Re: [Marxism] Imperialist feminism in Iraq

[<sdsocialist@xxxxxxx>]

Sharon Smith has dedicated some time to writing about this issue, at least in 
relation to the war on Afghanistan.  The article below is an example.

I'm confused, though, by Louis' comment about RAWA.  He said:

>>In the run-up to the war in Afghanistan, a segment of the left was 
>>championing RAWA, an Afghan feminist group that while never actually 
>>supporting the war, made appearances on CNN at the very moment the USA was 
>>being whipped into a war fever--not a very wise time and place for a group 
>>with a progressive agenda.>>

Not only did RAWA "never actually support the war", it actively opposed the war 
on Afghanistan, demonstrated clearly by issuing a statement about the war 
titled "Taliban should be overthrown by the uprising of Afghan nation" 
(http://rawa.fancymarketing.net/us-strikes.htm).

In fact, the liberal feminist organizations that did rally support behind the 
war, like the Feminist Majority Foundation, completely ignored RAWA's position. 
 I would argue that RAWA is an example of a solid anti-imperialist women's 
rights group that we should look to.

-Rebecca

***********

International Socialist Review Issue 35, May?June 2004

Women and Islam
By SHARON SMITH

Sharon Smith is author of "Engels and the Origin of Women?s Oppression" (ISR 2, 
Fall 1997). She is a columnist for Socialist Worker newspaper and the author of 
the forthcoming, Women and Socialism: Essays on Women?s Liberation, to be 
published by Haymarket Books.

Hijab ban: Racist hypocrisy

ON MARCH 3, the French Senate passed a law banning female students from wearing 
the hijab, the head covering worn by many Muslim women and girls, in public 
schools starting in September 2004. The new French law prohibits not just the 
hijab, but all "signs and dress that ostensibly denote the religious belonging 
of students." It also bans beards and bandanas that denote Islamic affiliation, 
the Jewish yarmulka, or skullcap, and "conspicuous" Christian crosses. 
Nevertheless, few in France, where the press has dubbed the ban "the law 
against the veil," believe the target is anything but the hijab.

The French ban has inspired lawmakers in Belgium and Germany to consider 
following suit. On April 1, the conservative state of Baden-Wurttemberg in 
Germany banned Muslim public school teachers from wearing headscarves. The 
anti-hijab trend has even extended to the United States, where a sixth-grade 
student in the Muskogee, Oklahoma public school district was suspended twice 
last year for wearing her hijab.2

France?s move to ban the hijab has generated heated controversy?dividing 
leftists, anti-racists, feminists, and even some Muslims. A founder of the 
French anti-racist organization SOS-Racisme resigned after it came out in 
support of the ban. Respected feminist Fadela Amara, president of Ni Putes Ni 
Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Downtrodden), an advocate group for North African 
women, supports the law.

Some feminists oppose the law on the grounds that it will strengthen Islamic 
fundamentalism. In December 2003, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, grand sheikh of 
al-Azhar University in Cairo, publicly declared that Muslims living in 
non-Muslim countries are obliged to obey that country?s laws, including a ban 
on wearing the hijab. But other high-ranking Islamic clerics strongly dispute 
this assertion, and argue that banning the hijab is a direct attack on Islam.3

Generally speaking, however, French progressives and feminists who support the 
law view it as a step forward for Muslim women?s rights. On December 5, 2003, 
for example, sixty prominent French women, including actors Isabelle Adjani and 
Emmanuelle Béart, published a petition calling for an outright ban on the 
hijab, as a "visible symbol of the submission of women."4

But whatever the rationale among progressives for supporting the hijab ban, it 
cannot be judged apart from its role in the rising tide of racism against 
Muslim populations throughout Europe, and indeed, around the world. In this 
campaign, as Middle East Report editorial committee member Paul Silverstein 
argues, "Law-and-order right-wingers, including [French Interior Minister 
Nicolas] Sarkozy, view the law as an important weapon in their ongoing "war on 
terror."5

French President Jacques Chirac?s stated motivation for the ban is draped in 
references to the French Republican secular tradition. "Secularism is not 
negotiable," he proclaimed when proposing the ban in December 2003. And the 
Stasi Report, the government commission study on which Chirac based the new 
ban, defined the public school as a privileged "closed universe" which 
emphasizes values of male-female equality and mutual respect. The Stasi Report 
recommended a total of twenty-six measures, some intended to promote cultural 
diversity?such as adding the Jewish Yom Kippur and Islamic Eid al-Adha in 
addition to Christian public holidays, and teaching Berber and Kurdish 
languages to address these ethnic minorities. But only the ban on "ostensibly" 
religious dress was incorporated into French law.6

There is something profoundly hypocritical in banning Islamic religious symbols 
in the name of secularism and gender equality while the French government 
continues to subsidize private education for the globally influential?and 
reactionary?Catholic Church, as well as Jewish religious institutions. Beneath 
French officials? talk of "laïcité" (separation of church and state), the 
status quo in French society is Christianity. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre 
Raffarin even described France as "the old land of Christianity" during the 
debate. The justice minister of one German state justified banning the hijab by 
stating that German children "have to learn the roots of Christian religion and 
European culture."7

It is just a short leap from the (stated and unstated) assumption of Christian 
religious and European cultural superiority to outright hostility to Islam. One 
German state designated the hijab "a symbol of fundamentalism and extremism." 
Former French Prime Minister Alain Juppé argued, "It?s not paranoid to say 
we?re faced with a rise of political and religious fanaticism." Jacques Peyrat, 
the mayor of Nice?a far-right stronghold?argued in a speech, "Mosques cannot be 
conceived of as existing within a secular Republic."8

Chirac?s hostility toward Muslims, France?s largest minority, was apparent when 
he argued on December 6, 2003, "Wearing a veil, whether we want it or not, is a 
sort of aggression that is difficult for us to accept." Bernard Stasi, head of 
Chirac?s commission, was even more forthright in defending the ban: "We must be 
lucid?there are in France some behaviors which cannot be tolerated. There are 
without any doubt forces in France which are seeking to destabilize the 
republic, and it is time for the republic to act."9

Chirac and Stasi are chasing after the voters of France?s second-largest 
political party, the far-right National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who forced 
the center-right Chirac into a runoff in the last presidential election. Le Pen 
argues that France?s five million Arab immigrants bring crime to the streets, 
and they should "assimilate" into French society or be driven out. In 2002, 
27.7 percent of voters from the Provence-Côte d?Azur-Alpes region?France?s 
third-wealthiest, and a voting base for the National Front?backed Le Pen?s 
"national preference" measures, including the enforced repatriation of 
immigrants.10

