1. We reaffirm our policy on religion and politicised religion.
a. Political Islam's reactionary anti-imperialism channels discontent against the poverty and disadvantage of much of the Muslim world, but in a reactionary way. It is analogous in many ways to 1930s clerical fascism in Europe.
b. In Britain we are against alliances with Islamists other than for such things as physical defence of Muslims and mosques against racists and fascists. We were right, for example, to oppose the SWP's alliance with MAB (approved or condoned by all other left groups) in the campaigning against the US/UK invasion of Iraq.
c. We are secularists. We are for the separation of church and state; for the freedom of individuals to practise religion as a private matter, but against political claims by churches, sects, and other religious groups. We are for secular education and for the prohibition of intervention by priests, preachers, churches, and sects into schooling.
d. Muslims in Britain, as in many other countries where they are a minority, experience oppression and racism. In Britain, a big element of this is old-fashioned racism against South Asian-background people - who make up close to 70 percent of Muslims here - recycled but with a specifically anti-Muslim character. Beyond that is a range of anti-Muslim phenomena that reach beyond South Asians (from street hassle for people dressed a certain way to bigoted nonsense in the press to attacks on mosques). Anti-Muslim racism has become a cutting edge for far right agitation. People of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin, who make up almost 60 percent of Muslims in Britain, in particular suffer disproportionately from poverty, unemployment, poor housing etc, and so do other ethnic groups with a high proportion of Muslims. And the state, while promoting Islamic institutions, has targeted Muslims with anti-terror laws, attacks on civil liberties etc. Opposing anti-Muslim racism and rallying the labour movement and working class against it is crucially important for socialists.
e. As a Marxist organisation we are hostile to religion as such, as well as to politicised religion and, of course, especially to reactionary "fundamentalist" politicised religion. We argue for materialism and science.
f. We are not secularist sectarians. We avoid raising the question of religion in ways that would disrupt workers' unity in struggles involving religious workers. We seek to help workers come to a materialist and scientific world outlook with the help of the experience of class struggle, not through counselling them to wait and listen to lectures from us. Although fully 42% of people in the UK aged 18-34 described themselves as of "no religion" in the 2011 census; only a decreasing minority in this country are religiously observant; and even among Muslims in Britain, who are more observant, only 30% of people aged 18-34 attend mosque weekly, we understand that even in Europe the socialist revolution will have to be made by workers many of whom still have some measure of religious belief.
g. People who are committed to revolutionary socialist activity in the class struggle, but yet still think themselves religious, can join AWL. We do not demand that they drop their religious beliefs as a condition of joining. We strive to convince them; we do not allow them to disrupt the AWL's collective advocacy against religion.
h. We defend the right of people to offend religious sensibilities, including in cases when we (because we are not secularist sectarians) would definitely choose to avoid offence.
2. We note that the spelled-out critiques of our introduction to Workers' Liberty 3/1 on "Marxism and religion" are in substance polemics against our basic and long-established views on political Islam. We endorse the general lines of the responses written by SI to Simon Hardy and by MT to Yassamine Mather and to Pat Smith, and look forward to the response being written by DR and EM to Marcus Halaby. (The response circulated in the name of Pat Smith was a strange outlier, blaming the introduction for doing what the main critics accuse it of not doing, i.e. identifying the poverty and disadvantage of many mainly-Muslim countries as a factor boosting political Islam, and then alleging that the introduction depicted the better-off capitalist countries like Britain as "wholly positive").
3. We will continue an open discussion within AWL on the issues, in which of course AWL members are free to argue to change our established views or dispute the interpretation and expression of those views.
4. We should organise discussions on the Marxist conception of history and historical progress. The text by Loren Goldner in DB 314 is a good starting point.