The future of working class politics?
- Thread starter Hawkeye Pearce
- Start date
Hawkeye Pearce
We're your friends man...
Thomsy said:
I'll admit class politics is at a low ebb at the moment in terms of its visibility. But there are a lot of struggles going on out there and there will be in the future. I don't believe that nationalism is going to solve anything however. In the Egypt you say that the division is as strong as ever between different religions, but Egypt had a radical nationalist ruler in Nasser and his project ultimately failed, the Baath party in Syria are now nothing more than the personal rule of Assad jr and the nationalists in Iraq became Saddam and his gang of crooks. I don't think nationalism has any sort of future here as what sort of nationalism will it be? Anyone attempting to start a nationalist movement that included (as i assume you would wish) all minority groups would have to base itself on a whole new set of values that has not been associated with either English or British nationalism in the past. Scottish and Welsh nationalism has the english to define themselves against but what would an english nationalism look like? I believe class is a far more valid manner of carrying out political struggle as the effects of the class system and how capitalism works are what can tie many people together in the work place. And how the government treats working class communities make the effects of the class system apparent. I would say that class can be a way of uniting people accross sectarian dividing lines and many socialists have achieved this down the years.
Hi rhys gethin.
You know, its curious. There is some truth in almost everything you wrote in that last post. And yet I find that almost everything you said is fundamentally wrong.
I do not accept the notion that we are becoming more ‘mixed’. Objectively, what we are witnessing – as Trevor Philips and the CRE recently acknowledged – is increased self-segregation. As newly emerging cultural groups build demographic and geographic centres of gravity, they find less and less need to extend relations beyond the borders of their immediate cultural community. There is actually less need to mix. It is only from a white British perspective that this trend can temporarily take the appearance of greater diversity. As the different localised communities grow, their borders expand into traditionally white areas. This creates the perception, for members of hitherto white communities, of growing diversity. In reality, to cite just one obvious example, large parts of London that were temporarily mixed race are now becoming mono-cultural though a combination of immigration and internal migration (aka ‘white flight’). The BBC’s George Alagiah’s recent book makes the point that the ring roads around our major towns and cities are degenerating into de-facto borders. In truth, I think we are only a decade or two from a South African demographic model: whites will live in suburban, rural and small town areas; the major city centres will all be the preserve of black and Asian communities. We already have green lines and ‘peace walls’ emerging in places like Bradford and Burnley and Oldham. These developments have profound implications for our politics.
Nor can I accept as accurate your suggestion that “religion is practically dead in Britain”. I live within a couple of miles of the Morden mosque which was built three or four years back and is the largest-capacity religious building ever raised in British history (capacity 10,000). Just this weekend ‘The Observer’ was reporting that planning permission is now being sought for a mosque in East London with an initial capacity for 40,000 worshippers rising to 70,000 later. There are new Hindu temples erected with some regularity. There have even been reports of a revival in the number of Christian church-goers – though, granted, the revival is founded entirely upon African and East European migrants. What you meant, I take it, is that religion is “practically dead” among indigenous white Britons. Which is true, but not necessarily a cause for celebration. The irony is that, for all the attacks on Christianity on these boards, churches provided one of the few places where people of diverse ethnicities voluntarily meet and function together as a real community – racial diversity, but cultural unity. (In that one respect, you could say something similar about mosques – though the politics of Islam is another question.) Meanwhile, the decline of Christian identity among British whites – indeed, the hollowing out of all traditional British symbols and institutions of identity and belonging – is leaving a vacuum that nationalism and the BNP are necessarily filling.
Sorry if I misunderstood, but your second paragraph also seems to imply that sectarianism and racism are the preserve of white people. Do you really believe that? I have found the ‘potential’ for these things to be almost universal. (Come to Egypt. Come to London.) Actually, the suggestion that these things are intrinsically ‘white’ sins is itself a racist assumption. Or, to be more precise, it is one of those doctrines which (like the whole steaming heap of doctrinal Multi-culturalism) are Establishment doctrines that are convenient for bosses and to which the Left in its defeat has capitulated – and has willingly capitulated, in so far as these doctrines ‘sound’ progressive and provide a fig leaf to cover the nudity of defeat.
I really was not certain what you were concluding in your last paragraph. Are you suggesting, on the Northern Ireland model, that there should be devolution for Burnley or East London?
You know, its curious. There is some truth in almost everything you wrote in that last post. And yet I find that almost everything you said is fundamentally wrong.
I do not accept the notion that we are becoming more ‘mixed’. Objectively, what we are witnessing – as Trevor Philips and the CRE recently acknowledged – is increased self-segregation. As newly emerging cultural groups build demographic and geographic centres of gravity, they find less and less need to extend relations beyond the borders of their immediate cultural community. There is actually less need to mix. It is only from a white British perspective that this trend can temporarily take the appearance of greater diversity. As the different localised communities grow, their borders expand into traditionally white areas. This creates the perception, for members of hitherto white communities, of growing diversity. In reality, to cite just one obvious example, large parts of London that were temporarily mixed race are now becoming mono-cultural though a combination of immigration and internal migration (aka ‘white flight’). The BBC’s George Alagiah’s recent book makes the point that the ring roads around our major towns and cities are degenerating into de-facto borders. In truth, I think we are only a decade or two from a South African demographic model: whites will live in suburban, rural and small town areas; the major city centres will all be the preserve of black and Asian communities. We already have green lines and ‘peace walls’ emerging in places like Bradford and Burnley and Oldham. These developments have profound implications for our politics.
Nor can I accept as accurate your suggestion that “religion is practically dead in Britain”. I live within a couple of miles of the Morden mosque which was built three or four years back and is the largest-capacity religious building ever raised in British history (capacity 10,000). Just this weekend ‘The Observer’ was reporting that planning permission is now being sought for a mosque in East London with an initial capacity for 40,000 worshippers rising to 70,000 later. There are new Hindu temples erected with some regularity. There have even been reports of a revival in the number of Christian church-goers – though, granted, the revival is founded entirely upon African and East European migrants. What you meant, I take it, is that religion is “practically dead” among indigenous white Britons. Which is true, but not necessarily a cause for celebration. The irony is that, for all the attacks on Christianity on these boards, churches provided one of the few places where people of diverse ethnicities voluntarily meet and function together as a real community – racial diversity, but cultural unity. (In that one respect, you could say something similar about mosques – though the politics of Islam is another question.) Meanwhile, the decline of Christian identity among British whites – indeed, the hollowing out of all traditional British symbols and institutions of identity and belonging – is leaving a vacuum that nationalism and the BNP are necessarily filling.
Sorry if I misunderstood, but your second paragraph also seems to imply that sectarianism and racism are the preserve of white people. Do you really believe that? I have found the ‘potential’ for these things to be almost universal. (Come to Egypt. Come to London.) Actually, the suggestion that these things are intrinsically ‘white’ sins is itself a racist assumption. Or, to be more precise, it is one of those doctrines which (like the whole steaming heap of doctrinal Multi-culturalism) are Establishment doctrines that are convenient for bosses and to which the Left in its defeat has capitulated – and has willingly capitulated, in so far as these doctrines ‘sound’ progressive and provide a fig leaf to cover the nudity of defeat.
I really was not certain what you were concluding in your last paragraph. Are you suggesting, on the Northern Ireland model, that there should be devolution for Burnley or East London?
Hi Hawkeye – I wasn’t exactly arguing for that nationalism. I was saying we are in a mess because we have massively miscalculated the consequences of abandoning a unified culture.
I think it has been a particularly grave mistake to pretend that multi-culturalism was a type of liberalism. It isn’t, and we’re going to pay the price for the mistake. The consequences of that mistake will now almost certainly be a form of authoritarian state – possibly some form of authoritarian nationalism, though not necessarily fronted by the BNP.
You point out how difficult it will be to find any common values to unite Britain’s disparate cultures and communities. I entirely agree. Which is why the coming form of state will, almost certainly, need to be far more authoritarian than anything that we have experienced before. It is the current Labour government that has actually begun the clamp down on liberties and the criminalization of forms of expression which are deemed to threaten social order. (In Egypt, it is illegal to form parties which are deemed to threaten sectarian balance; this provides a convenient way for the ruling party to ban ANY authentic opposition. This type of ‘censorship to promote peace among our communities' is already encroaching into the European cultural sphere, and spilling out into politics. Authoritarianism and censorship are the norm in any multi-cultural state.)
It is hard, now, to ask class politics to bridge the ethno-sectarian divide, when the Left has spend the last couple of decades working with the Establishment to entrench the notion that blacks and whites and browns are “fundamentally” different, should prioritise their differences, and should self-organise with some autonomy. Most minority communities do not now wish to define themselves in class terms. They are organised in cross-class movements, bonded by racial or sectarian loyalties, guided by religious and communities leaders (with the full sanction of the British state), and anxious above all to defend ‘their’ borders and to assert ‘their’ community interests in the ethno-sectarian dog-eat-dog that we call multi-culturalism.
I think it has been a particularly grave mistake to pretend that multi-culturalism was a type of liberalism. It isn’t, and we’re going to pay the price for the mistake. The consequences of that mistake will now almost certainly be a form of authoritarian state – possibly some form of authoritarian nationalism, though not necessarily fronted by the BNP.
You point out how difficult it will be to find any common values to unite Britain’s disparate cultures and communities. I entirely agree. Which is why the coming form of state will, almost certainly, need to be far more authoritarian than anything that we have experienced before. It is the current Labour government that has actually begun the clamp down on liberties and the criminalization of forms of expression which are deemed to threaten social order. (In Egypt, it is illegal to form parties which are deemed to threaten sectarian balance; this provides a convenient way for the ruling party to ban ANY authentic opposition. This type of ‘censorship to promote peace among our communities' is already encroaching into the European cultural sphere, and spilling out into politics. Authoritarianism and censorship are the norm in any multi-cultural state.)
It is hard, now, to ask class politics to bridge the ethno-sectarian divide, when the Left has spend the last couple of decades working with the Establishment to entrench the notion that blacks and whites and browns are “fundamentally” different, should prioritise their differences, and should self-organise with some autonomy. Most minority communities do not now wish to define themselves in class terms. They are organised in cross-class movements, bonded by racial or sectarian loyalties, guided by religious and communities leaders (with the full sanction of the British state), and anxious above all to defend ‘their’ borders and to assert ‘their’ community interests in the ethno-sectarian dog-eat-dog that we call multi-culturalism.
Sorry, Durruti02, I don’t have any rose-tinted hopes.
I suggested the possibilities were ‘sectarianism’ or ‘nationalism’. In fact, I think it’s more likely that we will see a kind of bastard progeny of them both: an increasingly fragmented society held together by an authoritarian state (fronted probably by the Labour Party, but it won’t really matter too much). It will have to use ever more intrusive and repressive powers in an attempt suppress the growing cultural and ethno-sectarian contradictions. It will be a kind of cultural Bonapartism. Tito-ism. And the violence of the state will be justified on the grounds that the alternative of ethno-sectarian violence would be even worse.
But even as it assumes greater powers, there’s going to be a huge crisis of legitimacy for the central state. It won’t represent anything except its own bureaucracy.
There is a palpable loss of belief in the collective project that we used to call Britain. I no longer find any real sense, even among the White community, of there being such a collective project any more. We’ve seen a haemorrhage of popular support from the main political parties and from the political process itself. I think you will see the same thing happen with all our collective institutions. No one believes in them any more. Few will participate in them. And so they will tend to fail. But it won’t engender any progressive protest; only a passive, morbid, fatalism. And that passivity will be the only thing that enables the state to function.
