...Leftwing critics “objected to working with the muslim community”, he maintains. Untrue - certainly in the case of the CPGB. The Weekly Worker carried many articles by myself, Marcus Ström, Ian Donovan and others celebrating the presence of large numbers of muslims on the anti-war demonstrations. Nor do we have any problem cooperating with or even recruiting individual imams to the SA. Squaring the circle of religious doctrine with our SA programme is entirely their problem. Not ours.
Equally false is the charge that we “talk as if all the muslims were fundamentalists” and are “anti-gay or anti-woman”. They are not. Only a small minority of muslims are fundamentalists or followers of political islam. Most are notionally observant, increasingly secular and open to the ideas of equality and democracy. The way to win such people to socialism is surely not through courting and thereby strengthening the mosque. Quite the reverse. Break them from the mosque - not through hectoring denunciations of their religion, but by encouraging at every opportunity active participation in class politics.
In the context of ‘peace and justice’ we emphasised that the Koran and other basic muslim texts are anti-gay and anti-woman. The mosque cannot compromise here. Nor should we. In contrast Lindsey German said the SWP would not make a “shibboleth” out of gay and women’s rights. Her intention was unmistakable: water down or abandon our socialist principles on gay and women’s equality outlined in the SA’s People before profit in order to make electoral gains...