Political Islam is an ideology taken up by social forces and movements in the various countries and is very much class-based. The Islamic interpretations and practices perpetuated by the Saudi royal family, for example, differ sharply from the ideology embraced by the followers of Muqtada al Sadr in Iraq representing distinctly diverse class interests. Bunching these two together as “reactionary” political Islam would be a gross distortion of realities.

Dazzled by the glitter of the so-called Western democracies, these ‘intellectuals’ do not realize that people do not sit by idly until perfect secular movements are born. This is the reality of class struggle. What they do not like to address is the question of why progressive secular forces have failed the people in many of these countries. Do they deserve any criticism for their failure?

Are the Iranian democratic and secular leftists, for example, willing to accept any responsibility for their failure to organize to beat the Mullahs to power after the overthrow of the Shah? What about those members of the Iraqi ‘Communist’ Party who chose the path of collaboration with the occupation forces instead of resistance? Will the Iraqi people be embracing them, just because they claim to be democratic and secular, or the forces of ‘religously backwards’ Muqtada al-Sadr? I think the answer is obvious.

Rhetoric aside, the Middle East is under attack today by the forces of imperialism and colonialism for its resources not its religion. The demonizing of the population as Jihadists and Islamists is pure propaganda, regardless of how progressive or reactionary Islam is. The reality is that the Palestinian or Iraqi Christians are suffering just the same as the rest of the Moslem population.

Political religion, by the way, is not an exclusive feature of the Middle East or of the Moslem world. What’s more, it is not all reactionary. A good example I can give you is from solidarity work with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the eighties where the poor and the working class supported the liberation theology while the upper classes embraced the reactionary religion of Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo.