On The MASA

Yesterday, jan 10, was a day when radical and muslim europe came together in a big number of cities of the EU to demand the end of the massacre and denounce Bush and Barak as murderers. Today a huge demo is scheduled in Brussels. Many, even on the extreme left, are uncomfortable with the religious undertones of many demos and the fact they end up in collective prayers. Also, the equation of the nazi swastika with the star of david is regarded as historically absurd and antisemitic, just as are cries for the destruction of israel and the burning of israeli flags.

Today there are at least 20 million European muslims, not counting Turkey. After catholic and protestant versions of christianity, islam is the second largest religious affiliation in the continent. After 9/11, the civil rights of this huge minority are being grossly violated, much as they were during Martin Luther King's times (another instance where religion expressed social mobilization). Their public expression of faith is severely limited, particularly in the nativist countries of Northern and Southern Europe (Denmark and Italy, for instance), where the construction of mosques is effectively denied (there's not a even a single mosque in a 3-million-plus metropolis like Milano). Cordoba and Istanbul remind us that islam is what makes modern Europe non-religiously homogenous. If Europe is to be secular and multicultural, it must be non-christian, and this in our the times of theologic revival translates as multireligious. Europe cannot only be christian, it must also be islamic. Those on the conservative and occidentalist right who say the Europe's legacy is strictly judeo-christian, more often than not are descendants of those same nationalists who exterminated the European jewry sixty years ago and destroyed its yiddish and Bund culture. Europe used to be jewish, but before 1942. After fascism, it turned into a land of ethnically and often religiously homogenous nation-states. Only postWWII immigration gave Europe back some of the diversity it enjoyed before the two wars. Most of this immigration has been from arab and muslim countries. If we look at the social pyramid of Europe today, we find four larg social categories: the cosmopolitan elties, a transnational, educated middle class, increasingly unsecure industrial workers, petty bourgeoisies and white collars of native stock, and finally the excluded: an increasingly mulatto precarious youth and a largely islamic immigrant population. Mayday wants to give voice to the precarious and the sans-papiers. We cannot deny that many of those without voice are islamic and want to express their faith politically.

Much as it pains me to say it, it's now clear in retrospect that the Iranian revolution of 1979 has been the equivalent for political islam of the Russian revolution for political marxism. It has imposed a new dynamic on world history, put fear in global capitalism, and created endless conflicts, also within its ranks. The shia clerics that destroyed the people's mujaheddins after toppling the shah, absorbed their leninism, and made islam a populist religion, something it had never been under the ferociously feudal wahhabi islam watching over mecca and the holy sites. A similar development gradually occurred in sunni islam with the extension of the influence of Muslim Brotherhood in countries where panarabism had gone to power (e.g. Egypt, Syria). Hezbollah descends from the shia revolution of Khomeini, and Hamas from the sunni revolution of Qutb. Both are populist versions of islam, which while hating zionism and Israel, are opposed to terrorist and necrophiliac versions of sunnism, such as the salafitism of al-qaeda, the talibans, or the kashmir death squad sent to Mumbai. It's telling that both hamas and hezbollah publicly distanced themselves from 9/11 and 7-7
http://www.pickensdemocrats.org/info/Facing_Hamas_and_Hezbollah_071119.htm

There's no doubt that especially Hamas is antisemitic (and more gynophobic than Hezbollah). But it's not the antisemitism deriving from roman catholicism or greek orthodoxy or protestant Lutheranism that has traditionally fuelled european fascism and racism, it's a hate of the jewish state and its perceived colonialist ideology as such. I don't justify it, but it is understandable for somebody to become say anti-italian and burn the italina flag because he/she has lived for decades under the domination of the italian state. Usually, in order to make it more palatable it's more often referred to as antizionism. To reject zionism is to reject the existence of Israel. I oppose this idea sharply. In fact zionism as a secular, once socialist-leaning, ideology is under attack in Israel as well, as new immigrants from Russia and Africa are for a sharp and clear ethnoreligious connotation of the state. I shall say this to all friends here and elsewhere now and for ever: Israel must live, in spite of all the crimes that its politicians are committing today. And heinous as their crimes currently are, they stop way short of genocide or nazism (words do have a meaning). Hamas by breaking the truce and refusing to recognize israel has made it easier for the bombers and cannons to torch and maim Gaza. They should have procrastinated the truce until jan 20, no matter how callous and unfair was israel's blockade. Still, it's against all notions of humanity to punish a whole people as terrorist because they have dared vote for an enemy of your government.

