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The obscure Quran burnings in Sweden have turned into an international political issue with clear reactionary implications. The confusion surrounding the issue threatens to sow division among people who as a matter of fact have everything to gain from sticking together against right-wing politics, racism, imperialism and religious fanaticism. A continued split of oppressed groups among ethnic and religious lines must be fought against, and here, revolutionary communists have a special responsibility in putting forward explanations, programme and strategies to that end.
The starting point for any analysis must be untangling the essential character of the conflict. Who are the actors, and what interests guide them? How should the working class, and specifically Marxists, relate to these actors and their real intentions and goals?
A central starting point is that a political actor can’t only, or even primarily, be assessed based on their own claims about themselves. An assessment must be made based on facts and their full character.
In the current, chaotic debate, a wide array of opinions have been put forward: that it’s a question of racism and Islamophobia; that it is about the awful religion of Islam; that it’s a matter of freedom of speech and the freedom to criticise religion, and so on. We need to consider that there might not be one, single core to the conflict that everyone in the debate agree to voice their different opinions on. It is possible that the participants in the debate project their own goals on each other, goals which may be a subordinate issue to the other party. In that case, several conflicts are in fact meshed together. This seems to be the case here, and this article will argue that it is so.
Blasphemy and free speech
When religious symbols are desecrated, the question of blasphemy and freedom of expression is inevitably raised, regardless of the purpose behind the act. If we look at this question in principle, that is, if we for the moment disregard the situation at hand, the Marxist position should be crystal clear: we defend the right to criticise religion, including offensive acts and desecration of religious symbols. The established religions are powerful and closely connected to the ruling elites in the areas of their control. Hence, Christianity is allied to imperialism, and not only to Western imperialism, as is obvious in the case of the Russian Orthodox church, which exists in a symbiosis with Russian imperialism. Similarly, the dominant form of Islam is closely allied with the ruling capitalist elites of Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.
Furthermore, religions are powerful forces of their own, with their own establishments. They disseminate a false, reactionary world view in order to hold on to their own power, regardless of whether they manage to fuse with the capitalist or feudal financial and political power in general or not.
In practice, a ban on criticising or desecrating religion always becomes a way for various ruling elites to ban criticism of themselves. But freedom of thought and discussion is necessary for the development of society, since it’s the only way to evaluate and discard whatever doesn’t work in order to replace it with something better (whether in science, culture, politics, etc.). Religion mustn’t be allowed to stand in the way of this, and must therefore be turned into strictly a private matter for the individual, not a political, societal force.
On this issue, Marxists and socialist must not waver or relativise the question: in the current situation, we defend the right to criticise Islam, and all other religions. We defend the right to burn the Quran. In principle, that book doesn’t have any special position. It should be possible to destruct it, to criticise it or to mock it. The alternative, in the long run, is the kind of authoritarian societies we see everywhere where religions have a stronghold.
The difference between racist aggression and serious criticism of religion
But the question of the current Quran burnings isn’t resolved by simply stating that we, in principle, defend the right to burn and desecrate the Quran. Legitimate criticism of religion and blasphemy isn’t a technical issue – it’s not a question of whether a match touches a certain book and manages to set it on fire. The key question is who does what, to what purpose and in what context. If 100 people line up with swastika flags outside a synagogue in order to burn Jewish books, it is hardly a case of criticism of religion, just as the Nazi book burnings of the 1930s were not carried out in order to intellectually criticise the contents of those books. In those cases, the goal is to attack a minority in order to build support for a totalitarian right-wing regime that will abolish all freedoms.
The Quran burnings carried out by Danish provocateur Rasmus Paludan are not in essence different from the example of the Nazi book burnings, but are rather an instance of the same thing. Questions like reforming and modernising Islam, solidarity with workers, women and intellectuals who are oppressed by Islamist fascist regimes, the struggle for safe harbours for refugees from Iran, to defend the general freedom in society – none of this is in Paludan’s interest. If Paludan had shared the goals of Salman Rushdie, an antiracist, progressive writer who has defended various oppressed groups, both Muslims and immigrants who are discriminated against as well as the victims of religions and cultural oppression in the Islamic world – then we could have defended Paludan’s right to burn the Quran. We would had protested his selected tactic, which we would have seen as defeating the purpose, but nevertheless we would have defended his right to carry out such a controversial, blasphemous act.
But Paludan is no Salman Rushdie. In fact, he’s the polar opposite. Paludan’s intention is to further the reactionary, undemocratic tendency in society in general. His method, just like the Nazis before him, is to focus on a scapegoat, to be demonised and persecuted, and who gets the blame for any and all problems in society, whether real or imagined ones. The criticism of religion is not of interest to him. It is the repressive, right-wing regime that is the goal. Paludan’s act is critical of religion in form, but not in its actual content.
