Islam: Ideology and Tool of the Exploiting Classes
By Nasreen Jazayeri1
The following
article was commissioned by A World To Win to examine the role
of Islam as a political force in the world today. Dealing with Islam is
only part of the task of revolutionaries confronting the recent rise of
religion, which is undergoing a revival that would have seemed unthinkable
only a few decades ago. Religion appeared to have been relegated to a
private concern in large areas of the world, in part due to the rise of
socialism and scientific Marxism. But the world changed. The revolutions
in the USSR and then China were defeated. The wave of national liberation
struggles that shook the 1960s ebbed. Also importantly, science fell into
further discredit, as it became identified in the eyes of millions with
horrendous weapons of mass destruction and luxury gadgets for the wealthy,
while the poor groan under the ever heavier burden of the intensified
production and immiseration associated with technology-fuelled imperialist
“globalisation”.
The new
wave of religiosity is, therefore, closely linked with the defeats inflicted
on world revolution and the horrors inflicted on the masses.
Religion
has also continued to be used as a weapon in the hands of those who rule.
The appointment of Christian fascists to key posts in the US government
by Bush junior is indicative of the importance the US imperialists give
to using religion to shore up their legitimacy, to anaesthetise the masses
to the real cause of their suffering and to mobilise hard-core reactionaries
behind the “core values” of bourgeois rule. Just as Hitler used anti-Semitism
to rally Germany to war, so too the US imperialists are turning to Christian
fundamentalist ideology to gear their subjects to their ambitious new
imperial quest at home and abroad. Thus Bush calls for a “crusade” against
the Islamic fundamentalists and for the Chinese to embrace “faith”, while
respectable US Senators commemorate the victims of 11 September by reading
from the Bible to give their god’s guidance in such circumstances. Indeed,
with respect to the role religion has played as a standard-bearer for
reactionary crimes, Christianity still has no rival.
The reason
this article focuses on Islam is not because of any belief that it is
in some way fundamentally different from other religions. On the contrary,
from an ideological viewpoint, Marxism treats all religions equally. But
Islam does have influence among an important section of the world’s oppressed.
In contrast to the world’s imperialists, who have targeted Islamic fundamentalism
out of chauvinism, the Maoists seek to unveil the actual interests behind
the Islamic religious forces so as to unleash the masses in important
parts of the planet to fight the imperialists and reactionaries with greater
determination and thoroughness. – A World To Win
Islamic
political parties or groups that are in opposition to the ruling cliques
in the Middle Eastern countries have played a major role on the political
stage for at least three decades. These Islamic forces, claiming to oppose
and fight (or wage jihad) against Western imperialist powers and their
neo-colonial client states in the Middle East, have been able, at times,
and to a significant degree, to influence sections of the social base
of new-democratic and socialist revolution – the workers, peasants and
semi-proletarians. But neither their ideology nor their programme represent
the interests of the masses to the slightest degree. To bring out this
truth has been a continuous and pressing challenge for the revolutionary
communist forces in the Middle East in their task to arouse and organise
the masses to fight for the goal of overthrowing the reactionary states
and ousting imperialism. Over two decades of experience in both Iran and
Afghanistan have demonstrated in a crystal clear manner that Islam is
not a liberating ideology and that the political and economic programmes
of the Islamic forces do not represent any rupture with the ugly oppressive
societies of the Middle East, which are semi-feudal, semi-colonial constructs
of imperialism in alliance with local reactionary big capitalist-feudal
classes. However, as Mao said, “Where the broom does not reach, the dust
will not vanish of itself.” Already for too long the Islamic forces have
distorted the struggles of the oppressed masses in the Middle East, wasted
their sacrifices and tried to dissipate their tremendous energy with religious
ideological shackles and reactionary political programmes. In this way,
the Islamic forces have contributed to delaying revolutions in this part
of the world, thereby providing great service to world imperialism.
Moreover,
the mere fact that US imperialism, the biggest and most vicious enemy
of humanity on the Earth today, has proclaimed the Islamic fundamentalists
as its enemy (although in reality this is an attack against the masses
of the region, under the pretext of going after the armed religious bigots)
is creating a certain spontaneous attraction amongst the masses of the
so-called Muslim countries towards Islam. The masses always tend to spontaneously
uphold whatever is vehemently attacked by their oppressors. But the masses
need a revolutionary scientific ideology that can defeat imperialism
and advance the struggle to liberate humanity from the clutches of all
kinds of oppression and exploitation. This emphasises the double task
for the revolutionary communists all over the world: they have to place
themselves at the head of the anti-imperialist struggles, lead the masses
to overthrow the reactionary state powers and make revolution; and at
the same time, as an inseparable part of doing that, in order to be successful,
they have to explain to the masses more vigorously than ever that the
ideology of Islam (and every other feudal and bourgeois ideology) is an
obstacle to liberation and unable to defeat imperialism. To defeat imperialism
the masses need to take up communism, which is the only genuinely liberating
ideology and programme in the world and in the history of humankind. It
is the only ideology that can unite the masses of the world, regardless
of their religion, race and nationality, to carry out the most earth-shaking
struggles against imperialism – mainly US imperialism – and all the reactionary
state powers that are today dominating the Arab and other Muslim countries.
Carrying out this ideological struggle is part and parcel of being able
to lead the rising masses towards real revolution, and only when the masses
actually see models of real revolution will the influence of religion,
as a whole, subside.
Trajectory
Contemporary political Islam is a complex phenomenon. It has been used
by different arrays of class forces – the Western colonial-imperialist
powers, the reactionary regimes of the Muslim countries, the reactionary
forces opposing these regimes, and, at times, nationalist forces as a
means to mobilise the opposition of the masses to foreign domination.
Our focus will be on the political Islam that has flourished in recent
decades in the Middle Eastern countries in opposition to the regimes there,
and which has overwhelmingly represented the aspirations and objectives
of reactionary class forces who have been pushed out of the power structures
and have been jockeying for better positions within the existing state
structures. Wherever and in so far as the masses have been attracted to
these forces, it has not been mainly due to any so-called religious impulse
but more because of their reaction to the extreme conditions of injustice
that imperialism and their puppet regimes have imposed on the masses.
Political
Islam is hardly a new phenomenon. Islam itself was born as a “worldly”
political programme using religion as its flag. Originally it was dictated
by Muhammad of Mecca in the Arabian peninsula. It was not the word of
an Allah, but its appearance in 610 AD was a historically specific
product of the socio-political conditions engulfing that part of the world
as a whole.2
In Europe,
after the eighteenth and nineteenth century bourgeois revolutions, the
role of religion in state affairs was substantially reduced, however it
continued to be a pillar of the state in the feudal Islamic countries.
In pre-colonial Islamic societies the Ulama (high-ranking Islamic
clergy) were one of two basic pillars of state power – the other pillar
being the Sovereign or King. This was an arrangement very similar to European
feudalism, where the Crown and the Church shared feudal power and pillage.
This
colonial-imperialist subjugation of the Arab and Muslim countries in the
nineteenth century was a watershed in the character of these societies.3
At the century's close, all the feudal elements in the economic base and
the social and political superstructure of that society were recast in
subordination to, and in the service of, the world imperialist system.
Unlike Latin America, in the Middle East the colonisers relied on the
local religion itself. The British, during their wars to oust the Sunni
Ottomans from Arabia, gave a major political role to the Wahabi branch
of Islam in Saudi Arabia and used it as the moral and ethical underpinning
for their war of colonial conquest to drive out the Ottoman empire from
the region. The Wahabi brand of Islam and Mecca gained its current importance
as a centre for Islamic congregation only after the Kingdom of Al-Saud
was established in 1932 with the help of British colonialism. The Shiite
Ulamas of Iran were close allies of the British in the latter’s rivalry
with colonial Tsarist Russia in the nineteenth century. In the early nineteenth
century (1816) the British pushed the Shah of Iran to call for a jihad
against Tsarist Russia. The first theological book on jihad in many centuries
was written in the city of Najaf in Iraq under the orders of the Shiite
clergy to create a religious pretext for the war with the Russian Tsar.