The protest you will see will come from those different communities which increasingly view the central state as an alien (even an imperial) power. Consequently, the central state will either have to impose itself by greater force in such areas – much as it did in Nationalist areas of N. Ireland, without any local support or legitimacy. Or else it will have to withdraw from these areas and delegate greater authority to local cultural leaders and organizations, employ ethno/culturally-specific security forces, and the like. Basically, if it does not impose it's will by force, the state's only alternative will be to create the institutions for regional / sectarian autonomy. That will intensify the segregation of different communities.
We will also see the appearance within Britain of movements claiming a kind of anti-imperialist legitimacy. The Left is soon going to have to decide whether the right of nations to self-determination applies to communities that seek greater political autonomy.
I suggested the possibilities were ‘sectarianism’ or ‘nationalism’. In fact, I think it’s more likely that we will see a kind of bastard progeny of them both: an increasingly fragmented society held together by an authoritarian state (fronted probably by the Labour Party, but it won’t really matter too much). It will have to use ever more intrusive and repressive powers in an attempt suppress the growing cultural and ethno-sectarian contradictions. It will be a kind of cultural Bonapartism. Tito-ism. And the violence of the state will be justified on the grounds that the alternative of ethno-sectarian violence would be even worse.
But even as it assumes greater powers, there’s going to be a huge crisis of legitimacy for the central state. It won’t represent anything except its own bureaucracy.
There is a palpable loss of belief in the collective project that we used to call Britain. I no longer find any real sense, even among the White community, of there being such a collective project any more. We’ve seen a haemorrhage of popular support from the main political parties and from the political process itself. I think you will see the same thing happen with all our collective institutions. No one believes in them any more. Few will participate in them. And so they will tend to fail. But it won’t engender any progressive protest; only a passive, morbid, fatalism. And that passivity will be the only thing that enables the state to function.
The protest you will see will come from those different communities which increasingly view the central state as an alien (even an imperial) power. Consequently, the central state will either have to impose itself by greater force in such areas – much as it did in Nationalist areas of N. Ireland, without any local support or legitimacy. Or else it will have to withdraw from these areas and delegate greater authority to local cultural leaders and organizations, employ ethno/culturally-specific security forces, and the like. Basically, if it does not impose it's will by force, the state's only alternative will be to create the institutions for regional / sectarian autonomy. That will intensify the segregation of different communities.
We will also see the appearance within Britain of movements claiming a kind of anti-imperialist legitimacy. The Left is soon going to have to decide whether the right of nations to self-determination applies to communities that seek greater political autonomy.
Hawkeye Pearce
We're your friends man...
This is true to a certain degree. The left in the 1980's did go down the wretched road of "identity politics" which played the states game totally by emphasising "culture" over class politics. The state does indeed prefer dealing with so called community leaders as the notion of communitarianism fits perfectly with the political elites message that class is dead. I also do not deny that an ugly authoratarian nationalism could emerge at some stage as the current situation where mainstream politics is becoming more and more obviously an oligarchy cannot last. An authoratarian nationalist movement could capitalise on that, probably not the BNP in its current shape but some kind of party more like the FPO in Austria or Le Pen in France. It would succeed by selling itself on an anti-immigration message as well as an anti elite message. It wouldn't look like 1920's fascism but an updated version. I don't think however that the divisions that currently exist will last forever though as I think we are currently in a situation defined by the collapse of the organised parliamentary left as well as the end of communism. But class politics has been declared dead many times before in the early 1960's was the time before this when academics were trying to sell the notion that the post war Keynesian system that had incorporated the TUC unions meant the end of class conflict. Of course that was before the economy took a down turn and the ruling class attacked the post war settlement. I think at the moment we are in a strange period.
The capitalist system has created a race to the bottom in terms of wages and conditions all accross the what was the advanced capitalist world as media/government and business all tell us that they have to cut wages/pensions etc in order to "compete with China and India". This is indicative of a deep underlying problem with British capitalism that has been ongoing for the last fifty years or more. Since manufacturing and extraction industries began declining in comparison to US, German, Japanese firms before finally collapsing in the 1970's and 1980's (aided and abetted by thatcher) now capitalism in Britain is based on consumer credit spending, high house prices and large amounts of people work in relatively unskilled low paid jobs. All of this means that there is massive instability which spreads all the war up to people who consider themselves middle class, but who carry massive amounts of debt with them. At the other end of the ladder lie an increasing number of people barely being able to scrape by from day to day. New labour has responded to this by maintaining with various means tested benefits and a regime that forced people into very low paid jobs or risk losing benefits.
This situation ironically enough reminds me of Argentina before the big crisis a few years back. Any serious downturn in consumer spending could wreck the whole show and impoverish large amounts of people who considered themselves middle class as well as reduce to truly abject levels of poverty those who are at the bottom of the ladder.
As for building a new politics based around class, as I mentioned above, it has to start from the very bottom. I've mentioned before on here there is now a whole generation at work who have no idea how to fight back against the bosses and the union movement at the moment is a toothless beast led by people who enjoy bosses wages. If we can concentrate our efforts on renewed workplace organisation where people from various communities work side by side then the divisions that have grown over the last twenty years can slowly be overcome. The same goes for community based action. Many communities which may be from different ethnic backgrounds have many of the same problems facing them. It is with this that class based politics must begin.
rhys gethin
New Member
Thomsy said:
And yet, Thomsy. you must admit, the number of 'mixed' people grows all the time. My parents didn't like it much when I married an English girl. Nowadays very few people I know are married within 'their own' groups - national, religious or 'racial'. The fact that new people are moving in from abroad all the time, settling near their relatives is what is creating the impression of ghettoes. The old cotton-towns are special cases - look at Leicester instead.
Thomsy said:
Yup - no question. Just so, in 'Wales' in the Nineteenth Century, two or three chapels were built every week - and just so the Irish built churches where they could hang together. Where is it all now? After a huge effort in 1902 it just disappeared in revived revolutionary action, as in Ton-y-Pandy It is a cultural stage we all go through. In my own family - and in many others - they moved from the chapels and churches straight into the Movement, and the two were hardly distinguishable at first. The SWP is doing good work with the Muslims here, as are 'multi-racial' churches which include militant members.
The Stalinist and LP 'internationalism' meant putting your own people down in favour of some other 'national; group - English, French, Russian or whatever - which was seen as 'progressive' (especially by itself). That sort of crap is being destroyed by the movement you are talking about - and a bloody good thing too! Real internationalism makes us equal. I don't think any of this stuff is 'sinful' because I'm not religious: it is, again, a stage we all go through: let's give our real differences real weight then get on with what's important.The dangers you are talking about are very real - but I think it's important to see them in the light of real history.
nightbreed
Im Bored
Cobbles said:
Big difference mate!! Read some Marx!
A manager manages. You will need managers in a workers state as long as they are accountable to the workforce.
Either you are a niave uneducated 'socialist' or just niave!!
Hi Hawkeye.
I wasn’t trying to say that the ‘class’ system would ceast to exist. I agree that capitalist production in Britain and elsewhere will have problems in the future. But the conflicts which will result are / will increasingly take sectarian and communalist ‘form’.
The trouble with re-establishing class consciousness as the basis for workplace politics, is that the division of labour is already pretty much racialised. Whites and blacks and Asians do different jobs. I overstate the case for effect, but it is actually remarkable coming back the UK to see how far this process has extended. Largely it is the product of immigrant workers coming to Britain and taking the jobs at the bottom of the pile, so it may change in years to come. But it may also become an institutionalised part of our political economy – and I do see significant evidence of this becoming institutionalised. There is also now an underclass of unskilled indigenous white workers who have been displaced from the workplace, who are unwilling to do low-paid low-status ‘non-white’ jobs, and who perceive that process of displacement in entirely ethnic or nationalist terms.
Same thing really with community politics. Self-segregation in housing and cultural life is breeding communalist politics. That will now be very hard to break. The SWP’s turn to the Islamists is partly a consequence of their crass theory of class consciousness (‘One step and one step only’, etc.). But it also reflects the reality that you now have to build political alliances on a sectarian basis. It has become difficult to find, let alone exploit, unalloyed class loyalties.
You actually suggest something of this yourself when you make the important point that an authoritarian nationalist movement may emerge that won’t ‘look like’ the fascists of the thirties. I agree. The Establishment and most of the Left continue trying to label the BNP as ‘fascist’ or ‘nazi’ because this actually covers up the responsibility of the Establishment (and the complicity of most of the Left) in the type of politics that have emerged. In reality, it is now almost meaningless to call the BNP a fascist party. It has transformed itself into a ‘communalist’ party and is now legitimised by the increasingly ‘communalist’ nature of the political system emerging in Britain.
I wasn’t trying to say that the ‘class’ system would ceast to exist. I agree that capitalist production in Britain and elsewhere will have problems in the future. But the conflicts which will result are / will increasingly take sectarian and communalist ‘form’.
The trouble with re-establishing class consciousness as the basis for workplace politics, is that the division of labour is already pretty much racialised. Whites and blacks and Asians do different jobs. I overstate the case for effect, but it is actually remarkable coming back the UK to see how far this process has extended. Largely it is the product of immigrant workers coming to Britain and taking the jobs at the bottom of the pile, so it may change in years to come. But it may also become an institutionalised part of our political economy – and I do see significant evidence of this becoming institutionalised. There is also now an underclass of unskilled indigenous white workers who have been displaced from the workplace, who are unwilling to do low-paid low-status ‘non-white’ jobs, and who perceive that process of displacement in entirely ethnic or nationalist terms.
Same thing really with community politics. Self-segregation in housing and cultural life is breeding communalist politics. That will now be very hard to break. The SWP’s turn to the Islamists is partly a consequence of their crass theory of class consciousness (‘One step and one step only’, etc.). But it also reflects the reality that you now have to build political alliances on a sectarian basis. It has become difficult to find, let alone exploit, unalloyed class loyalties.
You actually suggest something of this yourself when you make the important point that an authoritarian nationalist movement may emerge that won’t ‘look like’ the fascists of the thirties. I agree. The Establishment and most of the Left continue trying to label the BNP as ‘fascist’ or ‘nazi’ because this actually covers up the responsibility of the Establishment (and the complicity of most of the Left) in the type of politics that have emerged. In reality, it is now almost meaningless to call the BNP a fascist party. It has transformed itself into a ‘communalist’ party and is now legitimised by the increasingly ‘communalist’ nature of the political system emerging in Britain.
Hi Rhys Gethin.
Your choice of Leicester as a normative model is a little curious. My understanding is that Leicester will, in the next couple of years, become the first Asian-majority city in Britain. On current trends, I imagine the ethnic composition will become almost exclusively Asian in decades to come. I am not sure if you consider that an achievement. Certainly Leicester has not witnessed the tensions seen in the Cotton towns. But let’s be frank: if you ever visit Leicester in the future, you will do so as a foreigner, as someone visiting the home of a different culture. There is nothing inherently good or bad in that. (I love to travel.) But it does pose a type of political challenge that we have not seen in Britain since the post-Reformation era – or even earlier.
A couple of years ago, when it was starting to make the news that Leicester would be the first white-minority city, I discussed the matter with a Bengali friend. She actually called me a racist for expressing doubts about the virtue of permitting distinct ethnic and sectarian cities to emerge. She told me that this was the price that Britain had to pay for its imperialist past. That the British had an obligation to cede their physical and cultural space to those whom they had oppressed in history. She had a point. But what impressed me, at the time, was that she conceived the process as one of punishment and retribution.
I mention this because there is a strand within Left thinking which views the ills of modernity as intrinsic to whiteness. Implicit within the thinking of people like Lindsey German of SWP / Respect is the notion that there will only be hope for Britain once ‘white’ people and their ‘white’ culture have been reduced to a minority status. I remember her, during the last election, coming to Croyden (a town near me) and announcing how relieved she was to find it wasn’t as ‘white’ as she had feared. I am not attributing such ideas to you at all. But this notion – that we must diminish traditional British cultural institutions so as to create room for other cultures – is the foundation of all current multi-cultural policies in England and is a feature of most pseudo-Left / pseudo-progressive thinking.