As Pierre Tévanian argued in Le Monde Diplomatique,

Young Muslim women are being used as scapegoats, a focus of attention to 
distract France from rampant social inequality and deprivation, to take minds 
off deregulation, declining job security, encroachments on civil liberty, 
racial discrimination and gender inequality.11

In an equally racist manner, the French government has also marketed the hijab 
ban as a strike against anti-Semitism?despite the fact that hate crimes against 
French Jews have historically been inflicted by forces of the far right. During 
the hijab debate, Education Minister Luc Ferry argued that the Middle East 
conflict "has entered our schools" and that France is facing an anti-Semitism 
"which is no longer of the extreme right, but of Islamic origin." In 
November?just weeks before proposing the hijab ban?Chirac announced a new 
government commission to fight anti-Semitism, which will target the residents 
of North African neighborhoods for education against anti-Semitism.12

In reality, Muslims have been the primary targets of hate crimes in France (and 
throughout Europe) since the 1960s. Yet France?s ministry of the interior does 
not even include a category for attacks directed against Muslims or North 
Africans, as it does with anti-Semitic attacks. Norman Madarasz summarized the 
targeted communities as follows: "In England, with Pakistanis, in Germany, with 
the Turkish, and in France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, with immigrants from the 
al-Maghreb North African region: Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians, Berbers, 
Cabyls, as well as Palestinians and sub-Saharan Muslims, especially from 
Mali."13

France?s National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) documented 
hate crimes committed against Muslims in 2002?but noted that these examples 
"fall well under the real number" of racist attacks committed against Muslims. 
Below is a list of examples from the CNCDH report, published in Le Monde on 
November 24, 2003:

While awaiting the 2003 statistics, the study lists several examples of serious 
violence committed in 2002: Molotov cocktails thrown at the mosques of 
Mericourt (in the Pas-de-Calais region) and Chalons (in the Marne region), on 
April 25 and 27, and on March 24 against the Ecaudin mosque (in the Rhône 
region); a letter bomb was sent to an association seated at the Perpignan 
mosque (in the Pyrénées-Orientales), on April 9; an Islamic religious sculpture 
was profaned in Lyon, on April 24; attempted torching of a place of worship in 
Rillieux-la-Pape (Rhône), on December 27; anonymous tracts distributed during 
the presidential campaign [held in April 2002 which had set far-right racist 
candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen against the incumbent Chirac]. As for 2003, three 
facts can be pointed to: profaned tombs in the Haut-Rhin region in July, 
torching of a place of worship at Nancy, and profanation of an Islamic square 
in the Meuse region in March.14

In this context, France?s ban on Islamic headscarves can only further inflame 
anti-Muslim racism. No law reeking of such racist hypocrisy is intended to 
advance the cause of women?s equality.

Imperialism does not "liberate" women

Wittingly or not, feminists who support measures such as the hijab ban are 
supporting campaigns designed to exploit the Western symbol of Islamic women?s 
oppression?the veil?to claim Western imperialism?s cultural superiority, and 
bolster its domestic and global aims, all under the guise of fighting "Islamic 
terrorism."

Feminist support for Chirac?s hijab ban in France has a more exaggerated, and 
therefore more transparent, parallel in the U.S. during the 2001 Afghan war. 
The Bush administration gained the support of mainstream U.S. feminists for the 
war on Afghanistan, who echoed his arguments that the war would "free" Afghan 
women from the tyranny of Taliban rule.

First Lady Laura Bush declared, "The fight against terrorism is also a fight 
for the rights and dignity of women." Feminist Majority president Eleanor Smeal 
embraced this claim, adding to the general post?September 11 hysteria by 
putting forward her own version of the "domino theory":

We argued that the Talibanization of society would not stop in Afghanistan. We 
could see it moving into Pakistan, into Algiers and all through the Middle East 
to Turkey. We argued that it would lead to regional instability, and that this 
had much larger world ramifications than just what is happening to women 
there?. The link between the liberation of Afghan women and girls from the 
terrorist Taliban militia and preservation of democracy and freedom in America 
and worldwide has never been clearer.15

The Feminist Majority even circulated a petition thanking the Bush 
administration for its commitment to restoring the rights of women in 
Afghanistan. And feminists applauded Secretary of State Colin Powell when he 
proclaimed in November 2001, "The rights of women in Afghanistan will not be 
negotiable," as television cameras zoomed in to show smiling Afghan women 
lifting their veils.16

More than two years after the war, U.S. media outlets have not returned to 
report on the fate of women in post?Taliban Afghanistan. If they did, they 
would find that the majority of Afghan women, even in Kabul, continue to wear 
the burqa?head-to-toe Islamic covering. As Mariam Rawi of the Revolutionary 
Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) argues, "the U.S. has replaced one 
misogynist fundamentalist regime with another."17

The Taliban?s Department of Vice and Virtue has been resurrected under the name 
of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Warlords responsible for a reign of 
terror between 1992 and 1996, including the mass rape and murder of women, 
remain in power throughout the countryside, enriching themselves through opium 
production. President Hamid Karzai appointed fundamentalist Fazl Hadi Shinwari 
as the chief justice of the Supreme Court. "Shinwari has packed the nine-member 
Supreme Court with 137 sympathetic mullahs and called for Taliban-style 
punishments to implement Shari?a law."18

After visiting Afghanistan, filmmaker Meena Nanji reported,

The litany of laws passed this year governing women?s conduct reads like a page 
out of the Taliban handbook. They include the banning of co-education classes, 
restrictions on women?s ability to travel, the banning of women singing in 
public. The biggest blow yet to women?s rights was dealt in November, when a 
1970?s law prohibiting married women from attending high school classes was 
upheld. This is a major step backwards for women and girls, as many under-age 
girls are forced into marriage and now have no hope of improving their lives.19

This outcome should have been easy to predict. But in 2001, U.S. feminists 
never challenged the ridiculous notion that a right-wing Republican like Bush 
was taking a genuine interest in advancing women?s rights. His presidency 
already had a track record. Two days after his inauguration in January 2001, 
Bush reinstated a Reagan era global "gag" rule, denying U.S. funding to any 
international family planning organization that mentions the option of abortion 
to pregnant patients during counseling, effectively denying the right to choose 
to millions of poor women around the world faced with unplanned pregnancies. 
According to the World Health Organization, 78,000 women around the world die 
from unsafe abortions every year.20

Nevertheless, feminist endorsement for the war on Afghanistan helped the Bush 
administration to promote the fiction that the war aimed to "liberate" Afghan 
women. This illusion helped Bush gain support among a wide swathe of liberals 
and even antiwar activists in the U.S.?for the war that launched the "war 
without end" and led directly to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Furthermore, feminists such as Smeal, a regular guest on television news 
programs throughout the war, helped ratchet up anti-Muslim racism on the war?s 
other front: the war at home. While the USA PATRIOT Act sailed through Congress 
after September 11, thousands of Muslims were rounded up and "detained 
indefinitely" without charges or the right to legal representation in the name 
of "fighting terrorism." In a typical rant, Smeal stated, "We have become the 
bad guys; they are blaming all of their economic ruin on the West. They think 
we don?t like Muslims, so instead, they become more fundamentalist: ?We?ll show 
you, we?ll be more Muslim.?"21

European "cultural superiority" as justification for colonialism

France?s ban on the hijab is not a new phenomenon, resulting from circumstances 
peculiar to "modern" society. The French government?s current campaign against 
the hijab as a means to denigrate Islamic culture has its origins in colonial 
history. Imperialists and their apologists have claimed European cultural 
superiority as a justification for dominating Muslim societies since 
colonialism began. The reference points of Egypt?s British colonizers a century 
ago, for example, bear a striking resemblance to those of U.S. and European 
imperialists today.

