From: RASTAMANVIBRATION@RESTNESTA.CO.JAM   
      
   From the prople who brought you Uncle Joe Stalin...   
      
      
   Spectator 19th August   
   United in hate   
   Douglas Davis   
      
   Politics makes strange bedfellows. Stranger still when the odd couple are   
   fundamentalist Islam and the secular Left. The evolving Black-Red alliance   
   is growing in France, Germany and Belgium. But, based on the successful   
   British model, it is now going global to declare war on the war on terror.   
   No fewer than three international conferences have been convened in Cairo,   
   presided over by the former president of Algeria, Ahmed Ben Bella, under the   
   auspices of the International Campaign Against US and Zionist Occupations.   
   One outcome is 'The Cairo Declaration Against US Hegemony, War on Iraq and   
   Solidarity with Palestine.' British signatories included Tony Benn, Jeremy   
   Corbyn and, of course, the indefatigable George Galloway, whose 'fiery'   
   participation won honourable mention in Egypt's semi-official newspaper,   
   Al-Ahram.   
      
      
   If Iraq was the catalyst for the Black-Red alliance, the Stop the War   
   coalition provided the cauldron in which the union was consummated. The   
   result is a pure gestalt: the coalition allows its constituent parts to pack   
   a far greater collective punch than they could have dreamt of on their own.   
   Putting a million people on to the streets of London is not, after all,   
   small potatoes. The steering committee of the Marxist-Islamist alliance   
   consists of 33 members - 18 from myriad hard-Left groups, three from the   
   radical wing of the Labour party, eight from the ranks of the radical   
   Islamists and four leftist ecologists (also known as 'Watermelons' -green   
   outside, red inside). The chairman is Andrew Murray, a leading light in the   
   British Communist party; co-chair is Muhammad Aslam Ijaz, of the London   
   Council of Mosques. Among the major players from the Left are Lindsey   
   German, who resigned as editor of the Socialist Workers' party newspaper to   
   become convenor of the Stop the War coalition; John Rees, also of the SWP,   
   and, of course, George Galloway. Indeed, the first proud progeny of the   
   alliance is Galloway's Respect party, which fought and won the London seat   
   of Bethnal Green and Bow, with its substantial Muslim electorate.   
      
   Points of potential disagreement between the hard Left and radical Islam -   
   democracy, human rights, xenophobia, free-expression, feminism,   
   homosexuality, abortion, among many others - would seem to pose insuperable   
   barriers to the union. Not so. The hurdles have been neatly vaulted in the   
   interest of mutual hatreds: America, Israel, globalisation, capitalism and   
   imperialism. Anti-Semitism is never far from the surface. True, there is   
   some squeamishness within the 'house of horrors'. Dissent is evident in the   
   Socialist Workers' party but not in the Muslim Association of Britain, which   
   was inspired by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood and now shelters under   
   the umbrella of Sir Iqbal Sacranie's Muslim Council of Britain (it was, let   
   it not be forgotten, the good Sir Iqbal who, before being scrubbed up and   
   knighted, declared that 'death is perhaps too easy' for the allegedly   
   blasphemous Salman Rushdie; it was Sir Iqbal, too, who refused to   
   participate in this year's Holocaust memorial events because they did not   
   refer to the supposed genocide of the Palestinians).   
   Those on the Left who support the alliance have found not only a   
   revitalising cause but also an unexpected and deep hinterland from which to   
   draw support. 'The practical benefits of working together are enough to   
   compensate for the differences,' I was told. 'And success tends to win the   
   argument.' Such opportunism exposes a strain of pernicious racism that   
   allows the Left to indulge outrageous bigotry as long as it is espoused by   
   brown people. 'The far Left will always support Third World peoples against   
   what they view as an imperialist West,' notes one analyst who has closely   
   followed the phenomenon. Another says, 'Islamists in the West have skilfully   
   used the tools of intellectual intimidation to build an inviolate wall   
   around Islam, giving it a sacred status that brooks no criticism.' The   
   French Leftist leader Olivier Besançonneau added political piquancy when   
   explaining his inclusivist approach to the Islamists: 'Are these not the new   
   slaves? Is it not natural they should unite with the working class to   
   destroy the capitalist system?'   
      
      
   But there are small voices of doubt. To some within Britain's Trotskyite   
   Alliance for Workers' Liberty, the unholy marriage is outright heresy. One   
   Trot describes SWP advocates of the Black-Red alliance as 'demoralised   
   Guardian readers with headscarves', a withering allusion to the SWP   
   organiser who ordered secular, socialist women to cover their heads while   
   demonstrating with their Muslim sisters outside the Israeli embassy in   
   London. And he is scathing of SWP monitors who enforced gender segregation   
   to mollify Muslim sensibilities at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square.   
   'Marxists are secular or they are not Marxists,' said the Trot with   
   principled purity.   
      
   Dogma runs deep. The Islamists accentuate the positive, noting Galloway's   
   opposition to abortion and his professed religious faith, which, according   
   to one, 'will surely be welcomed by British Muslims who see Respect as a   
   real alternative'. And why complain when the Left is so obligingly on   
   message? Take Spark, the organ of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour party,   
   which hailed Asif Mohammed Hanif, the British suicide-bomber who attacked a   
   beachfront bar in Tel Aviv, as a 'hero of the revolutionary youth'. Hanif,   
   declared the paper, had carried out his mission 'in the spirit of   
   internationalism'.   
   The fact is the coalition has been a godsend to both sides. The Left, a   
   once-dwindling band of communists, Trotskyites, Maoists and Castroists, had   
   been clinging to the dregs of a clapped-out cause; the Islamists could   
   deliver numbers and passion, but they needed a vehicle to give them purchase   
   on the political terrain. A tactical alliance became an operational   
   imperative. Indeed, the first to advocate the Black-Red alliance was none   
   other than Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden and ideologue of   
   al-Qa'eda. In a message delivered in August 2002, he called on sympathisers   
   to seek allies among 'any movement that opposes America, even atheists'.   
   This sentiment was refined in London by Abu Hamza al-Masri, the hook-handed   
   Islamist from Central Casting who is currently fighting extradition to the   
   United States on terrorism charges. 'We say to anyone who hates the   
   Americans and wants to throw the Jews out of Palestine - Ahlan wa Sahlan   
   (welcome). The Prophet teaches that we could ally ourselves even with the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)