[NYTr] Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism - Pt 1

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by MichaelP - Dec 3, 2007


Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism - (1 of 2) 

[This is long but well- and clearly - thought out and thus worth
archiving and studying. Amongst other things the author makes the point
that Iraq. Palestine and Iran have something in common whish provides a
reason for their destruction -each has/had developed an educated
cadre capable of asserting internal leadership towards development of
a non-feudal, non servile nation, one capable of developing modern
technology. It's incredible that the Western fear of such development
centers on the ability to create WMD's - it's incredible that the
Western nations have created lots of such WMD's - and have used them;
but their defence is that such use is not the same as use by a "rogue"
state which might use WMD's for genocidal purposes. -Michael]

Monthly Reveiw - Nov, 2007
http://monthlyreview.org/1207amin.htm

Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism

by Samir Amin

English translation from the French by James Membrez 


All the currents that claim adherence to political Islam proclaim the 
"specificity of Islam." According to them, Islam knows nothing of the 
separation between politics and religion, something supposedly
distinctive of Christianity. It would accomplish nothing to remind
them, as I have done, that their remarks reproduce, almost word for
word, what European reactionaries at the beginning of the nineteenth
century (such as Bonald and de Maistre) said to condemn the rupture
that the Enlightenment and the French Revolution had produced in the
history of the Christian West!

On the basis of this position, every current of political Islam chooses
to conduct its struggle on the terrain of culture--but "culture"
reduced in actual fact to the conventional affirmation of belonging to
a particular religion. In reality, the militants of political Islam are
not truly interested in discussing the dogmas that form religion. The
ritual assertion of membership in the community is their exclusive
preoccupation. Such a vision of the reality of the modern world is not
only distressing because of the immense emptiness of thought that it
conceals, but it also justifies imperialism's strategy of substituting
a so-called conflict of cultures for the one between imperialist
centers and dominated peripheries. The exclusive emphasis on culture
allows political Islam to eliminate from every sphere of life the real
social confrontations between the popular classes and the globalized
capitalist system that oppresses and exploits them. The militants of
political Islam have no real presence in the areas where actual social
conflicts take place and their leaders repeat incessantly that such
conflicts are unimportant. Islamists are only present in these areas to
open schools and health clinics. But these are nothing but works of
charity and means for indoctrination. They are not means of support for
the struggles of the popular classes against the system responsible for
their poverty.

On the terrain of the real social issues, political Islam aligns itself
with the camp of dependent capitalism and dominant imperialism. It
defends the principle of the sacred character of property and
legitimizes inequality and all the requirements of capitalist
reproduction. The support by the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian
parliament for the recent reactionary laws that reinforce the rights of
property owners to the detriment of the rights of tenant farmers (the
majority of the small peasantry) is but one example among hundreds of
others. There is no example of even one reactionary law promoted in any
Muslim state to which the Islamist movements are opposed. Moreover,
such laws are promulgated with the agreement of the leaders of the
imperialist system. Political Islam is not anti-imperialist, even if
its militants think otherwise! It is an invaluable ally for imperialism
and the latter knows it. It is easy to understand, then, that political
Islam has always counted in its ranks the ruling classes of Saudi
Arabia and Pakistan. Moreover, these classes were among its most active
promoters from the very beginning. The local comprador bourgeoisies,
the nouveaux riches, beneficiaries of current imperialist
globalization, generously support political Islam. The latter has
renounced an anti-imperialist perspective and substituted for it an
"anti-Western" (almost "anti-Christian") position, which obviously only
leads the societies concerned into an impasse and hence does not form
an obstacle to the deployment of imperialist control over the world
system.

Political Islam is not only reactionary on certain questions (notably 
concerning the status of women) and perhaps even responsible for
fanatic excesses directed against non-Muslim citizens (such as the
Copts in Egypt)--it is fundamentally reactionary and therefore
obviously cannot participate in the progress of peoples' liberation.