You imply that the growth of Islam in Britain is equivalent to the Welsh experience of protestant revivalism or the arrival Irish Catholic migrants in the past. I think, in truth, that Northern Ireland, bereft of class politics for generations, is a closer analogy.
Progressives in Britain have spent so long arguing for ‘secularism’ against ‘religion’ that there is no longer any seeming sensitivity to the differences to be found among different religious doctrines and practices. One of the prominent features of Islamic doctrine is that it discourages Muslims from mixing with non-Muslims and absolutely forbids non-Muslims males, on pain of death, from marrying Muslim women. This has proved strategically significant in sustaining the integrity and hegemony of the Muslim community across the Middle East and in ensuring that Muslim communities necessarily expand faster than other confessional groups. I know it sounds utterly medieval to even mention such unpalatable facts. Except that I see the consequences every day in Egypt. And, though Shari’ah law is not enforced by the British state, this exclusive practice and the ‘honour’ system by which it is maintained are now becoming entrenched in Britain. You can cite liberal Muslim women who have broken with their community or married ‘out’. But as the different communities achieve critical mass – as the elders and religious leaders come to the fore and as the institutions of a parallel cultural state are established – it will become more difficult for Muslim women to break with that culture or even to conceive or desire such a break. And for all its hand-wringing over the growth of honour killings, official multi-culturalism actually institutionalises the conditions that produce such honourable behaviour.
I’m no more confessionally Christian than yourself, but I spend much of my time with Christian communities in Egypt and witness the consequence of the supremacism that is central to Islamic doctrine. So I find it really hard when you applaud the ‘good work’ the SWP are doing in helping to mobilize the Muslim community along confessional lines. The SWP are not encouraging Muslims to become Socialists. George Galloway acknowledged as much following the recent ructions in the Tower Hamlets branch. The SWP are seeking to exploit Islamism for electoral ends.
A discussion of the relative merits of historical Christianity and living Islam would need another thread. But however you evaluate Islam, the divisions we are erecting today will not dissolve in lifetimes. And they will supersede class consciousness.
Your choice of Leicester as a normative model is a little curious. My understanding is that Leicester will, in the next couple of years, become the first Asian-majority city in Britain. On current trends, I imagine the ethnic composition will become almost exclusively Asian in decades to come. I am not sure if you consider that an achievement. Certainly Leicester has not witnessed the tensions seen in the Cotton towns. But let’s be frank: if you ever visit Leicester in the future, you will do so as a foreigner, as someone visiting the home of a different culture. There is nothing inherently good or bad in that. (I love to travel.) But it does pose a type of political challenge that we have not seen in Britain since the post-Reformation era – or even earlier.
A couple of years ago, when it was starting to make the news that Leicester would be the first white-minority city, I discussed the matter with a Bengali friend. She actually called me a racist for expressing doubts about the virtue of permitting distinct ethnic and sectarian cities to emerge. She told me that this was the price that Britain had to pay for its imperialist past. That the British had an obligation to cede their physical and cultural space to those whom they had oppressed in history. She had a point. But what impressed me, at the time, was that she conceived the process as one of punishment and retribution.
I mention this because there is a strand within Left thinking which views the ills of modernity as intrinsic to whiteness. Implicit within the thinking of people like Lindsey German of SWP / Respect is the notion that there will only be hope for Britain once ‘white’ people and their ‘white’ culture have been reduced to a minority status. I remember her, during the last election, coming to Croyden (a town near me) and announcing how relieved she was to find it wasn’t as ‘white’ as she had feared. I am not attributing such ideas to you at all. But this notion – that we must diminish traditional British cultural institutions so as to create room for other cultures – is the foundation of all current multi-cultural policies in England and is a feature of most pseudo-Left / pseudo-progressive thinking.
You imply that the growth of Islam in Britain is equivalent to the Welsh experience of protestant revivalism or the arrival Irish Catholic migrants in the past. I think, in truth, that Northern Ireland, bereft of class politics for generations, is a closer analogy.
Progressives in Britain have spent so long arguing for ‘secularism’ against ‘religion’ that there is no longer any seeming sensitivity to the differences to be found among different religious doctrines and practices. One of the prominent features of Islamic doctrine is that it discourages Muslims from mixing with non-Muslims and absolutely forbids non-Muslims males, on pain of death, from marrying Muslim women. This has proved strategically significant in sustaining the integrity and hegemony of the Muslim community across the Middle East and in ensuring that Muslim communities necessarily expand faster than other confessional groups. I know it sounds utterly medieval to even mention such unpalatable facts. Except that I see the consequences every day in Egypt. And, though Shari’ah law is not enforced by the British state, this exclusive practice and the ‘honour’ system by which it is maintained are now becoming entrenched in Britain. You can cite liberal Muslim women who have broken with their community or married ‘out’. But as the different communities achieve critical mass – as the elders and religious leaders come to the fore and as the institutions of a parallel cultural state are established – it will become more difficult for Muslim women to break with that culture or even to conceive or desire such a break. And for all its hand-wringing over the growth of honour killings, official multi-culturalism actually institutionalises the conditions that produce such honourable behaviour.
I’m no more confessionally Christian than yourself, but I spend much of my time with Christian communities in Egypt and witness the consequence of the supremacism that is central to Islamic doctrine. So I find it really hard when you applaud the ‘good work’ the SWP are doing in helping to mobilize the Muslim community along confessional lines. The SWP are not encouraging Muslims to become Socialists. George Galloway acknowledged as much following the recent ructions in the Tower Hamlets branch. The SWP are seeking to exploit Islamism for electoral ends.
A discussion of the relative merits of historical Christianity and living Islam would need another thread. But however you evaluate Islam, the divisions we are erecting today will not dissolve in lifetimes. And they will supersede class consciousness.
rhys gethin
New Member
Hi Thomsy - I visit Leicester fairly frequently and perceive no problems whatever. Just as Puritan Boston became Irish Boston, so will the majority in Leicester change, doubtless - but change in two sense, being heavily influenced by the surrounding culture as new groups take over. My own experience tells me that three generations of an immigrant culture is IT, and as to religion, I see no reason why exclusive Islam should last much longer than has exclusive Roman Catholicism. I think we should leave the 'race/relgion' fantasies to the BNP and the boss-press and expect people to behave in pretty much the same way as people did in the past under pretty much the same conditions. Liverpool and Glasgow presented much the same situation as the northern ex-mill-towns now for much of the Nineteenth Century, and I don't doubt doubt that people would have talked about Liverpool then as 'the first English city with a Celtic majority', quoting the Protestant-Catholic community conflict as a sign of the disappearance of normal class-feeling. Many of the Irish were into 'retribution' and all. But, like the Welsh and Black people, they just turned into Scousers.
The Six Counties was a special case because of the semi-colonial relationship of Ireland to England. As you doubtless know, there were different reactions in the days of the United Irishmen, and in Larkin's day too. If Connolly and others had refused to play the national/sectarian game in 1916, things might have been different, I'd guess, but I'm not into counter-factuals. I don't think there is anything like the backlog of viciousness in this country, nor the very long tradition of division. And I know plenty of theoretically-Muslim people who are going through the motions, like my Father's generation with Christianity. When they leave, who is going to punish them - Tariq Ali? Important for us not to get into the state of mind of Nineteenth Century Protestants talking about 'Rome', I think. I quite see your point about the Middle East, but the position of Islam is very different there. I think the Muslim communities here would be following the old Jewish ones into general assimilation already but for continuing immigration. And, clearly, the State must - for everyone's sake - put a very firm stop to honour-killings and such nuttiness, for such time as they still go on. My own experience of Muslim students suggests that will not be long at all. It is just daft old peasant stuff, such as all our ancestors exhibited when they first escaped 'the idiocy of rural life' . And I'm not worried about the motives of the SWP or Respect - as people are pulled into political action they begin to move away from all that grandaddy behaviour, that's all.
I do see your point about different kinds of work using different kinds of workers - but that was again true in the Nineteenth Century, when navvies and (as even now) building workers were often Irish - or indeed, soldiers. The troops who shot down the Chartist marchers outside the Westgate Hotel during the March on Newport were almost solidly Irish. That didn't change basic history though: if they went home, I bet, many of them would have turned out for the Fenians, just as many of the Welsh marchers were ex-soldiers. And if they stayed in Wales, they'd have become good trade unionists. Class continues to exist, socialists continue to exist, and anybody sober knows that Unity is Strength, as it always was. Religious and cultural groupings collapse when faced with real social divisions, as did the Nonconformist 'gwerin' when faced with events like the Taff Vale Judgement or the Cambrian Combine Strike. Yes, again, they have muddled a lot of heads, and given us a lot more work to do. So - what's new there then?
The Six Counties was a special case because of the semi-colonial relationship of Ireland to England. As you doubtless know, there were different reactions in the days of the United Irishmen, and in Larkin's day too. If Connolly and others had refused to play the national/sectarian game in 1916, things might have been different, I'd guess, but I'm not into counter-factuals. I don't think there is anything like the backlog of viciousness in this country, nor the very long tradition of division. And I know plenty of theoretically-Muslim people who are going through the motions, like my Father's generation with Christianity. When they leave, who is going to punish them - Tariq Ali? Important for us not to get into the state of mind of Nineteenth Century Protestants talking about 'Rome', I think. I quite see your point about the Middle East, but the position of Islam is very different there. I think the Muslim communities here would be following the old Jewish ones into general assimilation already but for continuing immigration. And, clearly, the State must - for everyone's sake - put a very firm stop to honour-killings and such nuttiness, for such time as they still go on. My own experience of Muslim students suggests that will not be long at all. It is just daft old peasant stuff, such as all our ancestors exhibited when they first escaped 'the idiocy of rural life' . And I'm not worried about the motives of the SWP or Respect - as people are pulled into political action they begin to move away from all that grandaddy behaviour, that's all.
I do see your point about different kinds of work using different kinds of workers - but that was again true in the Nineteenth Century, when navvies and (as even now) building workers were often Irish - or indeed, soldiers. The troops who shot down the Chartist marchers outside the Westgate Hotel during the March on Newport were almost solidly Irish. That didn't change basic history though: if they went home, I bet, many of them would have turned out for the Fenians, just as many of the Welsh marchers were ex-soldiers. And if they stayed in Wales, they'd have become good trade unionists. Class continues to exist, socialists continue to exist, and anybody sober knows that Unity is Strength, as it always was. Religious and cultural groupings collapse when faced with real social divisions, as did the Nonconformist 'gwerin' when faced with events like the Taff Vale Judgement or the Cambrian Combine Strike. Yes, again, they have muddled a lot of heads, and given us a lot more work to do. So - what's new there then?
Hi Rhys Gethin.
Sorry this is way too long, but I think we’re the only ones still following this thread, so I let rip.
I wasn’t suggesting there were problems in Leicester, simply that it was becoming a ‘foreign’ place. In London, you now regularly hear people remark that parts of the capital have become foreign to them, have become places where they no longer feel at home. I don’t think you can call these the fantasies of the BNP or the bosses press. I think they are legitimate expressions of the fact that our culture is our external, collective home.
You argue that the new communities will eventually, inevitably, somehow-automatically, blend and blur. In fact, for the first time in many centuries, we are seeing the establishment within Britain of distinct cultural entities with both the demographic scale and the collective will to reproduce and grow themselves in effective autonomy from the rest of British society. We have encouraged them to do so. We face the real possibility of creating new homelands within Britain – incipient states with the sense of identity, the communal loyalty, the cultural institutions and the critical mass to resist the process of blending and blurring.
I was playing Jeremiah in most of the earlier posts. They were meant to be prophetic, in a Hebrew sense, rather than definitely predictive. But when you say that you can ‘see no reason’ why Islam should continue to present an exclusive face in Britain, then I can say with some certainty that you are in for a rude shock.
