- "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,
the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It
is the opium of the people."
-
- -- Karl Marx 1843
-
- Before I launch into a disclosure of liberal and leftist
delusional treatment of religions, Islam and Palestine in particular, I
would like to share with you a bad racist joke. Beware; you may not want
to share this short tale with your feminist friends.
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- An American female activist who visited Afghanistan in
the late 1990s was devastated to find out that women were marching 15 ft
behind their men. She soon learned from her local translator that this
was due to some religious guidelines that ruled [this is the way we show]
respect for the 'head of the family'. Once back in America the devastated
activist launched campaigns after campaigns for women's
rights in Afghanistan. As it happened, the same devoted activist visited
Kabul last month. This time she was amazed to find a totally different
reality. Women were actually marching 30 ft ahead of their husbands. The
activist was quick to report to her headquarters in America: "The
Women rights revolution is a great success here in Afghanistan. While
in the past it was the man who marched in the front, now it is the women
who takes the lead." Her Afghani translator, who overheard her report,
took the activist aside and advised her that her interpretation was totally
wrong. "The women" he said, "are walking in front because
of the landmines."
-
- As tragic as it may sound to some, we are not as free
as we believe ourselves to be. We are not exactly the author of most
of our thoughts and realizations. Our human conditions are imposed on us;
we are a product of our culture, language ideological indoctrination and
in many cases, victims of our intellectual laziness. Like the semi-fictional
American female activist above, in most cases we are trapped within our
preconceived ideas and that stops us from seeing things for what they
really are. Accordingly, we tend to interpret and in most cases misinterpret
remote cultures employing our own value system and moral code.
-
- This tendency has some grave consequences. For some reason
'we' (the Westerners) tend to believe that 'our' technological superiority
together with our beloved 'enlightenment' equips us with a 'rational secularist
anthropocentric, absolutist ethical system' of the very highest moral
stand.
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- The Lib-Left
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- In the West we can detect two ideological components
that compete for our hearts and minds; Both claim to know what is 'wrong'
and who is 'right'. The Liberal would insist on praising individual
liberty and civil equality; the Leftist would tend to believe to possess
a 'social scientific' tool helping to identify who is 'progressive' and
who is 'reactionary'.
-
- As things stand, it is these two modernist secularist
precepts that act as our Western political ethical guard. But
in fact, they have achieved the opposite. Each ideology in its own peculiar
way has led us to a state of moral blindness. It is these two so-called
'humanist' calls, that either consciously prepare the ground for criminal
interventionalist colonial wars (the Liberal), or failed to oppose
them while employing wrong ideologies and faulty arguments (the Left).
-
- Both Liberal and Left, in their apparent banal Western
forms suggest that secularism is the answer for the world's ailments. Without
a doubt, Western secularism may be a remedy for some Western social malaise.
However, Western Liberal and Left ideologies, in most cases, fail to understand
that secularism is in itself a natural outcome of Christian culture, i.e.,
a direct product of Christian tradition and openness towards an independent
civic existence. In the West, the spiritual and the civil sphere are largely
separated<http://counterpunch.org/atzmon07102009.html#_ftn1> .
It is this very division that enabled the rise of secularity and the
discourse of rationality. It is this very division that also led to the
birth of a secular ethical value system in the spirit of enlightenment
and modernism.
-
- But this very division led also to the rise of some
blunt forms of fundamental-secularism that matured into crude anti religious
worldviews that are no different from bigotry. It is actually that very misleading
fundamental secularism that brought the West to a total
dismissal of a billion human beings out there just because they wear the
wrong scarf or happen to believe in something we fail to grasp.
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- Progressive vs Regressive
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- Islam and Judaism, unlike Christianity, are tribally
orientated belief systems. Rather than 'enlightened individualism'
it is actually the survival of the extended family that is at the core
interest of those two belief systems. The Taliban that is regarded by most
Westerners as the ultimate possible darkest political setting, is simply
not concerned at all with issues to do with personal liberties or personal
rights. It is the safety of the tribe together with the maintenance of
family values in the light of the Qur'an that stands at its core. Rabbinical
Judaism is not different at all. It is basically there to preserve the
Jewish tribe by maintaining Judaism as a 'way of life'.
