Islamism

TV fictions and AWL reality

An open letter to Ashok Kumar It’s been said before, and it will bear saying again. If everything published by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in the last five decades were to disappear, and if future historians of socialism had to rely on what our political opponents said about us, then the historians would find it impossible to make political sense of the story. On the one hand we are people who do, and have always done, everything we can to help workers in their struggle against employers and governments. We throw everything we have into that. We preach working-class revolutionary...

Syria: massacre in Ghouta

Almost 400,000 people are trapped in Eastern Ghouta, the last enclave on the outskirts of Damascus that is still not under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. The UN Security Council has asked for a month-long ceasefire and for a humanitarian corridor to be opened up to allow civilians to leave. Putin, on whose army and air support Assad has relied, has instead called for a daily five-hour “humanitarian pause” Russia’s call will carry more weight than the UN’s. Meanwhile, one of the regime’s worst bombing campaigns has been allowed to kill 500 people in eight days. The ceasefire...

Trans women arrested in Aceh

On 27 January, 12 trans women were arrested in Aceh province in Indonesia and made to undergo a “re-education programme”. They were subjected to beatings, had their hair forcibly cut, were stripped and forced to wear men′s clothes, and otherwise humiliated. Trans women are reportedly fleeing the province, an area with an autonomous status meaning it can have some of its own laws, including on homosexuality. Many run beauty salons which have been shut fearing a wave of attacks after far-right and Islamist organisations put out calls for regular Friday protests to ″cleanse the province″. The...

Against the "my enemy's enemy is my friend" binary: an interview with Meredith Tax

Meredith Tax has been a prominent feminist voice and political activist since the late 1960s. She is the author of several books including The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880–1917 , Double Bind: The Muslim Right, The Anglo-American Left, and Universal Human Rights , and A Road Unforeseen: Women Fight the Islamic State , as well as two historical novels, Rivington Street and Union Square . Her 1969 essay “Woman and her Mind: The Story of Everyday Life” helped influence the US women’s liberation movement. In 1986, Tax and Grace Paley initiated the PEN American...

"We, the democrats and feminists from Muslim backgrounds, have been deleted"

Anissa Hélie is an assistant professor at John Jay College in New York. Her articles include “Multiculturalist Liberalism and Harms to Women: Looking Through the Issue of the ‘Veil’” and “Policing gender, sexuality and ‘Muslimness’” in the book Sexuality in Muslim Contexts: Resistance and Restrictions , which she co-edited with Homa Hoodfar. This interview was conducted by Andy Heintz, a freelance writer based in the US Mid West who writes about US foreign policy, universal rights, gender equality, and social movements. He has been published in progressive outlets like Foreign Policy in Focus...

Secularism is a women's issue: an interview with Marieme Helie-Lucas

Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist and the founder and former International Coordinator of the “Women Living Under Muslim Laws” international solidarity organization. Helie Lucas also is the founder of “Secularism is a Women’s Issue.” Helie Lucas has long been a critic of Western human rights organizations’ sole focus on the crimes of the state as opposed to the crimes of non-state actors. She is a fierce champion of secularism in governance and a harsh critic of all forms of religious fundamentalism. She was previously interviewed by Workers’ Liberty here . This interview was...

Daesh Sinai attack linked to growth of Islamism across the region

On 24 November, in the Egyptian province of Sinai, Daesh carried out one of their most sickening attacks. Killing 305 and injuring hundreds more, Daesh attacked the Rawdah mosque. Gunmen waited to shoot down fleeing worshippers after their bombing. Ansar Beyt al-Maqdis pledged allegiance to Daesh in 2014 and has since been known as the Sinai Province of ISIS. It was founded out of a number of competing factions previously linked to Al Qaeda. It could now be the most capable and dangerous section of Daesh in Egypt. The declaration of a “state of emergency” in Sinai since 2014 has not slowed...

Stop this slave trade!

Recent reports about the Libyan slave trade adds further to the horror of what is going on in Libya and across the south Mediterranean region. The Libyan slave trade has been known to be in operation for years. It accompanies the brutal exploitation of those fleeing poverty in Sudan, Chad and Nigeria. It is well illustrated by the story of Victor Imasuen, the young Nigerian interviewed by US broadcaster CNN on his return to Nigeria, a video that subsequently went viral. Unemployment and poverty in Nigeria mushroomed in the wake of the 2014 collapse of oil prices. This in part led to the 2015...

Solidarity with Mogadishu victims

Over 300 people were killed and many more injured in a massive truck bomb attack in the Somalian capital of Mogadishu on Saturday 14 October. The truck bomb was detonated outside the Foreign Ministry building on a busy road, and ignited a nearby oil tanker. The Federal Government of Somalia has said that the attack was almost certainly carried out by Al-Shabaab, a Salafist group which has been waging a war to overthrow the Federal Government since 2006, when US and Ethiopian troops drove the Union of Islamic Courts from Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab was the youth wing of the UIC, and became...

Daesh driven out of Raqqa

The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) have scored remarkable victories over the last three years against Daesh in northern Syria. The YPG was created five years ago. Assad withdrew from Kurdish areas in north west Syria to concentrate his offensive in more central areas. The YPG became the army of the cantons formed in what Kurds call Rojava, “the West” of Kurdish territory. It made its female units (YPJ) every bit as prominent and effective as the male units. It rejected religious sectarianism and nationalism. It armed those it liberated like the Yazidis, and helped them organise in...

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