The idea that the Palestinian people have only been able to persist because of their religion is ridiculous to me. They are resisting because colonialism, apartheid and genocide are very bad things to which nobody would want to be subjected, not because of Islam. If Palestinians were atheists, is he suggesting that they wouldn't have the strength or the will to resist? Would their lack of a belief in the supernatural turn them into doormats for Isn'treal?
I like Hakim's content, but his position on religion is quite frustrating. He is a Muslim first and a Marxist second. Also, Joram van Klaveren is still a right-winger.
A few comments from the original Hexbear thread come to mind
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"guy named Hakim from Iraq is Muslim, white people are shocked and appalled"
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In speaking about religion in HAMAS and other resistance groups. "I for one am shocked that members of the Islamic Resistance Movement find value in an Islamic text."
Like seriously? We have people in this thread bringing into question The Deprogram crew for..... having a member be religious? Also because they interviewed people that aren't explicitly MLs? These guys that have done more to bring communist theory to more people than this entire instance. Lol stop acting like fucking ultras or whatever. I mean really? You all need to get a grip. Furthermore, expecting them to BE infallible while also complaining they act like the ARE infallible and the attacking them for that too? Please. Coming off like a bunch of wreckers. These guys have never claimed or acted like they are the gods of communism. They get on, discuss what they know, and give their opinions. Those opinions can be not always on point,and not always what you want to hear. It's your own deal if you expect them to be perfect then get pissed when they aren't.
A man can be both religious and a communist. He can also have a disagreeable point while having good intentions. And most importantly he can have flaws and still be an extremely important and beneficial person to the cause. The man is religious. He shares this religion with most of the people currently undergoing a fucking genocide. He probably feels more empathy towards them then most westerners do to their fucking next door neighbors. My heart burns for the Palestinians, I can only imagine how he must be feeling. Man probably understands the Palestinian culture and religions better than any of you. But please, tell me how you all, as non Muslims, probably white ass westerners, know so much better. I for one, am a white as westerner. Yet I am capable of at least understanding where he is coming from, even maybe disagreeing with him, without also attacking him as rabidly, and disgustingly, as some of you all have.
Honestly, after reading some of the gross over reactions and ridiculous attacks from this thread, I am legitimately ashamed of some of you. Like legitimately. Ashamed. Downvote me and attack me for saying so if it makes you feel better. That's fine. After some of the absurdity I have seen here I'll be happy to add some blocks to my list.
People: want to learn more about Islam, ask for more reading materials on this topic.
Hakim: shares them, indicating that's what he personally read, with some source criticism.
People: refuse to read them and treat a youtube comment to be a Marxist analysis ripe for critique.
And to those who took issue with him being an "educator" and thus shouldn't do this: He's a minor e-celeb who makes videos, he's still a real person with his own worldview, just like the rest of us. He's not saying this is how Marxists should think, he's just sharing some books to better understand the context from his own point of view.
Yeah it's definitely disappointing.
The irony in some of these comments castigating him for supposedly not being marxist, and doing so by applying the most dogmatic, context-free invective.
Also religious belief can 100% motivate socialist beliefs. Take as two examples John Brown and Tony Benn
Existing forms of community, such as religious groups, also lend themselves well to socialism. Religious dogma is idealistic, but it feels reductive to ignore the motivation of belonging to and supporting a community when analyzing whether Marxism and religious beliefs are compatible.
There's evidence to support their compatibility as well as the damage religious groups can have on socialist causes. At the end of the day, I say more comrades is better.
My thinking is this look at Catholicism, they adapted to Roman patronism, they adapted to feudalism, they adapted to capitalism, they'll adapt again with a new economic system
liberation theology could be to communism what calvinism was to capitalism
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[Long post ahead]
Frankly, I was a bit confused at first at the responses to Hakim's supposed misdeed. I saw practically nothing wrong with his post.
This is speaking as someone who considers themself "ex-muslim" and rarely practices any of the daily rituals of being muslim.
I have read through both the Hexbear thread and this one here on Lemmygrad. Firstly, I would like to say I agree with Aru's comment on the other parallel thread running right now.
I'd like to address some of the contentions people have about the post. Hakim starts his post with this statement:
How do the Palestinian people persist? As muslims...
Not because they ARE muslims, as in, Islam was the only way in which they were able to carry out anti-colonial struggle, but rather they carry out the anti-colonial struggle through BEING muslim. Islam in this context is a material force, precisely because it is imbedded in the people - the colonized and the working classes, in their decision-making and power. It becomes entrenched in the material base.
It is in the masjid where muslims congregate and form communal bonds. It is in the masjid where people recieve their political and cultural education. It is the masjid that organizes the local community. It is in the masjid grounds in which people partake in the political economy.
To say that if Palestine was fully christian or any other "religion", they would still reject colonization, misses the point. It doesn't matter about some hypotheticals that you concoct in your head. That's as useful as saying that if China was 100% Christian they would still be communist - what is the point in engaging in idealist hypotheticals? To simply compare it to Christianity, is idealism. Because you are not comparing the reality in which these cultural traditions, epistemologies, and beliefs operate. You are comparing one idea to another, utterly deaf to the material context behind it. The material reality of the ummah, the material reality of Palestine, means that Islam is the force in which anti-imperialist and anti-colonialism is carried out.
So yes, perhaps for many muslims, the Quran, the life of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) becomes the starting point of their political conciousness, and to somehow call it immature, backward, or a type of "false consciousness", is to fall into the orientalist idealist tropes of the days of direct colonization.
Throughout the entire Islamic world we have seen numerous secular and communist organizations that directly collaborated with the colonizer, that never gained support from the muslim masses and that also had to face a visceral reactionary force funded by the West. To say that secular movements only failed in the Islamic world because they were being pitted against reactionary Western-funded movements ignores the fact that if these secular movements truly had the mandate of the people - truly did listen to the working masses, they would have succeeded in maintaining power in the first place.
To act like this analysis is somehow "idealism", when it is actually idealism to ignore history and material conditions in favour of a dogmatic secular understanding of class warfare.
Why is it when state secularism and athiesm is mentioned, we only mention those in AES, like the conditions of the ummah is somehow exactly one-on-one the same as that of China or the USSR? Why doesn't anyone ever mention about the beacon of liberal modernity and secularism - France - in which if you ask anyone in the ummah what they think about it, they would vehemently reject associating with that Islamophobic "secular" state. Why is it immediately assumed that when someones says they want an Islamic country, it is immediately assumed they want a monoreligious populace with forced conversions on heretics and heathens? Why is it assumed when we say something is Islamic, it means that it cannot involve people of other faiths (or lack thereof)?
In my eyes, the answer is simple. It is because the Western left still carries the mental burden of colonization, of cultural genocide, and they project it onto the global south - onto the ummah.
Are we suppose to ignore the Islamic influence of for example Southeast Asian foreign policy, Arab nationalism, or North African decolonization? How about the Islamic Axis of Resistance pushing back against the Zionist Entity and other US imperial projects in West Asia? Islamic socialism and Islam has been, and continues to be, materially closer to anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and communism than Western Marxism could ever even dream about (that is - if they even recognize imperialism). Islam is the form that the anti-imperialist essence of the ummah takes.
Is it the "muh slems" that are idealistic, or is it the Western's left misunderstanding of the "unity of opposites"? If you can only percieve reality in absolutes, in black-and-white, then "religion" is always "immaterial"; that means you will be unable to identify your friends from your enemies and it also means you will never understand Islam and the ummah.
I'm happy you said something. I think it's also clear from the text that he's not being chauvinistic (he makes purposeful allusion to important figures in Judaism and Christianity and clearly considers them all part of the struggle) and I think there's tactical value to taking the wind out of the sails of Islamophobic depictions of the struggle by helping provide context. Maybe there's room for criticism but I think he's doing more here than he is being credited for.
Or maybe I just wanna defend my video friend.