This means that Marxists should clearly defend the right to burn the Quran when it’s a matter of blasphemy, but also condemn the Paludan Quran burnings, which are not about blasphemy but a case of extreme right aggression.
The difference between blasphemy, that is actual blasphemy, and right-wing aggression is that actual blasphemy has the potential to strengthen freedom in society in general – provided it is carried out in a careful way, and is aimed at the powerful and the oppressors. The aggression of the extreme right, on the other hand, decreases freedom in society since it leads to more persecution and oppression of those already oppressed.
The discussion about the free speech of right-wing extremists has often been raised when the radical left, like Arbetarmakt, has obstructed or attempted to obstruct their meetings and demonstrations. The political establishment has always criticised us and said that we attack the right to free speech and freedom of assembly when we act against the extreme right. Our answer has always been that freedom of speech isn’t absolute. It cannot include the right to abolish the freedom of others. The right to free speech is an instance of the right to personal agency, since it is a question of what words you wish to use to express your own thoughts. This freedom does not include the freedom to abolish other people’s autonomy over themselves. But it is precisely this distinction that the extreme right, by extension, does not respect, which is what makes them dangerous. To stop reactionary forces from restricting freedom, even if it is done under the guise of democratic freedoms, is to defend these freedoms.
This is the context in which we must assess Paludan, and here it’s clear that it is misguided to defend the right of him, or other right-wing extremists, to burn the Quran with reference to any form of democratic rights. This, we don’t oppose his Quran burnings in themselves, but his right-wing extremism.
There should be no demands for the state to stop the activities of Paludan, or other reactionary and right-wing forces. We know from experience that when the state strengthens its repressive capacities, it is sooner or later turned against the left and the working class. The latest example of this is the Swedish anti-terror laws, which were immediately used against the PKK.
As revolutionary communists, we will do our utmost to reorganise and reawaken the working class as a separate and independently active force in society. If the working class of today had appeared in the shape of a massive, militant communist party, with various side organisations and militarised fighting groups of its own, the current situation could have been dealt with in an entirely different way. Then there would be no question of passively watching this reactionary show, with no other option but commenting on it or pleasing to one or another force to act. Then, the organised working class itself could intervene in order to clean the streets and the neighbourhoods of both Paludan and the Islamists.
While we welcome progressive voices in the labour movement that put forward analyses on the issue that partly overlap with ours, we emphasise that the central litmus test is practice: which left-wing forces of today are ready to regenerate the antifascist work in order to mobilise against all the Paludans, and to take the question out of the hands of the fundamentalists?
Sectarian aggression
Another recent desecration of the Quran in Sweden was carried out by a man of Iraqi descent. We don’t have enough information about him to confidently assess his intentions, mental health, background, etc. But nothing points to him being a serious political or cultural commenter on matters of religion. Instead, he seems to act from an Iraqi political context. The man is Assyrian, that is, part of a Christian minority in the Middle East, and is claimed ot have participated in an Assyrian militia in Iraq during the sectarian strife in the country after the U.S. war of aggression in 2003. A common method to create sectarian conflicts and war in Iraq has been to attack one group in order to spur on retribution, which then sets into motion a sectarian spiral of attacks and counterattacks where ethnic and religious groups are set against each other, playing into the hands of the various ruling elites and their interest of expanding their power. A credible hypothesis is that this man’s actions is a part of this damaging logic, not necessarily on the orders of anyone, but as an extension of the sectarian conflicts in Iraq.
If this man acts from an ethic-sectarian agenda, his actions are obviously not within the category of serious criticism of religion and true blasphemy. Rather, his actions would have more in common with Paludan’s right-wing aggression than anything else. He should then be condemned and stopped. But this man’s background, and the Iraqi political groups he has been active in, needs further investigation.
The actions of the Islamist leaders are reactionary throughout
When the developments started, the conflict was easy to understand: a right-wing extremist pretends to criticise religion in order to further stigmatise anyone from a Muslim dominated country. But it would be a mistake not to see that the question took another turn once Islamist sympathisers and leaders got involved. The original conflict remains, but a new one has been added to it – the attempts by Islamist leaders to suppress freedom based on their own needs and aims.
The Islamist leaders’ problem with Paludan isn’t that he’s a right-wing extremist and as such is a part of a rising, anti-democratic right-wing wave in the Western world. The Islamist leaders are themselves fascists or semi-fascists, and they consider the historial message of the labour movement as far more troubling than that of the European extreme right. Historically, there have also been considerable overlaps between Islamofascism and European fascism; at their founding, the Muslim Brotherhood openly took inspiration from Mussolini, the Grand Mufti of the British Mandate in Palestine was a Hitler supporter and spent time as a respected guest in Nazi Germany, etc. And displays of overt racism isn’t unknown to the Islamist establishment, either; anti-Black racism is well-documented in countries around the Persian Gulf with many guest workers from Africa.
The Islamist leaders are obviously not democrats. This is apparent from how they rule their countries. When they react against the burning of the Quran, it’s not for the reasons we’ve stated here as examples of progressive opposition to the act; that they are an excuse to build the extreme right-wing movement that ultimately threatens all democratic liberties.
The Islamist leaders consider the Quran burnings as they do any kind of blasphemy. It’s the Quran burnings that are the problem, not the right-wing extremism they stem from. As Marxists, we want to stop Paludan since he’s a right-wing extremist. The fact that he’s burning the Quran is a subordinate matter – even if he didn’t, we’d advocate for stopping him. To the Islamist leaders, it’s the other way around. They don’t care about Paludan’s right-wing extremism, they are themselves right-wing extremists, but they care about his desecration of the Quran. If Paludan didn’t burn the Quran and didn’t speak in a disrespectful way against Islam, they wouldn’t have done anything. The situation of refugees and immigrants in Europe is not of interest to them (provided they can’t exploit the situation for their own, fanatical purposes).
What is interesting to the Islamist leaders is to protect their own position in power, which is based on being the sole interpreters of the religion, to control as wide masses of Muslims as possible and to train them in slavish obedience to religious symbols and authorities, to not show any weakness in the defence of religion and to find external enemies to focus on in order to evade criticism from below. To the extent that Islamist leaders also control states and governments, this power becomes a key political factor.
The necessity of total control of religious practice, and in extension of political practice, makes any challenge against Islam a potential and legitimate goal to mobilise against. It’s less important if that challenge comes from Salman Rushdie, from a left-wing guerrilla or from Paludan. Al these targets function just as well as an enemy to close the ranks against.
Additionally, most of these leaders also have more direct political and tactical aims to consider. Turkish president Erdoğan obviously had domestic motives considering the election, as well as matters of foreign policy, relating to the U.S., to consider. al-Sadr in Iraq is in a power struggle with his rivals in Iraqi politics over domestic support. These rivals need to counter with measures of their own not to appear weak against the enemies of Islam, and to not lose support at home.
The interventions of the Islamist leaders in the conflict about the burning of the Quran is therefore completely reactionary. The goal is to strengthen their own hold over a form of Islamic practice that is already totalitarian. In that struggle, managing to limit the freedom of expression and assembly in a European country is a feather in the cap.
When the question only concerned Paludan, the freedom of expression, the right to criticise religion and the right to blasphemy wasn’t actually relevant. It was raised on an abstract, philosophical level, but not in terms of the actual situation. When influential, fascistic Islamist forces exploit the Quran burnings in order to push for general bans on blasphemy and free speech, the issue becomes relevant – not because of the burning of the Quran, but because of how it is exploited by the fundamentalists.
After the response of Erdoğan, Pakistan, the Iraqi fundamentalists, etc., one can no longer claim that the issue only concerns racism and right-wing extremism and that Muslims, as well as freedom in general, must be defended from this threat. Another reactionary force is part of the equation now, and it, too, must be unreservedly condemned.
The hangover of identity politics and cultural relativism within large parts of the left is a problem here. There are sectors influenced by postmodernism that even today are hard pressed to criticise religious and cultural oppression if it doesn’t stem from the Western world, since they have been taught that it’s racist to criticise religious and cultural oppression in the semicolonial world.
This absurd position makes it hard for them to criticise the type of Islamist interventions we see now, since they’re can’t tell whether this is a matter of righteous anger against European racism and oppression. But, as we have argued the Islamists aren’t leaning on such an analysis. It is the postcolonially influenced that project these opinions on the Islamists, and therefore lower their defences against them.
The Islamists oppose central parts of modernity, the enlightenment period, the labour movement, equality and democratic freedoms and rights. They don’t care about racism and discrimination. This is the case for the Quran burnings as well.
The popular Muslim discontent is heterogenous and contradictory
There is a third important actor to assess, and that is the broad masses of ordinary Muslims in Sweden and Europe. Without a doubt, the Quran burnings have annoyed many Muslims and been the cause of much indignation. It would be mistaken to see this as a collective, united response. The Muslims are divided in different layers, and by this we don’t primarily refer to the division of faith within Islam. We’re primarily dealing with the political dimension, and here we can discern the progressive, leftward moving layers, the conservative, rightward moving layers, and a large, passive mass who do not really engage with these questions, at least not enough to take action on any side.
