Anarchy, Autonomy and Political Islam in Europe

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Monday January 12, 2009 14:55 by Alex F

January 10, was a day when radical and muslim europe came together in a big number of cities of the EU to demand the end of the massacre and denounce Bush and Barak as murderers. Today a huge demo is scheduled in Brussels. Many, even on the extreme left, are uncomfortable with the religious undertones of many demos and the fact they end up in collective prayers. Also, the equation of the nazi swastika with the star of david is regarded as historically absurd and antisemitic, just as are cries for the destruction of israel and the burning of Israeli flags.

I will try to address these thorny issues in this piece.

Today there are at least 20 million European muslims, not counting
Turkey. After catholic, protestant, orthodox versions of christianity, islam
is the second largest religious affiliation in the continent. Due to
the aftermath of 9/11, the civil rights of this huge minority are being grossly
violated. Their public expression of faith is severely limited,
particularly in the nativist countries of Northern and Southern Europe
(Denmark and Italy, for instance), where the construction of mosques is effectively
denied (there's not a even a single mosque in a 3-million-plus metropolis
like Milano). Cordoba and Istanbul are reminders that islam
contributed to make europe modern and that present-day europe cannot
be a christians-only affair. If Europe is to be secular, it must be
multicultural, and for this to be true in our escatological times, it
must be multireligious, too, namely it must also be islamic. Those on
the conservative and occidentalist right who say the Europe's legacy
is strictly judeo-christian, more often than not are descendants of
those same nationalists who exterminated the European Jewry sixty
years ago and destroyed its yiddish and Bund culture. After fascism
eradicated centuries of jewish cosmopolitanism, Europe was transformed
into a land of ethnically and often religiously homogenous
nation-states. PostWWII immigration gave Europe back some of the
ethnic diversity it enjoyed before the two wars. Most of this
immigration has been from arab and muslim countries. If we look at the
social pyramid of Europe today, we find four large social categories:
the cosmopolitan elites, a transnational, educated middle class;
increasingly unsecure industrial workers, petty bourgeoisies and white
collars of native stock; and finally the excluded: an increasingly mulatto
precarious youth and a largely islamic immigrant population. Mayday*
wants to give voice to the precarious and the sans-papiers. We cannot
deny that many of those without voice are islamic and want to express
their faith politically.

Much as it pains me to say it, it's now clear in retrospect that the
Iranian revolution of 1979 has been the equivalent for political islam
of the Russian revolution for political marxism. It has imposed a new
dynamic on world history, put fear in global capitalism, and created
endless conflicts, not last within its ranks. The shia clerics that
destroyed the people's mujaheddins after toppling the shah, absorbed
their leninism, and turned islam into a populist religion, something
it had never been under the ferociously feudal wahhabi islam watching
over mecca and the holy sites. A similar development gradually
occurred in sunni islam with the extension of the influence of Muslim
Brotherhood in countries where panarabism had gone to power (e.g.
Egypt, Syria). Hezbollah descends from the shia revolution of
Khomeini, and Hamas from the sunni revolution of Qutb. Both are
populist versions of islam, which while hating zionism and Israel, are
opposed to necrophiliac versions of sunnism, such as the salafism of
al-qaeda, the talibans, or the kashmir death squad sent to Mumbai.
It's telling that both hamas and hezbollah publicly distanced
themselves from 9/11 and 7-7.

There's no doubt that especially Hamas is antisemitic (and more
gynophobic than Hezbollah). But it's not the antisemitism deriving
from roman catholicism or greek orthodoxy or protestant lutheranism
that has traditionally fuelled european fascism and racism, it's a
hate of the jewish state and its perceived colonialist ideology.
I don't justify it, but it is understandable for somebody to become
say anti-italian and burn the italian flag because he/she has lived
for decades under the domination of the italian state. Usually, to
make antisemitism more palatable it's more often referred to
antizionism. In fact zionism as a secular, once socialist-leaning,
ideology is under attack in Israel as well, as new immigrants from
Russia and Africa are for a sharp and clear ethnoreligious connotation
of the state. Still, Israel must live, in spite of all the crimes that
its politicians are committing today. And as bad as their war crimes
currently are, they stop way short of genocide or nazism (words do
have a meaning).

