Author: Amir Taheri
Publication: Secularislam.org
Date: June 10, 2004
When the US-led coalition invaded
Iraq in March 2003, few would have imagined that the move might lead to
the formation of an alliance between the radical Left and hard-line Islamists
in Western Europe. But this is precisely what happened.
In this month's election for a new
European Parliament, voters in several European Union countries, notably
France and Britain, are offered common lists of Islamist and leftist candidates,
often hidden under bland labels.
Europe's moribund extreme Left has
found a new lease on life thanks to hundreds of young Muslim militants
recruited from the poor suburbs of Paris and the Islamic ghettos of northern
England.
The Islamist groups, for their part,
are learning many tricks from the Left about how to exploit the inevitable
weaknesses of an open society.
In Britain, the new Marxist-Islamist
alliance is the offspring of the so-called anti-war coalition set up two
years ago to prevent the liberation of Iraq. The coalition has a steering
committee of 33 members. Of these, 18 come from various hard Left groups:
communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and Castroists. Three others belong to
the radical wing of the Labor party. There are also eight radical Islamists.
The remaining four are leftist ecologists known as Watermelons (Green outside,
red inside). The chairman of the coalition is one Andrew Murray, a former
employee of the Soviet Novosty Agency and leader of the British Communist
Party. Co-chair is Muhammad Asalm Ijaz of the London Council of Mosques.
A prominent member is George Galloway,
recently excluded from the Labor party, who is under investigation for
the illegal receipt of funds from Saddam Hussein. Galloway heads a list
of candidates backed by several radical leftist groups, notably The British
Socialist Workers Party (SWP), as well as the Muslim Association of Britain,
the British branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a dozen Palestinian groups
financed by Yasser Arafat.
The Palestinian checkered headgear,
worn by the leftists as a cache-col, has become the symbol of this left-Islamist
alliance.
The New Statesman, the organ of
the British moderate Left, calls the new Islamist-Marxist alliance "Saddam's
Own Party." The label is not fanciful. Many of the groups involved in the
alliance had been financed for years by Saddam through his so-called Cultural
Relations Office in London.
IN FRANCE the radical Left alliance
of Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and Workers' Struggle (LO) groups
counts on Islamist militants to help it win seats in the European Parliament.
Arlette Laguillere, the pasionaria of the Workers' Struggle, claims that
"the struggle for Palestine" is now an integral part of the "global proletarian
revolution."
Similar Marxist-Islamist alliances
have been formed in Belgium and Germany, where the Muslim Brotherhood itself
has been taken over by radicals sympathetic to al-Qaida.
Talks are underway for holding a
pan-European conference next year to give the Marxist-Islamist alliance
permanent organizational structures.
The European Marxist-Islamist coalition
does not offer a coherent political platform. Its ideology is built around
three themes: hatred of the United States, the dream of wiping Israel off
the map, and the hoped-for collapse of the global economic system.
Europe's hard Left sees Muslims
as the new under-class in the continent.
"Are these not the new slaves?"
asks Olivier Besanconneau, leader of the French Trotskyites. "Is it not
natural that they should unite with the working class to destroy the capitalist
system?"
The idea of an alliance with Islamists
has even seduced the more traditional French Communist Party (PCF), which
commissioned a study of the possibilities of electoral alliances with Muslim
organizations.
The Islamists, for their part, are
attracted to the European hard Left because of its professed hatred of
the United States and Israel.
"We say to anyone who hates the
Americans and wants to throw the Jews out of Palestine: ahlan wa sahlan
(welcome)," quipped Abu-Hamza al-Masri, the British Islamist firebrand
who is awaiting extradition to the US on various criminal charges. "The
Prophet teaches that we could ally ourselves even with the atheists if
it helps us destroy [the] enemy."
The first to advocate a leftist-Islamist
alliance against Western democracies was Ayman Al Zawahiri, al-Qaida's
#2. In a message to al-Qaida sympathizers in Britain in August 2002, he
urged them to seek allies among "any movement that opposes America, even
atheists."
The idea has received support from
Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal.
In his book Revolutionary Islam, published in Paris last year, Carlos,
who says he has converted to Islam, claims he has advised Osama bin Laden,
the al-Qaida leader, to forge an alliance with "all guerrilla, terrorist,
and other revolutionary groups throughout the world, regardless of their
religious or ideological beliefs."
Carlos says Islam is the only force
capable of persuading large numbers of people to become "volunteers" for
suicide attacks against the US. "Only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists
can destroy the US," he says.
Europe must wake up to the dangers
that this new version of the red-and-black alliance poses to its democracy,
indeed to its political and social peace.
The writer, an Iranian author and
journalist, is editor of the Paris-based Politique Internationale.