An old saying that “under the turban of every Mullah is written: ‘Made
in England’” captures this British-Mullah alliance in popular Iranian
terms.
In the
aftermath of the First World War, a major modern Islamic current arose
in Egypt – the Muslim Brotherhood founded by Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949).
It later became a source of inspiration to other political Islamic forces
developing in other Sunni-dominated countries. The original Muslim Brotherhood
appealed to a section of the intellectuals because it set itself the task
of proposing a modern, native ideology, as against the ethics of the colonialists.
It appealed to a section of the masses because of its opposition to the
British domination of Egypt and the misery engulfing the masses of the
poor in Cairo. But Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood never called for the
basic requirements for overcoming backwardness, i.e. uprooting feudalism,
in particular by arousing the masses of peasants for agrarian revolution
and liberating women from the yoke of patriarchy. In fact, they had a
dual message: for the masses of poor there was a call to go back to the
principles of the Koran and the Sunnah (Islamic tradition) as spiritual
healing; for the intellectuals, disturbed by both foreign domination and
by the backwardness of Egypt, the message was different: a modern Islam
that provided a “native” or “national” identity whilst allowing for the
use of Western management tools in the running of a semi-feudal, semi-colonial
country. In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood experience shows that Islam,
like all other religions, is able to accommodate itself to the dictates
of modern forms of oppression and exploitation. But it also shows the
limitations of a religious flag, as opposed to the revolutionary banner,
in terms of overcoming colonial-imperialist domination and economic and
political backwardness.
During
the 1950s and 1960s, political Islam was very marginal among those opposing
the status quo. In fact, organised Islam was ridiculed as a foreign puppet
project. The post-Second World War period was another watershed in these
societies. The imperialist powers forged new semi-feudal, semi-colonial
state structures in these countries. In the new set-up, the clergy got
a much smaller share of the power. A political trend grew out of the Islamic
establishments in different Middle Eastern countries in strong opposition
to the ruling regimes. They denounced the ruling cliques, as well as official
Islam, as corrupt and irrelevant. In fact, the contemporary political
Islamic movements mainly have their origins in this period, even though
their ideological forebears started to articulate their political thought
even earlier.4 (This article focuses its critique on
the Islamic forces that have been politically challenging the pro-Western
Middle Eastern regimes using the religious flag of Islam.)
The leaders
and core cadres of these Islamic movements generally come from: the clergy
who aspire to be restored to their old place in the ruling structure or
seek greater accommodation with the system, disgruntled urban middle class
intellectuals, and sections of the feudal-comprador classes pushed out
of the ruling structures (i.e. splits within the exploiting, propertied
classes of these societies). But their foot soldiers come from amongst
the desperate displaced urban masses who from afar are being seduced by
the “oppositional” posturing of these reactionaries. What makes these
Islamic movements reactionary is not mainly the class origins of their
leaders and core cadre, but rather their promotion of an archaic ideology
– a religious ideology – that is not based on reality, and therefore is
absolutely unable to transform the present day realities of the world.
And they are reactionary because they want to preserve the same class-structured
oppressive societies, simply making them “more Islamic” (by applying the
sharia, which is the Islamic law based on the Koran and tradition,
written after the death of Mohammed and subsequently updated many times
by each Islamic sect). This can only mean, and has meant, strengthening
the feudal-patriarchal elements of society. These movements in different
parts of the Muslim world uphold one of the various brands of Islam –
Shiite or Sunni, for example. But almost all of them adhere to the basic
tenets of Islamic ideology – with unimportant nuances – and derive the
future promised Islamic society from the old models established by the
original Islamic prophets. Specifically, the society established by Muhammad
is cited as the most favourable model by almost all of these trends. All
misfortunes of the Muslim countries are explained away as a “deviation”
from this early model, which according to them was corrupted after the
first four caliphs (successors to Mohammed).
The Islamic
fundamentalist forces have been opposing the imperialist powers and the
ruling cliques of these countries with hot rhetoric and, at times, violent
actions. But they are easily co-opted, becoming the new and at times more
ruthless guardians of the same old system. This dynamic took place in
a major way during the Cold War, when the US launched its Green Belt strategy
to make use of the Islamic countries (Islam is symbolised by the colour
green) strung along the southern border of the USSR, to contain and later
help dismember its Soviet social-imperialist rival. The US imperialists
aided the rapid development of the Islamic fundamentalist forces in Afghanistan
in the 1980s, and it was the US imperialists and their European allies
that opened the way for Khomeini and his cohorts in Iran to hijack a great
revolution there. Under a false revolutionary mantle, they established
themselves as the new ruling clique, quashing the real revolution and
massacring the revolutionary and communist forces. It must be brought
to light that the 1979 defeat of the revolution in Iran, through the establishment
of the theocratic regime, was a product of the collaboration between the
Western imperialist powers and the Islamic fundamentalist forces in Iran.
US General Huizer was right when he said, “We unplugged the Shah and plugged
in Khomeini.” (See the review of his book on the Iranian revolution in
AWTW 1986/6.) In the last 25 years, the biggest Islamic jihad was
financed by the US imperialists – the war of the Islamic fundamentalists
of Afghanistan (the generic name for them was mujahedeen, which
is Arabic for fighters) against the Soviet Union. The experience of the
last two decades has ripped apart the mask of the Islamic forces and shows
that they are neither revolutionary nor anti-imperialist. Islam is and
can only be an ideology and tool of the exploiters.
1. World View,
Stand, Political Programme and
Political Strategy of Contemporary Islamic Movements
In
order to construct their theoretical body of thought, mobilise the masses
and legitimise their programme, the political and ideological leaders
of the Islamic movements deploy several key concepts. The mere use of
the fundamental concepts of Islam and stories from the distant past allows
them to mystify the nature of their ideology and programme in the eyes
of many desperate masses. It is very important to tear apart this mystification
and reveal to the naked eye the very earthly, class nature of their world
view and programme: that their world outlook, aspirations and actions
represent certain class forces in Muslim societies.
In fact,
let us start from right there, with classes.
Umma
In the body of thought of these movements, there is no place for the most
stark reality of our times – that all societies are divided into classes,
that people in all parts of the world are first and foremost divided into
categories depending on their relation to the major means of production.
Instead of classes, in Islamic thought there is umma – the community of
believers, regardless of which class they belong to. The concept of umma
covers over the fact that societies are sharply divided into antagonistic
classes, with antagonistic economic and political interests. Big landlords
and industrialists and bazaar traders, as well as the proletarians with
nothing to lose and the impoverished peasants – in short, exploiter and
exploited – can all be part of the Islamic umma.
Under
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, those who united with him in his fight
for power were counted as part of the umma. At the start of his quest
for power, the umma combination changed according to the political needs
of the moment. As part of the umma he even included the Jews of Medina
that united with him in fighting against his opponents in Mecca. Even
then, his umma was divided into classes. The Koran (the Islamic scriptures)
was written by Muhammad and his associates to administer the new society,
which he built out of the scattered Arab nomads. The Koran very clearly
reveals the class and social distinctions among the umma: there are the
haves and have-nots; there are the slaves and the slave owners; there
are the women, owned by, subordinate to, and fully obedient to men; there
are warriors who share the plunder of the wars of conquest, with higher
economic and social status; and others who toil the land and tend livestock
herds. And there is the bigger division between the umma and non-umma:
the umma warriors can make their captives into slaves and take their women
as concubines. This is an ugly society. Muhammad built a new state power
and a new organised religion to enforce new exploitative relations, as
well as relations of domination over the populations of foreign lands
defeated in war and co-opted into the expanding Islamic empire. The Islamic
movements’ deployment of the concept of umma in modern times is meant
to mobilise the masses under their flag and gain legitimacy for their
cause, whilst keeping them ignorant of the class interests behind this
flag and programme.
