28.02.2008

Meat cleaver

Esen Uslu responds to Phil Kent's criticisms

Comrade Phil Kent from Haringey has written a comment on my article entitled ‘Riddle of the headscarf’ (February 7). Since I count Haringey, with its large Turkish-speaking community, as my ‘home turf’, I must reply.

Comrade Kent wants me to be clearer about my “position on the wearing of headscarves” (Letters, February 14). I summarised our position as: “Communists are … against any bans, restrictions or discrimination imposed by the state”, while I also pointed out that: “Support for the rights and religious freedoms of fundamental islam … would be a serious mistake.” He says that I wanted to oppose both the ban and the move to overturn it.

That is a correct assessment. Yes, I oppose any restrictions imposed by the state on what people wear. That is the essence of any communist position: whenever there is a bourgeois, state-imposed restriction, ban or discrimination, communists should oppose it with a view to undermining that state.

However, I am also against this particular “move” aimed at overturning the ban, because it is actually a move designed to tighten the stranglehold of fundamentalist islam over sections of the working class.

In other words, I am against the unitary monolithic state of Turkey which meddles in all aspects of life under the pretext of defending “territorial and national integrity”, and I struggle to topple it and all its paraphernalia. But I am also acutely aware of the dangers posed by the politics of fundamentalist islam. These cannot be reduced to “dowdy puritanism” or a “reactionary religious establishment”.

For a large belt of land, stretching from China to the borders of the European Union, it is not simply a question of a backward-looking, pre-capitalist ideology, but of a very real force of reaction in the service of the ruling classes. It is a carefully sculpted tool which is shaped and sharpened from time to time in accordance with the needs of those ruling classes.

That is why what I jokingly referred to as a riddle has been sending shivers down the spines of a large segment of the working population, which recognises that behind the hijab lies the meat cleaver ready to sever the arms and heads of the forces of revolution.