Three major arguments are nevertheless advanced to encourage social
movements as a whole to enter into dialogue with the movements of
political Islam. The first is that political Islam mobilizes numerous
popular masses, which cannot be ignored or scorned. Numerous images
certainly reinforce this claim. Still, one should keep a cool head and
properly assess the mobilizations in question. The electoral
"successes" that have been organized are put into perspective as soon
as they are subjected to more rigorous analyses. I mention here, for
example, the huge proportion of abstentions--more than 75 percent!--in
the Egyptian elections. The power of the Islamist street is, in large
part, simply the reverse side of the weaknesses of the organized left,
which is absent from the spheres in which current social conflicts are
occurring.

Even if it were agreed that political Islam actually mobilizes
significant numbers, does that justify concluding that the left must
seek to include political Islamic organizations in alliances for
political or social action? If political Islam successfully mobilizes
large numbers of people, that is simply a fact, and any effective
political strategy must include this fact in its considerations,
proposals, and options. But seeking alliances is not necessarily the
best means to deal with this challenge. It should be pointed out that
the organizations of political Islam--the Muslim Brotherhood in
particular--are not seeking such an alliance, indeed even reject it.
If, by chance, some unfortunate leftist organizations come to believe
that political Islamic organizations have accepted them, the first
decision the latter would make, after having succeeded in coming to
power, would be to liquidate their burdensome ally with extreme
violence, as was the case in Iran with the Mujahideen and the Fidayeen
Khalq.

The second reason put forward by the partisans of "dialogue" is that
political Islam, even if it is reactionary in terms of social
proposals, is "anti-imperialist." I have heard it said that the
criterion for this that I propose (unreserved support for struggles
carried out for social progress) is "economistic" and neglects the
political dimensions of the challenge that confronts the peoples of the
South. I do not believe that this critique is valid given what I have
said about the democratic and national dimensions of the desirable
responses for handling this challenge. I also agree that in their
response to the challenge that confronts the peoples of the South, the
forces in action are not necessarily consistent in their manner of
dealing with its social and political dimensions. It is, thus, possible
to imagine a political Islam that is anti-imperialist, though
regressive on the social plane. Iran, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in
Lebanon, and certain resistance movements in Iraq immediately come to
mind. I will discuss these particular situations later. What I contend
is that political Islam as a whole is quite simply not anti-imperialist
but is altogether lined up behind the dominant powers on the world
scale.

The third argument calls the attention of the left to the necessity of 
combating Islamophobia. Any left worthy of the name cannot ignore the
question des banlieues, that is, the treatment of the popular classes
of immigrant origin in the metropolises of contemporary developed
capitalism. Analysis of this challenge and the responses provided by
various groups (the interested parties themselves, the European
electoral left, the radical left) lies outside the focus of this text.
I will content myself with expressing my viewpoint in principle: the
progressive response cannot be based on the institutionalization of
communitarianism,*(* A political theory based on "collective cultural
identities" as central to understanding dynamic social reality.--Ed.)
which is essentially and necessarily always associated with inequality,
and ultimately originates in a racist culture. A specific ideological
product of the reactionary political culture of the United States,
communitarianism (already triumphant in Great Britain) is beginning to
pollute political life on the European continent. Islamophobia,
systematically promoted by important sections of the political elite
and the media, is part of a strategy for managing community diversity
for capital's benefit, because this supposed respect for diversity is,
in fact, only the means to deepen divisions within the popular classes.

The question of the so-called problem neighborhoods (banlieues) is
specific and confusing it with the question of imperialism (i.e., the
imperialist management of the relations between the dominant
imperialist centers and the dominated peripheries), as is sometimes
done, will contribute nothing to making progress on each of these
completely distinct terrains. This confusion is part of the reactionary
toolbox and reinforces Islamphobia, which, in turn, makes it possible
to legitimize both the offensive against the popular classes in the
imperialist centers and the offensive against the peoples of the
peripheries concerned. This confusion and Islamophobia, in turn,
provide a valuable service to reactionary political Islam, giving
credibility to its anti-Western discourse. I say, then, that the two
reactionary ideological campaigns promoted, respectively, by the racist
right in the West and by political Islam mutually support each other,
just as they support communitarian practices.