During the British occupation of Egypt, British Consul General Lord Cromer 
declared that Egyptians should "be persuaded or forced into imbibing the true 
spirit of Western civilization." Cromer targeted, "first and foremost," Islam?s 
"degradation of women," symbolized by the veil, as "the fatal obstacle" to 
Egyptians? "attainment of that elevation of thought and character which should 
accompany the introduction of Western civilization."22

Cromer needed look no further than the corseted and repressed women of 
Victorian England for examples of the "degradation of women." Yet, as Egyptian 
feminist Leila Ahmed notes,

This champion of the unveiling of women was, in England, the founding member 
and sometime president of the Men?s League for Opposing Women?s Suffrage. 
Feminism on the home front and feminism directed against white men was to be 
resisted and suppressed; but taken abroad and directed against the culture of 
colonized peoples, it could be promoted in ways that admirably served the 
project of the dominance of the white man.23

Neither could Cromer?s colonial policies in Egypt, which were aimed at 
developing the country?s economy no further than as a supplier of raw materials 
for factories based in England, be described as advancing women?s rights. 
Because he believed that government-subsidized education could foster 
nationalism, Cromer instituted school tuition fees, even though education was 
previously provided at government expense. The result: in 1881, the year before 
the British occupation began, 70 percent of Egyptian students received 
government assistance for tuition and other expenses. Ten years later, 73 
percent of students received nothing. This severely curtailed educational 
opportunities for girls as well as boys.24

British occupation denied women opportunities for education on another front. 
Before British rule, Egyptian women had been offered equal medical training 
with men at the School for Hakimas. But the British limited women?s training to 
midwifery. Once again, Cromer claimed cultural superiority: "I am aware that in 
exceptional cases women like to be treated by female doctors, but I conceive 
that throughout the civilized world, attendance by medical men is still the 
rule."25

Nevertheless, then?as now?imperialists were able to gain endorsements for their 
aims, under the guise of advancing women?s rights. Ahmed argues:

Whether in the hands of patriarchal men or feminists, the ideas of Western 
feminism functioned to morally justify the attack on native societies and to 
support the notion of the comprehensive superiority of Europe. Evidently, then, 
whatever the disagreements of feminism with white male domination within 
Western societies, outside their borders feminism turned from being the critic 
of the system of white male dominance to being its docile servant.26

Hostility to Islamic culture also found supporters inside the colonized 
countries, primarily among the rising upper- and upper-middle classes who 
benefited economically during colonialism. In 1899, The Liberation of Women 
appeared in Egypt, calling for banning the veil. Its author, Qassim Amin, a 
French-educated lawyer, was far less in favor of women?s rights than the book?s 
title suggests. Amin made clear he was "not among those who demand equality in 
education," instead recommending only primary education as necessary for women 
to fulfill their duties as wives and mothers. He based arguments on the need 
for assimilation with European culture, and described Egyptians as "lazy and 
always fleeing work."27

This phenomenon was by no means restricted to Egypt under colonial rule. During 
the twentieth century, other countries in the Muslim world imposed 
"Europeanization" on their own populations?banning aspects of Islamic culture 
and dress. In 1925, Kamal Ataturk, ruler of post-Ottoman Turkey, imposed the 
Hat Law, banning the traditional fez cap for men, under the penalty of death. 
In 1928, Reza Khan, Iran?s shah, passed a law mandating European attire for men 
after seizing power. In 1936, he banned the hijab for Iranian women.28

Islam and resistance to imperialism

But if much of the upper class benefited from imperialism and aimed to emulate 
European culture, less prosperous sections of society rebelled?by defending 
Islam. The result was a strengthening of Islam as an expression of cultural 
identity, in opposition to the colonizers. Muslim organizations embraced and 
defended Islamic religious customs as a counterweight to imperialism. The 
Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, sought a return to a purified 
form of Islam?and a rejection of British domination. Its early members 
expressed that they were "weary of this life of humiliation and domination?. We 
see that the Arabs and Muslims have no status?and no dignity?. They are not 
more than mere hirelings belonging to foreigners."29

The growth of Islam, however, was just one form of resistance to colonialism 
and imperialism. By mid-century, the impact of Islamic movements was supplanted 
by the growing influence of Pan-Arabism, as secular nationalist?including 
communist?parties grew in size, and Pan-Arab leaders asserted and finally won 
independence, breaking the hold of colonialism. Pan-Arabism grew throughout the 
region after Abdel Nasser seized power in Egypt in 1952. To consolidate his own 
power, however, Nasser dissolved and banned all political parties in Egypt in 
1953, brutally suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood.30

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union provided funding and support to a variety 
of anti-colonial movements and nationalist regimes around the world, including 
Nasser?s. This support did not reflect a genuine political commitment to 
national self-determination, but rather resulted from the Cold War rivalry 
between the U.S. and USSR?an imperialist competition to dominate whole regions 
of the world. Russia?s hypocrisy became most obvious after its 1979 invasion 
and decade-long occupation of Afghanistan.

But the resurgence of Islam in recent decades also coincided with the relative 
decline in the strength and influence of Pan-Arab nationalism. Pan-Arabism 
declined for a number of reasons?among them, its failure to confront either 
class inequality within Arab societies or to pose a fundamental challenge to 
imperialism itself. During the 1970s?decades after winning 
independence?entrenched and corrupted local ruling classes, from Pahlavi?s Iran 
to Sadat?s Egypt, amassed personal fortunes by continuing to collaborate with 
imperialist powers?while continuing to emulate European cultural norms.