The first time I read this comment, I started to write a reply but then realized that I'm not totally sure what you mean in some places, and I figured it would be better to ask than just assume.
Islam in this context is a material force, precisely because it is imbedded in the people - the colonized and the working classes, in their decision-making and power. It becomes entrenched in the material base.
What do you have in mind with the notion of 'entrenchment' here?
It is in the masjid where muslims congregate and form communal bonds. It is in the masjid where people recieve their political and cultural education.
How does this distinguish the masjid from superstructural institutions generally, like schools or mass media?
It is in the masjid grounds in which people partake in the political economy.
What does this mean? That the masjid is an employer? That it's a marketplace? Or just that it carries out the functions of the state in Islamic societies?
Why is it when state secularism and athiesm is mentioned, we only mention those in AES, like the conditions of the ummah is somehow exactly one-on-one the same as that of China or the USSR?
To be clear here, 'the' ummah extends to everywhere Islam is believed or practiced? Or does it mean instead something more like 'Muslim countries'?
Islam is the form that the anti-imperialist essence of the ummah takes.
To make sure I understand what you mean here, Is this a fair (equivalent) restatement or does it miss some things?
in the ummah, anti-imperialism takes the form of Islam
Yeh their post is so confused and unclear its difficult to even beging to parse and deconstruct it.
I don't know if Islam is a material force per se, because it is a super-structural phenomena. But looking at it from the Palestinians perspective, materially, the Christian Zionists and the Jewish Zionists are colonizing them materially. However there are Palestinians that are not Muslim. There are Palestinians that are Jewish or Christian that are subjected to the same horrors as the Muslims.
However it seems that if the Islamic countries united under one banner geopolitically, ban foreign capital from influencing them, that would materially undermine imperialism. Quadaffi tried to do something like this and we'll see if someone there can manage to do this again. Just make sure that if one develops nukes, keep them to protect your people.
Honestly this post reminds me that there a lot of people using the revolutionary language and history of Marxism to justify their own nationalism or other views which are not those of internationalist Marxism or Communism.
Yes religion is idealistic. Idealism in the history of Marxist use can mean both ontological idealism, in which one thinks that the only or most fundamental components of what exists has the basic properties of the mental; and epistemic idealism, where the explanation of certain events or properties is based first and foremost on ideas, in which ideas are given priviledge of explanation, rather than what those ideas are ideas of. Someone can be ontologically idealist on paper while acting like an (epistemic) idealist in their reasoning, of which many liberals are perfect examples. Of course, for a genuine materialists, ideas do also in a sense reduce to matter, while also emerging out of matter, and so are types or expressions of new properties which emerge out of very complex forms of matter. You do give a good example of epistemic idealism, which is people ignoring the historical and more specifically the religious context of these countries in which national liberation movements are active. However it is equally idealist to ignore the profoundly reactionary implications of a group being Islamist (as opposed to, say, simply being a group most or all of whose members are Muslims). I don't think anyone is implying that the political role, influence or importance of religion is to be ignored here. If anything it is the opposite. Though it seems you are implying they are in order to imply their view of what that significance is is incorrect, contrary to your own I'm guessing.
You are also introducing an unjustified exclusivity between (1) Islam being idealist (which you haven't made clear what you mean), but is most definitely when we are talking about the ontological content of Islamic beliefs and the kind of religious reasoning that is based on it; and (2) westerners not understanding the 'unit of opposites', which seems to be to just be a force of relativist mysticism; if you mean that is no such thing as truth or a correct view. This is not Marxism (a modernist ideology). This is simply another expression of postmodern relativism. If here you mean that have to recognize that there are potentially progressive aspects with non-preferable components such as strong religious ideology, then sure, that is something to be recognized. Islam is a material phenomenon, like every other religion, because it exists in the social world. But the actual beliefs, the content of it, are not materialist. Materialism is not the same thing as something being material. This is just a confusion of what different words mean.
An irony is that you yourself are essentializing Islam (or maybe it only seems so due to the lack of clarity in what you saying) by claiming that it 'is the form which the anti-imperialist struggle takes form'. Reactionary groups can oppose Imperialists. This is not a mystery. And assuming that because they do that they must be progressive is precisely the kind of 'absolute, black and white' mystifications you are accusing others of committing. There are plenty of non-Islamic, non-religious liberation struggles, and again there is a great difference between a movement containing religious people, and the movement being religious in character. Every Islamic or Islamist revolution has been a reactionary nightmare, for the people in general and the left in particular. The vast majority of genuinely progressive and successful revolutionary movements in recent history have been secular communist ones, notably of national liberation in the global south.
Marxists in many non-Western societies are often far more explicitly anti-religious in private than the sheepish left of the West, who are terrified of losing their virtue-signalling points. One example is Haiti: when I've spoken with Haitian comrades, they are fully conscious of the reactionary potential of religion, because they are in a society in which religion (whether in the form of Christianity of Voudou) is an immense obstacle and impediment for communist education, radicalization and organization. We are not going to bring people into the communist fold by ignoring reactionary views they hold or not attacking them. If anything, the fetishism of Islam extending into one of Islam, on a supposedly Marxist forum no-less, is an expression of the fact that these individuals actually almost certainly have no experience of organizing politically as Communists, let alone in the countries they are talking about.
Islamic socialism is certainly better than no socialism at all, and you are completely correct that white western atheists absolutely and completely condemning these movements purely on that basis is chauvinistic and ignorant, that is nevertheless completely irrelevant to any discussion of the political nature of religion, and there are certain fairly unavoidable conclusions on that front when we scientifically analysis the historical and contemporary evidence as Marxists. It's not clear to me how anything you'd said impacts in any way any serious discussion of the political nature of religion in general and particular religions specifically. Not all religions are equal, but there are sufficient similarities (hence using the common term 'religion') for us to be able to start making more general theorizations and conclusions about it. This includes the how religions function politically and influence politics in different contexts.
Another issue here is that no-one is making a distinction between Islam and Islamism, which is particularly ironic in a thread with a couple self-flagellating white westerners virtue-signalling other their desire to understand the religion of the downtrodden and avoid Islamophobia.
Regarding this:
"In my eyes, the answer is simple. It is because the Western left still carries the mental burden of colonization, of cultural genocide, and they project it onto the global south - onto the ummah."
It seems equally obvious to me that this is a giant jump in reasoning. I'm not really seeing the evidence here. This is also, again, ignoring the massive elephant in the room of Islamism. Fear of Islamism is the most rational emotional response to have towards it. Anyone who says otherwise has not lived in Islamist societies, does not understand Islamism and its both its differences with and intimate connections to Islam more broadly. This whole discussion is also again a reminder which angers me immensely that most Marxists from these parts of the world are not having their views discussed very clearly, and is ignoring that the vast majority of communists who have lived under Islamism understand that it is an extremely reactionary ideology that makes life misery. By far the most anti-theist people I have ever met are my Communist friends and comrades from and in the Islamic world, and most of all the Iranians. You seem to me to be giving a clearly idealist explanation here. The form of anti-imperialist politics is deeply influenced Islam and Islamism because these are deeply religious societies in which secularism and notably the secular left failed, and because they are responses to the correctly perceived, widespread racism and Islamophobia of the West, because many people in their suffering, misery and alienation turn to religion as a consolation that becomes essential and precious in their lives, and because modern Islamism explicitly formed itself on a conception of politics similar to the Leninist clandestine party organization, aiming for mass radicalization where they would take advantage of the radical energy of mass movements and direct them for reactionary ends, very similarly to Fascism.
On the France point, which I can speak to as having lived there, it is correct that the form of 'secularism' practiced as policy by the French government is not only inconsistent in its application to Muslims compared to Christians, and thus does not live up to the ideal of secularism which should be aimed for, but is deeply and structurally discriminatory in its application. Going from the fact that French secularism is racist, to the conclusion that secularism is racist, is like realizing that a square in front of you is red, then seeing a red circle, and saying that the circle is square. The French state is racist, but that does not imply in any way that we should not be secularists in our policies. Religious justifications have no place in a Communist party. Period. End of discussion.
Reactionary groups can oppose Imperialists. This is not a mystery.
Ever heard of critical support? Who else is gonna fight “Israel?”
I'm very familiar with the concept, being a member of Leninist orgs and having been in Maoist orgs.
I agree that there are not any other alternatives at the moment. No where have I claimed otherwise. But that doesn't imply that they are not reactionary. It speaks to how fucked the situation is that, as I see it, it is tragic necessity that the only vehicle currently available for armed struggle against Israeli apartheid, settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing is in Palestine in Hamas. I agree with you. But political forces and movements can be multifaceted. Hamas, on the one hand, provide social services in Gaza. They are also a deeply misogynistic, anti-communist, homophobic and anti-semitic organization (them removing the the Elders of the Protocols of Zion from reference in their public constitution notwithstanding).
My basic point is simply that Communists need to not lose sight of the reactionary aspects of these organizations or they are going to be lead into embarassingly incorrect judgements in the long-run, and will de-legitimize themselves in their own national contexts, by tacitly assuming that these orgs are less reactionary than they actually are. Honestly if people are so moralistically offended by this point then they are lacking the basic political realism of actual Marxists. If that offends them, then I guess they will have to dirty the reputations of most Marxists in history who have also recognized that oppressed classes, notably who have been lumpen-proletarianized, are often vulnerable to reactionary ideology and radicalization. At best, Hamas acquiring dominance in a state in Palestine would lead to conditions for the creation of a national bourgeoisie. But as other Islamist cases demonstrate, even in the less extreme cases of somewhere like Iran, these situations are pretty much never good for the left.
I don't agree with what Hakim said but it's not like he's the grand Oracle of communist theory. He's a young guy who grew up in a war torn country in which more than a million of his fellow countrypeople have been massacred by the west. A country that is geographically much closer to an ongoing genocide than the western country I am in right now.
Of course religion isn't the main thing driving the Palestinians forward right now. But it probably plays an important role in a Muslim Majority country.
What bugs me, though, is that many western communist nearly start foaming at the mouth the moment religion gets brought up, especially in combination with communism. Meanwhile we have actual religious majority countries being AES or resisting imperialism and it feels highly chauvinistic to discredit their struggle purely because they are religious. Once the first perfect atheist western revolution without violence and possible reactionary takes happens, we'll see. But my money is that our own revolutions, of they ever happen, will be far from 'perfect' as well.
What bugs me, though, is that many western communist nearly start foaming at the mouth the moment religion gets brought up
Yes, that's the core of the issue. Comrades, you can think whatever you want on this subject but in practice we need to be as understanding as possible because a lot of people who most want to see imperialism burn are muslim. This alliance is necessary and we won't win anything by trying to impose atheism. Materialism is a tool, it doesn't have to be a core belief that defines your whole being.
Saying 'people can think whatever they want on this subject' is dodging the real substantive issue though, namely the question of how much religious ideology limits the progressive potential of any political struggle, and frankly history is as unambiguous about this question, as a general rule, as it could be about any other. We know that the religious ideology is a serious impediment to communist politics. The counterexamples normally presented are very weak, such as Liberation Theology, as none of these have had the explanatory power or political or organizational success of Marxist movements proper. Imo his has to do with the fact that how ideology functions, and what it justifies, and how it shapes how you think, reason, and justify certain positions, policies and practices, is simply not equivalent between Marxism, which is the Proletarian and therefore political stage of scientific enlightenment and of scientific revolution, and Islam, which is a fairly reactionary (at this stage in history) religious ideology which emerged in a very different context which shaped how its political dimensions could develop.
Materialism is certainly not just a tool. Even as a tool, it's successful use is intimately linked to truth. If it is, then I'd have to suppose that every ideology is just a tool which is obviously an absurdly reductionistic instrumentalist view. It is a system of concepts, ideas, beliefs, propositions, theories and methods used to describe, understand, explain, predict and control the properties and events of the natural and social world. Marxism, as the Proletarian stage of Science, applied to society, is intellectually and therefore practically revolutionary precisely because it gives a form of understanding which was not previously available to human societies about themselves, and finally allows us to truly move towards social freedom, namely where societies, as socialist and eventually communist, are no longer condemned to society seeming like some impersonal force before which we're passive, weak and helpless, but is something of which we are not only a part but also something which we can collectively, consciously, control and shape. That is precisely the reason why socialism is more advanced as a form of society than capitalism, other things being equal.
Materialism's most basic theoretical foundation is that there is independently existing, objective reality, which conforms most fundamentally in its properties to what we understand as or call the 'physical', and out of which emerges a type of entity capable of subjective, conscious thought, which is in turn not only ontologically dependent on the matter (or whatever you what to call it, as the conception of the physical in modern science goes far beyond the pretty crude idea of matter of intellectually bankrupt 19th century of modern 'vulgar materialism'). I'm not sure how much time you've actually spent with seriously militant Marxists if you think that Materialism is not a key part of their beliefs and identity. Dialectical and historical materialism are then further theoretical developments of this idea. Materialism is ancient, whereas the latter are modern developments that were not possible before modern science and the industrial revolution. If you wanted to reduce Historical Materialism to tool, then I guess the best candidate for its purpose would be 'ruthless critique of all that exists'.
We can say we need to be understanding as much as we like, and it's not false, but it remains a limited, abstract point if it doesn't then ask the question of what our understanding of religion as Marxists implies about the political status and potential of religion. This doesn't imply you are wrong when you say that there have to be political alliances with religious non-Marxists, but it does imply that as Marxists we never let out of sight the knowledge that those movements are held back in their possible development by those religious dimensions, though of course the latter are also partially but still significantly expressions of how the material conditions and historical context have seriously undermined the potential for socialist politics. Religious movements can serve historically progressive purposes, but they are fundamentally limited, and there is immense danger of hyper-reactionary theocratic backlash which is as effective at crushing communist movements as fascists are (not a coincidence, given there are A LOT of similarities between Islamism and Fascism).
Im not sure what you mean by 'impose atheism'. We are not in a position to materially impose atheism on anyone. Whether that should be done once we have a state is another question (edit: to clarify, we shouldn't, though politics must be resolutely secular), and people on here seem to often approve of it in the case of, say, China or the USSR, but immediately get sheepish when its discussed in relation to Islam, whereas it seems to me like the recent political history of Islam should make us less so. If you mean 'imposing' in the sense of stating clearly that those are our views, when then you are basically saying that Marxists have to sacrifice a view that is pretty key to our conception of the world and make a concession to false (if you think anyone flew on a winged horse one night to see God then you believe an absurdity) and often reactionary views in order to not alienate certain potential allies. Which is a very problematic position to hold in all honesty and i'm not sure how anyone who is actually a Marxist can think that.
there are A LOT of similarities between Islamism and Fascism
what definition of "Islamism" are you using to justify this comparison?
I’m guessing they’re the type to put Al Qeada, ISIS, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the same category despite openly disagreeing with each other and being on different sides geopolitically.
Happy to clarify comrade. Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is a modernist political ideology and force whose roots are in the reaction of the Islamic world to Western Imperialism and Colonialism in the 19th century and the decline in political strength of the Islamic world. It's relative strength and influence in the contemporary world has to do not only with further radicalization
I would not say they are the same thing, as Fascism for me refers to strongly to a particular political phenomenon which is very much tied to the political and socio-economic history of Europe (or the capitalist-imperialist West). Aimé Cesaire's comment that it can be seen as the tools of imperialism turns inwards is relevant here, but I wouldn't use that to literally define fascism as it is too broad and captures more than the political phenomenon what the term 'fascism' was coined to capture.
The similarities in my mind are the following:
- They are both modernist ideologies that emerge in societies in socio-economic and political crisis. They serve a similar political function of crushing progressive forces, notably socialist political alternatives in the societies in question.
- Both present themselves as radical alternatives to secular, traditional conservative, liberal and socialist political forces, and which also offer a return to a mythical past through sacred bloodshed and violence.
- I don't particularly like the term 'totalitarian', as it tends to obscure more than it clarifies, but in this case I would say that the ambitions of Islamism are relatively totalizing in the reach and extremism of its ambitions. It generally would like to thoroughly reform all aspects of social life on a particular theocratic model.
- They are extremely socially reactionary, with emphasis on particular (in some ways modern/modernist) interpretations of tradition, and present themselves as revitalizing returns to the original, pure manifestation of a particular ideal form of society and political structure. In the European case the focus is on race The only case of European fascism I can think of which has been as ideologically theocratic would be the Romanian Iron Guard. This often manifests itself in violent death-cults with intense focuses and fetishizations of violence.
- They are both highly hierarchical and elitist. There is intense misogyny and hypermasculinity in both.
- Both were influenced in terms of their philosophies of revolutionary organization by the Bolshevik example. Shariati, for instance, one of the main ideologues in the history of Shia Islamism, was influenced not only by Islamic philosophy, but also explicitly by the clandestine methods of organization and agitation towards violent revolution as he thought evidenced by the Leninist model.
That being said there is also of course ideological and organizational variety among Islamist groups, just as there is among fascist groups. Groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood base themselves on more open political competition, notably for mass-movement based electoral influence, while also operating with some independence outside of formal, liberally-condoned political options. So the similarities are more clear in terms of several super-structural aspects, but there is also the base-level similarity in that both emerge as reactionary radicalizing forces often aiming for mass radicalization and violent revolution as consequences and responses to the socio-economic and political crisis of their societies, in contexts of delegitimization of the established, liberal, secular, nationalist or socialist alternatives (for whatever reason, though in this case often very closely related to the fact that these societies are generally suffering intensely due to Western Imperialism, Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism.
Aint gonna dignify this with serious reply comment if you aint gona justify those kinds of accusations.
Give an actual coherent response or fuck off.
What bugs me is OPs account is 8 months old with virtually zero activity then shows up with a pretty controversial struggle session where they are repeatedly attacking one of the more popular communist influencers.
When i first saw this i instinctively sided Roderic Day (refer to hexbear struggle session), but increasingly I've come to the conclusion that Hakim is not in fact proselytizing, he is simply answering the questions of people who came to their Muslim comrade with questions about Islam.
Whenever I talk about Islam to Marxists or Marxism to Muslims, I get the exact same reaction from both sides, instantly shutting down the other by calling them "Idealist" or "Kaffir" and not take any time to understand each other, like at most they'll read the Quran or they'll read the communist manifesto, not take time to understand it and call it a day, which I understand because not everyone has the time to read a book so long and repetitive let alone understand every bit of it, that's the point of having a conversation and asking questions, but you can't write off everything in you way and label it as "big bad" for having a word that you don't like, that's just ignorance.
You are definitely correct that there is not much communication going on, let alone productive. But another reason for that this is an awkward and difficult conversation to be had as Marxism and Islam are ideologically contradictory is a very strong, formal sense. Obviously this is most immediately an abstract, theoretical point, though that is not irrelevant, as moving through differences and formal contradictions towards consistency is necessary for moving towards truth, and truth is not irrelevant to politics, especially Marxist politics. There is also the issue of the political history of Islam, which is not very progressive and has become less so in the modern era imo. The contradiction between them is also not only something perceived by Marxists, but is very much clear to Muslims as well. An issue that Marxist militants ALWAYS have in my experience in situations like this is that if you are talking politics, or trying to agitate or organize, and you are doing so with religious individuals, especially if they are radicalizing and becoming interested in Marxism, is the contradiction they clearly perceive between their religious convictions and their developing Marxist/Communist political beliefs. At a point if you are in a party you do have to have the conversation with potential militants or members that Marxism is not compatible with the liberal position on religion of pretending like it is politically irrelevant, simply to appeal to the insecurity or narcissism of particular individuals who want to have their cake and eat it too. It is completely incompatible with the Leninist conception of the party.
It shouldn't be surprising that Marxists are not, in general, going to be attracted to a religion which not only explicitly states that they deserve to be and will be burned and unimaginably tortured in hell for eternity, whose metaphysics is clearly incompatible, but more importantly from it's inception to the current day has proscribed very different political structures and relations than Marxism (again, not a surprise, given that it emerged in Arabia in the 7th century CE, and that it's founder was not only a political and religious leader but a warlord who seems to have committed war crimes and whose values were profoundly different to those of modern socialism).
It's not a coincidence that the modern radical and dynamic expressions of political energy in the Islamic world of the modern era have been Islamist, and that Islamists immediately crush any progressive forces when they come confidently into power. Every place they have come to power they have enacted absolutely depraved social policies. The success of Islamism in the modern era is not only an expression of the religiosity of these societies and the effects of Imperialism and Colonialism, but also an expression of the failures of progressive forces, i.e. communists and socialists in these societies.
Honestly a consequence of this is that individuals then often end up taking pretty simplistic or nationalist positions in relation to certain political struggles, because there is also a reticence among many people of the left to recognize the self-evidently reactionary aspects of certain movements which stem directly from their religious, theocratic ideologies, as well as broader material conditions, due to the risk that that will be perceived as an attack of the downtrodden. It's a bizarrely moralistic, un-Marxist, and frankly moronic position to take, because more fundamentally its a question of being realistic about the political possibilities available to movements which are not driven ideologically by socialist or communist ideology, which I think worsens alot of the analysis you see on these problems.
It shouldn’t be surprising that Marxists are not... modern socialism).
This right here is exactly what I'm talking about, If I went out to a Muslims right now and asked them about Marxism they'd talk about China torturing the Uyghurs or that Stalin killed one gazzilion people, you have not read about Islam and you're perceiving it from whatever source you got it from, that's why you said Muhammed was a warlord who committed warcrimes [search the Islamic laws of war] instead of commenting on something that can actually be criticized.
(It’s not a coincidence that... socialists in these societies.)
This is why it is important to understand Islam, there's 1.6 billion Muslims, you can not fight against all of them and you can not magically convince all of them to pick a political side that was heavily red scared to them and that contradicts them, in fact they will declare Jihad on you and I think for being so ignorant you'd deserve it at that point.
(Honestly a consequence ... you see on these problems.)
Once again what I said, I did not suggest that Hamas should rule the universe or that the next Caliphate be built in China, you just read Islam and thought of idk a communist caliphate or islamic socialism or some bullshit, you've proved yourself to be speaking out of Islamophobic propaganda just like Muslims speak out of red scare propaganda, I am telling you need to actually read and understand something to do an analysis on it, and this is also what Hakim was calling for in the first place.
What on earth are you talking about? Again, your comment has either nothing to my points, as you are getting aggressively moralistic and missing, ignoring, or misinterpreting and misrepresenting them. You are claiming I am stating things which I am not. Everyone liking this comment should be a bit embarrassed frankly as they clearly decided not to understand what I wrote and just confirm their feeling of moralistic virtue.
I think I should put my cards on the table somewhat and point out that I used to be a very devout Christian, as nearly converted to Islam in my local context as a result of my alienation from Christianity and my desire to retain my spirituality, given that my Muslim friends were essentially marketing it to me as Christianity without the contradictions. I was actually very intellectually and emotionally attracted to Islam at a certain point, but not for too long. I continue to be interested in Islamic philosophy and theology to the present day. I'm saying this simply to get across that this is not a view I'm taking from wherever you clearly think. Of course, someone being intellectually interested in a subject, or having been attracted to a viewpoint in the past, doesn't preclude prejudice in the future, but you have given literally no argument or evidence for how anything which I said was Islamophobic. And again, you're making the same error I've mentioned before: you seem to be intimating that I'm saying something Islamophobic because I'm critical of religions in general (and Islam in particular), and that so are Islamophobes. Which is the same thing as looking at a red square, seeing then that there is a red circle, and saying that the circle is therefore a square. My source of Islam was me repeatedly reading the Quran and the Hadith and works of Islamic philosophy for a year, and discussing it intimately with my Muslim and ex-Muslim friends before deciding it clearly incorrect based in particular on what my ex-Muslim Marxist friends told me. So there were both intellectual and political reasons for rejecting it. Again, you are just fulling a completing vicious and unjustified accusation out of thin air because you are too thin-skinned and intellectually immature to admit that there is an inconsistency between Marxism and religion, or because you don't like something critically pointing it out. Really bizarre.
