Political Islam’s relation to Capital and Class

international | worker & community struggles and protests | other press Thursday August 23, 2007 11:35 by Ardeshir Mehrdad and Yassamine Mather

In this article Ardeshir Mehrdad and Yassamine Mather examine the underpinnings of Political Islam, they show how it is fundamentally anti-democratic and how it is hostile to the Enlightenment and the interests of the Working Class. The full text is at the link.

The last three decades have witnessed a relentless growth of Islamic movements, so that, today political Islam is an undeniable reality on the world scene. The events of September 11, 2001 and since have given it further prominence. From the Middle East to North Africa and South Asia, it has, in its various manifestations, become a major player that needs to be analysed both politically and theoretically. The contradictory nature of political Islam means that such analyses must deal with it not only in relation to the interests of capital, but also in relation to the challenge it poses to socialist ideas.

Iranian Worker Protest 1 May 2007

The pan-Islamist movement - however its elements interpret ‘political Islam’ - opposes democracy in all its forms. The movement’s beliefs, class make-up and historic direction come together to reject popular sovereignty and the right of the people to determine their own destiny by majority vote. It is forced to locate the right of sovereignty above the heads of ordinary people, to make it the overarching authority that must resolve the movement’s internal and external contradictions. Divine rule, where all rights belong to god, is the only realm where there are no tensions and dissent.

Once pan-Islamism creates a state in which religion rules, its effect on the environment is immeasurably greater and longer-lasting. Some of these effects will undoubtedly survive long after the Islamic regimes return to the grave from which they rose.

Sharia’a law displaces secular law. A system of law based on the parliamentary vote, rationality and contemporary human needs is replaced by one held to be sacred and eternal. The traditional role of the state is overturned, and it is transformed from the mechanism for the control of the country’s socio-economic tensions into the cause and perpetuator of those tensions and social crises. The contradiction between a religious-ideological state and its secular, material, rational base creates a situation of permanent crisis. A religious despotism is established in which the ruling Islamic power creates a new legal system, where the right to govern at every level (legislative and judicial) is held to be divine - exercised solely on god’s behalf by certain sections of the clergy.