It is worth noting that the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi 
regime was preceded by a mass strike wave that raised a broad range of 
working-class and anti-imperialist demands?women?s rights among them. A 
prolonged strike by oil workers in October 1978, for example, listed as one of 
its eleven demands "an end to discrimination against women staff employees and 
workers."31 The subsequent "Islamic Revolution" involved the consolidation of 
Ayatollah Khomeini?s repressive regime?and the dismantling of Iranian workers? 
organizations coupled with the imposition of reactionary religious law from 
above. The Iranian revolution was, therefore, far from a fanatical religious 
uprising.32

The fall of Stalinist rule in the USSR and Eastern Europe at the beginning of 
the 1990s dealt an enormous blow to nationalist movements allied with the 
Soviet Union, and discredited Stalinism. The fall of the Soviet Union put an 
end to the Cold War?but the collapse of the USSR allowed the subsequent 
strengthening of U.S. imperialism, beginning with the 1991 Gulf War. The 
current Bush administration?s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention 
the Bush Doctrine?s assertion of "preemptive war" were not a break from, but an 
acceleration of, a process that was well under way in the early 1990s, years 
before September 11.33

Political forms of Islam can gain in strength and influence?as an expression of 
opposition to imperialism?in the absence of a strong secular alternative. The 
decline of Pan-Arabism, coupled with a strengthening of U.S. imperialism in the 
1990s, produced a widening identification with Islam as an ideological 
counterweight to U.S. imperialism throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and has 
grown further since the U.S. launched the "war on terrorism" following 
September 11.

Moreover, the U.S. and its staunchest Middle East ally, Israel, played a key 
role in building up the very "Islamic extremists" that their war on terrorism 
targets today. In the 1980s, Israel provided funding that helped to launch the 
Islamic-based Palestinian opposition movement, Hamas, in the hope of weakening 
the extensive influence of the secular-nationalist Palestine Liberation 
Organization (PLO) "One can be pretty sure that this strategy received strong 
encouragement from Washington, which has also seen the advantage of financing 
and supporting the most vicious and narrow-minded Islamic terrorists on account 
of their antinationalist and antisocialist credentials," wrote New York Press 
columnist George Szamuely.34

The U.S. provided $3 million for the buildup of an Islamic fighting force, 
known as the Mujahideen, to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 
1980s. As journalist Ken Silverstein noted, "few within the government had any 
illusions about the forces that the United States was backing. The Mujahideen 
fighters espoused a radical brand of Islam?some commanders were known to have 
thrown acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil?and committed 
horrific human rights violations in their war against the Red Army."35

As BBC foreign correspondent Matt Frei summarized,

The U.S. and its allies plied this country with Stinger missiles and cash to 
fuel the Mujahideen?s opposition against Soviet occupation. They encouraged the 
growth of Islamic fundamentalism to frighten Moscow and of drugs to get Soviet 
soldiers hooked. The CIA even helped "Arab Afghans" like Osama bin Laden, now 
"America?s most wanted," to fight here.36

In the context of imperialism?and the racism that justifies imperialist 
domination?it is wrong to view the hijab, or other aspects of Islamic culture, 
only as symbols of women?s oppression. Today, the hijab is worn voluntarily by 
millions of Muslim women around the world as a symbol of cultural pride, often 
in overt opposition to Western imperialism. After Chirac announced the ban on 
headscarves, tens of thousands of women wearing the hijab marched in protest 
across France, chanting slogans such as, "Not our fathers nor our husbands, we 
chose the headscarf." In London, thousands of young women wearing hijabs also 
marched, chanting against "racist laws." Their voices should not be ignored.37

Veiled or unveiled, women?s oppression is universal

There is no contradiction between supporting Muslim women protesting the ban on 
headscarves in France and championing Afghan women in their fight against laws 
mandating the burqa. Women should have the right to dress as they choose 
wherever they live, without government interference. This should be a basic 
human right.

Moreover, feminists who allowed the Bush administration to equate the lifting 
of the Islamic veil with liberation, and those who now argue that the France?s 
hijab ban is a step toward women?s equality, perform a disservice to the fight 
for genuine women?s liberation, East and West. Journalist Natasha Walter 
recently expressed the common view among Western feminists: "Many women in the 
west find the headscarf deeply problematic. One of the reasons we find it so 
hateful is because the whole trajectory of feminism in the west has been tied 
up with the freedom to uncover ourselves."38

But the "freedom to uncover" can bring women no closer to genuine equality in a 
sexist society. In societies the world over, "uncovering" merely leads to 
greater sexual objectification. In the U.S., eating disorders have reached 
epidemic proportions among young women, cosmetic surgery is one of the 
fastest-growing branches of modern medicine, and Hooters is a national 
restaurant chain. Jiggle movies like "Charlie?s Angels" and "Tomb Raider" offer 
some of the best opportunities for career advancement for female actresses in 
Hollywood. And cartoon shows such as "Stripperella"?starring Erotica Jones, "a 
stripper by night and a superhero by later night"?target an ever-younger 
audience. Soon to join the primetime lineup is "Hef?s Superbunnies," a cartoon 
about Playboy Playmates who fight evil.39

Turkish society illustrates why "secularism" and "Westernization" do not 
automatically lead to women?s liberation. Although Turkey?s population is 
overwhelmingly Muslim, its government bans the hijab for women in educational 
institutions and government offices. But Turkey has imported Western sexist 
culture as well, including an endless barrage of demeaning sexist imagery. As 
political economist Behzad Yaghmaian described on a recent visit to Turkey, 
"Pictures of half-naked women were exhibited on billboards and in daily 
newspapers."

Yaghmaian described a woman student from Istanbul University, who said, "Hijab 
sends an important message that a person does not have to see my body to have a 
conversation with me."40 This sentiment is valid and should not be dismissed by 
feminists. As a young Egyptian woman told reporters some years ago, she prefers 
the hijab because, "Many men treat women as objects, look at their beauty; the 
Islamic dress allows a woman to be looked upon as a human being and not an 
object."41

Nor is there truth to the common claim that Islam is more reactionary, more 
violent, or more oppressive to women than Christianity. Indeed, this claim is 
absurd, considering the 200-year history of the Christian Crusades wreaking 
death and destruction against Muslims and Jews. Pope Urban II launched the 
first crusade in a speech in 1095, calling on Christians to wage a "holy war" 
against Islamic "infidels."42

In more recent history, the practice of burning of thousands of "witches" at 
the stake was practiced among the most self-righteous Christians in Europe, and 
in the U.S., as recently as four centuries ago. And in current history, 
Christian fundamentalists have used the excuse of September 11 to incite hatred 
and violence against Muslims. Shortly after September 11, evangelist Franklin 
Graham, now in charge of his father?s organization, the Billy Graham 
Evangelistic Association, declared: "The God of Islam is not the same God. He?s 
not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It?s a different 
God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion." George W. Bush 
himself frequently invokes his Christian "Almighty" as justification for the 
occupation of Iraq.43

It is impossible to generalize about the beliefs of Islam any more than about 
the beliefs of Christianity or Judaism, since there are as many different 
interpretations of the Koran as there are competing interpretations of Biblical 
scripture.

