One comment by the author of the piece in the Tribune that started this thread. Heh, George Monbiot called, "Moonbat."
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| Dear Pot, Yours Kettle » December 07, 2003
'Long live Soviet power, long live the sharia!'
The Socialist Workers Party's monthly magazine Socialist Review has an article entitled Bolsheviks and Islam: Religious Rights.
I'll leave it to others better qualified to comment on the historical accuracy or otherwise of the piece because I haven't got a clue and I don't think it makes a jot of difference to the current situation either - religious freedom for Muslims is not under threat in Britain, we haven't just had a socialist revolution and don't need to rally people to support our soviets.
But observers of the sectarian left will note the political significance of the article.
At a time when the SWP are receiving some criticism for their alliances with political Islam, the article is giving the ultimate seal of approval to such an approach - the Bolshevik precedent.
Historians agree that a majority of Muslim leaders supported the soviets, convinced that Soviet power meant religious liberty. There was serious discussion among Muslims of the similarity of Islamic values to socialist principles. Popular slogans of the time included: 'Long live Soviet power, long live the sharia!'; 'Religion, freedom and national independence!' Supporters of 'Islamic socialism' appealed to Muslims to set up soviets.
The Bolsheviks made alliances with the Kazakh pan-Islamic group the Ush- Zhuz (which joined the CP in 1920), the Persian pan-Islamist guerrillas in the Jengelis, and the Vaisites, a Sufi brotherhood. In Dagestan, Soviet power was established largely thanks to the partisans of the Muslim leader Ali-Hadji Akushinskii.
In Chechnya the Bolsheviks won over Ali Mataev, the head of a powerful Sufi order, who led the Chechen Revolutionary Committee. In the Red Army the 'sharia squadrons' of the mullah Katkakhanov numbered tens of thousands.
At the Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East in September 1920, Russian Bolshevik leaders issued a call for a 'holy war' against Western imperialism. Two years later the Fourth Congress of the Communist International endorsed alliances with pan-Islamism against imperialism.
There is no greater method of winning support of a sect membership to a controversial tactic than to declare it to be a replication of the strategy of Lenin and Trotsky. Even better when the only opposition cited to such an approach is that of Stalin's.
Given the undemocratic, totalitarian structure of the SWP I tend to look at the organisation and its publications with the same approach Sovietologists took to Stalin's USSR - you look for signals, messages being sent out to the cadres.
It is pretty clear what the purpose of this article is. Posted by Harry at December 7, 2003 08:54 PM | TrackBack
Comments
Ah, the Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East ! I recall the scene in the film 'Reds' where John Reed delivers an impassioned speech to the Baku Congress on the need for global proletarian revolution and is pleasantly surprised to find the assembled turbanned masses cheering him to the echo and waving their scmitars to cheers of 'Allahu akbar' - only to discover that the interpeter has diplomatically translated his appeal as a call for 'jihad'. Posted by: stephen marks at December 7, 2003 10:36 PM
I don't know if you've seen the Socialist Alliance item about the Preston council election where they won their seat, where Michael Lavalette makes it plain that the seat was delivered by the local imam.
http://www.socialistalliance.net/news/ocPreston.html
I wonder if Michael is any relation to Jean Parisot de La Valette, Grand Master of the Knights of St John, who lead the Knights of Malta in their jihad against the infidel Ottomans (and had the capital named after him for defeating them in the Great Siege of 1565). I bet he wouldn't get the imam's vote if he was.
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/military/16cen/malta1565.html Posted by: Laban Tall at December 7, 2003 11:20 PM
Well to be fair to the guy, having read his account of the campaign, he does seem to have stood on his own politics, and the imam backed him against a devout muslim. I guess in 'Reds' terms that makes him more like John Reid than Zinoviev.
Nice point about the Knights of Malta though. Posted by: stephen marks at December 8, 2003 01:13 AM
Who comes up with this shit. The longest, most determined, anti-Bolshevik resistance was the Moslem Basmachi in what was then Soviet Turkestan. It lasted until 1930. I have some knowledge of the subject and the Moslems of Central Asia were deeply opposed to Communism.
There may have been Moslem's that did cooperate with the Bolsheviks and claimed to speak for them, but from what I know they did not represent anyone. Posted by: steven dzik at December 8, 2003 06:35 AM
With regards to Wahhabi sharia, Bolsheviks would have their heads chopped off the same as the rest of us non-believers.
But please, continue on with your revolution. Posted by: Cog at December 8, 2003 08:29 AM
Here's more on the Left/Muslim alliance in Britain, which is proceeding apace thanks in part to the organisational efforts of one George Monbiot:
Moonbat Party Forming - World Saved
There's also a proposed preamble to the British Party platform...
"We, the Moonbats, Posted by: The Tapir at December 8, 2003 10:10 AM
I understand Monbiot is not very enthusiastic about the way in which the RESPECT Unity Coalition is being dominated by George Galloway and in the Guardian online chat the other day he was rather downplaying his role in any anti-war electoral coalition. Posted by: Harry at December 8, 2003 10:16 AM
I wonder if the good people of Chechnya would concur with Comrade Crouch's Marxism/Islam compatability pact?
Furthermore, I seem to remember some Syrians in the 1930s arguing for a synthesis of socialism and Islam. How did they get on with that, anyone know? Posted by: Borges at December 8, 2003 11:43 AM
I've posted the following comment on the article at LastSuperpower under the heading Pan-Islamism and Communism
Doubtless competing Trot groups will rush to the fray, citing Lenin and the Comintern's opposition to pan-Islamism.
