> So leftists have never been beheaded by Islamists who turned on them?
To be precise, many Islamists were beheaded by Islamists! But yes, of course I agree that this took place. One correct (obvious) observation does not make good history. Cf Niall Ferguson.
> This is true: "The first is that Halliday appears to have forgotten a
> deeper and more unambiguous conflict between imperialism and the
> left...." But it seems that you want to forget all the problems in
> making alliances with people simply on the basis of anti-imperialism.
I don't wish to forget anything, and I'm not interested in turning Islam into a master-category of resistance. I simply think that in all prevailing circumstances, it is absolutely imperative to open channels of communication and make links with politicised Muslims, and that includes some of those who are well to the right of us. My model here would be the collaboration between the Muslim Brothers and the Left in Egypt - as Hossam el-Hamalawy describes it, it is far from unproblematic, and dogged by the persistent conservatism of the MB leadership. Yet a constructive engagement with especially its radicalised youth and grassroots can produce results.
> I'm just editing an interview with Hamid Dabashi in which he recalls
> Iranians' fondness for Germans in the run-up to WW II, because the
> Germans made a lot of anti-British noises.
I think you need to be very careful about that kind of comparison. Do you really want to bolster the equation of Islamism with Fascism that the right are so fond of?
****************************
Just because you say that political Islam is socially conservative vis a vis questions of equality e.g. men and women; homosexual relationships and so on...does not mean that you are equating same with fascism. Fascism is a very specific sort of right-wing social order under the rule of Capital e.g. corporatist industrial relations to promote "national health" and to guard against the "disease" of international socialism with its ideology of class struggle--considered false consciousness by fascists. Theocratic governments are another kettle of fish, but with many of the same political flavourings. Both can be opposed without embracing Winston Churchill's speeches at Fulton, Misery or the Shrub's neo-con idiocies.
It's like the critique of Stalinism. Just because you make critical remarks about how the Russian Revolution was being run into the ground doesn't mean that you've chosen to support NATO.
My reading of history is that alliances with theocrats have ended in disaster for the left e.g. Iran. Some of the more extreme conservatives of political Islam have even bitten the hand of the secular conservatives who used them to fight and undermine various Stalinist States. Just because Le Pen and Osama bin Laden and other sects of political Islam want the U.S. out of Iraq doesn't mean that we need to make common cause with them or the neo-cons for that matter. If that marginalizes us then, so be it. It would be the height of masochism to help social conservatives to victory, all the while waiting for the inevitable noose to slide around our necks.
Best, Mike B)
Download a free pdf copy of the "Industrial Worker": http://www.iww.org/PDF/IndustrialWorker/IWMarch07.pdf
____________________________________________________________________________________ Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection. Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/features_spam.html