Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 19:41:42 -0500
From: Amiri Kudura Barksdale <ryann.scypion-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Antiterrorism = development of terror against ourstruggles


Harald Beyer-Arnesen wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Amiri K. Barksdale <abarksdale-AT-mail.thenation.com>
> Date: 12. desember 2001 6:12
> Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Antiterrorism = development of terror against
> ourstruggles
>
> .Amiri, to be frank, I think your reply is absolutely nonsense.
> Islamism is a force that works effectively to subdue working
> class struggles.

This seems to me to be impossible. It seems like it would come only after
the defeat, or, as your example implies, after Leninism has run its own
decaying course in the midst of trying to modernize a country like Iran in
1981.


> That is why it has also enjoyed so much
> support from various imperialist powers. The Islamists greatest
> enemy is "the left," however you define it, and then of course
> women ann every secular force there is. Their terror is foremost
> directed against "their own," and not against the US.  My view
> on this question is shared by every more or less social
> revolutionary person from the region I have ever met.

All of this can just as easily be said about Christian fundmentalism in
the USA.


> Since Iran was one of the countries mentioned, Mohammad
> Ja'far and Azar Tabari in an article from 1981, draws a direct
> analogy to Zionism: (forget the language here still stuck in a
> Leninist heritage.)
>
> "To elucidate this point we will draw an analogy. [...] To arrive
> at a revolutionary socialist consciousness in Israel, that is for
> the Israeli working class to become convinced of the necessity
> to overthrow the bourgeoise state, it is necessary first to
> break with zionism ... anti-zionist demands, therefore, must
> form the central axis of a revolutionary programme in Israel.
> [...] To conclude:A revolutionary socialist programme for Iran
> today must include as its central plank hostility to the theocratic
> Islamic regime and the very idea of an Islamic republic [...]
> The break with Islam therefore takes on a transitional character
> in Iran today, in a similar sense to a break with zionism
> in Israel."
>
> Much of the argument leading up to these conclusion is lost
> here, and I do not necessary agree 100 per cent with every
> word (and on the party stuff I surely disagree) but it makes
> a hundred times much more sense than what you wrote.

I dont see how one can discard the language of the document--in 1981,
while the teocrats were taking over the revolution, these revolutionaries,
however well intended they might have been, were still, as is given in the
example, trying to "convince" the workers of a need to overthrow a regime.
But they already did in Iran!!! And still they were not srong enough to
finish their revolution in one country, for reasons that go far beyond
Iran.

I do not doubt, and I am quite sure, that religious fundmanetalism is an
evil, but in this case, it is not a cause in itself of anything, and other
than perhaps a thorough critique of it--which your quote does NOT go far
in delivering, nor mere protestations from revolutionaires anywhere--, I
dont see why a struggle needs to be waged against it per se.

Amiri



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