Religion, class society, and women?s oppression

It is possible, however, to document that in neither form nor substance is 
women?s oppression unique to Islam. As Ahmed notes in her carefully-researched 
book, Women and Gender in Islam, "[A] fierce misogyny was a distinct ingredient 
of Mediterranean and eventually Christian thought in the centuries immediately 
preceding the rise of Islam," In addition, "The veil was apparently in use in 
Sasanian society, and segregation of the sexes and use of the veil were heavily 
in evidence in the Christian Middle East and Mediterranean regions at the time 
of the rise of Islam" in the seventh century A.D.44 Egyptian feminist Nawal el 
Saadawi has argued, "the most restrictive elements towards women can be found 
first in Judaism in the Old Testament, then in Christianity, and then in the 
Quran." Furthermore, el Saadawi argued, the "veiling of women isn?t a 
specifically Islamic practice but an ancient cultural heritage with analogies 
in sister religions."45

Religions did not create oppressive human relationships in class society, but 
have functioned historically to enforce ideology that strengthens 
already-existing inequalities within the social order.

Beliefs in supernatural forces, including male and female gods, preceded the 
rise of religion?as an attempt to comprehend forces of nature and their 
relation to human society. But organized religion could only have risen with 
the existence of settled communities, just as religious scriptures required the 
technology of writing. Organized religion rose hand in hand with the rise of 
class society, and its role evolved in tandem with the development of 
exploitation as the dominant relation of production.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued that the shift away from the communal 
life of earlier hunter-gatherer societies and toward settled agriculture gave 
way to the rise of class society. Technological developments such as the plow 
and the domestication of cattle sharply increased the productivity of 
agriculture?for those owning land, plows, and cattle. For the first time in 
human history, it was possible for some people to accumulate wealth, creating a 
division between rich and poor.

It is important to understand that these changes did not take place overnight, 
or in identical succession across all societies. Nevertheless, large swathes of 
human society were transformed in similar ways over a period of thousands of 
years, with the rise of the first class societies some 6,000 years ago (first 
in Mesopotamia, followed a few hundred years later by Egypt, Iran, the Indus 
Valley, and China).46

Nor did the rise of class society take place without struggle and extreme 
brutality. Slavery was common, and the peasantry, robbed of their land and 
livelihood was reduced to destitution. Early Christianity?before it acquired a 
bureaucracy of its own?provided a voice for the downtrodden against the 
appalling division between rich and poor in the Roman Empire. The Christian 
religion developed during the decline of the Roman Empire, encompassing today?s 
Italy and Spain, part of France, part of Turkey, Palestine, and other 
territories. The Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, in a 1905 pamphlet, 
"Socialism and the Churches," documented the outrage at class injustice shared 
by many early Christians, including Jesus Christ. Saint Basil, writing in the 
fourth century A.D., argued:

Wretches, how will you justify yourselves before the Heavenly Judge? You say to 
me, "What is our fault, when we keep what belongs to us?" I ask you, "How did 
you get that which you called your property? How do the possessors become rich, 
if not by taking possession of things belong to all? If everyone took only what 
he strictly needed leaving the rest to others, there would be neither rich nor 
poor."47

But as the Church itself developed as an institution, becoming incorporated as 
the state religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, its interests 
became intertwined with those of the nobility. From the sixth century on, the 
Church began collecting taxes in its own right. "Thus," wrote Luxemburg,

the poor people not only lost the help and support of the Church, but they saw 
the priests ally themselves with their other exploiters: princes, nobles, 
moneylenders. In the Middle Ages, while the working people sank into poverty 
through serfdom, the Church grew richer and richer.48

Class society drastically lowered the status of women. For property owners, 
agricultural production increased the demand for labor?the greater the number 
of field workers, the higher the surplus. Thus, unlike hunter-gatherer 
societies, which sought to limit the number of offspring, agricultural 
societies sought to maximize women?s reproductive potential, so the family 
would have more children to help out in the fields.

In communal hunter-gatherer societies, women had been able to play a key role 
in production and public life, but agricultural production shifted away from 
the household. The family no longer served anything but a reproductive 
function. Women became trapped within their individual families, as the 
reproducers of society?cut off from production for the first time. Therefore, 
at the same time that men were playing an increasingly exclusive role in 
production, women were required to play a much more central role in 
reproduction.

These changes brought about by class society were wholly degrading to women. As 
Engels noted in the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, the 
original meaning of "family" (familia) "was invented by the Romans to denote a 
new social organism whose head ruled over wife and children and a number of 
slaves, and was invested under Roman paternal power with rights of life and 
death over them all."

Engels continued:

The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to 
servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the 
production of children?. In order to make certain of the wife?s fidelity and 
therefore the paternity of his children, she is delivered over unconditionally 
into the power of the husband; if he kills her, he is only exercising his 
rights.49

Engels did not exaggerate the degree of misogyny that accompanied this process. 
Assyrian (pre-Islamic) law in Mesopotamia allowed men to "pull out the hair of 
his wife, mutilate (or) twist her ears" in punishment. The Biblical writings of 
Augustine conclude of womankind, "I fail to see what use woman can be to man?if 
one excludes the function of bearing children."50 By the Middle Ages, the 
Catholic Church codified into canon law the right of husbands to beat their 
wives.

Many of these changes in custom took place first among the property-owning 
families. But eventually, the family became the unit of reproduction in society 
as a whole. The veil, for example, was initially proscribed only for 
upper-class women (in Assyria, slaves were forbidden to veil51), functioning as 
a class delineator among women, but spread later as a common form of dress for 
all women.

As Ahmed describes, Islam, which did not emerge until these societal changes 
were well under way, inherited some religious customs from neighboring?and 
conquered?societies. Like Judaism and Christianity before it, Islam offered a 
divine sanction to women?s extreme oppression in the new social order, as Ahmed 
describes:

Islam placed relations between the sexes on a new footing. Implicit in this new 
order was the male right to control women and to interdict their interactions 
with other men. Thus the ground was prepared for the closures that would 
follow: women?s exclusion from social activities in which they might have 
contact with men other than those with rights to their sexuality; their 
physical seclusion, soon to become the norm; and the institution of internal 
mechanisms for control, such as instilling the notion of submission as a 
woman?s duty. The ground was thus prepared, in other words, for the passing of 
a society in which women were active participants in the affairs of their 
community and for women?s place in Arabian society to become circumscribed in 
the way that it already was for their sisters in the rest of the Mediterranean 
Middle East.52

Today, the Western media depict Islamic societies such as Iran or Afghanistan 
under the Taliban as a fanatical merging of religious institutions with 
nation-states that is peculiar to Islam. But the history of Christianity, and 
the Catholic Church in particular, is one in which a similar merger occurred?in 
which the Church?s immense wealth and power over European societies was broken 
only by bourgeois revolution in the eighteenth century.