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- In both Islam and Judaism there is hardly a separation
between the spiritual and the civil. Both religions stand as systems that
provide thorough answers in terms of spiritual, civil, cultural and day
to day matters. Jewish enlightenment (Haskalah) was largely a process of
Jewish assimilation through secularization and emancipation, and spawning
various modern forms of Jewish identities, Zionism included. Yet Enlightenment
values of universalism have never been incorporated into the body
of Jewish orthodoxy. Like in the case of Rabbinical Judaism,
that is totally foreign to the spirit of Enlightenment, Islam is largely
estranged to those values of Euro centric Modernism and rationality. If
anything, due to the interpretation of the Scriptures (hermeneutic),
both Islam and Judaism are actually closer to the spirit of post modernity.<http://counterpunch.org/atzmon07102009.html#_ftn2>
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- Neither the Left ideology nor Liberalism engage intellectually
or politically with these two religions. This fact is disastrous, for the
biggest current threat to world peace is posed by the Israeli-Arab
conflict; a conflict rapidly becoming a war between a Jewish expansionist
state and Islamic resistance. And yet, both the Liberal and the Left ideologies
are lacking the necessary theoretical means to understand the complexities
of Islam and Judaism.
-
- The Liberal would dismiss Islam as sinister for its take
on human rights and women in particular. The Left would fall into
the trap of denouncing religion in general as 'reactionary'. Maybe without
realizing it, both Lib and Left are falling here into a clear supremacist
argument. Since both Islam and Judaism are more than just religions, they
convey a 'way of life' and stand as a totally thorough answer to questions
regarding being in the world, the Western Lib-Left are at danger
of a complete dismissal of a large chunk of humanity.<http://counterpunch.org/atzmon07102009.html#_ftn3>
-
- I have recently accused a genuine Leftist and good
activist of being an Islamophobe for blaming Hamas for being 'reactionary'.
The activist, who is evidently a true supporter of Palestinian resistance
was quick to defend himself claiming that it wasn't only 'Islamism' that
he didn't like, he actually equally hated Christianity and Judaism. For
some reason he was sure that hating every religion equally was a proper
humanist qualification. Accordingly, the fact that an Islamophobe
is also a Judeophobe and Christiano-phobe is not necessarily a sign of
a humanist commitment. I kept challenging that good man; he then argued
that it was actually Islamism (i.e., political Islam) which he didn't approve
of. I challenged him again and brought to his attention the fact that in
Islam there is no real separation between the spiritual and the political.
The notion of political Islam (Islamism) may as well be a Western delusional
reading of Islam. I pointed out that Political Islam, and even the
rare implementation of 'armed jihad', are merely Islam in practice. Sadly
enough, this was more or less the end of the discussion. The Palestinian
solidarity campaigner found it too difficult to cope with the
Islamic unity of body and soul. The Left in general is doomed to fail here unless
it elaborates by means of listening to the organic Islamic bond between
the 'material' and the so called 'opium of the masses'. For the Leftist
to do so, it is no less than a major intellectual shift.
-
- Such a shift was suggested recently by <http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/06/26/hisham-bustani-
- thoughts-out-of-season-critiquing-the-european-left/>Hisham
Bustani, an independent Jordanian Marxist, stating:
-
- "The European left must make a serious critical
assessment of this 'we know better' attitude and the ways it tends to deal
with popular forces in the south as ideologically and politically inferior."
-
- Palestine
-
- Solidarity with Palestine is a very good opportunity
to review the gravity of the situation. As it happens, in spite of the
murderous Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, solidarity with Palestinians
has yet to become a mass movement. It may well never make it as such a
movement. Given the West's failure to uphold the rights of the oppressed,
Palestinians seem to have learned their lesson, they democratically
elected an Islamic party that promised them resistance. Interestingly
enough, very few leftists were there to support the Palestinian
people and their democratic choice.
