From ‘Submission’ to ‘Domination’ –
Why ANARCHIST Must Stand Against Fascists Of All Creeds
For too long The Left and The Trot parties Anarchism have had a policy of appeasement to Islamic radicals because they didn’t want to upset young Asians when they were tring to recruit them, this has left the left impotent. It time to start putting the working class politics before religion or party building.
Islam4UK The BNP and The EDL are both fascist organisations and totally anti working class, fight fascism weather religious or political.
It’s obvious that ANARCHIST are not fans of the BNP and other racist right-wing groups, but religious fascism also poses a threat to our hard-won liberties. March 4 Shari’ah will call for the full implementation of Shari’ah Law in the UK…
Anyone who opposes fascism should definitely*oppose this!
Isn’t it bad enough that the Labour government is rolling back basic liberties like the right to silence, due process of law, habeas corpus and the right not to be tortured – all in the name of security? Should we really abandon the little democracy we have left to a bunch of overbearing, religious zealots? Only a fascist would write something like this… “we have had enough of democracy and man-made law and the depravity of the British culture”
Anarchist Should believe wholeheartedly in religious tolerance, but the key word here is TOLERANCE. Groups like Islam4Uk will only ever damage the general perception people have of Islam, in much the same way that the BNP damage the reputation of tolerant*white, working class communities.
In recent weeks
A lot has been made in the media of the antics of the far-right Muslim group ‘Islam4UK’. Islam4UK are a pro-Sharia group who advocate the turning of Britain into an oppressive Muslim state. They advocate capital punishment, flogging for public drunkenness, and a whole raft of other oppressive policies, and have as one of their many slogans: “Freedom go to hell”. The group has recently proposed a demonstration in Wootton Bassett (the town where British war dead are repatriated), ostensibly to commemorate Afghan and Iraqi casualties in the two ongoing military occupations, but in reality they are just using it as a chance to publicise their deplorable fascist views (whilst great care must be taken when bandying about this much-abused phrase, in terms of Islam4UK’s strong authoritarian slant, advocacy for a strong police state, and excessive punishment for minor crimes and acts of dissent, we feel the term is justified).
While the reactionary forces of white nationalism have been quick to condemn the march and use it as a justification for their racist viewpoints, the radical left has been characteristically silent for fear of being labelled Islamophobic. It is with this silence in mind that we have decided to pen this open letter outlining why it is the duty of the radical left to oppose bigotry and injustice in all its forms, including Islam4UK and other far right Muslim groups.
It was last February that thousands of workers at the Lindsey oil refinery and dozens of other depots around the country engaged themselves in a series of direct actions and wildcat strikes in protection of their jobs, in the face of unemployment and Total Oil’s cynical corporate practice (see article ( www.indymedia.org). Despite framing their actions from a clearly non-racist and anti-capitalist perspective, the response from the radical left was at best lukewarm, with sections of the left being downright condemnatory, branding the strikers as ‘racist’. The lack of a coherent support base from the political left and anarchists alike has left the strikers out in the cold, with only the British National Party as uncritical allies – allies whose support that the strikers vehemently and physically rejected.
This and the Islam4UK march are two examples of events that require a definitive and class-conscious response from a unified and radical left. Instead, we are allowing political naivety, liberal tendencies and the sensibilities of some of our more questionable ‘allies’ to prevent us from making a clear call and framing important events from a radical left wing perspective. Thus we allow the forces of the far right the chance to exploit the events to convey their hateful diatribe.
It will be a tragedy for us and for common sense if we allowed the events in Wootton Bassett to only fuel the excesses of right wing extremists and Muslim fanatics alike. This can’t be allowed to be publicly viewed as the salt-of-the-earth white nationalists supporting the British people and poor soldiers, whilst the out-of-touch left unquestionably champions political correctness and excuses Islamic lunacy.
Both the BNP and Islam4UK represent a threat to the working class generally and pander to the efforts of the elite, who want to see us all divided along the lines of race, religion, gender and sexuality – as opposed to the only genuine divide in society, which is class. Surely we want to build a working class movement which is capable of, and willing to, overthrow discrimination and oppression in whatever guise it appears.
Since the opening of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, various groups have increasingly been using the parading of war casualties in Wootton Bassett as a propaganda tool. While some groups have been revelling in the body count to promote anti-western sentiment, others have been using corpses to stir up nationalist feeling and fly their flags. The truth is that dead soldiers are neither heroes nor monsters – they are simply men and women who have paid a harsh price for doing the dirty work of corrupt politicians and generals. Their repatriation is not a political event, and any attempt to make it so is being cold and manipulative. To this end, both BNP leader Nick Griffin and Islam4UK have been specifically made unwelcome by the residents of the town and rightly so, but, like circling vultures, both view the potential propaganda gains from dead bodies and grieving mothers as too significant to pass up.