Anarchy has always been against all forms of established religion as
well as the state. In global terms, it makes sense to see it as
anticlerical heresy typical of white christianity, or more precisely
as a radical form of secularism arising in the western world. Anarchy
is a form of "white" deviance, drawing legions in Europe and North
America, but very little outside this regions. Marxism has been
atheist, too, but has usually refrained from burning churches, even in
the Soviet Union.
In particular, marxist anti-imperialism and national liberation
guerrillas have positively engaged with leftist strands of catholicism
and other religions to mobilize rural masses. Autonomy (i.e. post-1973
marxism in the west) has been ecumenical in its approach, building in
terms of class as it emerged from postfordism and trying to build
cross-cultural movements bridging across ethnic and religious divides.
This is easier to do in countries like France where banlieusards see
their exclusion in terms of race and class much as the
African-Americans have historically done, than in Sweden or Holland
where discrimination is mostly seen in ethnic and religious terms.
Autonomy is more geared to the mulatto generation, to punk islam if
you wish, than anarchy, with its complete refusal of religious
manifestations evoking the transcendent. Both radical trends have to
support the civil and political rights of arab and muslim minorities
in europe, since islamophobia and immigration are the two issues
dividing the right from the left in europe today. Our alliance with
insurgent arab youth must be done in honesty, without hiding our
atheism and complete support of feminism and gender liberation. But
it's clear we have an enemy in common: european elites allied with
israel's irrational militarism and bushist occidentalism. Wanting
everybody to be like us seems another version of cultural imperialism.

Arab, african, and persian kids of muslim origin born into European
metropolises grew up in largely secular conditions, sharing the pop
consumerism of their mongrelizing peers. They did not particularly
care about religion, as their parents were often secularized muslims
and arab nationalists who did not care about the moral strictures of
islam (no alcohol, headscarves for women, respect of ramadan and hajj
etc.). This has dramatically changed since 2001, when boys as well as
girls have rediscovered their islamic roots and turned them in acts of
political defiance toward authorities as well as their families. I
here contend their display of religion is mostly a political
subculture which radical european movements must engage with if they
want to effectively fight global war and social discrimination. This
type of juvenile islam mixes easily with ghetto hip-hop culture as
well as youth alternative culture. It's a bit like the black panthers
embracing maoism and islamism; it's more resentment at failed
integration than a prokhomeneist agenda. Antifas, anarchists,
autonomists thus have done right when they have defended the right of
european muslims to practice their religion, as they did in Koeln,
Malmoe, and elsewhere. Fascists and xenofobes (DPP, Lega, Vlams Blok
etc etc) are particularly virulent in opposing the collective right of
european muslims to pray together. For instance in Italy, the fascist
minister of defense (the one who has sent soldiers patrolling
immigrant 'hoods in Milano and Rome), has even criticized the
archbishop of Milano for refusing to raise a stink when thousands of
muslims prayed in Duomo square last week in an unauthorized demo, an
event repeated yestedray in front of Centrale station and Pirelli
skyscraper. The popular rags are today titling: "Invasion". They are
playing the same game of the clash of civilizations that Bush and
Barak are rerunning to pre-empt any change in Middle-east policy by
the new US administration. Their hideous decision has not only already
killed hundreds of children, it has taken hostage a whole world
yearning for peace after a decade of uninterrupted war.

Those who long for the secular palestinian resistance to israel's
colonialism and apartheid, the one they had come to know in recent
decades, would do well to mount an international campaign to free from
prison Marwan Barghouti, the leader of al-aqsa brigades in the second
intifada, the only one who can restore the political respectability of
fatah, find an agreement with hamas and maybe strike a deal for full
palestinian independence in a single state encompassing Gaza and the
West Bank. In my view, he's the only secular alternative to hamas (the
marxist popular front for the liberation of palestine seems a
nostalgic remnant of a glorious past).

love'n'rage,

lx

* (Reference here is to Euromayday)