13.03.2003
Fundamentalists fear communists
Hizb ut-Tahrir: muslims must steer clear of STWC
In the lead-up to the historic February 15 mass demonstration, there was considerable controversy in the pages of the Weekly Worker, reflecting to some extent a wider political debate on the left internationally, about the sponsorship of anti-war demonstrations by the Muslim Association of Britain. A minority of comrades argued that any form of collaboration with the MAB effectively amounted to a red-brown bloc, a bloc between the left and 'clerico-fascists' and was therefore a betrayal of principle. This was argued, in my opinion, from a standpoint that had at best counterproductive, if not reactionary implications. Thus the likes of the MAB were falsely and dangerously accused of being programmatically and in practice the same thing as the Taliban and Al Qa'eda - beyond the pale when it comes to political interaction and any elementary solidarity, at the very time when, in their own way, they stood against the war and attempted to undercut the rise of anti-muslim reaction and bigotry in this country by uniting with secular and left forces. This in my view is a progressive step both for the leadership and the ranks of the MAB - something that communists and all partisans of social progress and class struggle should welcome. Politics is, of course, full of paradoxes and this was brought home to me when I was given a copy of a rather interesting leaflet issued by Hizb ut-Tahrir. This islamic group is well know for its purism and fulminations against secularists, as well as religious opponents such as jews and christians, mainly on university campuses, where their unrestrained hellfire-and-damnation preachings have in some cases led unfortunately to anti-democratic bans on them. This extended leaflet, titled 'Marching on February 15 is haram [ie, incompatible with islamic law -ID] and the height of political naivety' (dated February 11), is aimed at drawing a line between muslims and the broader anti-war movement, in favour of a sectarian, separatist (and thereby necessarily ineffectual) purely islamist anti-war movement. Quoting recent issues of the Weekly Worker, it cites comrades Martyn Hudson, Marcus Ström and myself. From the point of view of Hizb ut-Tahrir, communists have only "sinister motives" in seeking to draw muslims into the wider anti-war movement. I am quoted (accurately) saying: "It may well be that 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. There is no guarantee of this, of course, but I believe it is a realistic possibility and something positive to hope and struggle for" (Weekly Worker November 28 2002). Hizb ut-Tahrir is clearly alarmed at the very notion of its followers coming into contact with communists. It recoils in horror at comrade Ström's "sinister" suggestion that on the September 28 2002 demonstration "thousands of muslims ... were exposed to the ideas of mass democracy, secularism and socialism" (October 3 2002). Hizb comments: "The inability to reach a consensus on muslim involvement in the February 15 march is not surprising, given that it is difficult to reconcile the view of the communists that islam is the 'opium of the masses' with the view of muslims that islam represents the only ideological alternative to the decadent ideology of capitalism and the defunct ideology of communism." It is something of an indictment of the left that virtually the only place where such matters are aired properly and freely is in our CPGB press. Of course, for communists, there is no contradiction between engaging in joint struggle with those sections of the workers and the oppressed that have profound religious beliefs and the communist programme. Dogmatists We believe that communist ideas are not primarily propagated by abstract preaching, but by people learning from their own experience in struggle against the concrete manifestations of capitalism. But for religious dogmatists, as typified by Hizb ut-Tahrir, there is every contradiction between religious dogma and the struggle for the concrete interests of muslim peoples in countries like Iraq who are the targets of imperialism. Many muslims will blanch, and indeed have blanched, at this kind of naked assertion that religious dogma comes before the interests of the prospective victims of imperialism. What it also reveals, of course, is that Hizb ut-Tahrir is less than fully confident of its ability to maintain the hold of its religious views on muslim people drawn into struggle alongside the left. There are several curiosities in this leaflet, distortions of political reality that in fact echo the denunciations of the anti-war movement by various abstentionist left sects and individuals, who occasionally write in to the Weekly Worker regretting that our organisation is not foolish enough to split away and wash its hands of the broader anti-war movement on the grounds of its allegedly bourgeois, class collaborationist nature. Hizb ut-Tahrir also makes too much of the opportunism of some sections of the left in order to imply that the entire left really supports imperialist war against Iraq in all but name. For instance, it fulminates: "The Stop the War Coalition and the organisers of the February 15 march call for a parliamentary debate upon impending military action on Iraq, followed by a vote in the House of Commons. This means that they would accept a colonial war on Iraq if the MPs in the House of Commons deem such a war to be necessary for the pursuit of British