Surely Islamism, like secular nationalism and socialism, needs to be considered case by case, Islamism at one time in one place being different from Islamism at another time in anther place; even the same political formation led by the same leaders changes over time; such case-by-case examination is precisely what imperialists who exploit Islamophobia and those who fall for it fail to do, bundling Al Qaeda and Hizballah, Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, etc. into one political category and acting as if Iran today were the same as Iran in 1981-1988.
The problem is that, for too many of today's leftists in the West (notice I'm not talking about leftists in Indonesia today), Islamism is invariably BAD at all times in all places, and that's what needs to be reconsidered. "Struggle against Pan-Islamism!" is not always everywhere the right position, nor would it be if the slogan were "Struggle against All Religion!" as some would put it. That ought to be self-evident, but it isn't. The stance currently promoted by the so-called New Atheists among others is precisely the "militantly anti-religion stance" that, if adopted by leftists, would make it unlikely for Muslims as well as other religious people to want to listen to them, except perhaps in the sense of sizing up the enemy, as leftists might do with regard to FoxNews.
> And you can also be pretty sure that Tan Malaka would
> have little truck with the Iranian regime -- which probably
> would have marked him for early execution.
So would have the Soviet government if Malaka had ended up in the USSR at a wrong time, judging by what it did to Muslim national communists (see below) and others who fell out of orthodoxy (which was easy to do, as orthodoxy kept changing).
Oddly, however, I don't hear a leftist say that perhaps not just Islamists in particular but also Muslims in general have more (good and bad, real and imagined) reasons to fear leftists -- both communists (with a heavy historical baggage) and social democrats (largely imperialists* if they are in the North, then and now) -- than vice versa. Many leftists appear to believe that they themselves -- unlike other leftists past and present, to say nothing of Islamists -- are angels, but that may not be the way others see them.
By the late 1920s, the regime in Moscow had given up
on the experimentation that had characterized much of
that decade, and the Jadids' understanding of Soviet
reality collided head on with the centralizing impulse of
the new period. The results were catastrophic for the
Jadids personally and for Jadidism as a cultural movement.
Of the major figures, only Ayni died in his bed; most others
met violent deaths at the hands of various enemies.
Behbudi was the first to go, tortured to death in March 1919
by (appropriately enough, perhaps) the functionaries of the
amir of Bukhara after they had apprehended him as he
traversed Bukharan territory on his way, in all likelihood, to
the Peace Conference in Versailles to plead the case of
Turkestan. Hamza was killed by a mob in 1929 as he took
part in a campaign against the veil. Munawwar Qari, Cholpan,
Qadiri, Haji Muin, and Ubaydullah Khojaev all disappeared in
the Gulag in the 1930s. By 1938, when Fitrat was executed
and Fayzullah Khojaev, most famously of them all, mounted
the podium at the Great Purge Trial in Moscow as part of the
"anti-Soviet bloc of 'Rights and Trotskyites'" to face the fatal
charges of counterrevolution and anti-Soviet activity, the
Jadid generation had been obliterated. (Adeeb Khalid,
The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central
Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 1998,
p. 300, <http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8g5008rv/>)
* Lots of social democratic parties and governments are committed to NATO, the Afghan campaign, the Israeli occupation, etc., which I bet are more vivid in the minds of Muslims worldwide, if they are politicized at all, than domestic repression by the Iranian government during the Iran-Iraq War. And it is probably a small minority of Iran's citizenry who think that domestic repression by their government back then was a bigger problem than the war that the Ba'athist government of Iraq, supported by just about all Western governments and MEK and using a lot of Soviet-made hardware,** made on Iran. (Leftists who remember the Iran-Contra affair tend to forget this part of history.) In short, their priority is likely to be the opposite of many leftists'.
** <http://www.iranchamber.com/history/iran_iraq_war/iran_iraq_war2.php> Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
By the end of 1982, Iraq had been resupplied with new Soviet materiel, and the ground war entered a new phase. Iraq used newly acquired T-55 tanks and T-62 tanks, BM-21 Stalin Organ rocket launchers, and Mi-24 helicopter gunships to prepare a Soviet-type three-line defense, replete with obstacles, minefields, and fortified positions.