Let’s not beat around the bush; the radical left needs to wake up and treat these people like the fascists they are. Therefore, this call goes out to all ordinary people to join together regardless of their race, faith or lack thereof, and oppose authoritarianism, discrimination and oppression in all its forms, both in Wootton Bassett on the day of the march and in everyday life. The BNP and Islam4UK are two sides of the same hateful coin, and both their visions of an ideal future should be seen as an antithetical barrier to the free and socially just world for which we strive – a barrier that we must overcome.
In solidarity
From within (but not on behalf of) Bath Activist Network
Meanwhile we have more lies and propaganda from AFED and friends then?
The state are going to BAN Islam4UK asked do THEY agree with such FASCISM or would you agree that WE SAY NO TO FASCISM! IN ANY FORM IT MIGHT TAKE because at the end of the day, this is what was desired in the first place?
“American-led troops were accused of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead. Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed.
Western military sources said that the dead were all part of an Afghan terrorist cell responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have claimed the lives of countless soldiers and civilians. “
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new…cle6971638.ece
This is where we are going, now instead of attacking the working/underclass you might want to start fighting with them?
Those who know about Anarchism will understand this is how they act, and I have been attacked not only by words and repeating of lies told them by others but assaulted by members of AFED in Sheffield, then when you come to have an open debate with them they are not better then the far left, both are anti working class in there own right, and what we see here is another attack on the working class from New Labour and will the likes of AFED and The Left speak out of course not, but they condone you when you point out facts like ‘Islam4UK’ are a far-right Muslim group, then attack the working/underclass for looking and seeing the likes of the other far-right scum the BNP might hold some appeal, you can see why when all we have is the likes of AFED and The Far Left, all are anti working/underclass scum.
take now or stay the same 
It states at http://www.islam4uk.com that Islam4UK is “a platform for the global front Al-Muhajiroun”, so who are Al-Muhajiroun?
Nafeez Ahmed addressed this question in his written evidence before the Parliamentary ‘Prevent’ Inquiry, http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-written-evidence-before.html and, in-a-nut-shell, he implies that they are having their strings pulled by western “intelligence” agencies, the sections that mention Al-Muhajiroun:
20. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is only one Islamist extremist organisation that has been implicated in the fomentation of terrorist plots in Britain – al-Muhajiroun. Founded by Syrian cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed in 1996, the group has undergone several changes of name (al-Ghurrabah, the Saved Sect, al-Sabiqoon al-Awwaluun) to avoid the effects of government proscription – but has never been proscribed under its original name. Although Bakri was banned from returning to Britain after he travelled to Lebanon a month after the 7/7 attacks, in June this year al-Muhajiroun was officially re-launched under its founding name in the UK by Bakri’s deputy, Anjem Choudary.
21. Every major Islamist terrorist plot in the UK, including 7/7, the fertiliser bomb plot, the liquid bomb plot, and so on, have been linked to al-Muhajiroun. Both Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shahzad Tanweer (the lead 7/7 bombers) had been al-Muhajiroun members, as had others convicted in relation to different plots. Al-Muhajiroun founder Omar Bakri had advanced warning of the London bombings in the preceding year, and six months before the attacks had called his followers to embark on jihad on British soil.[22]
22. Officially, British authorities deny al-Muhajiroun’s involvement in planning, organizing or carrying out terrorist attacks in the UK. The response from Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke to questions on Panorama about al-Muhajiroun’s involvement in 7/7 was that the group “did not feature in the significant part at all.”[23] However, al-Muhajiroun’s primary function is neither logistical nor operational, but consists of providing a radicalizing social network that employs ideological techniques to indoctrinate and motivate recruits, as well as providing access and connections abroad through which recruits may receive opportunity to undergo terrorist training with groups associated with al-Qaeda.[24] Thus, a study by the Centre for Social Cohesion finds that 15 per cent of convicted terrorists in the UK were either members of al-Muhajiroun or knew members of the network. In the last decade, “one in seven Islamist-related convictions” have been linked to al-Muhajiroun.[25]
23. Al-Muhajiroun exploits grievances not only about perceived discrimination in Britain, but especially about British foreign policy in Muslim-majority countries. A joint Foreign Office and Home Office report in April 2004 concluded that among the factors attracting young Muslims to extremism is “a perception of ‘double standards’ in British foreign policy, where democracy is preached but oppression of the ‘Ummah’ (the one nation of believers) is practised or tolerated e.g. in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya; a consequent sense of helplessness over the situation of Muslims generally; the lack of any real opportunities to vent frustration.”[26] This frustration is galvanized to inculcate an ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ mentality in which violence against ‘Their’ (Western) civilians is justified by misappropriation of Islamic language and symbolism as a response to ‘Their’ killings of ‘Our’ (Muslim) civilians abroad.[27]
