The left and Islam

It’s been there for nearly 1400 years, it commands at least the nominal adherence of a fifth of humanity, and it isn’t about to go away. In the eyes of imperialist elites it occupies a place comparable to that once held by communism: the source of a mortal ideological and geopolitical challenge to be contained, rolled back and destroyed or marginalised at all costs. But to many on the left Islam represents an outrage against reason and progress to be anathemised in terms similar to those used by the class enemy and no less strident than those directed against the worst of capitalism’s excesses.

The relationship certainly hasn’t been a happy one: in the 1980s emergent Islamism widely allied with the imperialists against the communist movement, recruiting jihadists to fight the revolutionary government of Afghanistan and its Soviet allies, threatening progressive regimes in the Middle East and putting communists on trial for their life in Iran. Yet today political Islam in many places claims the role once played by progressive movements, as a counter to imperialist domination and a voice for the dispossessed. To intellectual revulsion at the politicisation of a medieval faith is added an note of bitterness at its usurpation of the rightful position of socialists and genuine anti-imperialists. The distaste has even led some to welcome western armed involvement against Islam’s most extreme manifestations; others who once accepted government-controlled single-list elections in socialist countries now declare themselves in solidarity with bourgeois opponents supposedly defrauded of election victory by clericalist rulers.

So is Islamism devoid of any positive potential? Should we condemn it outright and support resistance to it even by rival enemies of progress, or is there scope for engagement?

The first thing to be said is that Islamism takes many forms, from the national Shia Islamic Republicanism of the Iranian Revolution or the Sunni Muslim Palestinian nationalism of Hamas to the pan-Islamist Sunni extremism of al-Qaeda and its allies. In light of its own stated disavowal of any intention to impose an Islamic state against other Lebanese communities, Hezbollah’s status as in practice an Islamist movement might be questioned entirely. Despite having contributed to the development both of Hamas and its al-Qaeda enemies, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood now proclaims its rejection of the violence that once characterised its opposition to the regime.

Nor can those proclaiming Islamic political doctrines be dismissed as a source of resistance to imperialist excesses. While the jihadist movement of bin Laden and his kind has been a disaster for Muslims, delivering two countries into US hands, Iran ranks as the bête noire of imperialist and Zionist circles for its support for movements confronting Israel and its efforts to strengthen its strategic position against US encirclement and Israeli threats of “pre-emptive” military action. Hezbollah commands respect far beyond its own religious or electoral base for its role in confronting Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. Hamas now constitutes effective Palestinian opposition to Israeli control while its rival Fatah seems ever more at risk of collaboration in a dependent, fragmented statelet under Israeli or western tutelage. In Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr’s anti-occupation stance seemed (for all his movement’s taint of opportunism and communal sectionalism) for a time to offer the hope of uniting opposition across Iraq’s menacing religious divide.

Would recognition of such Islamic regimes or movements as legitimate forces of resistance to imperialism be a betrayal of secularist progressives in the Muslim world? Well, for one thing, it would be nothing such radicals hadn’t themselves attempted in the past: Iran’s once-mighty Tudeh Party was condemned by its own rivals on the left for supporting the Islamic Republic regime against leftist opponents and thereby walking allegedly blindfold toward its own suppression in 1983. Nor is there much indication of a secular nationalist or revolutionary alternative rising to take the place of those who claim to reconcile the Quran with 21st-century nation-building. In part the present situation is a reflection of the left’s historical weakness, too often compounded by vacillation between sectarian antipathy to past nationalist regimes and opportunistic collusion with repressive rulers.

At the moment there’s simply little effective alternative in many countries to the inconsistent and ideologically flawed resistance offered by Islamists of the Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah variety. Far from betraying local progressives, it would be a disservice to populations which have rallied to such movements to reject them in favour of barely more socially progressive opponents more likely to collaborate with imperialism and Zionism. Recognising Islam’s anti-imperialist potential doesn’t mean siding with the hate-fuelled idiocy of reactionary jihadism or abandoning the search for a radical alternative to socially conservative Islamist regimes. But blanket denunciation of politics incorporating an Islamic dimension serves neither the fight against Islamophobia in the developed world nor solidarity with those confronting imperialism in Muslim lands denied a viable secular alternative.