The concept
of umma is not only class collaborationist but also unscientific. At the
time this word was coined, modern classes, such as the capitalists and
the proletarians, did not exist. There was no such thing as colonial and
imperialist powers or oppressed and oppressor nations.
Covering
over sharp and antagonistic class interests is hardly a new phenomenon.
Throughout the entire history of class society, in their drive for power
and class rule the privileged classes have lied to the dispossessed, saying,
“My interests are your interests.” It is the kind of demagogy that the
imperialist powers and reactionary states employ all the time. Even the
rising bourgeoisies of Europe in the eighteenth century proclaimed the
“universality” of their vision and aims. And within the oppressed nations,
the political representatives of the small bourgeois and landlord classes,
which aspire to become part of the power structure, use this line to gain
the following of the masses. It is a means for reactionary forces that
have been pushed out of state power, to ride on the backs of the masses
in a bid to get back in. There is such a thing as umma unity, but it only
means the people under the thumb of the Mullahs.
World Umma Unity
The
Islamic movements call for international unity on the basis of umma. First
of all, this is an impossible project because the Islamic umma is divided
into tens of different faiths – Islam has been branching out since its
inception. Look at the Islamic Republic of Iran and its co-religious brethren,
the Taliban of Afghanistan, who were at each other’s throats. Within Iran,
the Sunnis are oppressed by Shiite rulers. In Afghanistan, Sunni, Wahabi
and Shiite Islamic parties are killing each other. In Lebanon, the Hezbollah
(“Hezbollah” means Party of God and is also a generic name for Islamic
fundamentalists) claim to fight for the liberation of Palestine, but they
cannot even approach the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon because the Palestinian
Muslims are Sunni and Hezbollah is Shiite. Secondly, Islamic international
unity is reactionary unity. It calls upon the people to believe in a supernatural
being and unite on the basis of a faith established fourteen centuries
ago. It is reactionary because it divides the oppressed peoples of the
world, who share a common enemy, world imperialism, on the basis of the
religious faith of their forefathers. Islam cannot even unite oppressed
people in one country against imperialist dominators, let alone across
countries. Within oppressed nations there are peoples with different religious
backgrounds. Look at Palestine: there are Christian as well as Muslims
forming the Palestinian people. How can Hamas (the Islamic party in Palestine)
possibly unite the entire Palestinian nation against the common enemy,
colonial Israel? It has not and will not. And, in fact, it has been an
obstacle to such unity. The proletarians from Egypt, Iran, Peru, Spain
and the US can and must unite with each other on the basis of their common
enemy and common future, whilst they cannot and must not unite
with the capitalist and feudal big shots of their countries on any basis,
whether religious or any other kind of real or imaginary “heritage”. Calling
for Islamic international unity will play into the hands of the imperialist
powers – especially the US imperialists – who are calling upon the masses
in the West to unite with them on the basis of “the clash of civilisations”
– Western civilisation, based on the Judeo-Christian tradition, versus
others, such as “Islamic civilisation”, “Chinese civilisation”, etc.
The irony
is that the umma preachers easily and comfortably enter into political
dealings and unity with the imperialist powers and the reactionary states.
Take for example the Islamic Republic of Iran, the first contemporary
state born of the Islamic movement. US President Reagan once remarked,
“the Mullahs are our friends”. And he was right. Under this regime the
flow of petroleum – the linchpin of Iran’s integration within the world
capitalist system – was not disturbed for even one day. The Islamic Republic
of Iran, under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, suppressed the attempts
of the petroleum workers to close down the plunder of oil resources by
the Western companies, and today, more than two decades later, the Iranian
economy is still heavily dependent on the sale of oil on the global market,
with sales of over $20 billion annually. Even though relations with the
US were apparently cut, the Islamic Republic of Iran carried out all of
its services to the Western powers and the world capitalist system through
the European states. It carried out joint covert operations with the CIA
of the US to help finance the infamous Contras5 against
the Nicaraguan people and the Sandinista regime. It secretly continued
relations with the Israeli government while denouncing the revolutionary
forces in Iran as the “agents of Zionism”.
This
picture also applies to the Islamic militant groupings in other countries.
Take for example the assorted Islamic rulers of Afghanistan who were close
allies of US imperialism and other reactionary states, such as Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia. According to bin Laden of al-Qaeda, the Saudi king was
part of the umma as long as US military forces were not stationed on Saudi
soil. According to the revolutionary communists, the Saudi king was a
lackey of US imperialism and Saudi Arabia was a neo-colony of the US long
before and after the 1990 stationing of US military forces there. And
as far as we are concerned it does not matter whether or not the Saudi
royal family is still part of the umma. The Saudi regime was not and will
not be part of the people and has always been a gang of vicious exploiters
that has to be overthrown.
The concept
of umma serves as a reactionary united front strategy by the feudal and
big capitalist classes who are struggling to get a better deal from the
rulers of their countries and the imperialist powers.
The leaders
of the Islamic movements have deployed the concept of umma (or united
front strategy) with some success. There is a basis for that success,
even though it is detrimental to the masses of workers, peasants and all
the oppressed. The national subjugation of Muslim societies (by colonialism
and imperialism combined with the semi-feudal structure dominating these
societies) provides the material basis for the strategy of umma to gain
some following amongst the oppressed masses. And the semi-feudal structure
in and of itself means that tribal – and religious – affiliations and
bonds amongst the people still have influence.
The introduction
of class concepts into the political movements within the oppressed nations
has always been reviled by the Islamic forces (and even by the secular
nationalist forces), because they are not opposed to class oppression
and exploitation. They uphold the feudal landlords’ right to own land
and on that basis exploit the poor and landless peasant; and they uphold
the capitalist ownership of the means of production and the exploitation
of the workers. They uphold all kinds of oppressive social relations –
most outstandingly, the subjugation of women by men. These Islamic forces
do not consider imperialism to be the highest stage of capitalism. They
call the Western powers “imperialist” when those powers do not give them
enough room in running their respective oppressive social orders.
The fact
of the matter is that while the imperialist oppression of these nations
makes a national united front against imperialism necessary, experience
has proven that if such a unity is forged under the leadership of feudal-tribal
and bourgeois forces, it is bound to lead to the selling out of the masses
of workers and peasants and even national betrayal. Whether or not the
much-needed national unity against imperialism is led by a proletarian
vision and programme and a communist party is a matter of life and death
for every genuine revolution in the countries dominated by imperialism.
Neither Islamic nor even the secular bourgeois-nationalist forces can
forge and lead a revolutionary national unity against imperialism that
can free the oppressed nations from the yoke of imperialism.
As experience
has amply shown, all of these forces would rather unite with the imperialists
in order to suppress the revolutionary forces and the workers, peasants,
women and progressive intelligentsia. As smaller slave owners, they always
tend to unite with big slave owners. Muhammad of Mecca 1,400 years ago
called for unity based on a new universal faith in order to break up tribal
segmentation and forge a unified state in the Arabian peninsula. Today,
the populations of the Islamic societies are not divided into tribes any
more. They are divided into classes by feudal and capitalist exploitation,
and at the same time they are oppressed by the powerful imperialist nations.
Today, these are the divisions that must be overcome and can only be overcome
through new-democratic and socialist revolutions.
