Secularism

Revolutionary politics, imperialism, and anti-racism: a further reply in the "Marxism and religion" controversy

Marcus Halaby’s polemic against Workers’ Liberty’s politics on religion, Islamism, and anti-imperialism ( “The AWL’s anti-anti-imperialist Islamophobia” ) is worth reading because it illustrates some differences between the political method of Workers Power and ourselves in Workers’ Liberty. Click here for the debate of which this is part, which started with a Facebook outcry in 2013 against the introduction to Workers' Liberty 3/1 of January 2006 Marcus expends more than 3,000 words before he reaches what he calls “the crux of the matter”: our disagreement on imperialism. We’ll start with it...

Political Islam, Christian Fundamentalism, Marxism and the Left Today

Click here for a range of articles that were part of the controversy sparked by the republication of this article *** (Adapted from the introduction to Workers' Liberty 3/1: Marxism and Religion - January 2006) In many countries, religion and disputes about, or expressed in terms of, religion have long been central to political life — in Christian Spain, Portugal, Ireland, or the USA; in Muslim Iran or Algeria; in Lebanon; in Israel-Palestine. Today, since Islamist terrorists attacked New York on 11 September 2001, religion, or concerns and interests expressed in religion, are at the centre of...

Political Islam, Christian Fundamentalism, Marxism and the Left Today

In many countries, religion and disputes about, or expressed in terms of, religion have long been central to political life — in Christian Spain, Portugal, Ireland, or the USA; in Muslim Iran or Algeria; in Lebanon; in Israel-Palestine. Today, since Islamist terrorists attacked New York on 11 September 2001, religion, or concerns and interests expressed in religion, are at the centre of international politics to a degree without parallel for hundreds of years. We have not, as in Francis Fukuyama’s thesis after the fall of the USSR, reached “the end of history”. We seem to be reprising long...

University of London cartoon controversy: defend the right to criticise religion!

The new year has seen a controversy about racism, secularism, freedom of speech and the right to criticise religion at two University of London colleges, UCL and LSE. We responded briefly and in broad terms in the 25 January edition of Solidarity , but wanted to try to understand the facts better before publishing more. What happened? In January the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society (ASHS) at University College London published an image from the web-comic Jesus and Mo , which depicts Jesus and Muhammad engaged in theological and philosophical discussion, often while having a drink in a...

For the right to criticise religion!

A meeting of the Atheism, Secularism and Humanism Society at Queen’s Mary’s University in east London on 18 January, discussing “Shari’a Law and human rights”, was cancelled after a man burst into the room, filmed all the attendees and proclaimed he would “hunt down” anyone who insulted the Islamic prophet Mohammed. The incident follows a similar furore at University College London, where the Students Union moved to take disciplinary action against its own Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society after it produced posters with cartoon depictions of Jesus and Mohammed sharing a drink. An...

Should faith keep its fortresses?

While I am an atheist, I still respect people with faith (or superstition, as it is sometimes called). But should we respect faith itself? Is there a real difference between faith and superstition, or are they just different words that people use for the same thing, depending on whether they want to refer to it warmly (faith) or coldly (superstition)? Some people who are atheists themselves argue that faith should be respected as a valid way of knowing on questions which science cannot reach. Stephen Jay Gould, a widely-read and left-wing science writer, claims that faith is a strong way of...

"Between the two poles" - socialism and secularism

Azar Majedi of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iran and the Worker-Communist Unity Party delivered the following speech at a conference on secularism at Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris, on 2 December 2011. Although Workers' Liberty does not necessarily agree with all of Majedi's positions, this speech is a worthwhile contribution to debate on the topic. The last time I spoke on the question of secularism at a conference in Paris, I differentiated between secularism of the right and of the left, and I spoke of the need to organise a movement for left-wing secularism. A movement which does not...

The battle for democracy in the Arab revolution (2011)

Sean Matgamna examines the prospects of the Arab Revolution, and compares it to certain events in recent history. The Arab revolution, the inspiring mass popular movement for freedom and democracy, sweeping across the Middle East might be compared to the “Springtime of the Peoples”, in 1848, when mass popular revolution spread from France to Germany, then to other countries, such as Hungary and Italy. Most of them were quickly defeated. Today the nearest modern equivalent — so far — is the collapse of East European and Russian Stalinism, in 1989-91. A tremendous mass movement demanding and...

A Hymn for the Godless

A Hymn for the Godless (After listening to a recording of poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins) Once, God and Kate Ni Houlihan* were one. I know Truth, negating Truth, as drought, Old prayers I’d known, mere talking to myself, Whimperings in the dark. The priests lied. And still the sternly sifting natural magic Of living, ageing, ceasing, dying, fills Tenuous life with dread and with dismay At inexorable final cutting down: Dead folk on leave in the one Elysium, Time-Speck, that grapples with eternity, Mind, that must, in time, cease to think, Roiling sub-mind that will lose all self-recall...

The SWP, Egypt and the lessons of the Iranian revolution

AWL comrades attended a meeting at the SWP’s “Marxism 2009” event (2-6 July) on “Islamism and the new Arab left”, in fact mostly about Egypt. Listening to Anne Alexander’s talk, you learned a lot. But the overall picture she presented was hopelessly mangled by the SWP’s confused theorisation of political Islam. The political conclusions it suggested are the same as those which three decades ago led to catastrophe for the left and the working class in Iran. Alexander quite explicitly built on the arguments made by Chris Harman in his pamphlet The Prophet and the Proletariat. According to this...

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