[PEN-L:36092] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Open Letter to Ellen Willis

[andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen@xxxxxxxxx>]

I can sort of see your point, and I certainly wouldn't want to be on that particular bandwagon. I don't suppose anyone has much to learn about Islam from most of that gang. Berman _might_ be an exception if (as appears on a superficial glance) he has made a serious and sympathetic attempt to grapple with an important IF thinker. The tenor his his article was certainly very different from Friedman/Fallaci/Hitchens/Huntington. Be that as it may, I think it behooves on the left to try to understand IF/militant Islam as a social movement.

The fact that a bunch of low life hacks use their own total lack of interest in or failure to understand the phenomena as an excuse for a crusade shouldn't deter us, any more than the fact that bunch of vulgar apologists for the existing class and power relationships use the phenomena of markets (which they also don't understand) to justify exploitation and oppression means that leftists and radical liberals should not study markets with an eye to promoting emancipation.

jks

 

 Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > I am not sure what you mean here. Are you saying that that the kind of 
> > critcism you would not make of fundamentalist Islam is that it isn't 
> > revolutionary Marxism, and that it is basically the same in this respect 
> > as liberalism?
> > 
>
> Let me be as clear as I can. Under the guise of fighting Islamic 
> fundamentalism, a powerful reactionary current has emerged over the past 
> several years. Under the name of Enlightenment values and liberalism, 
> and influenced by Samuel Huntington, it has provided the ideological 
> framework for the new crusades. It includes: Salman Rushdie, Christopher 
> Hitchens, Oriana Fallaci, Stephen Schwartz, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman 
> and a host of others. I would put a moratorium on this sort of thing 
> until every fucking US military base is removed from countries with an 
> !
> Islamic population. It is this irritant plus imperialist exploitation 
> that is fueling Islamic fundamentalism, not a desire to rid the world of 
> Madonna videos and parliamentary democracy (although I detest both myself.)
>
>
> -- 
>
> The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

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