[lbo-talk] Why We Must Back 21st-Century Islamists against 7th-Century Islamists (was Qaeda at Work)

[wrobert at uci.edu]

Without getting onto a side in this battle, I have to ask the question,
how are 21st century islamists battling 21st century islamists?  ... some
sort of rift in time a la Star Trek: Next Generation? (a series of old
fashioned anthropology, if I've ever seen one).  I thought we were done
with this absence of coevalness after Asad, Fabian, et al in the seventies
and eighties pointed out that this logic was crucial to colonialism.  (The
we feel very guilty moment of anthro that we seem to be still in.)  As for
the argument itself, I think that we might need to return to the work of
Fanon to answer some of these questions.....

                          Robert Wood


> Islamists are fighting Islamists -- that is precisely my point.  Only
> Islamists (plus a few remaining secular dictators, like the ones in
> Syria and Algeria) are capable of fighting Islamists in the Middle
> East.
>
> US (and multinational) imperialists, liberals and leftists in the
> West, secular and Muslim liberals in the Middle East, and so on are
> incapable of and unwilling to fight the dumbass Islamists, i.e., Sunni
> Islamists of the al Qaeda tendency (often backed by money, etc. from
> the Gulf states), who wish to turn back the clock to the 7th century.
> Imperialists are incompetent; Western liberals and leftists are out of
> the picture; and secular and Muslim liberals are too few and too soft
> (if they haven't signed up for the empire already) and their economic
> ideology repels working masses of the Middle East.
>
> Who are to defend modernity and civilization -- both Eastern and
> Western civilizations -- from the 7th-century Islamists?  The only
> effective defenders of modernity and civilization are the 21st-century
> Islamists -- of Iran, Hizballah, Hamas, and so on -- who believe that
> Islam tells them to see to it that women be educated, that birth
> control be practiced, that AIDS be combated through sex education,
> that wealth be redistributed for the benefit of masses, that
> technology be developed to put the East on an equal footing to the
> West, and that popular sovereignty be defended from the multinational
> empire.
>
> These 21st-century Islamists, needless to say, are far more capable,
> far more disciplined, and far better organized than Western and Middle
> Eastern liberals and leftists.  We ought to back them and defend them
> from imperialists the best we can, in a war of position in the West,
> so that they can defeat 7th-century Islamists.
> --
> Yoshie
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
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