Re: Islam, Political Islam and Women in the Middle East

Before replying, I should remind everyone to please clip text that is not 
necessary for understanding your replies!

"sabrecall" writes:

> There is nothing "Marxist" about this character's analysis
> of female oppression in Islamic countries; all that is
> employed is a most cursory and biased slander of Islam
> itself.

I think this is where we're going to see some very fundamental 
disagreements.  I think the view of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran 
(which posted the original piece) is closer to the mark.  I have yet to 
meet a progressive person from the Middle East who takes as "soft" an 
attitude toward political Islam as many Western leftists (particularly 
those from the various trotskyoid traditions -- apart from the Sparts, of 
course) do.  They view political Islam as a grouping of thoroughly 
reactionary movements, which -- not incidentally -- were fostered and used 
by imperialism as a way to crush the secular left.

Perhaps the exiled comrades from Iran are not as nuanced in their approach 
to this as they should be, and it would be better to draw a distinction 
between "Islam" as some sort of transcendent social/religious force on the 
one hand and the specific varieties of political Islam on the other -- 
which, as Samir Amin has pointed out, are not so much "religious" movements 
as conventional political ones, concerned with the seizure of state power, 
etc.  But on the whole the assessment of these movements as dangerous, 
reactionary poison is on-target, and keep in mind that in the future I will 
not tolerate outbursts like the following:

> In the scheme of things, Iran is not as horrible as the
> aforementioned rant pretends it to be. The author
> sounds like an American imperialist who just lost her
> investment in the Shah

This is outright baiting of comrades who are dedicated to fighting 
imperialism in Iran, but who happend to lose out during the course of the 
revolution to a group of murderous reactionaries.  It reeks of a political 
position that is objectively pro-Islamist (equating all criticism of the 
reactionary Islamic Republic with "pro-imperialism"!) and at least 
implicitly male-chauvinist as well.  To say that

> The Islamic Revolution was radical and progressive,
> relative to the hegemony of CIA-installed Pahlavi

is to gloss over the fact that Khomeini butchered the cadres of the Tudeh 
party, among many others.

On the face of things, the author of this message has some merit in saying:

> I do not support IJ/Hamas, but this does not mean I will
> sing my song to the tune of the colonizer, ranting about
> Islamism and moralizing about suicide-bombing: everything
> requires context.

However, this is a red herring, because NOWHERE in the writings of the 
Iranian comrades can you find them "singing their song to the tune of the 
colonizer."  To accuse them of that is outright libel, and as moderator of 
this list I will not stand for it.  Do not mischaracterize what other 
people say.

(Though by the way, we should note that Hamas was actually encouraged by 
the Israelis in the years prior to the outbreak of the first Intifada as a 
counterweight to the secular Palestinian resistance.  If you don't shudder 
to think what kind of society Hamas would create, remember the fact that 
nearly 30 percent of the Palestinian population is Christian.  That's one 
reason why the Palestinian movement has been overwhelmingly secular in the 
past.  Progressive Palestinian intellectuals like Edward Said -- while 
never yielding an inch to the fraudulent propaganda of the Israeli 
occupation and its US backers -- have absolutely no illusions about the 
nature of Hamas, and they say so openly. Why anyone else who is sincere in 
supporting the Palestinian struggle should be any less harsh in criticizing 
the Islamists is a mystery to me.)

The message ends with the following:

> through struggle many with their heads on straight will realize
> that for all the empty rhetoric, Islamism is just an overgrown
> prostitute of the CIA gone awry.

This is a statement which, to my mind, completely contradicts everything 
else that "sabrecall" has said.  In fact, it's pretty close to the position 
of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran which he earlier attacks.  But here's 
something to think about:

We're all agreed that political Islam was used -- and still is used -- as a 
political tool by imperialism as a way to crush the secular left.  Like all 
political movements, however, it has its own autonomous interests which do 
not coincide completely with those of imperialism -- which is why some 
Islamist movements have been characterized by the United States as "Islamic 
fundamentalist," as a false way of distinguishing "good" (read: pliant from 
the point of view of imperialism) from "bad" (read: willing to attack the 
interests of the United States or other imperialist countries from the 
point of view of a reactionary utopia) political Islamists.  With that 
said, however, are we to let up in our criticisms of the political 
Islamists -- with their murderous imposition of shari'a -- just because 
they may occasionally clash with the imperialists?  When the Boers were 
fighting with Britain at the turn of the last century, did that mean that 
socialists should have gone soft in their assessment of the Boers' ideology 
of open white-settler ascendancy?  (Unfortunately, by the way, much of the 
Second International -- infected as it was with white chauvinism -- did 
exactly that.)

It seems to me that the demands of solidarity require that we consider 
first the concerns of progressive people who are involved with the struggle 
on the ground -- recognizing, of course, that there are going to be 
differences among them, as well.  But considering the fact that in a 
society run by Islamists, every single one of us would be publicly hanged 
or stoned to death, I think we can understand how comrades from those 
countries might take a hard line against political Islam.  And so I do, too.

John Lacny


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--Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter 31

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