The fact that Catholic morality, such as celibacy for priests?mandated in the 
eleventh century so the Church could inherit their property?stems mainly from 
the Middle Ages, yet continues to influence popular discourse in the 
twenty-first century is a testament to the Church?s lasting influence in modern 
society. In colonial America, husbands were allowed to beat their wives?but not 
on Sundays or after 8:00 p.m., to avoid disturbing the peace. Not until 1911 
did all U.S. states (except Mississippi) outlaw wife beating. Until 1973, 
English law permitted husbands to restrain their wives if they attempted to 
leave. Fathers still "give away" their daughters to their new husbands in 
Christian marriage, and in some U.S. states it is still legal for husbands to 
rape their wives.53

Both Christianity and Islam developed as a product of class society, and their 
ideologies flourished as a justification for the forms of class exploitation 
and women?s oppression specific to the Middle Ages. But these ideologies live 
on in various forms in modern class society?and will retain their relevance as 
long as class exploitation and women?s oppression continue to exist.

Marxism and religion

But religious ideology imposed from above would be meaningless without a mass 
of worshippers from below. As Karl Marx wrote in 1844, "Religious suffering is, 
at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest 
against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the 
heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the 
opium of the people."54

Religion acts as an ideological justification for the inequalities produced by 
class society, but is also a source of hope and comfort to many of those who 
are the most exploited and oppressed within class society. This theoretical 
understanding guided the practice of the Bolshevik Party, the revolutionary 
Marxists who eventually led the Russian working class to power in 1917.

The Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin, was clear on both of these aspects of 
religion. "Marxism has always regarded all modern religions and churches, and 
each and every religious organization, as instruments of bourgeois reaction 
that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the working class."55 But he 
also argued, echoing Marx, "Those who toil and live in want all their lives are 
taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to 
take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward."56

For this reason, he argued in 1909,

No educational book can eradicate religion from the minds of masses who are 
crushed by capitalist hard labor, and who are at the mercy of the blind 
destructive forces of capitalism, until those masses themselves learn to fight 
this root of religion, fight the rule of capital in all its forms, in a united, 
organized, planned and conscious way.57

The Bolsheviks were neither for outlawing religion nor condemning those who 
practiced religion, but rather regarded religion to be a purely "personal 
matter." As such, the party stood for the complete separation of church and 
state. Lenin wrote,

Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have 
no connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to 
profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an 
atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on 
account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare 
mention of a citizen?s religion in official documents should unquestionably be 
eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state 
allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies.58

As Lenin notes, Marxism is based upon an understanding of historical 
materialism?and is therefore atheist. Nevertheless, the Bolshevik Party did not 
require atheism of its members, seeking instead to win those with religious 
beliefs over to the struggle to eliminate class society?the source and 
sustaining force of religion. Lenin argued, "We must not only admit workers who 
preserve their belief in God into the Social-Democratic Party, but must 
deliberately set out to recruit them; we are absolutely opposed to giving the 
slightest offense to their religious convictions, but we recruit them in order 
to educate them in the spirit of our program."59

In 1909, Lenin articulated a vision of post-revolutionary society entirely 
consistent with this patient approach:

The revolutionary proletariat will succeed in making religion a really private 
affair, so far as the state is concerned. And in this political system, 
cleansed of medieval mildew, the proletariat will wage a broad and open 
struggle for the elimination of economic slavery, the true source of the 
religious humbugging of mankind.60

This materialist approach to religion instructed Bolshevik practice in the 
years immediately following the 1917 revolution, and should not be confused 
with the sharp break with the revolutionary Marxist tradition?and the extreme 
authoritarianism?that characterized the Stalinist counter-revolution a decade 
later.

The Russian Revolution

The conditions facing Russia?s revolutionary government in 1917 were far from 
ideal for building a socialist society. Its factories were among the largest in 
the world, but as a whole the country remained economically backward. Its 
population was still some 80 percent peasantry spread across vast rural areas. 
Furthermore, its economy had been devastated by the First World War, and was 
soon to be further devastated by civil war, when fourteen counter-revolutionary 
armies backed by the Western powers invaded Russia in 1918, with the aim of 
overthrowing the young workers? state. For the next three years, the Bolsheviks 
were forced to use most of the country?s deteriorating resources toward 
fighting a civil war, not building a socialist society.

And Tsarist Russia was an imperialist power in its own right. In 1917, just 43 
percent of the Russian empire?s population was Russian?the majority was made up 
of colonized peoples living in surrounding nations. If most of Russia itself 
was economically?and therefore culturally?backward, Russian imperialism had 
ensured that the vast Muslim regions of Central Asia were yet more so. As the 
Russian revolutionary Trotsky described, "Hierarchically organized 
exploitation, combining the barbarity of capitalism with the barbarity of 
patriarchal life, successfully held down the Asiatic peoples in extreme 
national abasement."61

>From 1903, the Bolshevik platform incorporated the principle of the "right of 
>self-determination for all nations included within the bounds of a state."62 
>Lenin emphasized at all times that the "self-determination of nations today 
>hinges on the conduct of socialists in the oppressor nations. A socialist of 
>any of the oppressor nations?who does not recognize and does not struggle for 
>the right of oppressed nations to self-determination (i.e., the right to 
>secession) is in reality a chauvinist, not a socialist." And on November 2, 
>1917, the Russian revolutionary government, as one of its first acts, decreed 
>the right of Russia?s oppressed nations to self-determination up to secession 
>and the formation of an independent state.63

Ending women?s oppression was also central to the Bolshevik project. Like Marx 
and Engels before them, the Bolshevik leadership understood that women?s role 
within the family, is the primary source of women?s oppression. Therefore, 
removing household burdens from women was of the utmost priority for the 
Russian revolutionary government. Lenin argued in 1919,

The real emancipation of women, real communism, will begin only where and when 
an all-out struggle begins (led by the proletariat wielding state power) 
against this petty housekeeping, or rather when it its wholesale transformation 
into a large-scale socialist economy begins?. Public catering establishments, 
nurseries, kindergartens?here we have examples of these shoots, here we have 
the simple, everyday means, involving nothing pompous, grandiloquent, or 
ceremonial, which can really emancipate women, really lessen and abolish their 
inequality with men as regards their role in social production and public 
life.64

But again, while one-third of Petrograd?s factory workers were women in 1917, 
the vast majority of women lived far from cities, thoroughly oppressed and 
isolated in peasant communities heavily influenced by doctrines of Christianity 
in Russia, and in some cases pre-feudal communities dominated by Islam in the 
oppressed nations of Central Asia.65

As a general rule, the Bolsheviks approached the issue of religion as an 
ideology, in the revolutionary Marxist tradition outlined above. The 
revolutionary government did not seek to outlaw Christianity, Islam, Judaism, 
or any other religion. If religion is a product of the inequalities of class 
society, then ultimately its function should fade away in the absence of 
inequality, in a classless society. The point was not to persecute religious 
worshippers, but, in the first instance, to enact a firm separation between 
religious doctrine and civil law.

