> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of John Norem
> Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 8:00 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Islam/marxism
>
> Letter from France: In Europe, Islam fills Marxism's old shoes
>
> *Craig S. Smith
> <http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?key=Craig%20S.%20Smith>*
> International Herald Tribune
>
> Thursday, December 30, 2004
>
>
> *PARIS* <http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?key=PARIS> When Azzedine
> Belthoub was growing up in the shantytowns outside of Nanterre, France,
> 40 years ago, the people who came to take the young North African kids
> to swim in the community pool, to register them for school and give them
> candy and comic books, were Marxists. The French Communist Party offered
> a political voice for the working classes, including the growing number
> of North African immigrants imported to fill labor shortages after World
> War II.
> .
> Today, Islam plays that role, especially in France, where men like
> Belthoub, wearing long beards and short djellabas, reach out to the poor
> and disillusioned in the country's working-class neighborhoods.
> .
> Young Arabs and Africans here have turned to Islam with the same fervor
> that the idealistic youth of the 1960s turned toward Marxism.
> .
> "Now, religion has become our identity," Belthoub said last week,
> sitting in a friend's apartment in a largely Muslim suburb north of Paris.
> .
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk