The Clash of Fundamentalisms
By Tariq Ali
Verso, 2003, £10
Reviewed by
Jim Horton
TARIQ ALI’S Clash of Fundamentalisms, recently re-published
in paperback, is a welcome contribution to the post 9/11 debates taking place on
left.
Tariq Ali has been prominent in the anti-war movement and
his book gives vent to his anti-imperialism. Targeting particularly "the most
dangerous ‘fundamentalism’ today – the ‘mother of all fundamentalisms’," US
imperialism, Tariq explains how it has used the tragedy of 9/11 to pursue a
traditional far-right Republican agenda.
Written before the recent bloody assault on Iraq, Tariq’s
book attacks Bush and Blair’s justifications for the war; and, anticipating
current arguments over weapons off mass destruction, Tariq mockingly declares
that all "the talk of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ consists of fairy tales
designed to frighten the children/citizens at home".
This book is not primarily about 9/11 and its consequences,
however, rather it surveys the history proceeding those events, what Tariq
describes as a virtually "forbidden subject". Tariq refers to the "dead-end of
market-fundamentalism", and warns: "If Western politicians remain ignorant of
the causes and carry on as before, there will be repetitions".
Central to the book is an analysis of Islam, "its founding
myths, its origins, its history, its culture, its riches, its divisions", and
what Islamist politics represents today. In raising these issues Tariq aims to
stimulate debate within and without Islam.
Tariq’s style is lucid and vigorous, dealing proficiently
with a range of issues vital to an understanding of the world today. Combining
historical analysis with personal reminiscences, Tariq takes the reader on a
sweeping journey. No major area of the Islamic world is left untouched.
Although raised in an Islamic culture, Lahore under British
rule, Tariq confesses to being an agnostic from the age of six and an atheist at
twelve. His family were privileged landowners, his grandfather a leader of the
landlords ‘Unionist Party’ and governor of the Punjab. Tariq’s parents were
members of the Communist Party. We are also introduced to generals and
ambassadors, who are relatives or acquaintances of the family.
Clash of Fundamentalisms provides a good outline of the
origins of Islam in what is now Saudi Arabia, touching on many of the debates
within Islam over the centuries. He traces the spread of Islam to Syria, Egypt
and Iraq, and then to North Africa, Spain and India (and later Indonesia), and
the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire. The bulk of Tariq’s text though details
the more recent often symbiotic and perfidious relationship between many Islamic
groups and imperialism.
There is a very useful chapter on the roots of Wahhabism, a
particularly reactionary trend in Islam followed today by bin Laden and the
autocratic regime in Saudi Arabia. Established in 1927, Saudi Arabia has its
roots in the 18th century alliance between Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab
and the bandit emir Muhammad Ibn Saud. The Wahhabis were defeated in the early
19th century, yet 100 years later they found themselves first in an
alliance with British imperialism and later a willing instrument of US
imperialism and an important bulwark against secular nationalism and communism.
Tariq correctly argues that all three of the major
monotheistic religions can be understood only in their historical, social and
political context, with religion politically exploited by those with vested
interests. Islam itself has been through many different phases.
Islam went through a relatively tolerant phase during its
period of rise and expansion, when its culture greatly surpassed that of the
West. Islam reached its zenith between the mid-9th and mid-11th
centuries. Later, partly under pressure from an expanding West, Islamic society
declined and religious intolerance increased, although not without challenges
from within Islam itself. Towards the end of the 19th century
anti-imperialist trends developed, such as in Sudan and Iran. In the 1920s and
1930s there were divisions in the Arab world between supporters of communism and
fascism.
Post world war two saw the growth of secular and radical
nationalism, and strong communist movements, along with the encouragement by
imperialism of the most reactionary elements in Islam. These reactionary
elements were conscripted against radicals and the left, such as the Muslim
Brotherhood against Nasser in Egypt, the Masjumi against Sukarno in Indonesia,
Jamaat-e-Islami against Bhutto in Pakistan and bin Laden against Najibullah in
Afghanistan. It was the workers’ movement, especially the mass communist
parties, that felt the brunt of this reaction as imperialism helped install
compliant autocratic regimes to defend its interests.
From the late 1970s, following the failure of Nasserism and
Stalinism, there has been the rise of an ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ or right-wing
political Islam. The 1979 Iranian revolution marked the beginning of this
process. The revolution began as a workers’ movement with the masses striving
for a ‘republic of the poor’. It was the absence of a mass revolutionary
socialist alternative that allowed Khomeini to fill the political vacuum, but
initially even he had to adopt a left, radical and anti-imperialist phraseology,
before consolidating his rule and moving to the right.
Over the last decade though, in contrast to the radical
phase of the Iranian revolution, the development of political Islam has been a
right-wing phenomenon. The defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was a key
turning point. Tariq details the triad of US imperialism’s employment of Islamic
groups in an anti-Soviet jihad, financed with Saudi petro-dollars, and trained
in the Pakistani religious schools. Following the defeat of the Soviet Union US
imperialism was to reap a crop of hostile Islamic groups across the Middle East
and Asia, as veterans of Afghanistan turned their attention to Kashmir, the
running sore of Palestine, and opposition to US presence in the Holy lands.
These groups found a ready echo among the seething anger and frustration of
lives mired in poverty and humiliation at the hands of imperialism.
There are some weaknesses in the book, and Tariq’s analysis,
while likely to be broadly accepted on the left, is not without controversy.
Tariq is scathing towards all establishment religions,
rightly taking to task Islamic leaders who pursue neo-liberal economic policies
while adopting the most reactionary interpretation of Islam to defend their own
power and wealth. He calls for an Islamic reformation.
The Christian reformation marked the beginning of the
ascendancy of capitalism in the west, but for historical reasons by-passed the
Islamic world. In the post-second world war period secularism in the Islamic
world gained mass support, but its failure to decisively break with capitalism
allowed reactionary elements to come to the fore. Today it is correct to demand
the separation of religion and state, to support religious freedom and tolerance
while opposing the imposition of religious laws. Such demands should be linked
to a programme of workers rights on pay and conditions, land reform, and the
introduction of decent health, education and welfare provision. In a period of
degenerate capitalism this means expropriating the big landowners and companies
and the implementation of a democratic socialist plan of production.
Tariq refers to the narrowing of dissent and debate in a
period where one ideology, capitalism, has triumphed over another, communism.
While correctly pointing to the ideological dominance of the US, as the world’s
dominant economic and military power, his emphasis is one-sided and references
to communism are unqualified. Nowhere does Tariq explain that the former Soviet
Union and other Stalinist states were not genuine socialism but planned
economies ruled over by bureaucratic dictatorships. Genuine socialism requires
democratic control and management by the working class. Without this,
bureaucratic degeneration and capitalist restoration were inevitable. The
collapse of Stalinism had a huge negative impact on the consciousness of workers
across the globe, particularly in the neo-colonial world.
Tariq, as a once self-proclaimed Marxist, should understand
this. But while avowedly anti-imperialist, Tariq himself seems trapped within
the constraints of the post-Stalinist world. Unfortunately, while adopting a
materialist approach to the issue of religion and capitalism, Tariq fails to
advance a socialist solution and therefore leaves the masses in the Islamic
world disarmed in the face of reactionary Islamic leaders and an increasingly
belligerent imperialism.
On Kashmir, for example, he talks about ‘economic and
political logic’ dictating the need for a voluntary confederation of republics.
He calls on India, as the most powerful state in the region, to take
responsibility for a peace initiative. He proposes the Asian states and China
forego the mediation of the US and talk directly with each other on issues of
trade and military reductions. While providing a devastating account of the role
of imperialism in the Islamic world, when it comes to articulating a solution,
Tariq appears to ignore the raging class divisions in these countries, and the
class interests that lay behind the national conflicts, instead remaining within
the confines of the capitalism he very eloquently condemns.
These weaknesses should not detract from what is a highly
recommended account of imperialism and the Islamic world. Tariq’s book is a
welcome antidote to mainstream propaganda and deserves serious study by all
activists in the anti-war and anti-capitalist movement.