Where TF did I say not to understand Islam? I am in fact clearly arguing for the opposite in everything that I've said, and that of course requires sensitive conversation and seriously sympathetic understanding and study of the religion and its history, which I have again said is necessary. The fact that you are unable to distinguish be being critical of a religion from an attack on people who happen to believe in it for a variety a material and intellectual reasons says a lot frankly about your own maturity. You seem to just been assuming that a critical view of Islam must be based on ignorance of it. That Muhammad was a warleader is trivial. The idea that he was purely pursuing his conquests purely out of spiritual virtue is so idealistic an opinion as to beggar belief, especially given that that view can only be maintained by simply taking Islamic religious documents' claims at face value, which is absurd for any Marxist, as completely historically uncritical. That he committed war crimes is my opinion. Am I, as a communist, supposed to hide the fact that I don't admire or take as either ethical or political role models a man who had a very young wife, several wives in fact, and beheaded Jews. I am not a Muslim. I'm under no obligation to take those as the valid basis for what is, or is not, a war crime. In any case, I'm not going to intellectually respect a religion in which the mainstream view which is that that those who do not believe after hearing the 'revelation' are doomed to, and deserving of, eternal torture in hell. The idea that I should respect that because it is part of an ideological structure of spiritual value to someone is absurd and cowardly. And again, this has nothing to do with respecting those people. People are, in general, better than the religions they practice.
No where did I claim that anyone should be forcibly converted. In fact I'm pretty critical of the USSR's history related to religion (not that they forcibly deconverted, though they did place, at certain points, intense pressure on religion and were clearly very negative towards it), and think that there was significant Islamophobia. Because, as any Marxist would know, the conditions of people's ideology is not to just be determined by the will of particular groups, but by their broader socio-economic material conditions. Again, that view is for anarchists, not Marxists. But you do not seem to be understanding that part of my basic point is that there is a difference between being open, sensitive, sympathetic, and careful about critique in public and especially when political alliances are required, but that should in no way lead to communists pretending, like a bunch of cowardly liberals, that materialism is not the correct basis not only for a scientific view of the world but also for effective socialist politics. That does not preclude working with non-communists and religious individuals or even groups, but is does inform it. Anything else is intellectual and political cowardice and will be politically counterproductive in the long-run. Communist politics has never, ever, been effectively based on hiding the implications of our views.
Also the fact that you are justified religious war in your comment should have earned you a ban from the mods. I thought this was supposed to be a Marxist forum? So in one sentence you are happy to do a superficially, vulgar materialist maneuver of saying that 'you have to recognize the material reality that there are 1.6 billion Muslims', which is trivial and obvious and adds nothing to the conversation, and then you move to moralistic claim that I should be murdered by holy war, for something which is not only what I have not done, but the precise opposite of what I've called for in my comment. Honestly your comment is either profoundly dishonest and I'd be pretty ashamed if I were you, or deeply ignorant.
I did not claim anywhere that you said that Hamas should rule the universe or that there should be a Caliphate in China. Where in God's green earth did you pull that bullshit from? Honestly there are no real coherent points in anything that you've said. If you don't have anything to contribute except ignorant, vile, vicious and completely unjustified insults then kindly don't respond again. You are poisoning a forum that is supposed to be for principally for Marxists, which you clearly are not.
explicitly states that they [presumably atheists since Marxism didn't exist then] deserve to be and will be burned and unimaginably tortured in hell for eternity
Where in the Muslim holy texts is this stated?
Every place they have come to power they have enacted absolutely depraved social policies
Can you give some examples that weren't more or less created by the West? I'm not aware of Libya having depraved social policies before the coup
Where in the Muslim holy texts is this stated?
Quran [2:39], it also says it a few more times, but It's about the afterlife, anyone who doesn't believe in the afterlife and just believes a person lives in complete darkness also sees a shitty afterlife for believers of any religion, basically working your entire life just to be stuck in complete darkness and disappear, you can't be neutral about the afterlife. it is something that shouldn't matter for anyone who wants to stay out of idealism, what should matter to judge a religion or a school of thought is how it teaches to act towards anyone who's not from it, and the Quran says in [60:7] [60:8] [60:9] what it says.
Can you give some examples that weren’t more or less created by the West? I’m not aware of Libya having depraved social policies before the coup.
Iran, the laws against women are real, but a lot of the laws were made up by the Iran, the example I can give instantly is that in Islam there is no law that punishes women for not wearing Hijab, while Iran law criminalizes it.
thanks for the references; the first one is unfortunate, but you're right that it's ultimately inconsequential based on the latter three and similar surahs
the Hijab requirement is certainly restrictive and should be abolished (at least from my perspective), but I wouldn't consider it a depraved policy
I mean if you don't consider patriarchal control of and violence against women's bodies depraved then that's on you frankly. Iran's misogynistic laws and religiously justified social norms go way beyond simply the Hijab requirements. The fact that you are even caveating the point that it should be abolished is frankly a disgrace. Just to give another example: in Iran, based on what all my Persian communists comrades have told me, a common way in which child abuse occurs is through houses which act as sites for religiously sanctioned 'temporary marriages', which basically allow these to act as brothels (including for underage women). There are many Imams who frequent these, and feel protected by the supposed religious sanction. I have communist comrades who still live in Iran, and whose families who murdered and tortured to death by the theocratic regime. Also, Iran is not the only example of Islamism (I should have been more general instead of simply saying societies), as we can take any Islamist group you like whether in West Africa (the current hot spot for violent Jihadism), North Africa, the Middle East, or South East Asia. They can be governing political parties, governments or militant groups. If someone can give me a single example of non-reactionary Islamists I'll be legitimately amazed.
Rania did not answer your answer about Islamism and the West. You saying it's inconsequential based on the idea that there are tree surahs which can be interpreted in a certain way is a a completely idealist, un-Marxist position. The mainstream view in the Muslim world is that hell is eternal (at least for non-Muslims), notably among intellectuals and the main theological schools. There is indeed debate, and there will inevitably be a great amount of variation among Muslims, notably in the more liberalized societies of the West. This seems to me to be using purely abstract, religious justifications to argue for something being materially and politically inconsequential, which I don't think follows. Whether or not the Quran explicitly calls for women to cover their faces is not irrelevant (it of course does not), but Islam as a real, material phenomenon in the real world, does play a role in justifying and enforcing this. Just because we cannot will out of existence the material conditions that produce this situation doesn't mean they shouldn't be ruthlessly critiqued an distinguished from the socialist and communist conception of a society and its desired gender relations.
In terms of other verses:
Soorat al-Nisa:
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“Verily, those who disbelieve and did wrong [by concealing the truth about Prophet Muhammad and his message of true Islamic Monotheism written in the Tawraatt (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel) with them]; Allaah will not forgive them, nor will He guide them to any way. Except the way of Hell, to dwell therein forever” [al-Nisa’ 4:168-169]
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“and whosoever disobeys Allaah and His Messenger, then verily, for him is the fire of Hell, he shall dwell therein forever” [al-Jinn 72:23] :
The Hadith/Sunnah also contain several gruesome descriptions of the punishments in hell, including (in al-Bukhaari, the most significant Hadith compiler) the cutting off of lips, flogging, drowning, stoning. Bukhaari also cites a tradition of Muhammad supposedly claiming that the majority of the inhabitants of hell will be women, for classically misogynistic reasons. Unbelievers, as those 'too proud to submit to God' are almost always included in the category of those who merit hell.