Fitna:
The People do not have the Right to Rebel
Fitna (splitting and intriguing) is another concept that the Islamists
use. Any attempt to divide the umma is called fitna. So scientific
class analysis is the greatest fitna! All of the above arguments
are called fitna because they reveal that the umma is not an indivisible
whole. For example, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the workers’ strikes
and the struggles of the oppressed Kurds and women for their rights have
been called great fitnas. Any attempt by the masses to take their
destiny into their own hands has been impermissible. During and in the
aftermath of the 1979 revolution in Iran, the liberating fact that the
masses of workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals and women, all
over the country, were occupying the political scene was fitna and
dangerous to Islam. Khomeini crushed all these fitnas to consolidate
his reactionary rule.
Islam,
like religion in general, including the other Abrahamic religions, Christianity
and Judaism, is terrified of criticism and innovation and anything that
would shake-up sterile, stupid and frozen thinking. Thinking may be tolerated
in the exact sciences and the medical sciences but never in the social
sciences. The history of human evolution and human society, and most of
all the creation of god and religions by man in a certain historical period
of the development of the productive forces and human knowledge, are taboo
topics in the schools of the Islamic movements and groups. Islam does
not see any need for “developing” or for rectifying its shortcomings through
self-critical analysis. This is because, like all other religions, Islam
claims to be all-encompassing for all times. Frozen ideology versus a
constantly changing world and developing human knowledge is dealt with
by concepts similar to those of the Christian Inquisition, which in Islam
is called nifagh (splitting) or Kofr (blasphemy).6
Any innovation in dominant Islamic thought is called splitting or rebellion.
Khomeini did not even tolerate the minor “innovations” that Ali Shariati
(a reformer of the Shiite religion)7 or the People’s
Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran introduced into the doctrine of Islam.
He designated them munafigheen (splitters). Every Islamic branch
has its own splitters and throughout Islamic history bloody wars have
been waged over nifaghs among different branches of Islam. Kafir
is the term used for those “outsiders” who are not Islamic or who
criticise religious thinking. According to Islam, anybody who attempts
to criticise its tenets is kafir and punishable by death. Contrary
to claims by those termed “moderate Islamic forces”, this law is inscribed
in the Koran. Communists are kafirs.
One of
the shameful chapters of the history of the contemporary Islamic movement
has been the assassination of precious intellectuals and literary figures
in both Arab and non-Arab Islamic countries. For example, the assassination
of Kasravi by the underground Islamic movement in Iran, half a century
ago, was a national tragedy. He was an early modern critic and historian,
whose excellent books on the history of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution
in 1905 are treasures of the people’s history of Iran. Associates of Ayatollah
Khomeini killed him because he was a courageous and outspoken critic of
religious obscurantism and the reactionary clerical apparatus in Iran.
Today, his killer is hailed as a hero by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Systematic elimination or enforced exodus of the people’s intellectuals
by the Islamic Republic of Iran has been a national tragedy for Iran,
the scope of which is still not widely known. Many writers and artists
were assassinated by Hezbollah bigots in the Arab countries as well: Dr
Hossein Morovat in 1987; a few weeks later the assassination of Dr Mehdi
Amel; the assassination of the famous and courageous Palestinian caricaturist,
Naji Alali; and the assassination of Turhan Dursun in the early 1990s
in Turkey. All of these intellectuals were accused of serving Zionism,
whilst their elimination has been the summit of national betrayal by the
Islamists. With these kinds of compatriots, who needs Zionist colonialists?
Under
Islamic law, munafigheen, as well as those Muslims who convert
to another religion or become atheists, are punishable by death. Under
Khomeini’s rule, thousands of communists and Muslims of the Mujahedeen-type
were executed. The majority were revolutionaries who had fought to oust
the Shah’s regime. Those communists who waged armed struggle against the
Islamic Republic of Iran were condemned to death twice: once for being
heretics and the second time for Rebelling Against God (Mohareb Ba
Khoda).
Taghleed:
Leaders and Masses
Taghleed
means obeying a Grand Ayatollah8 in all aspects of life.
This is mainly a Shiite concept, but with some variance exists in other
branches of Islam as well. According to this reactionary concept, the
masses are sheep who need shepherds. It reveals that in Islamic theory
there is no place for the masses consciously taking their destiny into
their hands and fighting for their own interests. The shepherds are the
Ayatollahs or the Imam (the infallible leader who is chosen by the Ayatollahs),
who assign to themselves the job of thinking for the masses, judging every
detail of their lives and instructing them on how to live. The concepts
of taghleed and the Imam are meant to drive home this reactionary
relationship between the masses and the leaders who are supposedly god’s
men on Earth. In the Islamic world-view, one can never find anything close
to what we communists call the “mass line” or the concept that “the masses
are the makers of history”. Nor even anything close to the rising bourgeoisie’s
view of the creativity and ability of human beings to think reasonably
and to individually change their lot independent of god or church. In
the mid-1980s, Dr Hamood al-Oodie, a professor at the University of Sanaa,
the capital of Yemen, published his research on the ancient agricultural
system in Yemen, showing that it was a tremendous achievement of the masses
in the region. He was ruthlessly attacked by the Islamic forces, who claimed
all things on earth are the work and creation of god; they said that this
scholar had committed “apostasy” by giving credit to the masses of Yemen.
(See Salman Rushdie and the Truth of Literature, by Sadik J. Al-Azm.)
So it
falls to the Ayatollahs to herd the people in their daily routines. Each
of these Ayatollahs has their own books, which in detail prescribe daily
and long-term behaviour for their followers, the bulk of which includes
the most oppressive and reactionary ethical codes for, and indictments
against, women. These Mullahs, parasites that have never used their hands
for earning a living, sweat days in religious debates to formulate their
nonsense and stupity with the aim of keeping the masses obedient and ignorant.
Jihad and Shihadat
Jihad
is one of the most important tenets of Islam and a requirement for every
Muslim. It means waging battle on the path of god: jihad fi sabil allah.
But what is it, against whom should it be waged and what is to be achieved
on earth? What is the nature of jihad in Palestine? Is it a national war
for winning back the land stolen from the Palestinian peasants and people
by the colonisers, or is it a religious war for winning back the holy
places? What is jihad in Algeria? Why does god (or his representatives)
want to massacre thousands of peasants in the name of jihad?
The goals
of any war and the way it is fought make clear what kind of society will
emerge from it. Since the Islamic fundamentalists like to go back to fundamentals,
let us look at Muhammad’s time. From its inception jihad has been extremely
political in nature. Muhammad carried out 65 wars in nine years to forge
a new state, with new economic and political relations. Many of the Koranic
verses on this subject were formulated during this time. Later, his descendants
carried out jihads to expand the feudal empire of Islam to other parts
of the world. To mobilise the masses as foot soldiers and gain legitimacy
for his difficult quest for power, he had to cloak the nature of the war
in the mystical garb of religion: that jihad is ordered by a supernatural
being. He had to make promises realisable in both the short and long-term:
those who wage jihad and do not get killed get to have a share of the
war spoils; those who die in jihad get to go to heaven. It is guaranteed.
And there are all kinds of “better” material goods in heaven of course,
including many “virgin women” and young boys at the disposal of men. This
is clearly nothing but doping and bribing the soldiers of Fi Sabil
Alah. In jihad, if the vanquished did not accept to pay retribution
they were to be killed and their children taken as slaves. This was the
kind of society that jihad promised.