24. Intelligence Co-optation of Islamist Extremists
Here, the role of British and American intelligence policy in directly and indirectly facilitating the activities of Islamist extremist networks becomes significant. According to senior government and intelligence officials, at the time of al-Muhajiroun’s founding in 1996, the network was mobilized by MI6 to send British Muslims to Kosovo – coinciding with British and American military assistance to the Kosovan Albanians.[28] This continued prior actions in the former Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1994, whereby British and American military-intelligence services facilitated the influx of mujahideen fighters. Dutch intelligence files show that the Pentagon airlifted many al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters directly from Afghanistan and elsewhere into Bosnia.[29]
25. According to Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence, the selective sponsorship of al-Qaeda terrorist groups after the Cold War continued in the Balkans and Central Asia to intensify the rollback of Russian and Chinese power: “The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvellously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”[30] This strategy has been documented based on intelligence sources, as well as official documents and testimony, in several academic studies.[31] It is also corroborated by other intelligence officials. Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who has testified before US Congressional and Senate Committees about pre-9/11 classified intelligence documents she translated, confirms that US intelligence services maintained a “very intimate relationship” with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban “all the way up to September 11,” to secure geopolitical influence in Central Asia.[32]
26. Even after 9/11, elements of this relationship were not discontinued. Concurrently, reliable reports indicate that the Bush administration in around 2003 began encouraging Saudi government financing of al-Qaeda-affiliated extremist Salafi groups across the Middle East and Central Asia (particularly in Iraq, Lebanon, and Pakistan) to counter Iranian Shi’ite influence. A Presidential Finding signed by President Bush in early 2008 confirms that the CIA has backed this programme with at least $300 million.[33] In Lebanon, for instance, extremist Salafi groups co-opted by the ruling Hariri faction have been financed by US-Saudi largess as a counterweight to the Shi’ite group Hizbullah. The Lebanese Daily Star reported that the United States had earmarked $60 million to reinforce Interior Ministry forces and Sunni organisations identified as “jihadists.”[34] Ironically, a key figure benefiting from this policy is al-Muhajiroun leader Omar Bakri Mohammed, currently residing in Beirut, who has reportedly received material support from Lebanese Salafi networks which he now vocally promotes. In one recent interview, he proclaims, “Today, angry Lebanese Sunnis ask me to organize their jihad against the Shi’ites… Al-Qaeda in Lebanon… are the only ones who can defeat Hezbollah.”[35] He is currently being investigated by Lebanese security forces who accuse him of training al-Qaeda forces in Lebanon.[36]
27. Bakri appears to have benefited indirectly from US-Saudi intelligence sponsorship of extremist groups, with potentially deleterious consequences for US and British national security. This disturbing prospect is made all the more worrying given that his extremist network, al-Muhajiroun, continues to operate with impunity in the UK, openly inciting to violence, yet ignored by law-enforcement authorities. Bakri himself still addresses his British followers through video link and internet broadcasts.[37]
28. Violent Radicalization: a Positive-Feedback System
Overall, these factors alone constitute necessary conditions for violent radicalization, but their cumulative interaction creates a mutually-reinforcing positive-feedback system, acting in totality as a sufficient condition and causal basis for a minority of British Muslims to experience violent radicalization:
29. Social structural inequalities and institutional discrimination have generated a groundswell of social alienation, civic exclusion, and political impotence that fuels psychological instability and vulnerability to identity crises in many Muslim communities, including those which are more upwardly mobile.
30. This is reinforced by Islamophobic media reporting, which in turn has fuelled social polarisation between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Britain, contributing to Muslim vulnerability to separate self-identification through negative reflected appraisal, and increasing the ability of extremists to operate among both communities.
31. Foreign policy grievances exacerbate this condition and provide a focal point and critical catalyst for a sense of generic victimization that potentially undermines attachment to British national identity.
32. While the preceding items highlight ‘push’ factors, the key ‘pull’ factor comes in the form of Islamist extremist ideology, in the form of organisations which exploit all these circumstances of exclusion, navigating the groundswell of potential discontent to identify vulnerable individuals for recruitment into various forms of ideological indoctrination as a means to resolve their identity crises. The only group in the UK which has been linked directly and indirectly to actual terrorist activity is al-Muhajiroun, and it is this network in particular that should be recognised as providing a radicalizing social network opening material prospects for individuals to participate in terrorist activities that threaten public safety, at home and abroad.
