Re: [Marxism] The Left and Support For Islamic Resistance - an unsatisfying response

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

jscotlive -

You make this sound like a board game. Has it ever  occurred to you that as  
Marxists our enemy is at home, period, and  that perhaps those regimes that 
you  
consider unsavoury have emerged  from material conditions created by our own  
imperialist  governments?

The title of this thread reveals much about the Marxist  understanding of  
whoever started it. I wonder if during the Second  World War Marxists around 
the  
world held discussions under such titles  as 'The Left and Support For  
Christian Resistance In  France'.

Change the title to 'The Left and Support For Resistance' and  you  
substitute 
Marxism for paternalism.
 
reply -
 
I was the one who sent in this article, decrying the lack of support and  
solidarity from the left to Muslim communities and organizations under attack,  
and I must say that the response on this list is deeply unsatisfying. 
 
Because of the combination of political failure by the left and secular  Arab 
nationalist movements to link up to and provide solid leadership on the one  
hand, and their repression by pro imperialist regimes on the other, there is a 
 political void. Religious Muslims have successfully filled this void and  
are leading the struggle. Like it or not, this is reality - what do we do? 
 
During WW 2, there was no such void. There was a strong left secular  
resistance taking on the Nazi occupiers. But had there been no meaningful left, 
 if 
that resistance had instead been as dominated by the Catholic Church as  
today's anti imperialist resistance in the Arab world is by religious Muslims,  
it 
would have been the duty of all those opposed to the occupiers to support and  
seek to become part of that resistance, even if we had to pose as Catholics,  
while not abandoning our revolutionary perspectives. Anything else would be  
sectarian abstentionism. And in the case of today's leftist Islamophobia, a  
capitulation and adaptation to chauvinism dating back a thousand years to the  
Crusades.
 
Why has the US/European left been so unable/unwilling to forge strong ties  
to an oppressed and combative segment of its population - a natural ally?  Is 
this related to the notorious inability of the US left to become more  
Black/Brown?
 
I ask comrades to read or re-read the original speech.
 
 <_http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14818_ 
(http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14818) >
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