say this is hardly "inverted islamophobia", but elementary tactics for working with large numbers of oppressed people who have a religious consciousness. It would be wrong, for instance, to fall into the error most classically typified by Zinoviev at the 1920 Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East and adopt the slogans of islamic 'radicalism' as our own, but it would be equally wrong to shun those with such consciousness and refuse to work with them for limited common objectives - like organising a mass anti-war demonstration. Comrades may well regret that there is not some ideal, secular ally we can find among the Arab/muslim diaspora communities in order to connect the Arab and muslim masses with the wider anti-war and working class movements. Unfortunately, I do not see any such organisation even trying and, if they are, succeeding in doing so. It may well be that such a progressive movement will emerge from the contact and dialogue of the muslim brothers and sisters that are coming into contact with socialist and revolutionary literature and ideas - perhaps in some cases for the first time, as a result of the united front between the socialist anti-war movement and the followers of the MAB. There is no guarantee of this, of course, but I believe it is a realistic possibility and something positive to hope and struggle for. However, in the context of the current massive repression of the Palestinians, and the overtly bigoted and anti-muslim statements of elements of the Bush administration at least, and given that my 'own' government, for all its 'anti-racist' credentials, is moving in tandem with Bush in this reactionary imperialist crusade, I am proud to have marched with many ordinary muslims, mobilised mainly by the MAB, against this reactionary obscenity. Ian Donovan
Worker