-
- Within the current template of conditional political
solidarity, we are losing campaigners on each turn of this bumpy road.
The reasons are as follows.
-
- 1. The Palestinian liberation movement is basically a
national liberation movement. This acknowledgment is where we lose all
the Left cosmopolitans, those who oppose nationalism.
-
- 2. Due to the political rise of Hamas, Palestinian resistance
is now regarded as Islamic resistance. This is where we are losing the
secularists and rabid atheists who oppose religion, catapulting them to
being PEP (progressive except on Palestine).
-
- In fact the PEP are divided largely into two groups.
-
- PEP1. Those who oppose Hamas for being 'reactionary', yet
approve Hamas for their operational success as a Resistance movement. Those
activists are basically waiting for the Palestinians to change their mind
and revert to a secular society. But they are willing to conditionally
support the Palestinians as an oppressed people.
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- PEP2. Those who are against Hamas for being a 'reactionary' force;
and dismiss its operational success. These are waiting for the world
revolution. They prefer to let the Palestinians wait for the time being,
as if Gaza were a seashore holiday resort
-
- With these rapidly evaporating solidarity forces we are
left with a miniature Palestinian solidarity movement with an embarrassingly
limited (Western) intellectual power and even less positive performance
on the grass roots level. This tragic situation was disclosed recently
by <http://www.countercurrents.org/rosso110209.htm>Nadine Rosa-Rosso,
a Brussels-based independent Marxist. She states: "The vast majority
of the Left, including communists, agrees in supporting the people of Gaza
against Israeli aggression, but refuses to support its political expressions
such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon." This leads Rossa-Rosso
to wonder "why do the Left and far Left mobilize such small numbers?
And indeed, to be clear, are the Left and far Left still able to mobilize
on these issues?"
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- Where next?
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- "If the left's support for human rights in Palestine
is conditional and dependent on the Palestinians denouncing their religion
and ideological beliefs, cultural heritage, and social traditions and adopting
a new set of beliefs, alien values and social behaviours that matches what
its culture deems acceptable; that means the world is denying them a most
basic human right, the right to think, and to live within a chosen ethical
code." <http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?lg=en&reference=604>Nahida
Izzat
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- The current left discourse of solidarity is futile.
It estranges itself from its subject, it achieves very little and it seems
to go nowhere. If we want to help the Palestinians, the Iraqis and
the other millions of victims of Western imperialism we really must stop
for a second, take a big breath and start again from scratch.
-
- We must learn to listen. Rather than imposing our belief
on others we better learn to listen to what others believe in.
-
- Can we follow Bustani's and Rossa-Rosso's suggestions
and revise our entire notion of Islam, its spiritual roots, its structure,
its unified balance between the civil and the spirit, its vision of itself
as a 'way of living'? Whether we can do so or not is a good question.
-
- Another option is to reassess our blindness and to encounter
humanist issues from a humanist perspective (as opposed to political).
Rather than loving ourselves through the suffering of others, which is
the ultimate form of self-loving, we better for the first time, exercise
the notion of real empathy. We put ourselves in the place of the other
accepting that we may never fully understand that very other.
-
- Rather than loving ourselves through the Palestinians
and at their expense, we need to accept Palestinians for what they
are and support them for who they are regardless of our own views on things. This
is the only real form of solidarity. It aims at ethical rather than ideological
conformity. It puts humanity at its very centre. It reflects on Marx's
deep understanding of religion as the "sigh of the oppressed".
If we claim to be compassionate about people we better learn to love
them for what they are rather than what we expect them to be.
-
- Gilad Aztmon is a writer and jazz musician living
in London. His latest cd is<http://www.myspace.com/giladatzmon>In
Loving Memory of America.
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