Abu Izzedin may be a convert nutter, but his arguments have the support of the most significant minority of Muslims in Britain. In telling Mr Reid that the British interior minister had no right coming uninvited into the Muslim territory of East London, he was very deliberately setting up a boundary post, demarcating a border. He was pursuing the same Islamist policy which you can observe throughout the Middle East. The goal of the policy is to Islamise and make sacred hitherto secular spaces – cultural spaces, geographical spaces, architectural spaces, intellectual spaces. It is about marking and defining these as Muslim and thus inviolable, rendering them untouchable and ungovernable by non-Muslims. It is quite explicitly designed to make non-Muslims (and even liberal-minded Muslims) too intimidated to question or violate these boundaries. You dare not remove a Muslim woman’s hijab. You dare not approach a Muslim women. You dare not question the authenticity of the Quran. You dare not criticize the Prophet. You dare not penetrate the confines of our mosques and holy places. You dare not enter Muslim territory without permission. Etc. Etc. It is about erecting a high wall behind which the Muslim community itself can be regimented and policed by the radicals. It is about building a impregnable cultural fortress from the security of which subsequent sorties and advances may be made into the ‘kufr’ hinterland.
You asked me who would enforce these sacred taboos. Ask Salman Rushdie or the editors who published the Mohammed cartoons. Once the communal boundaries are established, they become almost self-policing. The community will defend its own honour. If you try to date a Muslim woman, build or repair a church in a Muslim area, question the divine status of the Quran, etc – all of these and so many more will be denounced as ‘insults’, ‘offences’ and ‘provocations’ to Islam.
The process even has a self-fulfilling dynamic. ‘Attacks’ upon the sacred boundaries are opportunities to cohere communal loyalty, to shore up the leadership of radical imams, and to justify ‘retaliatory’ militancy. The moderates of whom you wrote will either fall silent or be sucked
back into the communalist mentality. The example of Northern Ireland demonstrates that, once sectarianism is entrenched, it is the militants who tend to define the agenda.
N. Ireland is not as ‘special’ as I once thought myself. We’ve now imported an anti-imperialist struggle / sectarian Holy War into the stomach of our body politic.
In otherwise learned paragraphs, you argued that such bonds of civilized communion as religion and culture are essentially irrelevant. Irrelevant in themselves and irrelevant to the historical process as you conceived it.
I’m absolutely certain your argument would be more complex if you had space or time to lay it out fully. But I mention it because such a-culturalism is a characteristic of progressive / Left opinion in Britain. It is the way the Left has rationalized its own defeat. The Left has lost conviction in its own project and can see no authentic agent of historical change. So it has opted for a cultural relativism, ‘bigs’ it up by attacking the only thing it has the strength to hurt – our own decaying liberal-democratic and secular-Christian institutions; and canonizes as the ‘new proletariat’ any ‘other’, however politically backward, so long as that other is militant and anti-British. We can’t achieve socialism, but at least we can trash our own back yard. We still have the autonomy to self-harm.
And my point is that the empty cultural nihilism of the Left – and of the Establishment – has absolutely nothing to offer Muslims (or any other community) and absolutely nothing to compete with the sense of brotherhood, purpose, and vision that characterises the Islamist call.
What remains are the choices I outlined before: Islamism or Mr Reid; sectarianism or authoritarianism; fragmentation or nationalism.
Sorry this is way too long, but I think we’re the only ones still following this thread, so I let rip.
I wasn’t suggesting there were problems in Leicester, simply that it was becoming a ‘foreign’ place. In London, you now regularly hear people remark that parts of the capital have become foreign to them, have become places where they no longer feel at home. I don’t think you can call these the fantasies of the BNP or the bosses press. I think they are legitimate expressions of the fact that our culture is our external, collective home.
You argue that the new communities will eventually, inevitably, somehow-automatically, blend and blur. In fact, for the first time in many centuries, we are seeing the establishment within Britain of distinct cultural entities with both the demographic scale and the collective will to reproduce and grow themselves in effective autonomy from the rest of British society. We have encouraged them to do so. We face the real possibility of creating new homelands within Britain – incipient states with the sense of identity, the communal loyalty, the cultural institutions and the critical mass to resist the process of blending and blurring.
I was playing Jeremiah in most of the earlier posts. They were meant to be prophetic, in a Hebrew sense, rather than definitely predictive. But when you say that you can ‘see no reason’ why Islam should continue to present an exclusive face in Britain, then I can say with some certainty that you are in for a rude shock.
Abu Izzedin may be a convert nutter, but his arguments have the support of the most significant minority of Muslims in Britain. In telling Mr Reid that the British interior minister had no right coming uninvited into the Muslim territory of East London, he was very deliberately setting up a boundary post, demarcating a border. He was pursuing the same Islamist policy which you can observe throughout the Middle East. The goal of the policy is to Islamise and make sacred hitherto secular spaces – cultural spaces, geographical spaces, architectural spaces, intellectual spaces. It is about marking and defining these as Muslim and thus inviolable, rendering them untouchable and ungovernable by non-Muslims. It is quite explicitly designed to make non-Muslims (and even liberal-minded Muslims) too intimidated to question or violate these boundaries. You dare not remove a Muslim woman’s hijab. You dare not approach a Muslim women. You dare not question the authenticity of the Quran. You dare not criticize the Prophet. You dare not penetrate the confines of our mosques and holy places. You dare not enter Muslim territory without permission. Etc. Etc. It is about erecting a high wall behind which the Muslim community itself can be regimented and policed by the radicals. It is about building a impregnable cultural fortress from the security of which subsequent sorties and advances may be made into the ‘kufr’ hinterland.
You asked me who would enforce these sacred taboos. Ask Salman Rushdie or the editors who published the Mohammed cartoons. Once the communal boundaries are established, they become almost self-policing. The community will defend its own honour. If you try to date a Muslim woman, build or repair a church in a Muslim area, question the divine status of the Quran, etc – all of these and so many more will be denounced as ‘insults’, ‘offences’ and ‘provocations’ to Islam.
The process even has a self-fulfilling dynamic. ‘Attacks’ upon the sacred boundaries are opportunities to cohere communal loyalty, to shore up the leadership of radical imams, and to justify ‘retaliatory’ militancy. The moderates of whom you wrote will either fall silent or be sucked
back into the communalist mentality. The example of Northern Ireland demonstrates that, once sectarianism is entrenched, it is the militants who tend to define the agenda.
N. Ireland is not as ‘special’ as I once thought myself. We’ve now imported an anti-imperialist struggle / sectarian Holy War into the stomach of our body politic.
In otherwise learned paragraphs, you argued that such bonds of civilized communion as religion and culture are essentially irrelevant. Irrelevant in themselves and irrelevant to the historical process as you conceived it.
I’m absolutely certain your argument would be more complex if you had space or time to lay it out fully. But I mention it because such a-culturalism is a characteristic of progressive / Left opinion in Britain. It is the way the Left has rationalized its own defeat. The Left has lost conviction in its own project and can see no authentic agent of historical change. So it has opted for a cultural relativism, ‘bigs’ it up by attacking the only thing it has the strength to hurt – our own decaying liberal-democratic and secular-Christian institutions; and canonizes as the ‘new proletariat’ any ‘other’, however politically backward, so long as that other is militant and anti-British. We can’t achieve socialism, but at least we can trash our own back yard. We still have the autonomy to self-harm.
And my point is that the empty cultural nihilism of the Left – and of the Establishment – has absolutely nothing to offer Muslims (or any other community) and absolutely nothing to compete with the sense of brotherhood, purpose, and vision that characterises the Islamist call.
What remains are the choices I outlined before: Islamism or Mr Reid; sectarianism or authoritarianism; fragmentation or nationalism.
I,ve said it before and i will say it again, the quality posters on here, (they know who they are) should start to publish pamphlets developing their arguments. This is a tried and proven way of stimulating debate for hundreds of years.
or at least post them in the internet!
or at least post them in the internet!
rhys gethin
New Member
Well, Durruti and treelover are still with us. Our basic disagreement, I perceive, is that you have been insufficiently exposed to the notion of the dialectic. You seem to me to be supposing that things remain as they are, or continue in the way they are already going. This is not the case. Meanwhile, let me go on taking point by point:
When I was a boy, Cardiff/Caerdydd seemed exactly a foreign place, inhabited by English, Irish and Somalis. Nowadays I can hear our language spoken in the streets and visit Welsh(language)-only pubs. 'Native' foreigners find it foreign now therefore. Things change, and unless you set up incredibly strict barriers, 'communities will eventually, inevitably, somehow-automatically, blend and blur' - even in the Six counties, plenty of couples did the Romeo-and-Juliet bit. Love laughs at locksmiths.
I doubt. I can see no social body with the power to do the Canute bit and stop the tide. EVERY immigrant group so far has been entirely assimilated.
I tried this on the BBC boards with the zionists, and I don't think it works. The point about your Abu Izzedin person is that he feels weak, and therefore indulges in silly rhetoric. If you'd ever belonged to weak groups you'd understand this very well. The point is that he isn't IN the Middle East and can't 'Islamise and make sacred hitherto secular spaces – cultural spaces, geographical spaces, architectural spaces, intellectual spaces.' He is just making noise.
Well, actually, I have counselled Muslim women who were ENRAGED about, for instance, being considered barren when the husband's sperm count was the problem. I think you see a solid front where there are just a lot of people much like ourselves. Naturally they'll draw together when attacked though. So do my people, and indeed all people. The ladies I knew trusted me, and weren't at all sold on all the male-domination crap, though actually, on the whole, quite fond of the hijab, which kept off the gawpers.
No question but that we are, to some degree, shaped by our background. A friend of mine, an ex-trotskyite, describes herself as an 'ethnic Catholic', and we all know the jokes from the Six Counties about 'are you a Catholic or a Protestant Atheist?' My Father joined the Church in Wales the same week he began speaking for the CP - an equally revolutionary step - and so on. Clearly religion and culture are in no way irrelevant. But in every case, the forces interact and move towards completion, unity, action - as you have said some Christian communities unite different peoples - and they move on.
I think that a naive copying of the US has created this effect, and a search by class-traitors for a substitute politics. I can't see it lasting, however, nor should we take it too seriously. The Dialectic produces a new heaven and a new earth about every five minutes, I reckon. Roll on!
Thomsy said:
When I was a boy, Cardiff/Caerdydd seemed exactly a foreign place, inhabited by English, Irish and Somalis. Nowadays I can hear our language spoken in the streets and visit Welsh(language)-only pubs. 'Native' foreigners find it foreign now therefore. Things change, and unless you set up incredibly strict barriers, 'communities will eventually, inevitably, somehow-automatically, blend and blur' - even in the Six counties, plenty of couples did the Romeo-and-Juliet bit. Love laughs at locksmiths.
Thomsy said:
I doubt. I can see no social body with the power to do the Canute bit and stop the tide. EVERY immigrant group so far has been entirely assimilated.
Thomsy said:
I tried this on the BBC boards with the zionists, and I don't think it works. The point about your Abu Izzedin person is that he feels weak, and therefore indulges in silly rhetoric. If you'd ever belonged to weak groups you'd understand this very well. The point is that he isn't IN the Middle East and can't 'Islamise and make sacred hitherto secular spaces – cultural spaces, geographical spaces, architectural spaces, intellectual spaces.' He is just making noise.
Thomsy said:
Well, actually, I have counselled Muslim women who were ENRAGED about, for instance, being considered barren when the husband's sperm count was the problem. I think you see a solid front where there are just a lot of people much like ourselves. Naturally they'll draw together when attacked though. So do my people, and indeed all people. The ladies I knew trusted me, and weren't at all sold on all the male-domination crap, though actually, on the whole, quite fond of the hijab, which kept off the gawpers.