MODERNITY, DEMOCRACY, SECULARISM, AND ISLAM

The image that the Arab and Islamic regions give of themselves today is
that of societies in which religion (Islam) is at the forefront in all
areas of social and political life, to the point that it appears
strange to imagine that it could be different. The majority of foreign
observers (political leaders and the media) conclude that modernity,
perhaps even democracy, will have to adapt to the strong presence of
Islam, de facto precluding secularism. Either this reconciliation is
possible and it will be necessary to support it, or it is not and it
will be necessary to deal with this region of the world as it is. I do
not at all share this so-called realist vision. The future--in the long
view of a globalized socialism--is, for the peoples of this region as
for others, democracy and secularism. This future is possible in these
regions as elsewhere, but nothing is guaranteed and certain, anywhere.

Modernity is a rupture in world history, initiated in Europe during the 
sixteenth century. Modernity proclaims that human beings are
responsible for their own history, individually and collectively, and
consequently breaks with the dominant pre-modern ideologies. Modernity,
then, makes democracy possible, just as it demands secularism, in the
sense of separation of the religious and the political. Formulated by
the eighteenth century Enlightenment, implemented by the French
Revolution, the complex association of modernity, democracy, and
secularism, its advances and retreats, has been shaping the
contemporary world ever since. But modernity by itself is not only a
cultural revolution. It derives its meaning only through the close
relation that it has with the birth and subsequent growth of
capitalism. This relation has conditioned the historic limits of
"really existing" modernity. The concrete forms of modernity,
democracy, and secularism found today must, then, be considered as
products of the concrete history of the growth of capitalism. They are
shaped by the specific conditions in which the domination of capital is
expressed--the historical compromises that define the social contents
of hegemonic blocs (what I call the historical course of political
cultures).

This condensed presentation of my understanding of the historical
materialist method is evoked here simply to situate the diverse ways of
combining capitalist modernity, democracy, and secularism in their
theoretical context.

The Enlightenment and the French Revolution put forward a model of
radical secularism. Atheist or agnostic, deist or believer (in this
case Christian), the individual is free to choose, the state knows
nothing about it. On the European continent--and in France beginning
with the Restoration--the retreats and compromises which combined the
power of the bourgeoisie with that of the dominant classes of the
pre-modern systems were the basis for attenuated forms of secularism,
understood as tolerance, without excluding the social role of the
churches from the political system. As for the United States, its
particular historical path resulted in the forming of a fundamentally
reactionary political culture, in which genuine secularism is
practically unknown. Religion here is a recognized social actor and
secularism is confused with the multiplicity of official religions (any
religion--or even sect--is official).

There is an obvious link between the degree of radical secularism
upheld and the degree of support for shaping society in accord with the
central theme of modernity. The left, be it radical or even moderate,
which believes in the effectiveness of politics to orient social
evolution in chosen directions, defends strong concepts of secularism.
The conservative right claims that things should be allowed to evolve
on their own whether the question is economic, political, or social. As
to economy the choice in favor of the "market" is obviously favorable
to capital. In politics low-intensity democracy becomes the rule,
alternation is substituted for alternative. And in society, in this
context, politics has no need for active secularism--"communities"
compensate for the deficiencies of the state. The market and
representative democracy make history and they should be allowed to do
so. In the current moment of the left's retreat, this conservative
version of social thought is widely dominant, in formulations that run
the gamut from those of Touraine to those of Negri. The reactionary
political culture of the United States goes even further in negating
the responsibility of political action. The repeated assertion that God
inspires the "American" nation, and the massive adherence to this
"belief," reduce the very concept of secularism to nothing. To say that
God makes history is, in fact, to allow the market alone to do it.

>From this point of view, where are the peoples of the Middle East
region situated? The image of bearded men bowed low and groups of
veiled women give rise to hasty conclusions about the intensity of
religious adherence among individuals. Western "culturalist" friends
who call for respect for the diversity of beliefs rarely find out about
the procedures implemented by the authorities to present an image that
is convenient for them. There are certainly those who are "crazy for
God" (fous de Dieu). Are they proportionally more numerous than the
Spanish Catholics who march on Easter? Or the vast crowds who listen to
televangelists in the United States?

In any case, the region has not always projected this image of itself.
Beyond the differences from country to country, a large region can be
identified that runs from Morocco to Afghanistan, including all the
Arab peoples (with the exception of those in the Arabian peninsula),
the Turks, Iranians, Afghans, and peoples of the former Soviet Central
Asian republics, in which the possibilities for the development of
secularism are far from negligible. The situation is different among
other neighboring peoples, the Arabs of the peninsula or the Pakistanis.

