Re: So what!

Here are a couple of ideas as food for thought.
in the discussion on Political Islam

Ismail Buyukakan
-----------
Characteristics of the Islamist Political Movement in Opposition
1. Whatever is written in the party programme, the aim of the Islamist
Political Movement is to establish an 'Islamist state', that is, a 'state
based on Sharia'. It wants to unify religion and the state, to subordinate
the state to religion.
2. It is an anti-secular movement. Secularism is regarded as an insult, as
infidelity. As can be observed throughout the world, by increasing social
tension, by creating conflict at every level of society, and by aggravating
this conflict, it splits the whole of society into the secular and the
religious.
3. In order to be able to survive, this movement is a mortal enemy of class
reality. Since it splits the society into believers and infidels, it
overshadows class reality, suppresses it and diminishes class potential.
4. It splits and dismembers democratic organisations and institutions at
every level of society. Hence, it once again overshadows class reality and
diminishes class potential.
5. Who are organised by the Islamist Political Movement?
a. Those 'rootless' people who break away from the traditional lifestyle and
congregate in cities, but cannot participate in production
b. Simple commodity producers, tradesmen and artisans; in other words petty
bourgeois producers;
c. The real invigorating force of the movement and its leading cadres are
small businessmen, small capitalists, in other words the non-monopoly
bourgeoisie.
6. Therefore, the class content of the Party of Prosperity (in Turkey, 1n
1993-IB) is small capitalists, i.e. non-monopoly bourgeoisie, and to a
certain extent small tradesmen.
7. This movement is totally against such notions as 'enlightenment',
democracy, secularism and individual liberties.
8. This movement is against not only the reality of class, but the reality
of nation as well. It defends the notion of religious community. It does not
recognise national boundaries. It is perfectly aware of the fact that, if
its march is halted at some point, if it cannot conquer the entire world,
then it will collapse.
9. Precisely for these reasons, it will not accept the legal framework of
any state. State laws are simply elements of evil to be abolished.
10. It is anti-democratic in the real sense of the word. It cannot be
otherwise.
11. It does not recognise the notion of 'citizen' in society. All social
units other than the family are also rejected.
12. It is a jihad movement. It has to wage war against and shed the blood of
everybody who is not on its side or made a part of it. By definition and due
to its structure it cannot be a peaceful movement. When Erbakan  says 'We
are coming to take revenge for the past fifty years', this is what he means.
(referring to election discussions in Turkey in 1993-IB)
13. It politicises without fail the whole of society. (This may seem a good
thing to some, but the real consequences appear only after it seizes
power...)
14. It cries out for culture, morals and justice, but at every step in
engenders lack of culture, immorality and injustice.
15. Right from the beginning it blunts and lowers society's potential for
reflection. It replaces wisdom, enquiry and logic with the acceptance of the
'absolute', and absolute obedience. Apart from the great harm this causes to
society, the organisational advantages that it thus conceals are enormous.
Compared with its adversaries, it is extremely disciplined. 'Orders cut
through iron'.
16. It engenders a cult of violence and denunciation throughout society. As
has been observed concretely in Iran, small children through ignorance
denounce their parents in the name of Islam.
17. It is a totalitarian movement right from the beginning. It brings order
to every aspect of social life by attempting to squeeze everything into a
single 'right'.

(This passage above was from a long article on Political Islam in Turkey
written by late R.Yurukoglu. It was actually sent by me to the moderator
some time ago. It seems it was screened out as off topic. If you are
interested in the full article I can send it to you. .)


----- Original Message -----
From: <Threehegemons@aol.com>
To: <wwagar@binghamton.edu>; <john.till@famchildserv.org>
Cc: <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 7:20 PM
Subject: Re: So what!


> In a message dated 1/30/2003 1:03:07 PM Eastern Standard Time,
wwagar@binghamton.edu writes:
>
> > But the major positive religions
> > of our era originated in pre-capitalist times and are steeped in
> > pre-capitalist pre-modern pre-scientific world-views.  If their leaders
> > cannot stomach capitalism because of its associations with modern
secular
> > thought and/or Western imperialism, their default mode is not modern
> > secular socialism but an attempt to revert, time-travel if you please,
to
> > the centuries of their founding, e.g., 7th-Century Arabia.  Actually
> > getting there is, of course, impossible, as WS analysis shows, but they
> > can try, and sometimes their efforts to resurrect the social relations
of
> > production that obtained in these earlier centuries can be just as
> > oppressive to workers, or more so, than anything cooked up
> > by
> > Western-style capitalists.
>
> Here its difficult to presume that, despite your protestations to the
contrary, you're referring to fundamentalism. Catholics, Methodists, et al
haven't shown any propensity for trying to turn back the clock to the 7th
century.  But, for the most part, neither have fundamentalists.  The big
exception is the Taliban (fiercely denounced by the current Iranian
government), and they were amply assisted by the various Soviet and American
weapons that demolished whatever was 'twentieth century' about Afghanistan.
>
> Since scientific humanism produced virtually everything bad associated
with religion (intolerance, conformity,  inquisitions, etc) and left out the
good (spiritual ectasy, art, communal rituals) why exactly are we supposed
to believe it is THE path for the twenty-first century?
>
> Steven Sherman