Re: [Marxism] Re: Arab and Islamic World

["andypollack@xxxxxxxx" <andypollack@xxxxxxxx>]

Yes, but...
Rob makes some great points about the disjuncture between then and now. Another 
example is Stephen Kinzer's book on the coup against Mossadegh, which, despite 
some great depictions of British racist intransigence, is flawed because at 
every critical turn in the plot he falls back on the 1,400 year history of 
Shiite martyrdom as a psychological explanation. Very annoying.

On the other hand -- the memory of the Arab nation is long, and should be.  
History happens on different levels, and the boost given to the genesis of 
capitalism by conquests in Arab, African and American countries is part of a 
legitimate historical continuum (just as the expropriation of common lands in 
England is part of the long view of history for workers there...)

The problem is the weakness of secular, socialist forces in the Arab world able 
to recount that long view of history to the masses the way they used to.
-- RobBollard@xxxxxxx wrote:
In a message dated 10/1/2004 4:32:58 PM AUS Eastern Daylight Time,
suarsos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:


> Yes, exactly. In one sense I guess all conflicts have deep historical
> roots, but apart from that very general point, I think the earlier history
> is mainly important in providing the language and symbolism of the
> conflict. So for example you get Indonesian Islamic groups like Laskar
> Jihad calling Christian fighters in Ambon-Maluku â??Crusadersâ?? â?? a word 
> with
> very negative implications in their language - although the conflict has
> very little to do with Saladin and Richard the Lionheart. Conversely George
> Bush has spoken about a â??crusadeâ?? against terrorism.
>
>

An example of this sort of misuse of historical example is Huntington, who,
in the article where he first introduced his `Clash of Civilizations' thesis
drew a sketchy survey of relations between the West and the Middle East which
segued smoothly theough the crusades and the Ottoman/Hapsburg conflict to the
present day.  What is missing from his historical sketch was of course the
crucial decolonizing decades after the Second World War.  From the 1940s 
through to
the Iranian Revolution the dominant political currents in the Middle East
were both anti-imperialist and secular.  Nasseriite nationalists, Ba'athists, 
the
PLO, Mussadeq, the mass Stalinist parties in Iraq and Iran etc.  They
resisted the west with western concepts - mainly nationalism and a heavily 
Stalinist
version of `Marxism'.  The only significant Islamicist force until the '70s
were the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt - and even there they were very much a
minority current.
The problem with cultural explanations of historical phenomenon, such as the
rise of fundamentalist Islam, is that they may explain some aspect of the form
a movement takes, its rhetoric etc. , but can't explain its essence.
The Jihad's of early Islam have a relationship to the `Jihads' of modern
fundamentalists - just as the Book of Kings has a relationship to the 
misbehaviour
of Christian missionaries.  But Christianity was simply the justification for
their activities - only an understanding of imperialism can explain what they
did.  In the case of the modern day `Jihad' - it is a reaction to
imperialism, rather than the history of Islam which explains what is happening.
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