Maybe Doug thinks that Islamists are a danger to leftists but leftists are not a danger to Islamists, but an objective look at the history of socialism and Islamism says otherwise. I'm sure many Muslims (not just Islamists), when asked to join hands with socialists, have to first overcome their misgivings based on the history of Afghanistan among other things. The very mixed record of socialism itself, even without propaganda that makes the record look worse than an impartial look at it, is such that the same misgivings come to the mind of many people, which is the reason why socialism hasn't made a comeback yet except in Nepal and Venezuela. (If socialists have had an easier time advancing in Latin America in recent years than in Africa and West Asia, one of the reasons is that a number of peoples in the latter region were victims of the worst sort of Cold War realpolitik played by the USSR.) We have to be able to see things, including the history of socialism, from Muslim points of view, as well as other non-socialist points of view -- otherwise, we are not going to get anywhere.
> 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.
Well, that should go without saying, and it applies to other peoples, too. Most Americans are to the right of us, and so are most Japanese and Europeans, and they are far less politicized when it comes to capitalism and imperialism than the Muslim Brothers in Egypt.
On 4/11/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> But it seems that you want to forget all the problems in
> making alliances with people simply on the basis of anti-imperialism.
Alliances can't be based only on anti-imperialism. The other key components are the class bases of a given Islamist (or any other) movement; women's participation as activists in it; eschewal of al-Qaeda-like terrorism; and so on.
Similarly, an alliance that is not based on anti-imperialism, however good your would-be political ally is on such questions as women's rights, is also to be avoided, and that's the point that Fred Halliday and others like him forget.
> 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.
Empires always propagandize on three fronts, whether or not any Islamists are in the political picture: against other empires (e.g., if you don't ally with us, you'll be taken over by the Russians!); against non-client states (e.g, We'll help you liberate yourselves from your tyrannical government!); against movements against client states (e.g., They'll make things worse for you than the moderate government you have!). Be wary of all three.
On 4/12/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> THe last sentence, yes, but as an organization, the MB sounds rather
> dreadful. If it really wants to create a caliphate across the Middle
> East that would merely be replacing one form of authoritarian
> imperialism with another.
You know what, the Brothers don't want to create "a caliphate across the Middle East." If they did, liberals associated with Foreign Affairs and the like (Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke, "The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood," March/April 2007, <http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070301faessay86208/robert-s-leiken-steven-brooke/the-moderate-muslim-brotherhood.html>) wouldn't be arguing for engagement with it. Maybe you can read more about them and find out.
In any event, a lot of people used to think something similar to what you say or worse about Hamas, for instance, but over time activists, scholars, etc. who know something about the evolution of the organization have managed to change at least the minds of certain sorts of liberals and leftists, if not anyone else in the West. -- Yoshie