Thu Mar 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

About Islamism

 

We shall now reproduce some part of an article on Islamism (Angel Parras, Marxism Alive 11) analysing the policy revolutionaries should wield in the face of Islamic trends such as Hamas:

 

“It is a worldwide phenomenon with great weight among the masses in countries where imperialism is today most aggressive (.) an essential part of the process of workers’ reorganisation in the Middle East, Asia, Magreb. (.) The particularity of the Arabic countries cannot conceal that the essence of the debate is the same all over the world: the standpoint of the revolutionaries in the face of imperialism.”

 

Its character

 

“Islamic trends have been with us since the early XX century (.) but it is since 1980, after the Iranian revolution that they become a flourishing phenomenon inside the Moslem world. (.) These trends are overtly confronting imperialism, and this has earned them more sympathy and prestige in the mass movement in the Moslem countries. After the bankruptcy of Stalinism and the old pan Arabic bourgeois nationalism of the 1960s – 70s, they occupied a space in the resistance against imperialism and pro imperialist governments. What are their main features?

 

“a) They are bourgeois and petty bourgeois leaders leaning on different economic sectors and wings of Moslem hierarchy (Shii or Sunni) and take the Islam as a collective reference in the face of imperialist recolonisation. They lean on the mass movement, in mobilisations and protests, seeking for space to confront the exclusion suffered in the colonies and semi-colonies due to the worldwide process of centralisation of capitals and the capitalist looting (.) they are bourgeois sectors who confront imperialism inasmuch as they are excluded as capitalists.

 

b) They propose “Islamic state”: a Bonapartist regime and dictatorships under a religious cloak who will try and disassemble and check any revolutionary process, the persecute workers’ and young people’s activists and any trend that will not accept their political plans and their reactionary doctrines. (.) In all the cases, because of their bourgeois and theocratic nature, they will never be consistent with the struggle against imperialism.”

 

Two opposite criteria

“It not possible to determine political characterisations on the base of ideology alone even if it is part of the characterisation. What is essential is the class character of the trend, its policy and its programme, what they say and what they do in the class struggle, their relation with the dominating social system, imperialism and the links with the toiling masses. The determining element is not to be sough in the superstructure (ideology) but in the structures (class struggle) (.) Most of the world left applies a diametrically opposed criterion: ideology is the thread that joins all their characterisations and, consequently, the definition of the politics. That is why the religious issue becomes so important in the definition of these trends as essentially reactionary and pro capitalist.”

 

What policy do we have for them?

 

“A discussion is open on the world left as to the policy to wield in the face of the clashes between these trends and imperialism. There are those who say that they are two equally reactionary sectors and that the policy should be to call for “peace”. (.) Others find them the same as fascists and consequently will even justify military coups against them. . Many organisations assert that – unlike the case of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois trends in the other colonial and semi colonial countries, there can be no agreement as to unity of action with them nor of struggle in the military scope against imperialism. For those who uphold this position, Islamic fundamentalism is anti imperialist and anticapitalist because it pretends to drag us back to feudal times (…) and we must oppose them as hard as we oppose imperialism.

 

This position is totally wrong. Lenin and Trotsky taught us that when we have a weaker country confronting imperialism (…) we stand for the defeat of imperialism and, therefore, for the triumph of the raided country, regardless how reactionary its leadership and its regime may be. Fundamentalism is a phenomenon similar to bourgeois nationalism. Consequently, maintaining political and class independence and giving these leaderships no political support whatsoever we call for united action with the Islamic trend clashing with imperialism” (.)

 

“We fight against these leaderships placing the needs of class struggle, the struggle against imperialism and lackey governments in the centre of all our concerns. As part of this combat, we must reveal their inconsistency, their hollow chatter, their submission to bourgeois interests, their false “egalitarism” and we shall do so from the angle of the struggle of the workers and not from the angle of “fight religion”.”

 

Social roots of Islamism

 

” Western media (…) systematically identify millions of Moslem workers and young people with religious bigotry”. Echoing that, most of European left explains the Islamic phenomenon by “backwardness and ignorance of the people of those countries.” If the development of Islamism were based solely on these factors, why should the masses not restrain their religious feelings to going to Mosques? (…) Why is Islamism associated today with a monumental ascent of struggles, the irruption of millions into political life, insurrections and revolutions?” 

 

“We must look for the roots of this phenomenon in its material base. Lenin used to say: “The deepest root of religion in our times is social oppression of the working masses, their seeming helplessness when facing the blind forces of capitalism.” (…) It is the brutality of agonising capitalism, the countless expressions of barbarism, the bankruptcy of Stalinism and of the old bourgeois nationalism and the endless stubbornness and heroism of the masses as well as their recurring will to fight what explains the phenomenon of Islamism. (…) To place the combat against the Islamic forces in the territory of “struggle against religion” leads us to lending support to imperialism and the ayatollahs that happen to be on the agenda that day. If forced to cram this debate into a nutshell I would say: the so-called Islamic phenomenon that emerged in these last years is – essentially – a distorted expression of nationalism. As for the revolutionaries, their relations with these trends are guided – in general lines – by the same parameters according to which we act with bourgeois or petty bourgeois nationalist leaders when the collide with imperialism. The development of this religious feeling among millions of workers and young people in the world has deep social roots and any revolutionary propaganda against the religion will be submitted to the central task: the development of the class struggle of the exploited masses against the exploiters.” 

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