In Islamic
thought there are none of the modern concepts, such as “war is the continuation
of politics by other means”, “class war” or “national war”. There is only
war between the “believers” and others: dar-al-Islam against dar-al-harb
(the land of Islam against the land of the non-believers). But this does
not mean that Islamic fundamentalist movements do not have political goals
in their jihad, or for that matter in their other strategies. The ambiguity
is preserved for the desperate masses in order to fool them. Obviously,
during the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Mujahedeen of Afghanistan
and Osama bin Laden would tell the masses that they were “fighting for
god”. They were not going to tell them the truth, that they were “fighting
for the CIA”. Despite all their shallow boastings and huffing and puffing,
forces like bin Laden and the Islamic Republic of Iran will always be
the foot soldiers of the big reactionaries of the world.
Some
of the Islamic groups have been calling for jihad against the imperialist
powers because the imperialists are “infidels” that have dominated Islamic
countries. But jihad’s fight against the imperialists is a mockery of
the struggle against imperialism. It has nothing to do with the successful
wars that have been carried out against the imperialist powers: the Great
Russian Revolution in 1917; the Chinese war against imperialist Japan
and the US puppet regime in China, which led to the decisive victory of
the Chinese Revolution in 1949; the impressive defeat that the US army
received in 1953 at the hands of the Korean people and the Chinese Red
Army in the Korean war; and finally the humiliating defeat of the US army
by the Vietnamese. Today, liberating people’s wars in Peru and Nepal are
developing through twists and turns, on the basis of a winnable strategy
of people’s war and already, even before final victory, have established
red base areas where the masses wield political power. The victory of
people’s wars do not depend on any god but on the people – on a strategy
developed by the proletariat in the twentieth century and tested in practice,
on this strategy’s creative application and leadership by a revolutionary
communist party, and on the creativity and audacity of the people.
Far from
striking fear in the hearts of the imperialist powers, the jihad of the
Islamic fundamentalists has been mainly successful in raining terror against
the masses of people. Take for example Iran, Afghanistan and Algeria.
In the jihads of the Islamic groups against the ruling cliques of the
Middle Eastern countries, how many of the Algerian, Saudi and Egyptian
army commanders and soldiers or the occupying forces of the imperialists
in the Middle East have been killed? Not many at all. On the other hand,
there are the wholesale massacres of political prisoners by Khomeini in
1987, the massacre of the Kurdish people in Iran, the burning and looting
of the neighbourhoods of minority religious groups, such as the Baha’i,
the secret assassinations of progressive intellectuals and the banning
of their works, and the wholesale massacre of the masses in certain villages
of Algeria by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). In Afghanistan, the invasion
of the Taliban and Northern Alliance of each other’s areas during the
last decade, in which they have indiscriminately killed the masses and
raped little girls and women as a prize of jihad – these are the al-hamdo-lel-lah
– “praise be upon God”– fruitful jihads. The big jihads of the last two
decades – the war between Iran and Iraq, the war of the Afghanistani Mujahedeen
against the occupying Soviet army – were aided and fought with the advanced
“God sent” weaponry dispatched from the arsenals of the Western imperialist
powers and with the aid of their satellite intelligence. What makes jihad
reactionary in nature is not waging armed battle. The world amply shows
that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. It is the political
and social objectives of jihad and the way it is fought that makes it
reactionary.9
In the
1980s, the Islamic fundamentalist movements called for jihad for the seizure
of political power and the establishment of Islamic sharia societies.
But their calls have changed to some extent. Now most of them are calling
for jihad as a way of striking blows at the enemies of Islam and for the
sake of Islamic self-purification. The success of jihad is no longer guaranteed,
but it is said that victory will be granted whenever god decides – toufigh
men allah. This kind of superstitious talking to the people has a
ring of modern-day politics to it. It is telling the masses, “Let me use
you efficiently and don’t ask why things are not changing or when victory
will come.” There have been two shifts that have influenced this change
in the perspective of the Islamic fundamentalist movements. 1) These movements
have lost their big allies amongst the imperialist powers in the aftermath
of the Cold War. 2) The bankruptcy of the Islamic states in Iran and Afghanistan,
where not only poverty, dependence on imperialism and all sorts of social
injustices have continued for the great majority of the masses, but the
enforcement of sharia has made the lot of the people even worse. These
Islamic projects have proven that the promised Islamic society is not
Eden but the continuation of backwardness, poverty, debilitating ignorance
and all kinds of discrimination, as well as national subjugation and humiliation.
Along
with jihad there is a complementary concept of shihadat or martyrdom
for the cause. There is a wide gulf between shihadat and the revolutionary
concept of daring and readiness to sacrifice one’s life for revolution.
The latter is in the service of the clear aim of achieving victory – the
seizure of political power by the workers, peasants and all the other
oppressed masses and the overthrowing of private appropriation and exploitation.
In shihadat, achieving an earthly political aim is secondary, and
ascending to the summit of “closeness to God” is primary. In fact, in
Islam shihadat is the highest goal of jihad. Becoming a martyr
(shahid) is an end in itself, preparation for travelling to the
other world and securing well-being and happiness in the other world.
This is what makes the doctrine of shihadat reactionary.
The appalling
conditions that the masses face provide enough reason for them to want
to strike at the enemy by any means possible. In fact, in Palestine the
Islamic Hamas group, by promoting a series of suicide missions, only gives
vent to the anger of the masses and leaves them spectators to individual
acts, however spectacular, instead of taking the more difficult road of
finding the way to make them active participants in sustained collective
armed struggle. Shihadat is based on, and nurtures, desperation
and the masses’ lack of hope that they can actually change this world.
The masses need a revolutionary and scientific ideology that can raise
their sights and enlighten them about real winnable war strategies against
their powerful enemies. The masses of the Middle Eastern countries do
not need jihad. Since it is the product of an ancient oppressive society,
jihad would only bring more suffering. Plus, with the hocus-pocus of jihad,
the masses cannot rid themselves of powerful reactionary state powers
and their imperialist masters. The masses need to scientifically see how
an enemy as strong as the imperialist powers can be brought down by a
correct strategy. And for taking the enemy by strategy there will be a
huge need for audacity and sacrifice by the masses, including laying down
one’s life. But laying down one’s life is not the goal. The goal
is to lay down the enemy’s life and to destroy the system of exploitation
by destroying the powers that guard it – at the heart of which lie their
state powers and their armies.
Religious
ideology is injected into the masses as a fantasy escape route from this
horrible world. Marxism teaches the masses to face the world as it is
and change it accordingly. Marxism is completely based on the realities
of the world and, therefore, is capable of changing it. Marxism teaches
the masses that there is no supernatural being to aid them. The masses
do need “magic”. But this magic has always been and can only be a conscious
human product. And today it can be produced if the masses wield the only
ideology and science that belongs to them. Marxism, being thoroughgoing
materialism, has to, and has been, constantly developing; without this
development it would die out. Marxism has developed through epoch-making
revolutions and by absorbing the advancing knowledge that human beings
acquire through production and scientific inquiry – it has developed to
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the powerful scientific
revolutionary ideology of the proletariat. It is this class that, under
the leadership of its greatest representatives, Marx, Lenin and Mao, has
been able to produce a scientific world-view, a political, military and
economic line that truly reflects the interests of the exploited masses.
For the first time in the history of class society, the exploited masses
do not have to resort to ideologies that come from the ancient or modern
arsenals of the exploiting classes.
2. Factors Giving
Rise to Islamic Forces
Three
decades ago the overwhelming majority of the political forces opposed
to the ruling cliques in the Middle Eastern countries and their imperialist
backers were secular – genuine communist forces, pro-Soviet phoney communist
forces, and secular nationalist forces. Look at Iran, Egypt and Palestine.
