Islam and the Left Make Common Cause

Sometimes readers express their confusion over this unlikely and inexplicable new collaboration. We saw it in action during the Gaza conflict. All over Europe, Islam marched arm in arm with Communists, Socialists, Greens, Feminists and homosexuals, protesting (at best), or (at worst) committing acts of extreme violence directed at Israel, Jews, the United States, and the West. All over Europe dhimmi governments and dhimmi media tried to downplay this violence in which police were targeted, innocent bystanders caught up in the melées injured, property destroyed, cars burnt, and so on. How did an extremely fanatical religion find allies in forces that have been fundamentally and vociferously atheistic in the past? An article posted at Sultan Knish provides some clues:

(...) To understand just how far back this goes, consider this defense of Pan-Islamism by the Chairman of the Communist Party of Indonesia in 1922:

"But now one must first understand what the word Pan-Islamism really means. Once, it had a historical significance and meant that Islam must conquer the whole world, sword in hand, and that this must take place under the leadership of the Caliph, and the Caliph must be of Arabian origin. About 400 years after the death of Mohammed the Muslims split into three great states and thus the Holy War lost its significance for the entire Muslim world...

So Pan-Islamism no longer has its original meaning, but now has in practice an entirely different meaning. Today, Pan-Islamism signifies the national liberation struggle, because for the Muslims Islam is everything: not only religion, but also the state, the economy, food, and everything else. And so Pan-Islamism now means the brotherhood of all Muslim peoples, and the liberation struggle not only of the Arab but also of the Indian, the Javanese and all the oppressed Muslim peoples. This brotherhood means the practical liberation struggle not only against Dutch but also against English, French and Italian capitalism, therefore against world capitalism as a whole. That is what Pan-Islamism now means in Indonesia among the oppressed colonial peoples, according to their secret propaganda – the liberation struggle against the different imperialist powers of the world.

This is a new task for us. Just as we want to support the national struggle, we also want to support the liberation struggle of the very combative, very active 250 million Muslims living under the imperialist powers. Therefore I ask once again: Should we support Pan-Islamism, in this sense?"

The speech in question may date back to 1922 but its sentiments are very modern and commonplace among liberals in the West today. Their view is that Islamism is a people's liberation struggle against Western imperialism and capitalism because it serves as a common bridge between Islam and the Left today in 2009, just as it did then in 1922.

This reinterpretation of Islamism as an expression of economic and political discontent today tends to be described under labels such as resistance to Globalization or to corrupt Western "puppet regimes", but it is in fact a carbon copy of the Soviet approach to Pan-Islamism. This ideological approach enables the left to co-opt Islam in the struggle against Western hegemony. Meanwhile Islamists have long since learned to put forward economic and political grievances in order to make common cause with the left.