Re: Halliday on the left & Islamists
On Apr 11, 2007, at 3:02 PM, Lenin’s Tomb wrote:
I don’t wish to forget anything, and I’m not interested in turning Islam into a master-category of resistance. I simply think that in all prevailing circumstances, it is absolutely imperative to open channels of communication and make links with politicised Muslims, and that includes some of those who are well to the right of us. My model here would be the collaboration between the Muslim Brothers and the Left in Egypt - as Hossam el-Hamalawy describes it, it is far from unproblematic, and dogged by the persistent conservatism of the MB leadership. Yet a constructive engagement with especially its radicalised youth and grassroots can produce results.
THe last sentence, yes, but as an organization, the MB sounds rather
dreadful. If it really wants to create a caliphate across the Middle
East that would merely be replacing one form of authoritarian
imperialism with another.
I’m just editing an interview with Hamid Dabashi in which he recalls Iranians’ fondness for Germans in the run-up to WW II, because the Germans made a lot of anti-British noises.
I think you need to be very careful about that kind of comparison. Do you really want to bolster the equation of Islamism with Fascism that the right are so fond of?
Of course not, and you probably know that, but you just want to score
a point. The story shows the risk of making alliance simply on the
basis of anti-imperialist rhetoric, which can turn out rather ugly.
Doug