After the Second World War, in Iran two major political forces opposing
the Shah’s regime and its imperialist masters were the pro-Soviet Tudeh
Party and the National Front led by Mossadegh, who was toppled in 1953
by a CIA-led coup, with the help of the Mullahs. In the Arab countries,
it was mainly secular nationalist forces. In Egypt, these forces were
led by Jamal Abdul Nasser, who picked up the flag of opposition to foreign
domination whilst suppressing genuine revolutionary forces. In Palestine,
it was secular nationalist forces and Palestinian left-leaning forces
that led the struggle against Israel, while the Islamic forces gained
influence mainly in the 1980s. This raises the question of what factors
have been fuelling the Islamic movements. The following must be examined:
1) How Islamic political forces were brought onto the political stage
by deliberate imperialist policies. 2) How the destructive workings of
the imperialist system have provided a framework for the development of
these forces. 3) How the bloody suppression of, and failures of, the revolutionary
communists left a vacuum to be filled by them.
One of
the obvious reasons for the growing influence of the Islamic forces has
been the deliberate policy of the Western imperialist powers and their
client states in the Middle East to contain the revolutionary masses,
as well as the advances of their Soviet imperialist rivals, by fanning
Islamic forces. In the 1970s, throughout the Middle East, a network of
mosques was developed with the consent and encouragement of the respective
regimes. In 1977 General Zia ul-Haq carried out a US-backed coup against
Bhutto in Pakistan and inserted sharia into the Pakistani constitution.
In Iran, the Monarchical Philosophy Association headed by Western-educated
Islamic scholars was founded with the thesis that Iranian society needed
a new ideological identity with a heavy dose of Islam. While the revolutionary
communist forces were hunted, killed, imprisoned or pushed into exile
by the Shah’s regime, all kinds of Islamic discussion forums were made
available for spreading Islamic thought among the intellectuals. The alliance
of the clergy with the bazaar merchants and usurers was allowed to expand
the network of mosques and house-to-house Islamic preaching, and they
were even given considerable freedom to mix in criticism of the Shah.
Only a small underground Islamic-left guerrilla organisation, the People’s
Mujahedeen of Iran, did not enjoy that freedom. In 1980, after the military
coup in Turkey, fanatical pro-Ataturk, secular-minded generals went to
Switzerland to bring the Islamic leader Arbakan back from the exile that
they had imposed on him earlier. He returned to form the Islamic Refah
Party. The Islamic forces were given room to establish their control over
the basic masses, and granted millions of dollars for Islamic schools.
During the counter-insurgency against the Kurdish upsurge, hezbollah forces
were used extensively by the Turkish army.
While
it is true that those running the oppressive societies in the Middle East
had a deliberate policy of placing Islamic forces on the political stage,
the question remains as to what underlying workings produce and reproduce
them. It must be said that these forces cannot be reduced simply to “echoes
of the past”, even though they pledge to roll back their respective societies.
They are products of the modern structures of the Middle Eastern societies,
which are in turn products of the deep imperialist penetration of these
societies that has reorganised and integrated them into the world-wide
web of the imperialist system. This has been a very tumultuous process
and one of the ugliest in history, in terms of the human suffering inflicted.
This is an ongoing process that breeds crisis and suffering on a massive
scale for the peoples of the world – “globalisation” being its latest
chapter.
The rise
of Islamic fundamentalism reflects the incurable crisis of the neo-colonial
states in this region, their massive permanent poverty, whilst tremendous
riches are pumped out of this region into the West. It reflects the spasmodic
rise and fall of the middle classes; the displacement of populations from
one end of their country to the other, and from inside to outside of their
country; and the never-ending clash between being stuck in the pre-capitalist
era and being dragged into the maelstrom of world capitalism. These countries
are in constant turmoil. Even the reactionary classes are beset with bitter
splits and ruthless competition.
Islam
has been the ruling ideology in Middle Eastern societies for a long time.
And the religious establishment has been a part of the ruling structures
– both before and after the domination of the Middle East by the colonialist
and imperialist powers of the West. However, their position in the ruling
structures underwent some changes in the aftermath of the First and Second
World Wars. After the First World War, the British carried out major transformations
in the various countries they dominated. They resorted to what is now
called “nation building” in imperialist lingo: establishing centralised
states with modern armies and police forces, roads and railroads, etc.
This was part of building fortresses against the newly born socialist
Soviet Union, and gave rise to figures like Reza Shah of Iran and Ataturk
of Turkey. After the Second World War came another nodal point. Taking
over from British imperialism, the US carried out major economic and political
restructuring in several key countries it now dominated. The result was
a new class configuration: the working class expanded, and a modern school
system churned out modern intellectuals, some of whom became state functionaries
and technocrats, whilst others joined the progressive and revolutionary
milieu. A big part of the religious establishment was alienated, and in
most of the countries their veto power over legislation was overturned.
The Islamic
forces that seized power in Iran in 1979 had been shaved off from the
power structures following the Second World War. After the First and Second
World Wars the feudal economic base and its corresponding superstructure
were dealt heavy blows in separate waves of imperialist penetration. The
clerical establishment, which had been a powerful pillar of state power,
was pushed aside in several waves, first after the First World War when
the British introduced a semi-colonial centralised state structure, and
then again after the Second World War. The US sponsored land and other
reforms that the Shah of Iran carried out in the 1960s under the name
of the “White Revolution”. These weakened the clergy to a considerable
degree. But the White Revolution did not uproot feudalism, it simply
reorganised the semi-feudal mode of production and linked it to
global imperialist relations. Moreover, because the further penetration
of “modern” relations was on a capitalist basis and was concerned to preserve
the existing state structures, it did not seek a decisive showdown with
feudal representatives, ideas and institutions, but instead sought compromises
with them so as to integrate them into the neo-colonial system. Ayatollah
Khomeini protested two chief features of the Shah’s White Revolution:
the distribution of land among the peasantry, limited though it was, and
the granting of the right to vote to women. When the “modernisation” drive
hit the rocks, the Islamic forces that had been pushed out of the power
structures came back to hound the Shah and his US masters. This imperialist
modernisation created a lopsided and disarticulated economy to such a
degree that it not only inflicted suffering on millions of people, but
it even became dysfunctional.
Similar
dynamics developed in other countries such as Egypt. Starting in the 1960s,
the so-called modernisation drive there uprooted the peasantry in vast
numbers, but bureaucrat capitalism could not absorb them into the token
modern factories, agri-businesses and infrastructure construction activities.
This
was a major phenomenon throughout the Middle East. The big cities swelled
with populations displaced from the countryside. The urban middle class,
which had grown in the 1960s – one expression of this was growth of the
secular school system and the number of university students – started
to feel the squeeze. The Islamic movements, originating from clerical
centres, used all of their wits to connect with the rage of the poor masses,
who were swelling the cities, and a section of the urban intellectuals.
The revolutionary
communists, obscurantist religious forces and nationalists found themselves
on the same side against the Shah of Iran and its US masters for a short
but intense and turbulent period. A section of the urban poor – largely
the displaced peasantry – followed Ayatollah Khomeini. It is not true
that this displaced poor is inherently Islamic. It is the case that Islamic
ideology spontaneously boils from the semi-feudal structures of the society
and is there to be resorted to by the distressed masses. But a similar
crowd of urban poor to that which greeted Khomeini in 1979 in Tehran,
the capital of Iran, had marched there a decade earlier in mourning for
a popular woman singer-dancer called Mahvash.