The revolutionary government enacted legislation establishing full social and 
political equality for women: the right to vote and to hold public office, the 
right to divorce at the request of either partner, the principle of equal pay 
for equal work, paid maternity leave for four months before and after 
childbirth, and childcare at government expense. Abortion?viewed only as a 
health matter?was made legal in 1920, and women won the right to obtain free 
abortions in state hospitals. Only those who performed abortions for profit 
were considered criminals. In addition, the revolution repealed all laws 
criminalizing homosexuality and other laws regulating sexuality.66

But legal equality for oppressed groups was not enough. The Bolshevik 
leadership, Lenin in particular, forcefully argued that revolutionaries had a 
duty to struggle against sexist attitudes that continued to oppress women and 
also against the Russian colonial chauvinist prejudices against oppressed 
nationalities. German socialist Clara Zetkin recalled lengthy discussions with 
Lenin in 1920, where he argued,

Very few husbands, not even the proletarians, think of how much they could 
lighten the burdens and worries of their wives, or relive them entirely, if 
they lent a hand in this "women?s work".? Our Communist work among the masses 
of women, and our political work in general, involves considerable educational 
work among the men. We must root out the old slave-owner?s point of view, both 
in the party and among the masses. That is one of our political tasks.67

Lenin was equally adamant in combating "Great Russian" chauvinism, as in this 
polemic against Joseph Stalin over the rights of the oppressed republic of 
Georgia in 1922:

Internationalism on the part of oppressors or "great" nations, as they are 
called (though they are great only in their violence, only great as bullies), 
must consist not only in the observance of the formal equality of nations but 
even in an inequality of the oppressor nation, the great nation, that must make 
up for the inequality which obtains in actual practice.? What is needed to 
ensure this? Not merely formal equality. In one way or another, by one?s 
attitude or by concessions, it is necessary to compensate the non-Russian for 
the lack of trust, for the suspicion and the insults to which the government of 
the "dominant" nation subjected them in the past.68

This principled stance on national liberation should not be misconstrued as an 
endorsement of any religious ideology. Just as Lenin argued before the 
revolution, the state should approach religion as a "private matter," but the 
revolutionary party, based upon historical materialism, is atheist. The 
Bolsheviks were adamant that revolutionaries should make no concessions to the 
backward ideologies of any religion. The Comintern, the international movement 
of revolutionary parties set up by the Bolsheviks in 1919, adopted the 
following statement as part of its "Theses on the National and Colonial 
Question" in 1922: "An unconditional struggle must be carried out against the 
reactionary and medieval influence of the clergy, the Christian missions and 
similar elements." Another statement read: "A struggle is necessary against 
Panislamism, the Panasiatic movement and similar currents which try to tie the 
liberation struggle against European and American imperialism to the 
strengthening of the power of Turkish and Japanese imperialism, the nobility, 
the big landlords, the clergy, etc."69

Islam, national liberation, and women in revolutionary Russia

The need to rectify the colonial injustices of Tsarist Russia came into 
conflict with the goal of championing women?s liberation, however, precisely on 
the issue of Islam. In many respects, the Bolshevik approach to Islam was the 
same as toward the Russian Orthodox Church, because women themselves have to be 
the agents in their own liberation rather than imposing liberation from above. 
But whereas Christianity was the religion favored in Russia, the oppressor 
nation, Islam was the religion of many of those oppressed by Tsarist Russia.

Russian imperialism had not merely prevented entire populations from advancing 
economically and politically, but suppressed their rights to speak their own 
languages or practice their own religions and cultures. As Trotsky described, 
"The peoples and tribes along the Volga, in the northern Caucasus, in Central 
Asia?the struggle here was about matters like having their own alphabet, their 
own teachers?even at times their own priests."

Russian colonialism, like its European counterparts, was openly racist toward 
Muslims and hostile to Islamic culture. But Islam was, in turn, oppressive to 
women. By the end of 1922, seven of the USSR?s eight autonomous republics were 
populated mainly by Muslims.70 If autonomy were to be meaningful, Russian laws 
granting women equality could not be imposed from above. Public opinion had to 
be won over from below, through patient argument.

In 1919, the Bolsheviks created a party women?s bureau, The Zhenotdel, under 
the direction of Inessa Armand, and, after her death in 1920, by Alexandra 
Kollontai. The Zhenotdel?whose motto, coined by Kollontai, came to be 
"agitation by deed"?was responsible for organizing communal kitchens, 
nurseries, and laundries that could begin to free working and peasant women of 
the burdens of housework. Developing an idea of Armand?s, Zhenotdel agitators 
organized "delegates? assemblies," in which women were elected from factories 
and villages to work in apprenticeships running factories or hospitals, to 
serve in the soviets or unions, or even to function as administrators or 
judges.71

In the Zhenotdel?s second year, 853 conferences of working and peasant women 
were held throughout Russia. By the mid-1920s, over 500,000 women had attended 
as conference delegates.72 In the revolution?s early years, the Zhenotdel took 
up a variety of campaigns, from support for the Red Army in the civil war to 
the promotion of education and literacy for women, with the aim of involving 
ever larger numbers of women.

Islamic customs, of course, varied from region to region. For example, in the 
regions that today are called Uzbekistan and Tajikistan?where the economies 
were based on settled agriculture?women were veiled and secluded within the 
home and prohibited from speaking to men other than relatives. But women in 
Turkmenistan?and other nomadic societies of Central Asia?were neither secluded 
nor veiled.73

Lacking local Bolsheviks to begin working among Muslim women, teams of Russian 
Zhenotdel organizers quietly began to meet with Muslim women to discuss women?s 
rights and socialism, make crafts and offer literacy instruction. When 
necessary, Zhenotdel organizers wore veils to avoid attracting attention 
because they frequently encountered hostility throughout Central Asia. On 
occasion, Zhenotdel workers and Muslim women members were attacked or killed by 
men hostile to changing women?s status. (It should be noted, however, that a 
similar degree of hostility also existed in remote Christian areas, such as 
Ukraine.) In some Central Asian localities, however, the Zhenotdel was able to 
build up local organizations of Muslim women.74

But there were enormous obstacles to overcome before the ground could be 
prepared socially and economically for genuine reform. Unfortunately, as Joseph 
Stalin consolidated his power within the bureaucracy, he proved this point all 
too clearly. During the second half of the 1920s, after Lenin?s death, Stalin 
began to outlaw so-called crimes of custom throughout Central Asia. One such 
crime of custom was the practice of paying "bridewealth" (galïng)?payment from 
the groom?s family to the bride?s parents in marriage, often when the bride was 
very young. To be sure, this practice is a form of "selling" women. But 
bridewealth was central to an elaborate kinship network on which social 
structures were based. In Turkmenistan, for example, banning this custom was 
widely opposed. Bridewealth could not be simply "outlawed." It had to be 
replaced by an entirely different form of social organization.

