I do not know to which current of communism in India, if any, Saadia Toor belongs, but it is most likely that Toor agrees with Carrol that imperialism is not a policy but a deep structure of capitalism, which is one of the common ideas among modern communists, especially Marxists. It won't be easy to find a Marxist who thinks that imperialism is merely a policy, let alone that "fighting imperialism is a meaningless concept" (which you falsely attribute to Carrol -- the debate would become more intelligible and intelligent if you stopped setting up straw men).
> That
> aside, she's completely right about this, and I couldn't agree more.
> Note that she didn't say anything about phantasmic identifications
> with Islamist parties and governments. Which is no surprise, since
> when pressed to identify as Muslim by the interviewer, she refuses,
> saying "I'm a Marxist, a Communist, and so I'm against organized
> religion." That would not go down well with some on this list,
> starting with you.
The host wanted Toor and Shemirani to speak about the impacts of Islamophobia on Muslims from "personal" perspectives, and it is in that context Toor clarifies that, while she is from a Muslim family background, she is a Marxist, a Communist, personally "against at some level organized religion across the board," so it's hard for her to answer that particular question, and then, Shemirani, who is also secular, adds that Islamophobia spills over into reaction against all immigrants, all individuals linked -- even just by family name as in his case -- to the Middle East, predominantly Muslim nations, etc. Aside from the question of who they are, though, they both insist, for instance, on the importance of understanding that political Islam, Islamic fundamentalism, etc. are not the same as the Christian Right, Christian fundamentalism, etc. here, the former being a reaction to colonialism and imperialism; of doing home work learning about the history, political economy, and current political conditions that create issues people have to deal with outside the North before jumping into global activism; and of focusing on reforming and reining in the government here as _the number one task_, since that would make the work of activists around the world easier.
Moreover, Shemirani says he went to Iran very recently and talks about the complexity of the situation: sodomy laws in Iran are not about sexual orientation*, some Iranians identify as gay to get out of military service, queer Iranians and their allies are working within the health ministry to change things for the better, etc. Knowledge about that complexity is obviously missing from much of human rights activism here (they focus on GLBTQ activism in the West in the program because that's the topic, but the same should be said about human rights activism that is not focused on queer issues and identities).
The issue, in short, is politics** and knowledge, not personal identity, whether you ask me -- I'm not a Muslim, either by religion or family background, and I'm not from a predominantly Muslim nation -- or Toor or Shemirani.
* The point that should be easy to grasp for anyone who knows Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality and contemporary queer studies.
** Politics includes the politics of location, as Toor says, where we are in the international division of labor, in our case the nation that is the hegemon of the multinational empire, which determines what should be our primary task. -- Yoshie