Clearly, many Muslims reacted against Paludan for the same reasons we’ve recounted here; they worry about a rightward development in general, and correctly identify Paludan as part of it, and they rightly protest against Muslims in general being portrayed as a threat to society. But equally clear, other layers aren’t primarily concerned by this, but are mainly out to carve out a self-segregated, Muslim society within society at large, where Islam holds a position beyond criticism, both from within and outside of such parallel societies.
The jumbling up of the progressive and reactionary layers in the current situations is mainly to the advantage of the Islamists, letting them portray themselves as spokespersons for all Muslims, which isn’t the case.
The political problem is that the radical left has been so weakened that it hasn’t been able to act as forcefully as it did years past. It would have been natural for the radical left to act first, and mobilise against Paludan, turning the conflict into a classic question of right-wing extremism and its threat against minorities and democracy. But this didn’t happen. Instead, the initiative quickly passed directly to Islamist groups and individuals, turning it into a question of whether blasphemy against Islam should be allowed or not. That interpretation of the conflict worked well for the right and the extreme right, and these two sides have together brought the situation to its current development, where it could actually have larger reactionary effects on the political consciousness of both Muslims and non-Muslims in Sweden.
In passing, it’s worth pointing out that the Swedish government, in its fearful courting of Erdoğan, has contributed to encouraging fundamentalist aggression, since it seems to pay off. The Swedish government clearly communicates that it is ready to bend to demands from religious extremists, and that image is a recipe for more demands.
A Muslim who criticises the Quran burnings cannot automatically be dismissed as an Islamist, but equally can’t automatically be seen as a progressive critic of racism. Our message to all Muslims who are upset over the Quran burnings is that it’s better to support a democratic, secular law than to put their trust in Erdoğan, the governments of Iraq and Iran, etc. These despotic forces can only “defend Muslims” in a sectarian, suffocating way. Their “defence” of Muslims will always take the shape of a repressive power that monitors and bans any form of Islamic faith that isn’t allowed by these conceited hypocrites. Under a democratic, secular law, any Muslim may freely exercise their belief, as long as it doesn’t undermine the basis that guarantees that exercise, that is the democratic and secular laws. It’s a principle that applies to, or should apply to, everyone. The capitalists don’t respect it, and that’s why a democratic and secular state ultimately must take the form of a socialist workers’ republic. When it comes to the right-wing extremists, we call on Muslims who want to fight racism and fascism to unite with the radical left against both European and Islamic right-wing extremism.
Right-wing extremism and imperialism: the main enemies in Sweden
Two deeply reactionary camps are in conflict here. On one side, the right-wing extremists and the imperialists. On the other, Islamic right-wing extremism and fundamentalism. Having said that, the threat from the domestic right-wing and the ruling elites is the main problem in Sweden and the Western world. It is from their side that the entire attack on all social and political rights is launched now. If we move towards an authoritarian development, the impulse will first and foremost come from the domestic right-wing.
The Islamists are a secondary threat in the Western world. This is not to say that they’re harmless or an unimportant threat, just that they, in relation to imperialism and the domestic right-wing, are much weaker and wield much less influence. That they represent a secondary threat doesn’t mean that they’re nicer or less undemocratic. They could even be more undemocratic, but they don’t have the same capacity to influence society in general, and are therefore a secondary threat.
We should also keep in mind that it’s the imperialist states that, during the entire modern epoch, have aided the growth of Islamism, both indirectly and directly. Indirectly through their brutal acts in power, for example through the wars in Iraq, which have been a key factor for the growth of Islamism there. But also through the colonial oppression of Israel. Directly through financial and military support to Islamists such as the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet occupation. They have also supported Islamism in state power, through friendly political, military, diplomatic and economical relations. Saudi Arabia has long been a close ally to Western imperialism. So imperialism is in every way a main issue here.
Our analysis need to include this. Our first duty is therefore to fight imperialist exploitation of the Muslim countries (and the entire semicolonial world), to fight anti-Muslim racism, to organise struggle against the right-wing forces and to unite all those oppressed, regardless of their background, under the banner of revolutionary Marxism. In doing so, we must also take up the struggle against Islamic fascism, since it severely disorients and confuse the struggle, and plays an utterly oppressive and reactionary role whenever it is in power.
The two important conclusions to draw are:
- Fascist and racist aggression against Muslims must be stopped through left-wing interventions on the street and under progressive slogans, with no concessions to religious politics.
- It would be completely wrong to give in to the demands of Islamists and dictatorships on the changing of laws in Sweden. All demands on the institution of laws against blasphemy, bans against the desecration of the Quran, bans on desecration of Islam and any religion must be strongly refuted.
Peter Larsson
Arbetarmakt