What Rania is either ignorantly or dishonestly ignoring above is that is is not only absurd and idealistic to presume, but is also not the case, that these beliefs have no influence on the views of, say, Christian minorities. They are used to justify religious violence against Christian minorities, for instance in West Africa.
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I wouldn’t describe atheist death as darkness and despair. It’s simply the absence of everything. There is nothing to perceive. As if you were never born. You’re right it doesn’t matter what religious people think happens to us after death.
On the bad laws in Iran or other countries, that is in the context of colonialism and the coups of progressive governments.
I wouldn’t describe atheist death as darkness and despair. It’s simply the absence of everything. There is nothing to perceive.
Sorry for my mistake.
You are correct on the atheist conception of death, so thanks for pointing that out. Absence of experience is not the same as experience of absence.
One question I have though: How does the (obviously correct) point that Islamism in general can not be understand as having emerged except in relation to, and in an essential way as a result of and reaction to Western Imperialism and Colonialism, influence in any way whatsoever the answer to whether or not Islamism is reactionary? This also just strikes me as a way of avoiding another important discussion of the reactionary effects of Islamism on the societies they influence. Did the US actively supporting, arming and financing Jihadists such as the Taliban mean that these are not bad laws, or that Islamism is not reactionary? I'm genuinely asking here as it's a complete mystery to me what anyone thinks they are meaningfully pointing out when they say things like things like this beyond correctly underlining how reactionary the effects of US imperialism are. But you can't even make that point with full strength without recognizing that the effects through flaming Islamist radicalization are also reactionary because Islamism is profoundly reactionary.
Yes comrade atheism is what I am referring to here. And Marxism was born in part out of a critique of religion, as a political extension of scientific critique of religion, as Marxism is the Proletarian stage of Scientific Revolution. The concepts of socially real abstractions such as commodity and money fetishism has intellectual roots in the Marxist critique of religious fetishization. There are religious communists, and contrary to what might be expected I'm actually very sympathetic to the pursuit of mystical and spiritual experience as a key component of a flourishing life. I sympathize deeply with this motivation behind religious belief, though desire to experience the numinous is not limited to non-atheists. Like honestly if I was pushed to it in some ways my metaphysical beliefs in the light of modern science in conjunction with my interpretations of dialectical materialism almost lead to a form of pantheism, though I'm considering that to be atheistic here. Part of my sympathy is because for 16 years of my life I was in a cycle of devout religiosity and alienation. So I understand the appeal intimately and think that that has a place in a socialist and communist society, though in a form very different from that which organized religion currently takes.
There are several places in the Quran and the Hadith were the punishments in hell and the idea that it will be eternal are implied or described. Please see my other response to your comment for some examples. It is a completely ad hoc, idealist method to ignore the Hadith/Sunnah, which is almost as important in the discussions over Islamic social policy and legislation, as the Quran, as the latter leaves alot of question unanswered, for the materialist reason that it is an imperfect religious text, despite it still being a really marvelous text in many ways. The Quran itself is a fascinating text, and I recommend that everyone read it. There are passages of immense beauty, sublimity and philosophical depth, as well as poetic effect, but though the question of whether or not I think it intellectually impressive overall is a secondary concern, I do also think that, no matter how progressive Islam as a social force might have been during it's rise to prominence, relative to the Byzantines or Arab paganism, it is not any real basis as an ideology for progressive, let alone communist politics in the current era, so we have to make that clear if asked, as we would for any other organized religion as they currently materially exist, or could feasibly so exist in the relevant political futures open to us. Of course, as Rania correctly points out (while bizarrely assuming that I am suggesting the opposite), this in no way implies that discussions with religious believers cannot be open, sympathetic and sensitive, and doesnt change that it is of course reactionary to simply go around telling people they are incorrect or attacking them personally for their religious beliefs. The point is that Marxists have to understand, realistically, the nature of organized religion as it currently exists. But that, again, is not the same thing as making clear that the communist ideological position that has to be staked out cannot be on a religious basis, and that the legitimacy of religious justifications in politics has to be contested, and that we have to make clear that that politics based on organized religion is fundamentally limited in terms of the progressive potential which it opens up. In societies where religion is very powerful, it is a key obstacle to Socialism and Communist radicalization. Rania seems to be suggesting that Communists should simply hide their views and ignore reactionary aspects of religion, which is not communist in the slightest.
Libya is a weird case because Gaddafi's relationship to Islam was very strange, and he was, as always, pretty incoherently unorthodox when you look as his expressions on it detail. Libya never really engaged in any real thoroughgoing Islamization of its political structures. Certainly not in any way comparable to, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia. It was certainly the society in the Middle East and North Africa with the most notable economic success. No disagreement there.
this was already posted before but i don't think you can discount the role religion plays in giving people a source of hope and strength where there otherwise isn't any. Maybe you could do the same thing another way, but I'm at a loss as to how. We all know that religion plays a large part in the lives of a large portion of the world population.
It's obviously not the a ONLY reason they fight back but it doesn't hurt the cause at all imo.
But isn't religion a source of false consolation? The real consolation would of course be the improvement of material conditions.
It certainly helps people cope with day to day life under capitalism, but eventually it needs to go.
Isn’t hakim’s argument that religion helps people keep fighting for better material conditions because they can bare the struggle better?
That is still poor analysis. People can have religion, but to chalk up a people's survival to it is absurd and horrifically bad material analysis.
It's better analysis than dogmatically repeating "isn't religion opium of the people? It dumbs them down, makes them complacent," even when that's clearly not what's happening in this situation.
Where did I ever say it dumbs people down and makes them complacent. Especially not in this situation.
That’s what religion has historically been used for, making it a powder keg of a belief to rely on without any sort of critical analysis.
If you’re going to get hostile at least don’t shove words in my mouth.
I never said you said it, OP said it. You responded to my reply to OP.
No, you replied to me. As in directly to me.
I apologize if that’s an accident, but you did response directly to my comment.
It wasn't targeted at you, but I intended to reply to you. You said what I said was bad material analysis so I said Hakim's analysis was better than OP's. I'm sorry that my hostility appeared targeted at you.
I just got out of the shower and I realised that’s what you meant. I’m very sorry, I completely misunderstood what you were trying to say.
I will say though, I still feel that both Hakim and OP’s analysis are both very flawed but from opposite sides of the spectrum.
I think in cases where religious institutions are actively organizing and encouraging people to engage in struggle, political or armed, to change their circumstances, it doesn't make much sense to call it false consolation.
Even when religions assert a kind of cosmic justice outside the scope of individual earthly lives, it's not always true that religion serves mainly to console, even in matters of personal psychology and belief. Christianity certainly falls into that pattern, but John Brown was not as consoled by the prospect that justice would be achieved in the afterlife as he was convicted by his religious morality that the earthly evil he saw in slavery had to be combatted by all means available, immediately.
I do think that desperate situations drive people to religious belief as a way of upholding the just world hypothesis in the face of powerful cognitive dissonance. But that's just one factor among many in promoting religious belief, and as a general tendency, it doesn't necessarily address what religion inspires or motivates people to do in particular circumstances.
Through a collection of a peoples wills and faith in their country, people, and survival? Literally what the Soviet Union did during WW2? Very few Soviets thought that God would save them. They knew that their own collective strength would save them.
This belief gave them hope.
but for every group that did it without religion, how many relied on religion, or worse didn't come together to believe in themselves?
Can you give examples? That’s just an open ended hypothetical that no one can answer. I really don’t get what your argument is here.
Don’t forget that faith has been used as a tool of oppression and placed at the height of state, the entire “Opiod of the masses” spiel. Of course people will turn to it if that’s all they know.. many wouldn’t if they knew the alternatives.
I can't, I hoped there might be some well known examples that I overlooked. Maybe there aren't many or even any, but over human history it's probable that it has happened.