But, if only to demonstrate that my disinterest in academic pedantry is not due to an inability to compete, I can't resist pointing out the complete fabrication involved in this statement from the article:
"...the Fourth Congress of the Communist International endorsed alliances with pan-Islamism against imperialism."
Here's what the Fourth Congress actually said about pan-Islamism:
"In the Moslem countries, the national movement is guided in its early stages by the religious-political slogans of the pan-Islamic movement, and this gives the Great-Power diplomats and officials the opportunity to exploit the prejudices and ignorance of the broad masses and turn them against the national movement (British imperialism dabbles in pan-Islamism and pan-Arabism and plans to transfer the Caliphate to India; French imperialism pretends to “Moslem sympathies”). However, as the national liberation movements grow and mature, the religious-political slogans of pan-Islamism will be replaced by political demands. This is borne out by the recent struggle in Turkey to remove temporal power from the Caliphate."
(Theses on the Eastern Question, Part II, The Conditions of Struggle, 5 December 1922)
Naturally enough the pseudo-Leftist interprets an "opportunity to exploit the prejudices and ignorance of the broad masses and turn them against the national movement" as a positive commandment for an alliance that "dabbles in pan-Islamism" following the wonderful example of British imperialism.
Without such "creative" references to the comintern etc the pseudos would not be pseudo-Left at all but just common or garden reactionaries.
Consider for example the article's conclusion - contrasting themselves as good allies of the Islamists with the evil communists, who they refer to as "Stalinists" in order to distinguish the tone from any other reactionary islamist article attacking communism (and indeed such modern evils as "womens rights") as an "attack on islam" provoking an understandable "backlash".
vvvv
From the mid-1920s the Stalinists began planning an all-out attack on Islam under the banner of women's rights. The slogan of the campaign was khudzhum - which means storming or assault.
The khudzhum entered its mass action phase on 8 March 1927 - international women's day. At mass meetings women were called upon to unveil. Small groups of native women came to the podium and threw their veils on bonfires. This grotesque plan turned Marxism on its head. It was far from the days when Bolshevik women activists veiled themselves to conduct political work in the mosques. It was a million miles from Lenin's instruction that 'we are absolutely opposed to giving offence to religious conviction'.
Inevitably there was a backlash against the khudzhum. Thousands of Muslim children, especially girls, were withdrawn from Soviet schools and resigned from the Young Communist League. Unveiled women were attacked in the street, including ferocious rapes and thousands of killings.
The assault on Islam marked the beginning of a sharp break with the socialist policies of October 1917. As the Soviet Union launched a programme of forced industrialisation, Muslim national and religious leaders were physically eliminated and Islam was driven underground. The dream of religious freedom was buried in the Great Terror of the 1930s.
*Socialist Review* stands in a tradition that totally rejects the Stalinist approach to Islam...
^^^^
They are wrong about Stalinists suppressing Islam. But they are quite right about the bitter struggle waged against the reactionary Mullahs as part of industrialization and modernization.
Exactly the same events, described from a progressive instead of a reactionary standpoint can be read about in the classic inspirational article The Stalin Era by Anna Louise Strong.
Please take a look at the above link and compare it with the "Socialist Review" article to understand precisely the real meaning of that confession:
"*Socialist Review* stands in a tradition that totally rejects the Stalinist approach to Islam..."
It is of course true that the correct Bolshevik ("Stalinist") policy was to fight against national oppression of the Muslims by supporting complete religious freedom. (That of course is also how one undermines religion). Posted by: Albert Langer at December 8, 2003 11:48 AM
For those who fantasize that their often noble socialist goals will be achieved by an alliance with Islam, they need read of an account of where this was already attempted: Iran. VS Naipal has a good account of this in his "Beyond Belief," initially the over throw of the Shah and his Savat was accomplished by Communists with Islamists in the background. Within a year Communism was repealed, its backers either murder or deported, and Islam Sharia installed. None of the socialist goals of equality, women's rights, tolerance, etc are found in Sharia. You might as well make an alliance with Alexander the Great. Posted by: Right Brain at December 8, 2003 03:37 PM
Bolshevik power was established in Central Asia through the support of the overwhelmingly Russian industrial working class in Tashkent and the garrison towns of what is now Kazakhstan and their control of the railway network. Progressive movements like the Jadids in Bukhara formed a tactical alliance with the Bolsheviks as they had little choice. Russia tolerated their reformed version of Shari'a until Stalin began his USSR-wide crackdown on national and cultural diversity, but certainly had no time for the Islamic fundamentalists who, as Steven Dzik says above, rallied around the Basmachis and fought both the Jadids and Soviet from their Afghan bases well into the 1930s. The Islamic groups the SWP is cosying up to clearly have more in common with the Basmachis than the Jadids, who were another of the tragic lost oppotunities for a progressive movement within Islam. A good book that gives an overview of the subject is Edward Allworth's "The Modern Uzbeks". And let's not forget that the man Lenin chose as the leader of the Muslim alliance with Bolshevism was Enver Pasha, the organizer of the Armenian Genocide who, once he'd got to Central Asia, promptly defected to the Basmachi, proclaimed himself Caliph and came to sticky end in the High Pamirs. By their friends shall ye know them. Posted by: Martin Morgan at December 8, 2003 04:31 PM Post a comment