Re: Fundamentalist Islam and Social Control--was CNN...

[Art Burke <aburke@VANSD.ORG>]

Personally, I find Thomas Friedman's analyses in The New York Times more straightforward and convincing.

Art


>>> Newdem@AOL.COM 09/21 9:56 AM >>>
Hello, everyone--

I have finally encountered a report of the situation in the Middle East in
which ordinary people are in fact rejoicing at the bombings. This report
raises a critical issue about the role of Islamic fundamentalism in Middle
Eastern society and sheds light on what really is happening with "Operation
Infinite Justice." (Since this is by way of reply to points raised by George
Cunningham, I hope you'll indulge me here.)

A person named Farooq Taliq, General Secretary of the Labour Party of
Pakistan, reports that his hometown in central Punjab "was once a hub of
peasant movement led by the Stalinist Left. On 23rd march 1970, over 500,000
attended a peasant conference in the town. Now, " he writes, "the town is in
the grip of religious fundamentalists." Taliq reports that "Many working
class youth have been recruited during the past years by the Jihadi (holy
war) organisation to fight in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The youth finding no
possibility of jobs, can at least find the basic nessecities at the religious
schools and in the training camps."

On the mood of the masses in regard to the bombings, Tariq says this:

"Six days after the Tuesday attacks on American cities, it seems that
generally
many are happy and feel the pride that at last some one has done the job,
they
should be doing. It shows an utmost haterdness against the American
Imperialism among the general masses. But the mood is turning in favor of the
fundamentalists. Once the attack by the Americans starts here, the military
regime will face an extra ordinary situation of demonstrations and rallies
against the attacks led by the religious fundamentalist."

What we are seeing here, I think, is the replacement of Communist
("Stalinist") politics by fundamentalist Islam and nationalism as the key
means of controlling the working classes in Middle Eastern countries.

In May 1979 I was at a cocktail party in Washington, DC with Hodding Carter
III, who was the State Department spokesperson at the time for the Jimmy
Carter administration. The time was a few months after the Iranian revolution
of Feb. '79. I said to Carter, "Well. it's pretty lucky for teh US that the
Iranian revolution is in the hands of religious fanatics, huh? Otherwise it
would have been very dangerous for US interests." Carter just got a big grin
on his face and said, "You might say that," or words to that effect.

The point of my remark was this. A big struggle over the direction of the
Iranian revolution had just concluded. Would the revolution be radical,
anti-capitalist, and democratic, or would it be authoritarian, religious
fundamentalist, and conservative? By May, the Ayatollah Khomeini and his
clerical party of fundamentalist Moslems had won out over the unions and
other workers' organizations for control of the revolution and the society.

The US had a huge stake in the outcome of the Iranian revolution. The Shah of
Iran was the biggest US client after Israel, and the US spent billions
keeping him in power. (The CIA had put him in power in 1953.) A liberating,
democratic, working-class -led revolution in Iran could have led to working
class revolutions throughout the Mid-East and beyond, which would have
destroyed the grip of capital in this strategic region. Instead what
developed was a conservative takeover which, while it made lots of violent
noises against the US as the Great Satan and even took over a US Embassy,
still prevented an anti-capitalist trasformation and made sure that the
"revolution" stayed contained within the borders of Iran.

A few months later it emerged in the pages of teh New York Times (I don't
have the reference now, but I'll find it) that CIA representatives had been
meeting with the Ayatollah Khomeini in his exile in Paris in 1978 in the
months preceding the revolution.

It also came out later that representatives of the Reagan campaign met with
Khomeini in October, 1979 to make sure that the Iranians kept the Americans
hostage in the Embassy until Jan 20, 1981--after Reagan had been safely
elected. (If they had been freed before the election, Carter would likely
have won.) During the Reagan administration, Ollie North used the Iran
connection (while the Ayatollah was still in power) to get arms for the
Contras in the Iran/Contra deal. From 1979-1989 the US with Saudi Arabia and,
if I remember correctly, Israel, funded, armed, and trained the
fundamentalist Muslim mujahadeen (including Osama bin Laden) in Afghanistan
to fight the Soviet invaders.

The point I'm making is this: there is considerable evidence that the US
elite, through the CIA and other means, has been encouraging, funding, and
arming Islamic fundamentalism for over two decades and even encouraging it to
attack the US (e.g., in Iran).

Why would they do this? Because Islamic fundamentalism is a conservative
force. Every young worker or farmer in the Middle East recruited to
fundamentalism is one worker or farmer lost to democratic revolution. Having
masses of Muslims hate the US and threatening their own rulers for colluding
with the US is not terribly desirable for the US, of course--in a "perfect
world" that the US elite could control absolutely, the Shah of Iran would
never have been toppled. But the US can't control things absolutely, and
Islamic, anti-US uprisings beat the alternative of democratic revolution
hands down where the capitalist class is concerned.

Why then would Bush mount "Operation Infinite Justice" against Islamic
fundamentalism? Because it is the perfect enemy as far as the ruling class is
concerned. Bush is aware that the more he attacks Islamic fundamentalists,
the more the rebellious masses of urban and rural poor in the Middle East
will be attracted to it and come under its sway. Communism has collapsed and
is no longer a viable means to manage rebellious masses and keep them in
check. Islamic fundamentalism will have to fill that bill now, at least in
the Middle and Near East. Clerics of the Khomeini bent will impose
"sharia"--Islamic law--on those societies and create the equivalent of
religious police states throughout the region, keeping people in check with
beheadings and an extremist form of Islam. The world won't be perfect from
the standpoint of the corporate ruling class, but it will be a lot safer for
them than the revolutionary alternative.

Dave Stratman
Editor, New Democracy
www.newdemocracyworld.org 
5 Burr Street
Boston, MA 02130
617-524-4073

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