Anarchy has always been against all forms of established religion as well as the state. In global terms, it make sense to see it as anticlerical heresy typical of white christianity, i.e. as a radical form of secularism arising in the western world. Anarchy is a form of "white" deviance, drawing legions in Europe and North America, but very little outside this regions. Marxism has been atheist, too, but has usually refrained from burning churches, even in the Soviet Union. In particular, marxist anti-imperialism and national liberation guerrillas have positively engaged with leftist strands of Catholicism and other religions to mobilize rural masses. Autonomy (i.e. post-1973 marxism in the west) has been ecumenical in its approach, building in terms of class as it emerged from postfordism and trying to build cross-cultural movements bridging across ethnic and religious divides.
This is easier to do in countries like France where banlieusards see their exclusion in terms of race and class much as the African-Americans have historically done, than in Sweden or Holland where discrimination is mostly seen in ethnic and religious terms.
Autonomy is more geared to the mulatto generation, to punk islam if you wish, than anarchy, with its complete refusal of the religious manifestations evoking the transcendent. Both radical trends have to support the civil and political rights of arab and muslim minorities in europe, since islamophobia and immigration are the two issues diving the right from the left in europe today. Our alliance with insurgent arab youth must be done in honesty, without hiding our atheism and complete support of feminism and gender liberation. But it's clear we have an enemy in common: european elites allied with
israel's irrational militarism and bushist occidentalism. Wanting everybody to be like us seems another version of cultural imperialism.

Arab, african, and persian kids of muslim origin born into European metropolises grew up in largely secular conditions, sharing the pop consumerism of their mongrelizing peers. They did not particularly care about religion, as their parents were often secularized muslims and arab nationalists who did not care about the moral strictures of islam (no alcohol, headscarves for women, respect of ramadan and hajj etc.). This has dramatically changed since 2001, when boys as well as girls have rediscovered their islamic roots and turned them in acts of political defiance toward authorities as well as their families. I here contend their display of religion is mostly a political subculture which radical european movements must engage with if they want to effectively fight global war and social discrimination. This type of juvenile islam mixes easily with ghetto hip-hop culture as well as youth alternative culture. It's a bit like the black panthers embracing maoism and islamism; it's more resentment at failed integration than a prokhomeneist agenda. Antifas, anarchists, autonomists thus have done right when they have defended the right of european muslims to practice their religion, as they did in Koeln, Malmoe, and elsewhere. Fascists and xenofobes (DPP, Lega, Vlams Blok etc etc) are particularly virulent in opposing the collective right of european muslims to pray together. For instance in Italy, the fascist minister of defense (the one who has sent soldiers patrolling immigrant 'hoods in Milano and Rome), has even criticized the archbishop of Milano for refusing to raise a stink when thousands of muslims prayed in Duomo square last week in an unauthorized demo, an event repeated yestedray in front of Centrale station and Pirelli skyscraper. The popular rags are today titling: "Invasion". They are playing the same game of the clash of civilizations that Bush and
Barak are rerunning to pre-empt any change in Middle-east policy by the new US administration. Their hideous decision has not only already killed hundreds of children, it has taken hostage a whole world yearning for peace after a decade of uninterrupted war.

Those who long for the secular palestinian resistance to israel's colonialism and apartheid, the one they had come to know in recent decades, would do well to mount an international campaign to free from prison Marwan Barghouti, the leader of al-aqsa brigades in the second intifada, the only who can restore the political respectability of fatah, find an agreement with hamas and maybe strike deal for full Palestinian independence in a single state encompassing Gaza and the West Bank. In my view, he's the only secular alternative to hamas (the marxist popular front for the liberation of palestine seems a nostalgic remnant of a glorious past).

love'n'rage,

lx