re: Islamic radicalism, Jared Israel etc.

[JOHN M COX <coxj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Harman's pamphlet on political Islam is well worth reading; it can
be accessed on line at www.marxisme.dk/arkiv/harman/1994/prophet :


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First published in International Socialism Journal no. 64, Autumn 1994.
Published as a pamphlet titled The prophet and the proletariat  Islamic
fundamentalism, class and revolution by the Socialist Workers Party 1999
ISBN 1-898877-181.

Buy the pmphlet from Internationale Socialisters Forlag.

Transcribed by Jrn Andersen for Marxisme Online, 24 november 2001.
Note: Proof reading could have been better!


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Islamic fundamentalism has emerged as the ideology that Western
politicians and media pundits most like to hate. The kind of abuse once
reserved for 'Communism' is now diredcted at the Islamic movements which
threaten to destabilise key areas of Western influence in the Middle East
and beyond. But the campaign against Islamism has found allies on the left
among those fearful that it threatens an irrationalist, even fascist,
backlash.

Chris Harman charts a careful course through the contradictions of
ISlamism, revealing its class roots and arguing that when the Islamists
are in opposition the socialist attitude should be 'with the state never,
with the Islamists sometimes'. He goes on to show in which circumstances
Islamism plays a reactionary role and in which circumstances the Islamic
challenge the establishment.

Chris Harman is the editor of Socialist Worker and a leading member of the
Socialist Workers Party.



Contents
1. Islamic fundamentalism, class and revolution
2. Islam, religion and ideology
3. The class base of Islamism
4. Radical Islam as a social movement
5. The contradictions of Islamism: Egypt
6. The contradictions of Islamism: Algeria
7. Splitting two ways
8. The Iranian experience
9. The contradictions of Islamism: Sudan
10. Conclusions
Notes



John Cox
Chapel Hill, NC

This week in history:
May 18, 1928 Big Bill Haywood dies, Moscow
May 19, 1890 Ho Chi Minh born
May 19, 1895 Jose Marti dies
May 19. 1895 Augusto Sandino born
May 19, 1925 Malcolm X born
May 20, 1924 Amilcar Cabral born
May 21, 1904 Fats Waller born
May 22, 1914 Sun Ra born
May 24, 1879 William Lloyd Garrison dies
May 25, 1803 Ralph Waldo Emerson born
May 25, 1926 Miles Davis born
May 27, 1525 Thomas Muentzer, radical reformer and leader of German
peasants' uprising, executed
May 29, 1830 Louise Michel, Paris Commune leader, born



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