The third
and extremely important factor is the crisis within the communist movement
internationally. The restoration of capitalism in the ex-USSR in the mid-1950s
was the first source of this crisis. Islam did not gain such a prominent
place among the masses opposing the status quo because of its political
vigour, theoretical clarity or practical radicalism. The crisis within
the international communist movement created a huge vacuum of leadership
among the masses, which was filled by the Islamic forces who in turn were
being virulently promoted by the Western imperialist powers. Just as the
socialist revolutions in Russia (1917) and China (1949) and the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966) had tremendously boosted the growth
of communist and revolutionary secular movements in the world as a whole,
including in the Middle East, the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet
Union and the betrayal of the national liberation movements by it and
the pro-Soviet so-called Communist Parties was a blow to the genuine communist
forces. On the basis of Soviet foreign policy interests, the pro-Soviet
parties started to collaborate with reactionary regimes. For example,
they “discovered” “progressive” elements in the Shah of Iran and in Arab
socialism and Islamic socialism in the Arab countries. The revisionist
coup in China (1976) was a second major blow, which in the 1980s caused
tremendous crisis in the communist movements in these countries, as well
as on a world scale. These defeats, along with bloody suppression of the
genuine revolutionary communist forces by the reactionary regimes and
imperialists, gave an opportunity for the growth of opposition under Islamic
flags. When there is no powerful alternative to idealism, obscurantism
and imperialism, then assorted reactionaries seize the opportunity.
When
China was a red power base, it provided a resounding argument for revolution
and a revolutionary vision of society. It was a powerful magnet for the
oppressed masses everywhere. It was a flag for the people that dared to
change the world themselves and not wait for some god to decide whether
he wants to bother. It was a shining example of internationalism, aiding
all the struggles of the people around the world. It gave heart to the
world’s oppressed.
Imperialist Lunacy
Is Not Better Than Islamic Fundamentalism
In
reaction to Islamic fundamentalism, there is a trend among the intellectuals
of the Middle Eastern countries to proclaim that the first and foremost
problems of these countries come from “within”; that “we can’t blame it
all on the foreigners”, in other words, on colonialism and imperialism.
This argument has some truth to the extent that it calls attention to
age-old problems strangling Middle Eastern and a great many other countries
– namely, vast feudal remnants. But the bigger truth is that since the
integration of these countries into the world imperialist system, these
“internal” and “external” problems have become intertwined – the problem
comes from the rule of certain classes and their ruling ideology and political
power that today are intrinsically interwoven with imperialist economic
and political domination. These classes have their roots in the capitalist
and feudal exploitation of the workers and peasants, and at the same time
they are integrated into a world system. The current problems of these
countries cannot be sought in their distant history, because the contemporary
Third World countries are constructs of the imperialist era. Without correctly
identifying the obstacles to the progress of these societies, one cannot
find solutions. Both the Islamic forces and those who whitewash imperialism
are wrong in their conception of the root causes of the problems. Therefore,
their solutions are wrong. The first proposes going backwards with reactionary
programmes. The second closes its eyes to the savagery of imperialism
because its bombs are supposedly the seeds of modernisation and enlightenment
being spread over these countries. This pro-imperialist line has always
existed among the upper echelons of Middle Eastern intellectuals. Often,
despite their own intentions, it has made them technocrats of imperialism.
It is
the world capitalist system – imperialism – that is preserving the reactionary
states in the Third World countries, condemning so many of the world’s
people to misery and starvation, and robbing the whole world of the enormous
potential power of the all-round development of the creativity and cultural
and scientific ability of the masses. This world system is structured
in such a way that it does not allow the masses of the Third World to
empower themselves. Imperialism and feudalism have locked the oppressed
countries into backward conditions. Look at this simple fact: the US forces
landed in Afghanistan with bags of dollars to buy the political and military
allegiance of the tribal leaders in order to establish the kind of political
arrangements their empire needs in that part of the world. The dollar
is a social relation. It shapes the socio-economic conditions in the world.
The structure of relations between the imperialist countries and the oppressed
nations is part – and in fact a decisive part – of the world capitalist
system. It is imperialism that is the main force shaping the internal
class and social relations within the oppressed nations. The reactionary
classes within these oppressed nations – i.e. the big landlords, industrialists,
traders and bankers – are class allies of the world capitalist system.
They are imperialist “operatives” within these nations. Sometimes the
relations between the master imperialist and the local reactionary classes
become tense. Yet, in the final analysis, their lives as feudal comprador
classes depend upon their diverse connections with the imperialists. It
is, therefore, not possible to separate “internal” and “external” problems
because they are not separate. Both must be overthrown at the same time.
There
is widespread feudalism both in the economic base and the superstructure
of these societies. Basically, they are passing through a long, slow and
painful transition period from the feudal to the bourgeois epoch. The
intertwining of religion and state, the status of women, the strong patriarchal
social relations and nepotism are all manifestations of this situation.
But these societies have been under the thumb of imperialism for a long
time. The imperialists have been the foremost agent of whatever modernisation
exists in these countries and, at the same time, have integrated these
countries’ backward economies in a subservient way into their world web
of capitalism. Whilst introducing modern productive forces, they have
imposed a lopsided economic development, where advanced sections of the
economy exist as small detached islands surrounded by vast backward areas.
The very workings of the world capitalist economy have devastated the
local economy of these countries and have left them at the mercy of the
violent swings of the world market and changing ecology. At times, the
imperialist powers have deliberately adopted the policy of strengthening
the forces of feudalism. Afghanistan is a glaring example of this. What
has dictated, and will dictate, the penetration of imperialism into these
countries is profit, greed and political dominance. Only an anti-feudal
and anti-imperialist strategy and programme can open the doors for the
all-round development of these societies.
New-democratic
and Socialist Revolution – The Only Solution
Political Islam has failed. Wherever it came to power, it failed to establish
anything new for the masses. It kept the old oppressive relations intact.
The rich stayed rich and the poor stayed poor, and the grip of the imperialists
on the economy and political power remained as strong as ever. Political
Islam does not represent a cover for the coalescence of traditional ethics
and tribal unity under a new regime. It mainly and fundamentally represents
specific class aspirations in Muslim countries. It is the banner of a
section of the exploiting classes raised in order to gain incorporation
into the ruling power structures. These class forces care about the masses
only so long as they need foot soldiers. As Lenin emphatically put it,
today even the reactionaries need the masses to carry out their projects.
The rise of Islamic forces signifies a grave crisis among the reactionary
states in the Middle East. Political Islam has not, and cannot, cure this
disease. With or without an Islamic cover, these states are crumbling.
That is the main reason that their guardian – the US – has been compelled
to land its military forces in the Middle East. It must now deal with
this situation in person. The US can show off its air power as much as
it desires. But on the ground the angry masses are besieging its neo-colonial
client states. What is lacking is strong Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties
capable of putting themselves at the head of these masses, organising
their unquenchable thirst for liberation and their tremendous energy in
powerful people’s wars, and leading victorious new-democratic revolutions.
This is the only way to both uproot feudalism and solve the centuries-old
problems suffocating these countries, and to cut off the strangling yoke
of imperialism once and for all.
Endnotes
1
A supporter of the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist).
2
Ilya Pavlovitch Petroshevsky, Islam in Iran. This authoritative
Marxist source book on the history of Islam presents valuable scientific
analysis of the socio-political roots of Islam. To paraphrase Petroshevsky,
the emergence of Islam at the beginning of the seventh century AD is inseparably
connected with the developments in class society and the beginning of
a complicated social and political movement among the Northern Arabs.
Islam became the ideological mantle that led to the establishment of an
Arabian state and its military and political expansion throughout Arabia.
Muhammad
was an intellectual from a family of small merchants in Mecca. His family
(the Bani Hashem family from the well-to-do Ghoreish tribe) were the guardians
of a collection of idols worshiped by different tribes and families. Mecca
had a strategically important geographic location. It was a centre for
foreign trade, including the slave trade. The trading routes connecting
India and the Byzantine empire (Syria, Palestine and Egypt) passed through
Yemen (in the South) and then Mecca (in the North). Iran under Sassanid
captured Yemen in the sixth century and diverted the transit route in
its favour. Foreign trade diminished in Mecca. Mecca was also a centre
for internal commodity exchanges between Arab nomads, who traded dairy
products for dates, grain and craft items from Mecca. The Ghoreish tribe
lived in Mecca. Some of its member families became very rich from trade
and usury, through which they ruined smaller families and merchants (such
as the Bani Ommayeh family, initially the main enemies of Muhammad, but
who later united with him and led the expansion of the Islamic empire).