Perhaps most importantly, however, the Russian state had no right to impose its 
rule on any question in Russia?s former colonies. In so doing, Stalin betrayed 
the very principles of national liberation that were a hallmark of the 
Bolshevik tradition.

Too many historians blur the crucial distinction between Lenin and Stalin?and 
note without comment, for example, that the Zhenotdel developed a campaign in 
which Muslim women ceremoniously tore off their veils on International Women?s 
Day and May Day in Central Asia. That campaign reached its peak from 1927 to 
1929?Stalin?s ultra-left "third period" that accompanied the forced 
collectivization of agriculture. The unveilings were followed by the slaughter 
of many of the Muslim women who had participated by enraged husbands and 
brothers. In one quarter of 1929 alone, some 300 women were murdered in Central 
Asia.75

Like the ban on "crimes of custom," the campaign against the veil was a product 
of Stalin?s increasing control, solidified in 1928, with a devastating impact 
on the oppressed nationalities?and women.

If the precondition for women?s equality in Russia was to address its economic 
backwardness, this was yet more the case in Russia?s former colonies, where 
imperialism had prevented any new development of the forces of production. The 
Bolsheviks who led the 1917 Revolution understood this. As Trotsky asserted, 
"The fate of the colonial possessions, especially in central Asia, would change 
together with the industrial evolution of the center."76 The Comintern?s 
"Theses on the National and Colonial Question" stated:

>From the principles set forth it follows that the whole policy of the 
>Communist International on the national and colonial question must be based 
>mainly on the union of the workers and toiling masses of all nations and 
>countries in the common revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the 
>landlords and of the bourgeoisie. For only such a union can secure victory 
>over capitalism, without which the destruction of national oppression and 
>inequality is impossible.77

The rise of Stalinism overturned the theoretical foundations of the Bolshevik 
Revolution. In 1930, not long after outlawing "crimes of custom" in the name of 
women?s equality, Stalin?s regime dissolved the Zhenotdel. During the 1930s, 
abortion was outlawed, divorce became much more difficult, and Stalin 
proclaimed the "New Soviet Family," which meant the old "bourgeois family" with 
a new name.

Nevertheless, the early years of the Russian Revolution offer a glimpse, albeit 
rudimentary, of the potential for a socialist society to liberate all of 
humanity. Trotsky wrote, "Political practice remained, of course, far more 
primitive than political theory. For things are harder to change than ideas."78 
This would have been true in any case, but any honest assessment of the 
Bolsheviks? accomplishments must also take into account that the revolution was 
hamstrung by the conditions of civil war, while disease and famine plagued all 
parts of society. In this context, the revolution succeeded remarkably in 
combating oppression in all its forms.

The Bolsheviks, as leaders of the world revolutionary movement in the years 
immediately after 1917, built a movement that truly was, in Lenin?s words, a 
"tribune of the people."79 A speech given by Nadzhiya, a Turkish woman 
representative at the Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East in 1920 offers 
insight into the demands women in Muslim societies might put forward in the 
fight against their own oppression:

The women?s movement beginning in the East must not be looked at from the 
standpoint of those frivolous feminists who are content to see woman?s place in 
social life as that of a delicate plant or an elegant doll. This movement must 
be seen as a serious and necessary consequence of the revolutionary movement 
which is taking place throughout the world. The women of the East are not 
merely fighting for the right to walk in the street without wearing the chadra 
[veil], as many people suppose. For the women of the East, with their high 
moral ideals, the question of the chadra, it can be said, is of the least 
importance?

The women Communists of the East have an even harder battle to wage because, in 
addition, they have to fight against the despotism of their menfolk. If you, 
men of the East, continue now, as in the past, to be indifferent to the fate of 
women, you can be sure that our countries will perish, and you and us together 
with them: the alternative is for us to begin, together with all the oppressed, 
a bloody life-and-death struggle to win our rights by force. I will briefly set 
forth the women?s demands. If you want to bring about your own emancipation, 
listen to our demands and render us real help and co-operation.

1) Complete equality of rights.

2) Ensuring for women unconditional opportunity to make use of the educational 
and vocational-training institutions established for men.

3) Equality of rights of both parties to marriage. Unconditional abolition of 
polygamy.

4) Unconditional admission of women to employment in legislative and 
administrative institutions.

5) Everywhere, in cities, towns and villages, committees for the rights and 
protection of women to be established.

Undoubtedly we can ask for all of this. The Communists, recognizing that we 
have equal rights, have reached out their hand to us, and we women will prove 
their most loyal comrades. True, we may be stumbling in pathless darkness, we 
may be standing on the brink of yawning chasms, but we are not afraid, because 
we know that in order to see the dawn one has to pass through the dark night.80

Conclusion: Past and present

Although the possibilities of the revolutionary Marxist tradition have yet to 
be realized, its potential to combat both national and women?s oppression can 
be seen in embryonic form in the Russian Revolution. The need to combat women?s 
oppression was not counterposed to the fight against national oppression, for 
the elimination of both required the transition to a classless society. This, 
along with a clear understanding of the role of Islam as a religious doctrine 
that both sanctions the inequalities produced by class society?notably, women?s 
oppression?and as an aspect of national culture brutally suppressed by 
imperialism in oppressed nations, offers lasting theoretical clarity.

The resurgence of Islam at the end of the twentieth century has its origin in 
the aims of American imperialism in the post-Cold War era?with a rise in racism 
toward Muslims parallel to the era of colonialism one hundred years earlier. 
The events of September 11 only accelerated this trend.

At the same time, neither imperialism nor its Islamic opposition can 
effectively address the issue of women?s oppression, because both defend it in 
different forms. Leila Ahmed, assessing the colonialists and the Islamic 
movement nearly one hundred years ago, remarked, "For neither side was male 
dominance ever in question."81 Elsewhere she argues, "The resemblance between 
the two positions is not coincidental: they are mirror images of each other."82 
The solution to women?s oppression?and imperialism?lies in the revolutionary 
Marxist tradition.


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