No question but that we are, to some degree, shaped by our background. A friend of mine, an ex-trotskyite, describes herself as an 'ethnic Catholic', and we all know the jokes from the Six Counties about 'are you a Catholic or a Protestant Atheist?' My Father joined the Church in Wales the same week he began speaking for the CP - an equally revolutionary step - and so on. Clearly religion and culture are in no way irrelevant. But in every case, the forces interact and move towards completion, unity, action - as you have said some Christian communities unite different peoples - and they move on.
Thomsy said:
I think that a naive copying of the US has created this effect, and a search by class-traitors for a substitute politics. I can't see it lasting, however, nor should we take it too seriously. The Dialectic produces a new heaven and a new earth about every five minutes, I reckon. Roll on!
As treelover said, quality writing. Well argued debate. 
Like rhys gethin, I do not see Islam occupying a privileged space in British society. Try replacing Judaism or Zoroastrianism with every time you write Islam. Islam is not this monolithic whole, complete and intact and in some way threatening Britishness (whatever that is)
White (possibly middle-class) guilt exists outside of the Left. The "ills of modernity" are world wide thanks to imperialism, colonialism, the industrial revolution, globalization. Then again who gives a shit about modernity if you're sick and starving to death? How about we address the real problems of the inequality, imbalances of power and injustice.
Specifically which "traditional British cultural institutions" do you feel are under threat? Cricket (damned Muslim ball tamperers), our German monarchy or the sunday roast (no pork and apple sauce for me)?
Britain is not Egypt. Of course you can imagine that what happens in another country will happen here, but it is not necessarily so.
(As you said: "I was playing Jeremiah in most of the earlier posts.")
I've stayed close to a lot of my school friends, from all those many years ago. A few of them are Muslims and I get invited to weddings, birthdays and other celebrations. Men and women marry *out*. I'm not sure if it's the same in the old northern textile towns but then I've never lived there.
I'm also no expert on Islamic law, but I've been told that Islam *officially* consider Jews and Christians "people of the book". Much, much better than God-less atheists like myself.
The way I see it, if a Briton goes to live in Spain they should learn Spanish and obey the laws there.
All the immigrants I know, some here for more than one generation admittedly, speak English and follow the law better than I do.
Like rhys gethin, I do not see Islam occupying a privileged space in British society. Try replacing Judaism or Zoroastrianism with every time you write Islam. Islam is not this monolithic whole, complete and intact and in some way threatening Britishness (whatever that is)
Thomsy said:
White (possibly middle-class) guilt exists outside of the Left. The "ills of modernity" are world wide thanks to imperialism, colonialism, the industrial revolution, globalization. Then again who gives a shit about modernity if you're sick and starving to death? How about we address the real problems of the inequality, imbalances of power and injustice.
Specifically which "traditional British cultural institutions" do you feel are under threat? Cricket (damned Muslim ball tamperers), our German monarchy or the sunday roast (no pork and apple sauce for me)?
Thomsy said:
Britain is not Egypt. Of course you can imagine that what happens in another country will happen here, but it is not necessarily so.
(As you said: "I was playing Jeremiah in most of the earlier posts.")
I've stayed close to a lot of my school friends, from all those many years ago. A few of them are Muslims and I get invited to weddings, birthdays and other celebrations. Men and women marry *out*. I'm not sure if it's the same in the old northern textile towns but then I've never lived there.
I'm also no expert on Islamic law, but I've been told that Islam *officially* consider Jews and Christians "people of the book". Much, much better than God-less atheists like myself.
The way I see it, if a Briton goes to live in Spain they should learn Spanish and obey the laws there.
All the immigrants I know, some here for more than one generation admittedly, speak English and follow the law better than I do.
audiotech
wav, aiff, mp3, ogg, flac
durruti02 said:what does that mean?? .. that cos i don't support GG i agree with oona king
I was likening you to a party spin doctor with your throwaway comments. The charges of "communalism" has been countered pretty well on here by Respect members and supporters.
Your "mate" was entitled to his prediction. It hasn't turned out to be correct though.
Hawkeye Pearce
We're your friends man...
I'm still present and correct as well.
I agree with a lot of what Rhys Gethin is saying here. Communities do not stay fixed and unchanging, particularly from one generation to the next. There is the risk of sectarian politics of course and that goes for many different communities. But I think the next wave of political struggles will take place within communities and this will present opportunities for solidaric actions. Many of the communities in northern mill towns like Oldham which is focussed on so much in the mainstream media, face much the same problems. Only there has grown up a barrier of mistrust between them that has to be overcome. Struggles over common interests will play a key role in overcoming that. Like i stated above we should not take the period we are in now as permanent. Class divisions in Britain are becoming more and more pronounced as new labour continues on its "refom" path that is going to make life worse for many communities across sectarian dividing lines. I think it is only a matter of time before new methods of organisation emerge in response to this.
.I agree with a lot of what Rhys Gethin is saying here. Communities do not stay fixed and unchanging, particularly from one generation to the next. There is the risk of sectarian politics of course and that goes for many different communities. But I think the next wave of political struggles will take place within communities and this will present opportunities for solidaric actions. Many of the communities in northern mill towns like Oldham which is focussed on so much in the mainstream media, face much the same problems. Only there has grown up a barrier of mistrust between them that has to be overcome. Struggles over common interests will play a key role in overcoming that. Like i stated above we should not take the period we are in now as permanent. Class divisions in Britain are becoming more and more pronounced as new labour continues on its "refom" path that is going to make life worse for many communities across sectarian dividing lines. I think it is only a matter of time before new methods of organisation emerge in response to this.
G'day, Yield.
I guess you have to decide for yourself whether the 'complete and intact' doctrines threaten your notion of "Britishness". Here's some pointers from KM:
‘The Koran and the Mussulman legislation emanating from it reduce the geography and ethnography of the various people to the simple and convenient distinction of two nations and of two countries; those of the Faithful and of the Infidels. The Infidel is the enemy. Islamism proscribes the nation of the Infidels, constituting a state of permanent hostility between the Mussulman and the unbeliever.'
(Marx, 'On the History of the Eastern Question')
You know, whenever I speak to Islamists about their hopes and prospects for Islamizing the West, they almost always remark that they will triumph because the West has lost all self-belief in its own culture, does not even know what it's own culture is, and has nothing with which to counter the certainty and mission of Islam. Looks like they may have a point.
That's correct. Islamic law sets out a hierarchy of categories that descends (roughly speaking) from Muslims; to People of the Book (Christians and Jews); and then down to other religions; atheists; and, bottom of the pile, apostate Muslims.
Christians and Jews are afforded security from harm so long as they submit to a second-class status.
Atheists have no rights. In Egypt, for example, an Egyptian is not legally permitted to declare himself/herself an atheist. You can only, legally, be a Muslim or a Christian (all the Jews have left).
I've never suggested it was monolithic. I have said it has a 'complete and intact' doctrinal core. That 'core' is contained and enunciated in the Quran and the Sunna (model) of the Prophet. If you question these, specifically if you deny that they are 'complete and intact', you will need to go into hiding.yield said:
I guess you have to decide for yourself whether the 'complete and intact' doctrines threaten your notion of "Britishness". Here's some pointers from KM:
‘The Koran and the Mussulman legislation emanating from it reduce the geography and ethnography of the various people to the simple and convenient distinction of two nations and of two countries; those of the Faithful and of the Infidels. The Infidel is the enemy. Islamism proscribes the nation of the Infidels, constituting a state of permanent hostility between the Mussulman and the unbeliever.'
(Marx, 'On the History of the Eastern Question')
yield said:
You know, whenever I speak to Islamists about their hopes and prospects for Islamizing the West, they almost always remark that they will triumph because the West has lost all self-belief in its own culture, does not even know what it's own culture is, and has nothing with which to counter the certainty and mission of Islam. Looks like they may have a point.
yield said:
That's correct. Islamic law sets out a hierarchy of categories that descends (roughly speaking) from Muslims; to People of the Book (Christians and Jews); and then down to other religions; atheists; and, bottom of the pile, apostate Muslims.
Christians and Jews are afforded security from harm so long as they submit to a second-class status.
Atheists have no rights. In Egypt, for example, an Egyptian is not legally permitted to declare himself/herself an atheist. You can only, legally, be a Muslim or a Christian (all the Jews have left).
Hi, Rhys Gethin.
Not clear why you charge me with being “insufficiently exposed to the notion of the dialectic”. The charge seems rather harsh given that you go on to explain the historical process with the statement that: “Things change”.
Actually, though, there is an important theoretical point here. I was suggesting that your argument was a type of economism – that you seemed to accord cultural phenomena no dynamic significance within the historical process. So you insisted that religion and culture do have historical relevance. Except that you promptly added: “But in every case, the forces interact… and move towards completion, unity action... they move on”.
The trouble is that 'necessity' is a property of essences, not of the 'interactions'. More pertinently, you are substituting 'inevitability' for 'necessity’. The actualization of an essence may be necessary, but it is not inevitable. The teleological essence of a kitten is a cat; it will necessarily grow into a cat; but it won’t get there if (contingently) you drop a brick on its head while its still weaning.
My point is that you have ended up labeling as a dialectical movement what is, in fact, simply a faith in benevolent providence. That looks rather like a species of Fabianism.
There were lots of decent things about the Fabians. They were imbued with that reassuring late-Victorian notion of incremental but irresistible ‘improvement’ – the inevitability of gradualness. But I’m not sure I want to substitute the rosy confidence of inevitability for concrete analysis.
And then you say that I “seem… to be supposing that things remain as they are, or continue in the way they are already going”. Which is strange because, in every post I have written, I have been warning that “things” can get worse.
There are myriad possible forms and intensities of inter-cultural / inter-communal interaction. I argued that the need to investigate the historical forms of interaction that take place. I argued that we cannot assume things will inevitably turn out for the best. Specifically, I was pointing out that under Islamic law, non-Muslims cannot (on threat of death) marry a Muslim woman; non-Muslims must accept a subordinate status as demi-tolerated semi-citizens; that Muslims cannot (on threat of death) convert away from Islam; and that atheism is illegal (on threat of death). How “strict” do you want your barriers?
You tell me that Abu Izzedin and his brothers have no capacity to Isalmize our cultural, intellectual and public spaces because he “isn’t IN” the Middle East. It seems ironic to argue this on the very day that the British Home Secretary felt obliged to insist that he would not permit the formation of no-go areas in England.
You say it’s different here because we aren’t ‘IN’ the Middle East. But I’ll note again: the declared goal of the Islamists is to bring the Middle East to Europe, to establish their faith in Europe as a legal and communal practice. Why shouldn’t they seek this? Islam aspires to realize itself in communal practice. This is one of Islam’s distinguishing features. It is the duty of a diligent Muslim to seek this end. And it’s not as if the Islamists are trying to hide their intentions. The SWP are in bed with MAB. Try researching the ideological roots of that organization. Try reading Qutb or Mawdudi – plenty of the Muslim websites, including mainstream Muslim sites, offer them in translation.
I’m a bit weary of that kind of apologetic. There are gruesome features to Western foreign policy in the Arab World, but don't imagine that this must connote something virtuous in Islam itself. Expressing solidarity with oppressed peoples of the Middle East is not the same thing as closing one's eyes to the supremacist nature of core Islamic doctrine.
I presume you mean in England. And, with minor caveats, I’d agree. Even the Britons and Saxons and Vikings eventually welded into a unitary culture. It did, though, take a couple of hundred years of Dark-Age warfare and rapine.
And that’s my point, of course. I’m not saying anything remains the same till the end of time. I’m saying that I expect communalist identities to subordinate class politics for the rest of our brief lifetimes. Different ethnic and confessional groups have been encouraged to organise and define themselves in communalistic ways. And now the evidence suggests that ethno-sectarian identities are hardening (not dissipating) among the second- and subsequent-generation members of immigrant communities. Meanwhile, there’s a back-lash building within sections of the White community.