33. The radicalizing activities of such groups in turn serve to feedback into the previous processes of social and civic exclusion, negative perceptions of Muslims, and so on, processes which become further intensified in the aftermath of terrorist attacks or plots by associated individuals.
34. However, the impunity with which al-Muhajiroun networks continue to operate in Britain is not simply a question of lax law-enforcement with regard to their members who continue to incite to violence, but also of deeper intelligence issues suggesting a need for far greater oversight over Britain’s foreign intelligence policies, which may have undermined domestic security. Those intelligence issues concern the selective financial sponsorship of Islamist extremist groups for short-sighted geostrategic reasons by Britain and her allies, such as the US and Saudi Arabia.
…
42. Finally, parliamentary oversight over the conduct of the British intelligence services is deeply inadequate. Far greater scrutiny of intelligence policy – particularly the influence of US strategic intelligence planning on British policy – is required to ensure a cessation of activities that have, and potentially continue to, foster Islamist extremist networks abroad that may undermine domestic security. This should include an independent public inquiry into the 7/7 terrorist attacks. Similarly, the trajectory of law-enforcement toward ‘widening the net,’ which increasingly criminalises and alienates the very communities that need to be empowered, should be reversed so as to focus specifically on charging and prosecuting individuals at large linked to networks (namely, al-Muhajiroun) with documented links to terrorist activity in the UK, and who have a track record of inciting to violence.
Footnotes:
[22] See Ahmed, Inside the Crevice, op. cit.; and Ahmed, The London Bombings, op. cit.
[23] Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Inside the Crevice: Islamist terror networks and the 7/7 intelligence failure (London: Institute for Policy Research & Development, September 2007)
[24] Quintan Wiktorowicz, Radical Islam Rising: Muslim Extremism in the West (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); Ahmed, The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (London: Duckworth, 2006)
[25] CSC Press Briefing, “One in Seven UK Terror-related Convictions Linked to Islamist Group Now Threatening to Relaunch” (London: Centre for Social Cohesion, 1 June 2009)
[26] John Gieve (ed.), Draft Report on Young Muslims and Extremism (London: Home Office and Foreign & Commonwealth Office, April 2004) Restricted Document leaked to the British press, available here
[27] See Choudhury, op. cit. and Change Institute Report for the European Commission, Studies into violent radicalisation: the beliefs, ideologies and narratives (London: The Change Institute, February 2008) pp. 29, 133-137. Also see Ahmed, “Engaging the enemy within: Their legitimate concerns turn into a psychology of victimization”, Independent on Sunday (13 August 2006)
[28] This has been confirmed for instance by John Loftus, former US Justice Department official; as well as by Gen. Pervez Musharraf in his memoirs. See Ahmed, The London Bombings, op. cit.
[29] See Ahmed, op. cit.
[30] Richard Labeviere, Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam (New York: Algora, 2000).
[31] See for example Professor Emeritus Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of the American Empire (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008); Professor Jeremy Keenan, The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2009). For a shorter analysis see Ahmed, “Terrorism and Western Statecraft: Al-Qaeda and Western Covert Operations After the Cold War”, in Paul Zarembka (ed.), Research in Political Economy (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2006, Vol. 23).
[32] Sibel Edmonds interviewed on Mike Malloy Radio Show (31 July 2009). Transcript available here
[33] For sources see Ahmed, Inside the Crevice, op. cit., Appendix. Also see Brian Ross (The Blotter), “Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran”, ABC News (22 March 2007) ; Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” New Yorker (5 March 2007)
[34] Daily Star (20 April 2007)
[35] See for example Gary C. Gambhill, “Salafi-jihadism in Lebanon”, Mideast Monitor (January-March 2008, Vol. 3, No. 1); Bakri cited in Olivier Guitta, “Al-Qaida’s Opportunistic Strategy: Part 3”, Middle East Times (18 August 2008)
[36] Richard Edwards, “Omar Bakri sought in Lebanon for training al-Qaeda terrorists”, Telegraph (3 January 2009)
[37] Ishtiaq Hussain, “Preacher Omar Bakri ‘Is a Danger'”, Sky News (13 December 2008)
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmcomloc/memo/previoex/uc19a02.htm
I suspect that the situation is worse that Nafeez Ahmed feels confident to state and that Islam4UK *and* the EDL have both been set up and/or are having their strings pulled by western “intelligence” agencies to develop, manage and control extremism and to provide justification for the “war on terror” and the “clash of civilizations” which are clearly bogus justifications for Imperial Resource Wars in the face of peak oil.
http://oilempire.us/
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