To attribute the enduring will of Palestinians to struggle for their freedom solely to their religion is reductive. Of course objective circumstances and material interests are major factors too. But at the same time we should not discount the role that faith and cultural values play in inspiring courage, resilience and faith in victory. Even though these are immaterial factors they are nonetheless real. Religion is of course not the only thing which can fulfil this role, and people can be motivated to endure great suffering and commit selfless acts of sacrifice for the struggle by many different things. Revolutionary fervor, the belief in fighting for a better future, plays a big role in every liberation movement. The impact of morale in a war should not be underestimated.
That being said, it's probably not a good idea to proselytize your own faith (or lack thereof) to others in the struggle, it creates needless friction when we should accept for now that we each have different reasons why we fight and what matters is that we fight for the same goal.
This is straight up proselitysm. From supposed ML to people he is trying to expose to ML. Wew.
He is a Muslim first and a Marxist second.
How do i put it... it cast shadow of doubt on his materialist analysis, since he clearly is not a consistent materialist.
Also his recent content is pretty disappointing, instead of even reuploading his old videos which were pretty useful he's doing debunks of random wackjobs.
He’s good at reading books and sharing knowledge, idk about doing his own analysis.
Looking at the OP, he's got kinda problem with that too, now. And even reading and sharing will necessarily be filtered through his brain.
Sure, but it looks like he is reading Islamic works and sharing information from them. I wonder how familiar he is with anti-theist arguments and works.
He would have to be, at least a little bit. He is extremely well read on Stalins early works and Lenin’s later works, both of which touch on the topic of secularism, atheism, and the role of religion and society.
So at least by proxy he must have some understanding.
People are really taking his comment about Islam being a driving force in the Palestinian national liberation struggle to mean the main driving force or even worse, the only driving force are not reading the comment correctly. Every single national liberation struggle has an ideological component which drives the struggle alongside material conditions. Even something like "restoring our once glorious empire," which various factions of the Chinese national liberation struggle embraced, counts as ideology. The material component of the Palestinian national liberation struggle should be a given and frankly deserves little mention for how obvious it is. The Palestinians are blowing up tanks and merking IOF goons because Palestinians don't want to be ethnically cleansed. There, that's your material analysis. It doesn't need to be longer than a sentence. It's the ideological motivation that's far more interesting and that actually warrants paragraphs to outline, which Hakim did. The material motivations are obvious to all, even to people who refuse to accept Marxism, while the ideological motivations aren't as obvious to an Anglophonic audience that isn't predominately Muslim.
As for the recommendation of the Quran, well no shit, it turns out the Islamic Resistance Movement uses the Quran as its foundational text, and it would behoove anyone attempting to make a critical analysis of a political group or movement to read that groups' foundational text. Imagine someone criticizing an ML party or even Marxism-Leninism in general without ever reading State and Revolution or criticizing Marxism without reading any text by Marx a la Jordan Peterson. The gigachad who planted the warhead on the tank did it while reciting a Quranic verse. I would think that it should inspire people to actually read the Quran to understand why he would recite it instead of going, "opium of the masses" like some Reddit atheist. And you can't just wave around "material conditions" as if that would automatically lead people to perform acts of great courage. Material conditions might provide the clay, but it's ideology that molds the clay.
At the end of the day, the community note isn't an all-encompassing analysis. It's, as Hakim himself stated, merely providing context to the Palestinians' ideology (political Islam) for people who might not have pick up on it because they aren't Muslim (his audience).
I've been reading all the replies in this thread and feel like I am missing something. As far as I can tell, the only thing Hakim is saying, is that it is important to consider Islamic influence on current Palestinian struggle. Not that the only reason the people are fighting is because of Islam, or that Islam is any way better for liberation of colonized people.
I wouldn't be even surprised if Islam is actually more prone to anti-colonial struggle than other religions, but I don't know enough about it to make such claims. But more importantly, I don't see anything that says that struggle for Palestinian liberation is something that is possible only thanks to Islam.
Religious text can have huge influence even in completely irreligious populations (in this case, people who identify as atheist). For example, my country is one of the most irreligious in the world. But (in my opinion unfortunately) many of our customs, laws, world view, etc. are in some ways derived from the Bible. So it would be fair to say that to understand my country, it might be a good idea to read the Bible.
Which I would say is basically what Hakim is saying here. If you want to have better understanding of current Palestinian fight for liberation, it is useful to have knowledge of Islam. Which I would say is a completely fair statement. Especially considering how demonized Muslims are in western countries.
I am happy to be corrected, but I just cannot see what people are complaining about in this post.
As far as I can tell, the only thing Hakim is saying, is that it is important to consider Islamic influence on current Palestinian struggle.
But he isn't saying this, he's saying that it's religion that's driving the anti-colonial struggle.
their unshakable faith, which drives their anti-colonial struggle.
And then he proceeds to give a list of religious texts to read in order for us to learn about the persistence of Palestinian resistance.
This is a blatantly idealist analysis of the situation in Palestine. Again, no one is saying we need to ignore or even actively reject the influence of religion to the struggle, but it's simply not correct that religion is driving the struggle. He offers no materialist analysis and no sources to learn about settler-colonialism or the history of Palestine and its resistance.
The problem with this is that he positions himself as a Marxist educator, but in this post he's being an idealist.
He also says this is the "largest missing context" in regards to the Palestinian struggle, but that's also not true. A lot more people are thinking about this in religious terms, than as an anti-colonial struggle against zionist settler-colonialism and the wider context of western imperialism - which it is in reality.
You claim he's just trying to highlight Islamic influence on the current struggle, but his wording is not consistent with this. His post is idealist and not materialist.
For your take of the post to be true we would have to assume his intentions and say he didn't communicate clearly enough. If we just read what he wrote, it cannot be considered something a Marxist-Leninist educator should be saying.
I agree that many western countries have a christian culture, but would reading the bible really help you understand our modern society, especially more than reading some Marxist theory?
It just feels like you and almost everyone else defending Hakim's post are trying to find a meaning in his words that just isn't there if you read them directly, a meaning that you find acceptable and compatible with Marxism, but not one that can be read from the actual words he used.
I agree he strays a bit into idealist territory, and dangerously towards saying that this is a mostly religious based conflict. However, it would be false to suggest he is ignoring other dimensions of it like material analysis of colonialism. Most people who would come upon his community post would likely be aware of his recent video entitled ‘everything you need to know about Palestine.’ If hakim things religion is primary, why does it not take up much of his video about ”everything you need to know?” It’s clear in his post that he has received many messages specifically about Islam, so he took the opportunity to share these books.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
In pretty much every post here and on hexbear that's defending Hakim's post I see at least one of a few assumptions taken as true which aren't.
Firstly, no one here is criticizing the Palestinian resistance and the forms it takes. We're criticizing Hakim's post. Hakim has positioned himself as a Marxist educator and taken on the role of spreading ML theory. With this come some responsibilities, namely to share actual Marxist analysis. When he departs from this, he'll get rightly criticized for it.
He can be religious and do what he wants. No one is criticizing the fact that he's religious. We're criticizing the fact that he brands himself a Marxist educator with Lenin as his picture and then shares idealist analysis like in this post.
Secondly, that his analysis is not idealist, when it really is. This has nothing to do with Islam specifically, it would be true of any religion, but stating that a religion is what's driving resistance is simply idealist. As Marxists we know that it's the material conditions that are the primary drivers of both the zionist settler-colonialism and Palestinian resistance. We, of course, don't neglect the superstructural aspects, with ideology and religion among them, but we don't make them the primary drivers of resistance. We begin with the material.
There have been similar resistance movements throughout history, some religious and some not which have persisted just like the Palestinian movement. As Marxists we understand why that is, and that, while in each particular case the particular ideology had an impact, ideology as such is not the driving force behind revolution.
As Amílcar Cabral said
always bear in mind that people are not fighting for ideas, for things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better lives and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.