You know, you could say that about the bosses. Or the Tories. Or the Nazis. Or the Chigley Ping Pong Club. Why accuse me of neglecting dialectics? You’ve just denied the legitimacy of any collective category.
I didn't really see how those conversations with Muslim women buttressed your argument. I also think personal relationships can be particularly deceptive guides when investigating communalist relations. Individual Christians and Muslims and Jews and atheists and blacks and white and browns can get along just fine. But that tells us precious little about the way communities interact. The terrible fallacy of Multi-culturalist doctrine is the presumption that collectives behave in the same manner as individuals. They don't.
Not clear why you charge me with being “insufficiently exposed to the notion of the dialectic”. The charge seems rather harsh given that you go on to explain the historical process with the statement that: “Things change”.
Actually, though, there is an important theoretical point here. I was suggesting that your argument was a type of economism – that you seemed to accord cultural phenomena no dynamic significance within the historical process. So you insisted that religion and culture do have historical relevance. Except that you promptly added: “But in every case, the forces interact… and move towards completion, unity action... they move on”.
The trouble is that 'necessity' is a property of essences, not of the 'interactions'. More pertinently, you are substituting 'inevitability' for 'necessity’. The actualization of an essence may be necessary, but it is not inevitable. The teleological essence of a kitten is a cat; it will necessarily grow into a cat; but it won’t get there if (contingently) you drop a brick on its head while its still weaning.
My point is that you have ended up labeling as a dialectical movement what is, in fact, simply a faith in benevolent providence. That looks rather like a species of Fabianism.
There were lots of decent things about the Fabians. They were imbued with that reassuring late-Victorian notion of incremental but irresistible ‘improvement’ – the inevitability of gradualness. But I’m not sure I want to substitute the rosy confidence of inevitability for concrete analysis.
And then you say that I “seem… to be supposing that things remain as they are, or continue in the way they are already going”. Which is strange because, in every post I have written, I have been warning that “things” can get worse.
rhys gethin said:
There are myriad possible forms and intensities of inter-cultural / inter-communal interaction. I argued that the need to investigate the historical forms of interaction that take place. I argued that we cannot assume things will inevitably turn out for the best. Specifically, I was pointing out that under Islamic law, non-Muslims cannot (on threat of death) marry a Muslim woman; non-Muslims must accept a subordinate status as demi-tolerated semi-citizens; that Muslims cannot (on threat of death) convert away from Islam; and that atheism is illegal (on threat of death). How “strict” do you want your barriers?
You tell me that Abu Izzedin and his brothers have no capacity to Isalmize our cultural, intellectual and public spaces because he “isn’t IN” the Middle East. It seems ironic to argue this on the very day that the British Home Secretary felt obliged to insist that he would not permit the formation of no-go areas in England.
You say it’s different here because we aren’t ‘IN’ the Middle East. But I’ll note again: the declared goal of the Islamists is to bring the Middle East to Europe, to establish their faith in Europe as a legal and communal practice. Why shouldn’t they seek this? Islam aspires to realize itself in communal practice. This is one of Islam’s distinguishing features. It is the duty of a diligent Muslim to seek this end. And it’s not as if the Islamists are trying to hide their intentions. The SWP are in bed with MAB. Try researching the ideological roots of that organization. Try reading Qutb or Mawdudi – plenty of the Muslim websites, including mainstream Muslim sites, offer them in translation.
rhys gethin said:
I’m a bit weary of that kind of apologetic. There are gruesome features to Western foreign policy in the Arab World, but don't imagine that this must connote something virtuous in Islam itself. Expressing solidarity with oppressed peoples of the Middle East is not the same thing as closing one's eyes to the supremacist nature of core Islamic doctrine.
rhys gethin said:
I presume you mean in England. And, with minor caveats, I’d agree. Even the Britons and Saxons and Vikings eventually welded into a unitary culture. It did, though, take a couple of hundred years of Dark-Age warfare and rapine.
And that’s my point, of course. I’m not saying anything remains the same till the end of time. I’m saying that I expect communalist identities to subordinate class politics for the rest of our brief lifetimes. Different ethnic and confessional groups have been encouraged to organise and define themselves in communalistic ways. And now the evidence suggests that ethno-sectarian identities are hardening (not dissipating) among the second- and subsequent-generation members of immigrant communities. Meanwhile, there’s a back-lash building within sections of the White community.
rhys gethin said:
You know, you could say that about the bosses. Or the Tories. Or the Nazis. Or the Chigley Ping Pong Club. Why accuse me of neglecting dialectics? You’ve just denied the legitimacy of any collective category.
I didn't really see how those conversations with Muslim women buttressed your argument. I also think personal relationships can be particularly deceptive guides when investigating communalist relations. Individual Christians and Muslims and Jews and atheists and blacks and white and browns can get along just fine. But that tells us precious little about the way communities interact. The terrible fallacy of Multi-culturalist doctrine is the presumption that collectives behave in the same manner as individuals. They don't.
rhys gethin
New Member
Hi, Thomsy - This correspondence is getting quite long enough without your tempting me into a brief discursus on the Dialectic, but be assured that my notion of it does not equate to 'a faith in benevolent providence' or ' a species of Fabianism', and, no, I do not believe in 'necessity' or any sort of incremental progress. You've been saying that things get worse - but in the way you think they are already worsening, in the way you expect. I reckon one of the fascinating things about dialectical change is that it produces results you DON'T expect - like, for instance, the creation of a sort of revolutionary Islam out the capitalist use of that religion to destroy Soviet Communism. An optimist I am not: I think the chances are heavily on the disappearance of this species quite soon, actually - but not by way of Rapture, Armageddon, Crusade or Jihad.
Who will impose these laws you quote when they have lost the support of congregations used to a quite different worldview, here? Reid is, very evidently in no way really feeling what he had to say was 'necessary' - he is playing for 'populist' support against our equivalent of the Jews for Hitler, surely? Muslims soon stop being 'diligent', like all other believers, and the SWP and so on are hardly going to work to make them more so. All religions change and develop to deal with the realities of believers' experience. 'Fundamentalists' try to retain quaint old villagy stuff, always, but it didn't work for the Oxford Movement (the High Church produced some excellent socialists) and it won't work now - though it may give rise to all sorts of interesting developments, like the various Christian sects in Britain. I have, in my time, done some research into them: that alone would see to it that I was no economist.
Really, one can only go by one's own experience. You have seen one set of conditions in Egypt, I quite another with all sorts of Muslim students. Yes, if we want to pretend to be Americans, we can set up the whole 'community leader' nonsense - but the actual people they allegedly represent will be working together with us, watching the same television, reading the same ludicrous newspapers and so on - so the 'leaders' will have to run very hard to keep up with their 'followers' as, like all previous immigrants, they move away from the stockade that seemed once to give them security. And, by the way, I have never come across any COMMUNITY in Britain for which 'white' was the definition. My point would be that, amongst other things, religion is a relationship, like class, and outside very specific social conditions not present here, the latter soon becomes a much more vital one, even if we might prefer the first. I think you are supposing that Islam, unlike other religions, has some very special magic glue to hold it together - but no way can I believe in that magic.
Thomsy said:
Who will impose these laws you quote when they have lost the support of congregations used to a quite different worldview, here? Reid is, very evidently in no way really feeling what he had to say was 'necessary' - he is playing for 'populist' support against our equivalent of the Jews for Hitler, surely? Muslims soon stop being 'diligent', like all other believers, and the SWP and so on are hardly going to work to make them more so. All religions change and develop to deal with the realities of believers' experience. 'Fundamentalists' try to retain quaint old villagy stuff, always, but it didn't work for the Oxford Movement (the High Church produced some excellent socialists) and it won't work now - though it may give rise to all sorts of interesting developments, like the various Christian sects in Britain. I have, in my time, done some research into them: that alone would see to it that I was no economist.
Really, one can only go by one's own experience. You have seen one set of conditions in Egypt, I quite another with all sorts of Muslim students. Yes, if we want to pretend to be Americans, we can set up the whole 'community leader' nonsense - but the actual people they allegedly represent will be working together with us, watching the same television, reading the same ludicrous newspapers and so on - so the 'leaders' will have to run very hard to keep up with their 'followers' as, like all previous immigrants, they move away from the stockade that seemed once to give them security. And, by the way, I have never come across any COMMUNITY in Britain for which 'white' was the definition. My point would be that, amongst other things, religion is a relationship, like class, and outside very specific social conditions not present here, the latter soon becomes a much more vital one, even if we might prefer the first. I think you are supposing that Islam, unlike other religions, has some very special magic glue to hold it together - but no way can I believe in that magic.
A lot of good posts but a couple of points ; I get the impression that a lot of the posters on this subject are pushing on a bit age wise which combined with the fact that education is fast becoming the preserve of the MC makes me ask this question ; where are the future/younger next generation of WC leaders/activists going to come from? The reason I ask is that I believe some WC people have a natural ability for rhetoric/politics but the three main parties only want yes people. The SWP also want yes people .The Greens want posh yes people 
The BNP want yes people, but if the existing political and so called radical political culture continues to progress the way it is, then it will be one of social (and in the lefts case moral) exclusion which will exacerbate the community identity tip that Thomas is hypothesising.
Also what about taking this thread a bit wider and thinking in terms of a growing underclass? I just think that examining this subject in purely working class notions is a bit 80's.
Brasicattack sits back and waits for the usual unfunny failed social workers to appear
The BNP want yes people, but if the existing political and so called radical political culture continues to progress the way it is, then it will be one of social (and in the lefts case moral) exclusion which will exacerbate the community identity tip that Thomas is hypothesising.Also what about taking this thread a bit wider and thinking in terms of a growing underclass? I just think that examining this subject in purely working class notions is a bit 80's.
Brasicattack sits back and waits for the usual unfunny failed social workers to appear
brasicattack said:A lot of good posts but a couple of points ; I get the impression that a lot of the posters on this subject are pushing on a bit age wise which combined with the fact that education is fast becoming the preserve of the MC
Yeah cos in the 70s 80s and 90s there were so many more people from working class backgrounds in H/E........
Er like SHIT.
Hi Thomsy.
I was hoping you'd explain YOUR definition of Britishness?
For me Britishness is one of voluntary peaceful assimilation, since the end of colonialism anyway. My ancestry is from all over the British Isles for example.
Anyway multi-culturalism requires that you come from a culture of multi-culturalism. I always thought it was the polite way of saying, you'll integrate eventually, give it time.
The reality is the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is the best recruiting tool for terrorists. As shown in that recent US intelligence report.
"Four underlying factors are fuelling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq .jihad;. (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims, all of which jihadists exploit."
Current US/UK foreign policy is at fault. It's hardly a "Clash of Civilisations.™"
Thomsy said:
I was hoping you'd explain YOUR definition of Britishness?
For me Britishness is one of voluntary peaceful assimilation, since the end of colonialism anyway. My ancestry is from all over the British Isles for example.
Anyway multi-culturalism requires that you come from a culture of multi-culturalism. I always thought it was the polite way of saying, you'll integrate eventually, give it time.
The reality is the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is the best recruiting tool for terrorists. As shown in that recent US intelligence report.
"Four underlying factors are fuelling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq .jihad;. (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims, all of which jihadists exploit."
Current US/UK foreign policy is at fault. It's hardly a "Clash of Civilisations.™"
Hi Rhys Gethin
True: Islamists are inspired in their struggle by the conviction that they and their faith have already brought down global communism. The belief that they have defeated communism gives them enormous moral strength. [*]
Did you ever read Assef Bayat’s study of the 1979 revolution (‘Workers and Revolution in Iran’ from Zed Books). I mention it because it was written by someone coming from a Leftist tradition that had not yet been corrupted by idolatry of, and dependence upon, Islamism. It’s the best account I’ve ever read of the steps by which the Mullahs and revolutionary Islamists systematically dismantled and then physically liquidated the independent workers’ movement in Iran.