In this larger region, political traditions have been strongly marked
by the radical currents of modernity: the ideas of the Enlightenment,
the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the communism of the
Third International were present in the minds of everyone and were much
more important than the parliamentarianism of Westminster, for example.
These dominant currents inspired the major models for political
transformation implemented by the ruling classes, which could be
described, in some of their aspects, as forms of enlightened despotism.

This was certainly the case in the Egypt of Mohammed Ali or Khedive
Ismail. Kemalism in Turkey and modernization in Iran were similar. The
national populism of more recent stages of history belongs to the same
family of modernist political projects. The variants of the model were
numerous (the Algerian National Liberation Front, Tunisian Bourguibism,
Egyptian Nasserism, the Baathism of Syria and Iraq), but the direction
of movement was analogous. Apparently extreme experiences--the
so-called communist regimes in Afghanistan and South Yemen--were really
not very different. All these regimes accomplished much and, for this
reason, had very wide popular support. This is why, even though they
were not truly democratic, they opened the way to a possible
development in this direction. In certain circumstances, such as those
in Egypt from 1920 to 1950, an experiment in electoral democracy was
attempted, supported by the moderate anti-imperialist center (the Wafd
party), opposed by the dominant imperialist power (Great Britain) and
its local allies (the monarchy). Secularism, implemented in moderate
versions, to be sure, was not "refused" by the people. On the contrary,
it was religious people who were regarded as obscurantists by general
public opinion, and most of them were. The modernist experiments, from
enlightened despotism to radical national populism, were not products
of chance. Powerful movements that were dominant in the middle classes
created them. In this way, these classes expressed their will to be
viewed as fully-fledged partners in modern globalization. These
projects, which can be described as national bourgeois, were modernist,
secularizing and potential carriers of democratic developments. But
precisely because these projects conflicted with the interests of
dominant imperialism, the latter fought them relentlessly and
systematically mobilized declining obscurantist forces for this purpose.

The history of the Muslim Brotherhood is well known. It was literally
created in the 1920s by the British and the monarchy to block the path
of the democratic and secular Wafd. Their mass return from their Saudi
refuge after Nasser's death, organized by the CIA and Sadat, is also
well known. We are all acquainted with the history of the Taliban,
formed by the CIA in Pakistan to fight the "communists" who had opened
the schools to everyone, boys and girls. It is even well known that the
Israelis supported Hamas at the beginning in order to weaken the
secular and democratic currents of the Palestinian resistance.

Political Islam would have had much more difficulty in moving out from
the borders of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan without the continual,
powerful, and resolute support of the United States. Saudi Arabian
society had not even begun its move out of tradition when petroleum was
discovered under its soil. The alliance between imperialism and the
traditional ruling class, sealed immediately, was concluded between the
two partners and gave a new lease on life to Wahabi political Islam. On
their side, the British succeeded in breaking Indian unity by
persuading the Muslim leaders to create their own state, trapped in
political Islam at its very birth. It should be noted that the theory
by which this curiosity was legitimated--attributed to Mawdudi--had
been completely drawn up beforehand by the English Orientalists in His
Majesty's service.* 

[*The origin of the force of today's political Islam in Iran does not
show the same historical connection with imperialist manipulation, for
reasons discussed in the next section.--Ed.]

It is, thus, easy to understand the initiative taken by the United
States to break the united front of Asian and African states set up at
Bandung (1955) by creating an "Islamic Conference," immediately
promoted (from 1957) by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Political Islam
penetrated into the region by this means.

The least of the conclusions that should be drawn from the observations
made here is that political Islam is not the spontaneous result of the
assertion of authentic religious convictions by the peoples concerned.
Political Islam was constructed by the systematic action of
imperialism, supported, of course, by obscurantist reactionary forces
and subservient comprador classes. That this state of affairs is also
the responsibility of left forces that neither saw nor knew how to deal
with the challenge remains indisputable.

continued in Part 2...

[Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal.
His recent books include The Liberal Virus (Monthly Review Press,
2004), A Life Looking Forward (Zed Books, 2007), and The World We Wish
to See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century,
forthcoming from Monthly Review Press. James Membrez translated this
essay from the original French.]