What we (Marxists-Leninists) should be spreading are works through which you can learn about settler-colonialism and resistance to it in general, and works about the specific conditions of Palestine. No one's even saying we should totally ignore religion, but it cannot form the basis of our analysis, and we cannot center it above the material.
An example of a better (in my opinion) post about Palestinian resistance right now is this thread by Roderic Day.
Also, as Marxists, critique is what we do. No one is beyond critique, and especially not our fellow comrades. Such critique and discussion is how we arrive at correct theory (and practice) and consolidate around it.
Anti-colonial struggle is universal. It has taken place all over the world and by no means limited to Islam or the Palestinians.
Islam does play a role in the formation of the political movement in Palestine. However, the idea that religion drives anti-colonial movement and infuses them with some “special” property is nonsense.
National liberation movement has always taken on a form that is deeply influenced by its local culture and shared values among its people. This is not unique to the struggle of the Palestinian people.
You know, for a man that's so well read I have a feeling he hasn't really touched much ex-muslim writings. That said I wouldn't have written a word had I not seen so many defending him.
I'm not being an edgy anti-theist. I know that any attempt to actively dissuade people of their religion is futile at best and often malicious. The issue is that he's precribing something that's not possible to reasonably back up.
If his analysis is that Islam is more conducive to a liberation struggle, he should say so. It'd be easy to debunk mind you; liberation struggles, marxist and non-marxist, happen all over the world. West Asia isn't close to being unique in this regard. Desire for liberty is quite inherent to all peoples of the world and fighting against subjugation doesn't become something else done for different reasons because the people doing the fighting are attributing their struggle to something else.
I feel this might not be quite clear, so I'll try to elaborate. A people may struggle and they may attribute their will to fight to their God, their patriotism, or something else they believe in. This doesn't make it true. If it were, we'd see a clear distinction between peoples of different religions or cultures, yet we don't. People struggle whether they believe in Allah, Buddha or Wakan Tanka. What we do see is that people in similar material conditions react in similar ways. A people under siege, kicked from their homes, treated with disdain and contempt will fight back. Many, of different cultures and religions have. From this it should be easy to conclude that the initial claim would be chauvinistic, even if one isn't impuning other beliefs.
I'm thinking how one would write that and make those recommendations without a hint of chauvinism, I can't really think of a way. He recommends books quite similar to books my haji grandfather gave me to read. He thought Islam was correct and that by reading, I'd come to the same conclusions and my faith would be stronger for it. It backfired spectacularly, but that's not my point. He wasn't trying to proselytise, in his mind he was doing no more than give a kid the tools he needed to find the truth. His best intentions didn't make him less chauvinistic, and they wouldn't Hakim. It doesn't make them bad people, but it means their approach doesn't have a sound material basis.
Edit: I deleted the last part because it wasn't helpful. I don't begrudge people fighting for their lives their religion, if that's what gets them through, all the power to them. All I'm saying is that these people aren't holding onto religion because it gives them their will, it gives them their will because they're believers holding onto it. Reading the life of the Prophet doesn't inform the readers as would the words of Ho Chi Minh or the history of Palestine, which is why I took issue with the post and its defenders.
I feel like an old man, I'm still having trouble with this website, pressing reply insread of edit.
I have a very strong negative reaction to this, admittedly only some of which is due to its dissemination through a channel supposedly focused on Marxist analysis.
There's nothing in the screencapture that could be recognized as Marxist analysis. There's no science here, just idealism and essentialism (Islam is about not just the culture but the 'nature' of the Palestinian people, really?).
Even the book recommendations seem dubious to me. Is biography really central enough to history for Marxists for the biography of one man to be a 'great historical work'? The next title even sounds like it could have been AI-generated from a collection of apologetics tropes, from its fixation on the figure of the convert to the 'this was supposed to be an anti-religious book' move other grifters in the space use to enhance their credibility.
Yes, I think religious faith absolutely plays a role in organizations like Hamas (as well as in daily life, 'resistance by existence', for many) that is not reducible to material interests or other forces. Religion, like ideology, takes on a force of its own beyond the material conditions that shape both its initial formation and constrain its evolution. For that reason, superstructural forces like religion are worth analyzing in their own rights (alongside the material forces that are, as Marxism understands, 'determinative, in the final instance' in the unfolding of history). It can even be argued that particular religious institutions (as distinct from religious beliefs or doctrines) are material, are members of 'concrete social relations'.
But an analysis which asserts that Islam is the driving force of the resistance movement in Palestine without any account of things like the fact that secular forces' leadership were in exile, outside Palestine, when Hamas rose to prominence during the first intifada; or that there are nearby Islamist nation-states willing and able to smuggle arms to resistance groups in part to serve their own geopolitical interests, while there have not been any such Marxist-Leninist states for many decades... this is neither dialectical nor historical nor materialist.
Analysis of how religious institutions on the ground in Palestine organize, support or constitute anticolonial resistance is one thing. Exhortations to study the Quran are another: ordinary proselytizing.
Edit, a couple days later: I still think it's true that the post pictured in the OP isn't Marxist analysis. But I also think that my turning that observation into criticism was a mistake, and that my criticism was fundamentally misplaced.
Political education is a task, not an identity. It's no one's job to speak always and only in a Marxist idiom. Sometimes a reading recommendation is just a recommendation, not a thesis— and that's fine.
My hostile reading of the individual book recommendations was also reductive and uncharitable. I glossed over the analogy Hakim asserts between the broader social context of the emergence of Islam and present-day Palestine. Because other aspects of its premise remind me of hackish Christian apologetics books that have been pushed on me in the past, I also discounted one good faith reason Hakim had (and stated!) for recommending von Klaveren's book: namely that the author's conversion journey involved overcoming common Islamophobic myths and stereotypes. Even if that book absolutely sucks, that's a feature it couldn't have in common with Christian conversion narratives situated in cultures where Christianity is dominant.
It may be true that as a writer, Hakim could have done something to frame his post in Marxist terms, or to 'tag' it as not really directly concerned with Marxism. But as a reader, I think I failed to recognize a lot of implicit framing that was already there, in the form of the Deprogram catalog itself, by considering pretty much only what was excerpted in the OP when I started commenting here.
Exhortations to study the Quran are another: ordinary proselytizing.
Why are you opposed to studying something from the Quran ?
If the leadership of Hamas is driven by Islam, then you need to understand Islam to analyse their decisions. They are the major resistance movement in this situation.
Why are you opposed to studying something from the Quran?
I'm not. In fact, despite my atheism and anti-clericalism, all of this chatter increased my general curiosity about the Quran and I picked up a copy of a translation that now sits (digitally) alongside my Oxford Annotated Bible, my JPS Jewish Study Bible, and my JPS Jewish Annotated New Testament. (If you know of a modern, annotated, interfaith English translation of the Quran comparable to the above, please let me know. For now I've incidentally ended up reading only the same Study Quran that Hakim recommended.) I started reading it this morning!
What I'm opposed to is the notion that the post in the OP somehow constitutes Marxist analysis. I'm also opposed to the confusion of the dialectical interplay between base and superstructure with a confounding of the distinction between base and superstructure. I also think it's dishonest and silly to characterize the recommendation of a reading list comprised exclusively of intrafaith texts as anything but proselytism.
Edit: see also my edit to the grandparent comment.
The conspiracy nutter in me is starting to think that the boys on the Deprogram have had someone "persuade" them to be less openly Marxist. They really do seem to be going backwards in their analysis. I guess that's kind of inevitable when something like this happens, a big financially successful socialist project under a capitalist system will challenge the creators in a lot of ways, and they wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds them, even if it is the hand of capital.
Along with them now accepting guests on the show that are explicitly liberal, duganist, or soccdem at best, things have been getting really fishy.
Sadly, I think they're trying to be "more marketable" and that includes abandoning their original principles. This is something else entirely.
I think this is related though, as others have said, Hakim is a Muslim first and a socialist second, and I do think that would've played a role in him being ok with the podcast being less actively Marxist and more marketable.