And now ‘We are all Hezbollah’?
I suppose that’s true in a way. I used to live in Jordan and worked with guys from the PFLP and DFLP. They were never numerically significant, but they did once punch – intellectually and ideologically – above their weight. All you have now are Hezbollah, Hamas and Jihad. There are reasons this has happened. I’m just pointing out that there is no necessary grounds for historical optimism.
You say you’re not an ‘optimist’ or an ‘economist’ or an ‘inevitable-ist’ – and then you argue that Islamic religious commitment will somehow, automatically, wither on contact with our ‘worldview’. Where is the evidence of this spontaneous movement towards liberalism or secularism and pluralism? As I said before, the evidence is significantly to the contrary.
Muslims are not unaffected by contact with other cultures or ‘modernity’. Every Islamist tract you read, and every devout Muslim you meet, will assure you of Islam’s desire to appropriate the ‘technical’ and ‘technological’ aspects of modernity. What they do not wish to abandon is their core loyalty to Allah, the Quran and the form of community cohesion these divine inspirations enjoin. As Muslim communities (or any other cultural grouping) gain critical mass, they are able to insulate themselves from contact with other British communities. You end up with towns where, for example, the people watch Pakistani or international cable media, send back to Pakisatan when they want a wife, and feel no association or need for contact with the other British communities. There are many individual Muslims who wish to embrace alternative influences and lifestyles. But by extolling the virtues of Islam, by legitimizing the imams as the legitimate community leaders, and by providing those imams and sheikhs the space to guide, control and police their communities, we simply make it more difficult for Muslims to consider alternatives.
Btw, it is not accurate to equate ‘fundamentalism’ with ‘quaint’ rural traditionalism. The ‘fundamentalist’ movement is a product of the contact of Islam with modernity. The leaders and most militant adherents of the movement come from educated, urban and largely middle class ranks: doctors, engineers, IT technicians, accountants, etc.
I have no doubt at all that Islam possesses a very special glue. I have worked throughout the Arab World, from Tunisia to the Gulf, and for all the many local idiosynchracies, there are core features of Islamic community culture which are uniform everywhere you go. The core cultural practices are divinely enjoined and become manifest wherever the Muslims find themselves possessed of the authority to establish them.
Part of my work is to visit communities that have suffered mini-pogroms or had their shops and animals burnt or their churches attacked. Of course, all communities divided upon ethno-sectarian lines have a potential for pogroms. Pogroms are obviously not unique to Muslims. Yet it is interesting to listen to the chants used by the crowds when they launch attacks on churches or the like. They are always the same three or four slogans. If you have friends from the Arab World, you might ask them what those slogans are. They hark back to the actions and model of the Prophet Mohammed.
There is nowhere you may criticize or even critique the words and actions of the Prophet. He is ‘perfect man’ and the ideal model for emulation by every devout Muslim.
I’m not saying that Muslims can’t change. (I’m not even saying they should. They are capable of making their own decisions as well as you or I.) I am saying Islam won’t change.
There have been times when Muslim people have started to turn away from Islamic identification. And those, in the Left and the Establishment alike, who seek to legitimise the notion of an ‘Islamic community’, relate to the ‘Muslim community’ through the sheikhs and imams, and provide apologetics for Islamic militancy, are simply helping to shore up the Islamist stockade.
Have you been to Barking? Guess that's a different thread, though.
[* The SWP have made an alliance with those Islamists who are specifically inspired by a writings of Qutb, Mawdudi, Al Banna, etc. If you ever want to get a flavour of those intellectual sources, it’s worth having a look at Sayyed Qutb’s ‘Milestones’. It is the ‘What Is To Be Done?’ of the modern Islamist movement. It sets out the road map for defeating the dual enemies of capitalism and communism.]
rhys gethin said:
True: Islamists are inspired in their struggle by the conviction that they and their faith have already brought down global communism. The belief that they have defeated communism gives them enormous moral strength. [*]
Did you ever read Assef Bayat’s study of the 1979 revolution (‘Workers and Revolution in Iran’ from Zed Books). I mention it because it was written by someone coming from a Leftist tradition that had not yet been corrupted by idolatry of, and dependence upon, Islamism. It’s the best account I’ve ever read of the steps by which the Mullahs and revolutionary Islamists systematically dismantled and then physically liquidated the independent workers’ movement in Iran.
And now ‘We are all Hezbollah’?
I suppose that’s true in a way. I used to live in Jordan and worked with guys from the PFLP and DFLP. They were never numerically significant, but they did once punch – intellectually and ideologically – above their weight. All you have now are Hezbollah, Hamas and Jihad. There are reasons this has happened. I’m just pointing out that there is no necessary grounds for historical optimism.
rhys gethin said:
You say you’re not an ‘optimist’ or an ‘economist’ or an ‘inevitable-ist’ – and then you argue that Islamic religious commitment will somehow, automatically, wither on contact with our ‘worldview’. Where is the evidence of this spontaneous movement towards liberalism or secularism and pluralism? As I said before, the evidence is significantly to the contrary.
Muslims are not unaffected by contact with other cultures or ‘modernity’. Every Islamist tract you read, and every devout Muslim you meet, will assure you of Islam’s desire to appropriate the ‘technical’ and ‘technological’ aspects of modernity. What they do not wish to abandon is their core loyalty to Allah, the Quran and the form of community cohesion these divine inspirations enjoin. As Muslim communities (or any other cultural grouping) gain critical mass, they are able to insulate themselves from contact with other British communities. You end up with towns where, for example, the people watch Pakistani or international cable media, send back to Pakisatan when they want a wife, and feel no association or need for contact with the other British communities. There are many individual Muslims who wish to embrace alternative influences and lifestyles. But by extolling the virtues of Islam, by legitimizing the imams as the legitimate community leaders, and by providing those imams and sheikhs the space to guide, control and police their communities, we simply make it more difficult for Muslims to consider alternatives.
Btw, it is not accurate to equate ‘fundamentalism’ with ‘quaint’ rural traditionalism. The ‘fundamentalist’ movement is a product of the contact of Islam with modernity. The leaders and most militant adherents of the movement come from educated, urban and largely middle class ranks: doctors, engineers, IT technicians, accountants, etc.
RG, that is almost a dictionary definition of economism.rhys gethin said:
rhys gethin said:
I have no doubt at all that Islam possesses a very special glue. I have worked throughout the Arab World, from Tunisia to the Gulf, and for all the many local idiosynchracies, there are core features of Islamic community culture which are uniform everywhere you go. The core cultural practices are divinely enjoined and become manifest wherever the Muslims find themselves possessed of the authority to establish them.
Part of my work is to visit communities that have suffered mini-pogroms or had their shops and animals burnt or their churches attacked. Of course, all communities divided upon ethno-sectarian lines have a potential for pogroms. Pogroms are obviously not unique to Muslims. Yet it is interesting to listen to the chants used by the crowds when they launch attacks on churches or the like. They are always the same three or four slogans. If you have friends from the Arab World, you might ask them what those slogans are. They hark back to the actions and model of the Prophet Mohammed.
There is nowhere you may criticize or even critique the words and actions of the Prophet. He is ‘perfect man’ and the ideal model for emulation by every devout Muslim.
I’m not saying that Muslims can’t change. (I’m not even saying they should. They are capable of making their own decisions as well as you or I.) I am saying Islam won’t change.
There have been times when Muslim people have started to turn away from Islamic identification. And those, in the Left and the Establishment alike, who seek to legitimise the notion of an ‘Islamic community’, relate to the ‘Muslim community’ through the sheikhs and imams, and provide apologetics for Islamic militancy, are simply helping to shore up the Islamist stockade.
rhys gethin said:
Have you been to Barking? Guess that's a different thread, though.
[* The SWP have made an alliance with those Islamists who are specifically inspired by a writings of Qutb, Mawdudi, Al Banna, etc. If you ever want to get a flavour of those intellectual sources, it’s worth having a look at Sayyed Qutb’s ‘Milestones’. It is the ‘What Is To Be Done?’ of the modern Islamist movement. It sets out the road map for defeating the dual enemies of capitalism and communism.]
G’day again, Yield.
Thanks for the link, but actually I don’t think that US intelligence report is very useful to an understanding of sectarian dynamics in the UK. The report is concerned with the ‘jihadist movement’ defined in narrow terms to cover only those groups that are conventionally termed ‘international terrorist’. These groups and their actions aren’t irrelevant to the UK. But I think the more important phenomenon is the type of communalist self-segregation we’ve been discussing. And that process of self-segregation is proceeding nicely without the need for ‘spectaculars’.
There are a couple of points I would note, though.
The report says the four listed factors are “fuelling the spread of the jihadist movement”. It doesn’t claim these factors created the jihadist movement. It certainly doesn’t say that the listed factors are responsible for the concept and practice of jihad. It simply says these factor have fuelled the spread of certain existing jihadist movements.
Also, the authors of the report found at least half the factors “fuelling” the “spread” of these specific groups were issues domestic to the Muslim World.
So when you say: “Current US / UK foreign policy is at fault”, I would have to reply: “Yes, current US / UK foreign policy is one of the range of factors that is fuelling the spread of certain specific groups whose existence, ideological inspiration, political orientation and ultimate objectives must be explained by a more substantial analysis .” Not so catchy, but more accurate, I think.
I’m sure you have laudable motives when you seek to blame the jihadi militancy on our foreign policy. But it isn’t the whole truth. And, strangely, I think it turns out to be you who has succumbed to the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ idea.
British people in Barking and Dagenham have legitimate grievances relating to housing, employment, the sense that their community and way of life are under threat, etc. In fact, many of the factors mentioned in that US intelligence report can be applied to B&D with just a little creative reinterpretation to reflect the local setting.
Now, I think it is accurate to acknowledge that these factors ‘fuel’ support for the BNP. But I don’t think you can say these factors ‘cause’ the BNP. And you certainly would not argue, I presume, that racial nationalism is the natural and inevitable response to bad housing, low pay, or “grievances such as corruption, injustice and fear of domination leading to anger, humiliation and a sense of powerlessness”. You would say that nationalism is one possible political response among others to these grievances.
And yet when you turn to the Arab World, you assume that an Arab response to a grievance must take an Islamic and jihadist form of expression. You presume that Arab = Muslim and that an popular reaction = a Jihadi reaction. You assume, implicitly, that Islam is the definition of Arab civilization. And so you – not me – view the anti-imperialist dimension in Middle East politics as a clash of civilizations.
In reality, there is no ineluctable, divinely ordained reason why the response should be jihadist. A hundred years ago, Arab opposition to Western intervention took a secular cross-confessional form.
I’m not trying to exculpate the British and US governments. But we have to face up to the fact that Islamist groups across the Middle East have been sponsored by corrupt local regimes – either to further the geopolitical ambitions of those regimes, or else to deflect popular grievances away from the corrupt rule of those regimes by re-directing the anger against non-Muslim minorities, against Arab secularists, against Arab Leftists & working class initiatives, against Western symbols, etc.
It would be one-sided to view it only in this light, without considering the impact of Western foreign policy and the broader framework of imperialist relations. But no more one-sided than blaming Islamic militancy on Western foreign policy.
Thanks for the link, but actually I don’t think that US intelligence report is very useful to an understanding of sectarian dynamics in the UK. The report is concerned with the ‘jihadist movement’ defined in narrow terms to cover only those groups that are conventionally termed ‘international terrorist’. These groups and their actions aren’t irrelevant to the UK. But I think the more important phenomenon is the type of communalist self-segregation we’ve been discussing. And that process of self-segregation is proceeding nicely without the need for ‘spectaculars’.
