Grist and the Islamist mill

Submitted by Matthew on 11 December, 2013 - 12:14

I think my reply to Yassamine Mather covers Janine Booth’s first point about the introduction to Workers’ Liberty 3/1 (“Prioritise clarity over rhetorical flourish”, Solidarity 306, 4 December 2013).

“Of course modern political Islam is modern... but [it] responds to modern problems by invoking bygone times as a model. That political Islamists hark back to the caliphate (Islamic empire) and to what they see as original Muslim virtue is not a ‘chauvinistically offensive’ slur on them, but what they pride themselves on”.

Janine queries the term “much of the Islamic world” in a much-reviled sentence of the introduction. But in that whole section of the article, the subject of discussion is political Islam. The two sentences before the much-reviled one use the term “political Islam”; the sentence following it, “Islamic fundamentalism”.

For literary variation, in one sentence, the writer used the term “much of the Islamic world” to denote the same subject of discussion. Better if he’d put the variation in a different sentence? Yes, in hindsight. But...

Political Islam is characterised by “envy and covetousness” towards the wealth of advanced capitalist societies. It is not a levelling doctrine. It aspires not to liberate nations from big-power control, but to create a different big power, “the caliphate”. It aspires not to equalise societies, but to make the rich observe their religious obligations to the poor.

In this respect, political Islam draws on the mythologised foundation-narrative of Islam. Muhammad became a rich man, and his successors conquered a huge empire. They did not raze the wealth of the great cities they conquered, but took them over (which is why the Islamic world became a great thoroughfare for culture for some centuries).

Some movements merge Islamism with nationalism.

But I don’t think “response to Western governments’ military adventures against mainly-Muslim countries” explains much about political Islam. The rise of political Islam in Iran and Afghanistan was not a response to Western military action. The Islamists in Afghanistan got Western support.

In Syria today, the Islamists are funded by the closest local allies of the Western big powers.

The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by the US and its allies have been grist to the Islamists’ mill as they spread their influence. But the Islamists could use grist only because they had a strong mill beforehand.

When the Arab countries, and Iran, and Turkey, were directly combating colonial imperialism, secular nationalists rather than Islamists led the battle.

The irreducible objection to the much-reviled sentence is that by saying things that are true about political Islam (about its violence, or its imperialistic aims), it may reflect badly on other Muslims who do not support political Islam. But the answer must be to tell the truth on both counts — that political Islam is reactionary, and that ordinary Muslims are its first victims.

Clarity rather than rhetorical flourish? Yes, but vivid language often makes things clearer, and it is often worth at least trying to be vivid.

No revolutionary cause ever made headway by sticking to always-fully-hedged and bland language.

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