On 7/6/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Jul 6, 2007, at 8:34 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > The end of habeas corpus has come not through anticommunism but
> > Islamophobia, which most liberals and leftists of the West are unable
> > to counter because their estimation of Muslims is not all that
> > different from the general public's and at the bottom of their hearts
> > they fear Islamism more than imperialism.
>
> <http://www.gallupworldpoll.com/content/?CI=28051>
>
> Britons Unthreatened By Those With Different Religious Beliefs
> Two-thirds agree that people from minority groups enrich their culture
>
> by Patricia Guadalupe
> GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
>
> PRINCETON, NJ -- Britain's new Prime Minister Gordon Brown faced his
> first real test over the past week with the attempted bombings in
> London and Glasgow that are believed to be tied to al Qaeda. Police
> have made eight arrests and expect to make more. The bombings come on
> the heels of the recent sentencing in London of several Muslim men in
> connection with a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange. Brown has
> called terrorism "a serious and continuous threat," and is proposing
> to extend the period for which suspected terrorists may be detained
> for questioning without being charged.
>
> But although many of those involved in alleged terrorism plots in the
> United Kingdom are Muslim extremists, UK officials have taken pains
> to distinguish them from the country's large Muslim population.
> London mayor Ken Livingstone said Britons should not "demonize" the
> country's Muslim population, saying they have played a "good and
> active role in creating a multicultural society." According to a
> Gallup poll conducted in late 2006 and early 2007, most UK residents
> agree: 75% said they didn't think people with different religious
> practices threatened their own way of life. Just over two-thirds of
> Britons, 68%, said people from minority groups enrich the cultural
> life of their country. Among Londoners only, the number in agreement
> was 78%.
You put too much faith in what people say to pollsters, as well as the words of government officials if they are of Western governments. Look at who are actually being detained and disappeared in the name of "war on terror." Not too many atheists or Anglicans, if any. This is an age when it's politically safer to be a Red than a Muslim if you live in the West. I'm puzzled why you think otherwise. You don't think your chance of receiving extra scrutiny at airports, coming under surveillance, getting arrested in a terror case, etc. is the same as that of a Muslim man who is as law-abiding as you are, do you?
One of the reasons why it's difficult to win back habeas corpus is that its loss, in the short term, is not felt by us all and that even leftists, such as yourself, don't necessarily recognize Islamophobia as a problem.
* One of the UK officials cited by Gallup, Ken Livingstone, moreover is hardly the most typical example of the Western government officials, himself a target of Islamist-baiting by such former leftists as Fred Halliday. Yes, he stands with Muslims, for which he is attacked, but many others don't. That's why he says Britons _shouldn't_ demonize Muslims. If demonization is not going on there, he doesn't need to say any such thing.
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization/left_jihad_3886.jsp> The Left and the Jihad Fred Halliday The left was once the principal enemy of radical Islamism. So how did old enemies become new friends? Fred Halliday reports. 8 - 09 - 2006
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
London's mayor Ken Livingstone, and the vocal Respect party member of the British parliament George Galloway, welcome the visit to the city of the Egyptian cleric (and Muslim Brotherhood figurehead) Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
On 7/6/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Jul 6, 2007, at 9:32 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Or perhaps the President of Iran, or his adviser, knows what happened
> > to Comandante, Oliver Stone's first documentary about Fidel Castro
> > that is reportedly a sympathetic portrayal of the Cuban leader, too
> > sympathetic to be allowed to be released in theaters in the USA, and
> > it was naturally rejected by HBO as well.
>
> So that's what the president's spokestool meant by saying that while
> he knew that Stone was part of the opposition in the U.S., the U.S.
> opposition was still Satanic? Doesn't it embarrass you to do PR for
> people who speak so freely of Satan?
Taking a break from your campaign against Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, et al.? Or venting frustration about your inability to overthrow the Black nationalists who are said to dominate the WBAI local board, let alone the state of the Islamic Republic of Iran? -- Yoshie