There are a couple of points I would note, though.
The report says the four listed factors are “fuelling the spread of the jihadist movement”. It doesn’t claim these factors created the jihadist movement. It certainly doesn’t say that the listed factors are responsible for the concept and practice of jihad. It simply says these factor have fuelled the spread of certain existing jihadist movements.
Also, the authors of the report found at least half the factors “fuelling” the “spread” of these specific groups were issues domestic to the Muslim World.
So when you say: “Current US / UK foreign policy is at fault”, I would have to reply: “Yes, current US / UK foreign policy is one of the range of factors that is fuelling the spread of certain specific groups whose existence, ideological inspiration, political orientation and ultimate objectives must be explained by a more substantial analysis .” Not so catchy, but more accurate, I think.
I’m sure you have laudable motives when you seek to blame the jihadi militancy on our foreign policy. But it isn’t the whole truth. And, strangely, I think it turns out to be you who has succumbed to the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ idea.
British people in Barking and Dagenham have legitimate grievances relating to housing, employment, the sense that their community and way of life are under threat, etc. In fact, many of the factors mentioned in that US intelligence report can be applied to B&D with just a little creative reinterpretation to reflect the local setting.
Now, I think it is accurate to acknowledge that these factors ‘fuel’ support for the BNP. But I don’t think you can say these factors ‘cause’ the BNP. And you certainly would not argue, I presume, that racial nationalism is the natural and inevitable response to bad housing, low pay, or “grievances such as corruption, injustice and fear of domination leading to anger, humiliation and a sense of powerlessness”. You would say that nationalism is one possible political response among others to these grievances.
And yet when you turn to the Arab World, you assume that an Arab response to a grievance must take an Islamic and jihadist form of expression. You presume that Arab = Muslim and that an popular reaction = a Jihadi reaction. You assume, implicitly, that Islam is the definition of Arab civilization. And so you – not me – view the anti-imperialist dimension in Middle East politics as a clash of civilizations.
In reality, there is no ineluctable, divinely ordained reason why the response should be jihadist. A hundred years ago, Arab opposition to Western intervention took a secular cross-confessional form.
I’m not trying to exculpate the British and US governments. But we have to face up to the fact that Islamist groups across the Middle East have been sponsored by corrupt local regimes – either to further the geopolitical ambitions of those regimes, or else to deflect popular grievances away from the corrupt rule of those regimes by re-directing the anger against non-Muslim minorities, against Arab secularists, against Arab Leftists & working class initiatives, against Western symbols, etc.
It would be one-sided to view it only in this light, without considering the impact of Western foreign policy and the broader framework of imperialist relations. But no more one-sided than blaming Islamic militancy on Western foreign policy.
Hi Thomsy
Not useful for explaining terrorism... but Barking and Dagenham that's a different matter. Interesting.
What was it you wrote earlier? "Islamism or Mr Reid; sectarianism or authoritarianism; fragmentation or nationalism."
Precisely the point I was trying to make. It is nationalism, not Islam, that (for instance) are causing the suicide bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. (As shown in this article The Logic of Suicide Terrorism.) They are resisting armies of occupation.
I said "The reality is the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is the best recruiting tool for terrorists." Surely there would already have to be recruiters to do the recruiting. Of course it isn't the original cause. It is a "fuel" for support of extremism, forced "moderates" into the arms of terrorists.
Yes there are other reasons, but the main reason for our/the current troubles is foreign policy.
Not all Muslims are Arab and nor are all Arabs Muslim. Afghanistan isn't Arab it's mainly Pashtun. The article I linked to doesn't say Arab once.
I did not presume "Arab = Muslim". You did.
I agree with you. For example the furore over the Danish cartoons was to draw attention away from deaths on the Hajj in Mecca. There are Madrasahs funded by Saudi Arabia in Pakistan that are a training ground for fundamentalism.
Only you seem to have forgotten our own corrupt local regimes. In Afghanistan in 1980 the USA, with the support of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Britain and others, armed the militant groups to oppose the Soviet invasion. This supplied a lot of "fuel" to the fires of terrorism.
Thomsy said:
Thomsy said:
Not useful for explaining terrorism... but Barking and Dagenham that's a different matter. Interesting.
What was it you wrote earlier? "Islamism or Mr Reid; sectarianism or authoritarianism; fragmentation or nationalism."
Thomsy said:
Precisely the point I was trying to make. It is nationalism, not Islam, that (for instance) are causing the suicide bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. (As shown in this article The Logic of Suicide Terrorism.) They are resisting armies of occupation.
I said "The reality is the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is the best recruiting tool for terrorists." Surely there would already have to be recruiters to do the recruiting. Of course it isn't the original cause. It is a "fuel" for support of extremism, forced "moderates" into the arms of terrorists.
Yes there are other reasons, but the main reason for our/the current troubles is foreign policy.
Thomsy said:
Not all Muslims are Arab and nor are all Arabs Muslim. Afghanistan isn't Arab it's mainly Pashtun. The article I linked to doesn't say Arab once.
I did not presume "Arab = Muslim". You did.
Thomsy said:
I agree with you. For example the furore over the Danish cartoons was to draw attention away from deaths on the Hajj in Mecca. There are Madrasahs funded by Saudi Arabia in Pakistan that are a training ground for fundamentalism.
Only you seem to have forgotten our own corrupt local regimes. In Afghanistan in 1980 the USA, with the support of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Britain and others, armed the militant groups to oppose the Soviet invasion. This supplied a lot of "fuel" to the fires of terrorism.
G’day, Yield.
I am sorry if I misrepresented you. I confess, your brief comments put me in mind of a particular ‘type’ of argument. And in fairness to me, that US intelligence report you linked was talking about specifically Islamic militancy – not the nationalism to which you now refer. Nonetheless, I am sorry if I misunderstood or misrepresented your position in any way.
But, you know, I think you’ve actually misunderstood my own position a little in your opening remarks.
The British Establishment argues that the ‘challenges’ facing the UK are caused by a few psychos with a ‘perverted’ interpretation of Islam and a fertilizer bomb in a back-pack. I don’t agree. I think the ‘challenges’ are caused by the emergence of entire communities which seek, for legitimate reasons, to express their collective identities in distinct cultural and legal practices. I was not saying that the ‘grievances’ cited in that US report have no significance for UK Muslims (while claiming that parallel ‘factors’ are significant determinants of BNP growth in Barking). I was saying that suicide bombings were not the most significant factor tending to divide ‘communities’ in the UK.
I agree that military occupation has provoked resistance. But I do not believe it is accurate to characterize the resistance simply as ‘nationalist’. And, actually, I don’t agree with the distinctive thrust of that article you linked on the logic of suicide bombers.
The article says: “suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland”.
But ‘homeland’, like ‘nation’, is a cultural construct. And the geographical and cultural ‘homeland’ the jihadis are seeking to liberate has been defined in specifically Islamic terms. The resistance is conceived in Islamic terms. It’s goals are elaborated within a broader Islamic understanding of Creation. And the militants see themselves as re-enacting the deeds of Mohammed and the early Caliphs.
So I was not claiming that ‘terrorist cells’ pre-existed the Iraqi occupation. I was saying that the Islamic conception of a homeland, the conception of Iraq as part of the Islamic Ummah, and the conception of a world characterized by a conflict between ‘Muslims’ and ‘Non-Muslims’ – that all these long preceded the current occupation of Iraq. So, contrary to the article you linked, I do not think it is useful or legitimate to abstract the concept ‘suicide bomber’ from the specific Islamic context. Not all suicide bombers are Islamic. But the suicide bombers we are disucussing do see themselves as Muslim martyrs helping to liberate and construct a Muslim society.
I’m not quibbling over nomenclature.
Because the resistance in Iraq (and to ‘Western occupation’ in general) takes Islamic form, one of the manifestations of ‘resistance’ that I witness are attacks on Egyptian Christians. The Islamist nature of the resistance silences – in central Iraq it is liquidating – secularist alternatives. Hizbollah was successful in repelling the Israeli incursion – but now the Maronites are looking to flee from Lebanon. Etc.
There is a type of logic that starts out from the presumption that US/Western governments are the cause of all evils; notes that the resistance to these governments in the Middle East is currently Islamic in form; concludes that Islam must, in itself, be a progressive force; and ends up by applauding the spread of Islam in Britain – or by forging electoral pacts with Islamism.
It seemed to me that you embraced elements of that apologetic when you argued that: "Current US/UK foreign policy is at fault. It's hardly a "Clash of Civilisations.™"
I hadn’t, though, forgotten the West’s arming of the Islamists against the Soviets. Rhys Gethin and I were talking about in the previous posts.
Have a nice weekend.
I am sorry if I misrepresented you. I confess, your brief comments put me in mind of a particular ‘type’ of argument. And in fairness to me, that US intelligence report you linked was talking about specifically Islamic militancy – not the nationalism to which you now refer. Nonetheless, I am sorry if I misunderstood or misrepresented your position in any way.
But, you know, I think you’ve actually misunderstood my own position a little in your opening remarks.
The British Establishment argues that the ‘challenges’ facing the UK are caused by a few psychos with a ‘perverted’ interpretation of Islam and a fertilizer bomb in a back-pack. I don’t agree. I think the ‘challenges’ are caused by the emergence of entire communities which seek, for legitimate reasons, to express their collective identities in distinct cultural and legal practices. I was not saying that the ‘grievances’ cited in that US report have no significance for UK Muslims (while claiming that parallel ‘factors’ are significant determinants of BNP growth in Barking). I was saying that suicide bombings were not the most significant factor tending to divide ‘communities’ in the UK.
yield said:
I agree that military occupation has provoked resistance. But I do not believe it is accurate to characterize the resistance simply as ‘nationalist’. And, actually, I don’t agree with the distinctive thrust of that article you linked on the logic of suicide bombers.
The article says: “suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland”.
But ‘homeland’, like ‘nation’, is a cultural construct. And the geographical and cultural ‘homeland’ the jihadis are seeking to liberate has been defined in specifically Islamic terms. The resistance is conceived in Islamic terms. It’s goals are elaborated within a broader Islamic understanding of Creation. And the militants see themselves as re-enacting the deeds of Mohammed and the early Caliphs.
So I was not claiming that ‘terrorist cells’ pre-existed the Iraqi occupation. I was saying that the Islamic conception of a homeland, the conception of Iraq as part of the Islamic Ummah, and the conception of a world characterized by a conflict between ‘Muslims’ and ‘Non-Muslims’ – that all these long preceded the current occupation of Iraq. So, contrary to the article you linked, I do not think it is useful or legitimate to abstract the concept ‘suicide bomber’ from the specific Islamic context. Not all suicide bombers are Islamic. But the suicide bombers we are disucussing do see themselves as Muslim martyrs helping to liberate and construct a Muslim society.
I’m not quibbling over nomenclature.
Because the resistance in Iraq (and to ‘Western occupation’ in general) takes Islamic form, one of the manifestations of ‘resistance’ that I witness are attacks on Egyptian Christians. The Islamist nature of the resistance silences – in central Iraq it is liquidating – secularist alternatives. Hizbollah was successful in repelling the Israeli incursion – but now the Maronites are looking to flee from Lebanon. Etc.
There is a type of logic that starts out from the presumption that US/Western governments are the cause of all evils; notes that the resistance to these governments in the Middle East is currently Islamic in form; concludes that Islam must, in itself, be a progressive force; and ends up by applauding the spread of Islam in Britain – or by forging electoral pacts with Islamism.
It seemed to me that you embraced elements of that apologetic when you argued that: "Current US/UK foreign policy is at fault. It's hardly a "Clash of Civilisations.™"
I hadn’t, though, forgotten the West’s arming of the Islamists against the Soviets. Rhys Gethin and I were talking about in the previous posts.
Have a nice weekend.
Similar threads