interests." Hizb continues: "The STWC ... propose that the matter of Iraq be decided by 'the explicit authority of the United Nations'", and go on to quote an open letter to Tony Blair signed by various MPs and worthies, including leading elements of the STWC and of course the Muslim Association of Britain. Sagely, Hizb then concludes: "O muslims! Aggression against Iraq is unlawful, whether sanctioned by the UN or not. Aggression against Iraq is unlawful, whether it is authorised by the British parliament or not. Aggression against Iraq is unlawful, whether the rulers of the muslim world acquiesce in it or not. Aggression against Iraq is unlawful, whether the government scholars issue a fatwa legitimising it or not. Aggression against Iraq is unlawful, period." Of course, while holding no brief for the theological and islamic-legalistic underpinnings of the above statement, nevertheless this is a sentiment with which communists would heartily concur. War on Iraq has no legitimacy, because it is a reactionary war, irrespective of the formal positions adopted by pseudo-democratic institutions under capitalism. But it is revealing that this should be used by Hizb as an excuse for running away from real struggle in the anti-war movement. Muslims should "Publicly dissociate yourselves from the STWC and the organisers of the march. Do not march with them on February 15, do not accept their empty slogans and do not call for their corrupt western-inspired slogans that are the fuel of the hellfire." We all know there are many in the anti-war movement who bank on using the United Nations, or the existing undemocratic structures of bourgeois parliamentarianism, to prevent the war. Great masses of people, as well as reformist anti-war figures, have these illusions, and like those who believe in the power of prayer, religion or even jihad to prevent imperialist war, they can only be disabused of such notions through their own experience, through mass struggle. An anti-war movement that excluded elements that had such illusions, and communists who refuse to try to lead people in struggle despite all their illusions, would be utterly worthless. It is certainly an egregious opportunist error for those such as the Socialist Workers Party's Lindsey German, to put their name to a statement calling on Tony Blair to "give an explicit undertaking not to engage in military action against Iraq without the explicit authority of the United Nations and without an explicit decision of the House of Commons to do so" (December 10). Seal off Communist leaders should maintain a strict programmatic separation from such calls and should not endorse them. But in citing this manoeuvre, whose real aim is to sabotage the Blair-Bush war drive in a reformist manner, as evidence that the Stop the War Coalition is really pro-war, Hizb is merely seeking to seal off those muslims it is able to influence from the broader anti-war movement. A form of political cowardice that is, despite the massive difference in programme and world outlook, shared by some of the fringe sectarian elements on the left who are also insistently demanding that 'principled' elements on the left should split away from the STWC because of the illusions of some of its components in the UN and parliamentarism/class collaboration as a means to prevent war. The truth is that political independence from reformism and class collaborationism (of whatever kind) is not the same thing as organisational separation - and communists, as the most far-sighted elements, while disdaining to conceal our views and goals, also aim to act as a yeast within the existing anti-war movements and coalitions, maximising the influence of revolutionary views and strategies. In this regard it is also instructive that Hizb ut-Tahrir is at pains to 'instruct' muslims: "Do not adopt the nationalistic flags of Iraq or Palestine, nor chant nationalistic slogans for Iraq or Palestine, since the salvation of this Ummah [the worldwide community of muslims - ID] lies in islam and not the false call of nationalism." Hizb thus appears to be particularly scared of one particular aspect of the appeal of those islamic groupings that are prepared to engage with the secular left in the anti-war movement. That is, the tendency for some forms of islamic politics to act as a surrogate form of the nationalism of the oppressed. In that the nationalism of the oppressed can be the leaven for a real mass struggle against oppression in the here and now, as opposed to an illusory deliverance in the hereafter, such ideologies can be the antechamber of revolutionary, communist consciousness. It is this tendency of some islamist groups in practice to act as surrogates for this kind of sentiment that makes it particularly stupid and sectarian (as well as scandalously chauvinist in implication) for communists to refuse to engage with and struggle alongside those devout muslim groups who are prepared to work with the secular left against this war. Hizb ut-Tahrir, as a particularly dogmatic and reactionary manifestation of political islam, is well aware of the progressive potential of such engagement and collaboration: something they hate like sin itself. It is not the job of the left, blinded by an admixture of rigid dogmatism and in some cases a degree of islamophobia, to help them in warding off this progressive potential. On the contrary, we should welcome contact with thousands of muslim workers - exactly what Hizb ut-Tahrir fears like the plague. Ian Donovan
Worker