{"id":11377,"date":"2010-08-22T16:58:48","date_gmt":"2010-08-22T16:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/08\/22\/what-explains-islamistleftist-collaboration\/"},"modified":"2010-08-22T16:58:48","modified_gmt":"2010-08-22T16:58:48","slug":"what-explains-islamistleftist-collaboration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/08\/22\/what-explains-islamistleftist-collaboration\/","title":{"rendered":"What Explains Islamist-Leftist Collaboration?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An analysis<\/font><\/a> by Daniel Pipes.  Excerpt:<\/font><\/p>\n

Why, then, the formation of what David Horowitz calls the Left-Islamist "<\/font>unholy alliance<\/font><\/a>"? For four main reasons.<\/font><\/p>\n

First, as British politician <\/font>George Galloway<\/font><\/a> explains, "the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies," namely Western civilization in general and the United States, Great Britain, and Israel in particular, plus Jews, believing Christians, and international capitalists. In <\/font>Iran<\/font><\/a>, according to Tehran political analyst Saeed Leylaz, "the government practically permitted the left to operate since five years ago so that they would confront religious liberals."<\/font><\/p>\n

Listen to their interchangeable words: <\/font>Harold Pinter<\/font><\/a> describes America as "a country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics" and <\/font>Osama bin Laden<\/font><\/a> calls the country "unjust, criminal and tyrannical." <\/font>Noam Chomsky<\/font><\/a> terms America a "leading terrorist state" and <\/font>Hafiz Hussain Ahmed<\/font><\/a>, a Pakistani political leader, deems it "the biggest terrorist state." These commonalities suffice to convince the two sides to set aside their many differences in favor of cooperation.<\/font><\/p>\n

Second, the two sides share some political goals. A mammoth 2003 joint <\/font>demonstration in London<\/font><\/a> to oppose war against Saddam Hussein symbolically forged their alliance. Both sides want coalition forces to lose in Iraq, the War on Terror to be closed down, <\/font>anti-Americanism<\/font><\/a> to spread, and the elimination of Israel. They agree on mass immigration to and multiculturalism in the West. They cooperate on these goals at meetings such as the annual <\/font>Cairo Anti-War Conference<\/font><\/a>, which brings leftists and Islamists together to forge "an international alliance against imperialism and Zionism."<\/font><\/p>\n

Third, Islamism has historic and philosophic ties to Marxism-Leninism. Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian Islamist thinker, accepted the Marxist notion of stages of history, only adding an Islamic postscript to them; he predicted that an eternal Islamic era would come after the collapse of capitalism and Communism. <\/font>Ali Shariati<\/font><\/a>, the key intellectual behind the Iranian revolution of 1978\u201379, translated Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Jean-Paul Sartre into Persian. More broadly, the Iranian analyst <\/font>Azar Nafisi<\/font><\/a> observes that Islamism "takes its language, goals, and aspirations as much from the crassest forms of Marxism as it does from religion. Its leaders are as influenced by Lenin, Sartre, Stalin, and Fanon as they are by the Prophet."<\/font><\/p>\n

Moving from theory to reality, Marxists see in Islamists a strange fulfillment of their prophesies. Marx forecast that business profits would collapse in industrial countries, prompting the bosses to squeeze workers; the proletariat would become impoverished, rebel, and establish a socialist order. But, instead, the proletariat of industrial countries became ever more affluent, and its revolutionary potential withered. For a century and a half, author <\/font>Lee Harris<\/font><\/a> notes, Marxists waited in vain for the crisis in capitalism. Then came the Islamists, starting with the Iranian Revolution and following with 9\/11 and other assaults on the West. Finally, the Third World had begun its revolt against the West, fulfilling Marxist predictions\u2014even if under the wrong banner and with faulty goals. <\/font>Olivier Besancenot<\/font><\/a>, a French leftist, sees Islamists as "the new slaves" of capitalism and asks if it is not natural that "they should unite with the working class to destroy the capitalist system." At a time when the Communist movement is in "decay," note analyst Lorenzo Vidino and journalist Andrea Morigi, Italy's "<\/font>New Red Brigades<\/font><\/a>" actually acknowledge the "leading role of the reactionary clerics."<\/font><\/p>\n

Fourth, power: Islamists and leftists can achieve more together than they can separately. In Great Britain, they jointly formed the <\/font>Stop the War Coalition<\/font><\/a>, whose steering committee includes representation from such organizations as the Communist party of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain. Britain's <\/font>Respect Party<\/font><\/a> amalgamates radical international socialism with Islamist ideology. The two sides joined forces for the March 2008 <\/font>European Parliament elections<\/font><\/a> to offer common lists of candidates in France and Britain, disguised under party names that revealed little.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An analysis by Daniel Pipes.  Excerpt: Why, then, the formation of what David Horowitz calls the Left-Islamist "unholy alliance"? For four main reasons. First, as British politician George Galloway explains, "the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies," namely Western civilization in general and the United States, Great Britain, and … Continue reading “What Explains Islamist-Leftist Collaboration?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,163,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islamism","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}