Others were modest merchants and agriculturalists (such as Bani Hashem,
Muhammad’s family). All of them ruthlessly traded slaves from Ethiopia,
and exploited them in agriculture as well. The disintegration of the tribal
community and the development of private land ownership, and the consequent
increasing gap between the rich and the poor of each tribe, shook up the
Northern regions of Arabia. A tremendous social and economic crisis engulfed
them. Muhammad took it upon himself to unite the scattered, warring tribes
of the Arabian Peninsula to deal with the crisis. For this, a unified
state for all of Arabia was necessary.
3
Defeats by the Western colonialists during the nineteenth century loom
large in Islamic literature. The British consolidated their hold on the
Middle East in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and during that
same period dismantled the Ottoman Empire. Tsarist Russia went into the
Caucasus and Central Asia in 1857. That half-century was a turning point.
It ended the centuries-old balance between the Muslim and Christian empires.
The Christian world had surpassed feudalism. But the Muslim world was
still grappling with the past.
Various
Islamic forces that are less fundamentalist and closer to nationalism
use nostalgia for the pre-colonial past as an ideological banner for uniting
the people: marching through the streets of Ramallah carrying a portrait
of Salahedin Ayubi (a celebrated victorious fighter for the Islamic empire
against the Crusaders); fantasising about the Ottoman empire, even though
the Arab feudals and kings happily helped the British to oust it; and
endless nostalgia about how Islamic civilisation was more advanced than
European, which was still in the Dark Ages (which is true, but let’s take
care of the future!). This history has given way to a lot of debate over
“why the Islamic portion of the world was not able to compete with European
colonialism”. This in itself is a big subject of historical study and
analysis among the intellectuals in Muslim countries, but this debate
is beyond the scope of the present article. Nevertheless, a correct proletarian
approach would start from the point that, while it is important to explore
this aspect of the development of human society, the proletariat does
not struggle against today’s ruthless reactionary empires (i.e. the imperialists)
with the objective of restoring past empires. First of all, the proletariat
did not even exist then, so it does not have any lost empires to cry over
or fight to revive. Secondly, these past empires – in the East and West
and regardless of religion or ethnicity – were oppressive and not worth
getting nostalgic about. The proletariat can freely say, as Marx did:
let the dead bury the dead (in other words, let the bourgeois and feudal
class forces cry over their own past). We have the future to fight for,
a future society completely different from all previously existing class
societies.
4
Among the ideologues of the current Islamic movements are: Khomeini, Motahari
and Taleghani from Iran, Seyyid Qutb from Egypt, Maududi from Pakistan
and Al-Turabi from Sudan.
5
In the 1980s, the CIA under the Reagan administration carried out covert
operations against the new Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The reactionary
Nicaraguan and Cuban mercenaries, who were run by the CIA’s Oliver North,
were called the Contras. This operation was funded by revenues from cocaine
smuggling and the selling of arms to Iran through Israel. The scandal
was called Iran-Contragate.
6
Especially since 11 September, there has been an enormous amount of propaganda
in the Western media, including in the liberal intellectual press, arguing
that Islam is different from other religions, that it is inherently more
rigid and less open to inquiry than the other major religions, and that
this is the reason why the Arab and Muslim world is so poor and has such
backward leaders (feudal sheikhs and the like). This implies that the
people in the West are so much luckier because they live under regimes
based on the much more open-minded Judeo-Christian ethic, and that in
turn is why they enjoy more prosperity and greater liberty. This is a
Western chauvinist argument. In terms of the scriptures and traditions
of Islam it is necessary to call attention to the fact that the Koran
and Islamic tradition is in many ways simply an updated and concretised
extension of the Judeo-Christian scriptures and traditions – as well as
others such as Zoroastrianism, Greek philosophy, etc. All these religions
are equally oppressive and reactionary.
It is
ahistorical to say that Islam is inherently incapable of reform. Throughout
its history, Islam has responded to changing social conditions. In fact,
many varieties of Islam are products of mass rebellions, invasions, power
struggles, great debates, the flourishing of science in parts of the Islamic
world, learning from the Greeks, Egyptians and Babylonians, advances in
mathematics, astronomy, etc. It is also true that the Islamic world was
in many ways scientifically and intellectually more developed than the
world of medieval Europe. When the Muslim empire was established in the
seventh century, Europe was in the Dark Ages. In the following centuries,
Christianity went through the Inquisition, burned heretics at the stake,
and so forth. However, the hold of religion and feudalism was overthrown
by capitalist revolutions in Europe, whilst feudalism continued to maintain
its grip on the Islamic lands. But capitalist development in the West
was not Christian-ordained. Some say that if it had not been for Protestantism
and Calvinism, capitalism would not have developed in the West. But it
is the other way around. When capitalism developed (which did not
have to happen the way it did, i.e. emerging in Europe first),
it forged a unified world history. And in this process Islam continued
to be part of the superstructure of societies that are both oppressive
and subordinate. When European and American colonialism and imperialism
penetrated these countries, it gave rise to the semi-feudal, semi-colonial,
lopsided societies that we see today. The domination of Islam in the superstructure
of these societies represents both the strong presence of feudalism and
colonial-imperialist bondage. This is how history developed, and it is
ahistorical to argue which religion is better.
Another
ahistorical view is that Islam should catch up! It cannot and should not
try to “catch up”. The world is saturated with imperialist-capitalist
countries already. And the Islamic countries do not need to produce Islamic
Luthers or Kants. That era has passed and attempts to reproduce it are
bound to be reactionary.
7
Ali Shariati, an Iranian, is one of the most famous Islamic thinkers.
He tried to forge a modern revolutionary Shiism. He is the founding father
of a new trend among Shiites. Ayatollah Khomeini considered him an eclectic.
Shariati
goes back to the origins of Shi’ism to claim that it has an immense revolutionary
potential. He injected this new reading of Shi’ism with modern sociology,
including aspects of Marxism, to produce what is portrayed as an anti-colonial,
native identity, called “Coming Back to Self” after the title of one of
his most important writings. He lumped the exploited and exploiters in
the West together as “others” and portrayed Fatemeh, the daughter of the
Prophet Muhammad, as a role model for modern Muslim women.
His political
aim was to counter the growing influence of Marxism among Iranian intellectuals.
8
In the nineteenth century the hierarchy of the Shiite faith was institutionalised
like this: Grand Ayatollah at the top, followed by the Ayatollah and then
the Hojat-ul-Islam. Only Grand Ayatollahs can practice Taghleed.
9
A word should be said here about the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation
of Iran, since it differs in certain respects from most fundamentalist
Islamic movements. It was founded in the late 1960s as an anti-imperialist
guerrilla organisation and fought against the Shah and US imperialism.
It had clearly defined political goals – the overthrow of the Shah and
the ousting of imperialism from Iran – and its perspective for future
society was a “classless Towhidi society”, a classless society
where everything belongs to god. At its inception, it was a radical petit-bourgeois
organisation, which felt required to resort to Islam in order to gain
legitimacy among the Muslim population and to distinguish itself from
the Marxist political organisations. At the same time it felt the need
to incorporate Marxist notions, such as classes, exploitation, imperialism,
etc., into its theory to distinguish itself from the reactionary clergy
and Islamic fundamentalists.