{"id":5246,"date":"2017-09-11T13:25:57","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T13:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/09\/11\/the-most-radical-form-of-islam-neo-bolshevik-post-marxist-islamo-leftism\/"},"modified":"2017-09-11T13:25:57","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T13:25:57","slug":"the-most-radical-form-of-islam-neo-bolshevik-post-marxist-islamo-leftism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/09\/11\/the-most-radical-form-of-islam-neo-bolshevik-post-marxist-islamo-leftism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Radical Form of Islam: Neo-Bolshevik Post-Marxist Islamo-Leftism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pascal Bruckner<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

And here is where the strangest factor in the whole Islamophobia controversy emerges: the enlistment of a part of the American and European Left in the defense of the most radical form of Islam\u2014what one might call the neo-Bolshevik bigotry of the lost believers of Marxism. Having lost everything\u2014the working class, the Third World\u2014the Left clings to this illusion: Islam, rebaptized as the religion of the poor, becomes the last utopia, replacing those of Communism and decolonization for disenchanted militants. The Muslim takes the place of the proletarian.<\/span><\/p>\n

The baton seems to have been passed at about the time of the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, with the resulting rise to power of Islamist revolutionaries, which was the occasion for enthusiastic commentary by Michel Foucault, among others on the left. God\u2019s return on history\u2019s stage had finally rendered Marxist and anticolonialist programs obsolete. The faith moved the masses better than the socialist hope. Now, it was the believer in the Koran who embodied the global hope for justice, who refused to conform to the order of things, who transcended borders and created a new international order, under the aegis of the Prophet: a green Comintern. Too bad for feminism, women\u2019s equality, salvific doubt, the critical spirit; in short, too bad for everything traditionally associated with a progressive position.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This political attitude is manifest in progressives\u2019 scrupulous idolatry of Muslim practices and rites, especially the Islamic veil: \u201cmodest fashion\u201d is praised to the skies, so much so that, for certain leftist commentators, an unveiled Muslim woman who claims this right can only be a traitor, a turncoat, a woman for sale. The irony of this neocolonial solicitude for bearded men and veiled women\u2014and for everything that suggests an oriental bazaar\u2014is that Morocco itself, whose king is the \u201cCommander of the Faithful,\u201d recently forbade the wearing, sale, and manufacture of the burka in his country. Shall we call the Cherifian monarchy \u201cIslamophobic\u201d? Shall we be more royalist than the king?<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth considering this Islamo-leftism more closely, this hope nourished by a revolutionary fringe that Islam might spearhead a new uprising, a \u201choly war\u201d against global capitalism, exactly as in Baku in 1920, when Bolshevik leaders, including Zinoviev, published a joint appeal with the pan-Islamists to unleash jihad against Western imperialism. It was an English Trotskyite, Chris Harman, leader of the Socialist Workers Party, who, in 1994, provided a theory for this alliance between militant revolutionaries and radical Muslim associations, arguing for their unity, in certain circumstances, against the common enemy of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Generations of leftists saw the working class as the messianic leaven of a radiant humanity; now, willing to flirt with the most obscurantist bigotry and to betray their own principles, they transferred their hopes to the Islamists. (Emphasis added.)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pascal Bruckner: And here is where the strangest factor in the whole Islamophobia controversy emerges: the enlistment of a part of the American and European Left in the defense of the most radical form of Islam\u2014what one might call the neo-Bolshevik bigotry of the lost believers of Marxism. Having lost everything\u2014the working class, the Third … Continue reading “The Most Radical Form of Islam: Neo-Bolshevik Post-Marxist Islamo-Leftism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islamism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5246","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=5246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}