On 23 April, the Guardian published a letter from the three Tower Hamlets Respect councillors linked to the SWP, Oliur Rahman, Rania Khan and Lufta Begum, which denounces the “extremist” views of Islamist organisations like al-Muhajiroun, calls on the government to “stop” them and requests a meeting with Tower Hamlets police to discuss the issue. (See www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/23/uksecurity.bbc)
On one level, it is quite encouraging to hear left-wing Muslim activists display such stark hostility to Islamic derived fascism. Like socialists in Muslim-majority countries from Indonesia to Algeria, these comrades have learnt the reality of clerical fascism the hard way, through harassment, threats and violence.
Nonetheless, from a socialist point of view, the letter is deeply problematic. We should reject the characterisation of Islamist politics and organisations as “extremist”. Socialists should oppose Islamism because it is reactionary — in some cases, extremely reactionary — not because it is outside a bourgeois “mainstream” which, after all, also labels revolutionary socialism as extreme.
What we counterpose to the poison of Islamism is not moderation, but working-class unity and struggle against capitalism — something which Rahman, Khan and Begum’s letter fails to mention.
In addition, we should oppose the implied call for state bans, even against organisations like al-Muhajiroun or the BNP. As Trotsky put it in the mid-1930s:
“Anyone... who calls on the ‘state’, ie the class enemy, to ‘act’ in effect sells the proletariat’s hide to the Bonapartist reaction. Therefore, we must vote against all measures which strengthen the capitalist-Bonapartist state, even those measures which may for the moment cause temporary unpleasantness for the fascists.”
What the SWP will say about their comrades’ stance — and whether their criticism, if it comes, will be from a working-class or a pro-Islamist standpoint — remains to be seen.
