Using Marxism, Christianity and Islam to
Dismantle Arab Homeland
Adel Samara
(Part 1)
Edward Said’s distinguished work Orientalism, (1978) followed by a debate in the academic and cultural circles in the capitalist west even more than its influence in the political sphere. This is due to the fact that the political instance has its own deliberate colonial goal, i.e. the old and continuous targeting of Arab Homeland. The book was published during an era when culture became largely dominant in western academia and politics were oriented and designed to camouflage the neo-colonial role in the Orient benefited from the strive of cultural Marxists (Lukacs, Kursh, Gramsci…) leftist i.e. Frankfurt school, liberal and later feminist writers who were trying to avoid and negate historical materialist approach.
In such an environment, culture became a Trojan horse to invade the East for the sake of colonial interests during the so-called post-colonial era.
The main issue which Orientalism focuses on was and still is that the West invasion of the Orient is motivated by two goals:
- To understand all aspects of history and life of the Orient, for sure each form of Orientalism has its own goal.
- According to Said, Orientalism absorbed the orient and re-creates, reproduces an image of the orient as it wants the East to be. This is the main affair of the formal, colonial and cultural Orientalists.
In this level, several dangers threaten the Orient taking into consideration that the West’s re-creation of an image for the Orient is aimed at designing a plan and strategic vision to dominate and rule it. The colonial essence of Orinetalism is crystallized in military, economic and cultural colonialism which never stopped and will not stop voluntary. Those forms of colonialism are interdependent and even exchange their roles, i.e. while military colonialism was the first, it paved the way for other economic and cultural forms.
The so-called post-colonial era witnessed neo-colonialism which inherits the old direction form of colonialism and took the form of dependency in political, economic, cultural instances. The so-called post colonial era confirms what Said argued that the West re-creates the Orient according its own image. This was and still is represented through the two weak components of orient societies who collude with the colonialists:
- The political elite or comprador capitalism.
- The intellectual elite or the Sixth Intellectual Brigade (SIB).
Both of them are externalized, Qutri[1], and to a large extent sectarian a fact that put them in contradiction with the ambitions of the nation for real independence, development and freedom. The most harmed by those two elites are the popular classes which sacrifice for independence. Those classes did not get its share in rule and wealth in the so called post-colonial era.
As long as economic and political dependency exists they exchange roles. In many occasions the cultural instance plays the role of “marketing” the economic one through the expansion of cultural invasion to the minds of people especially promoting consumerism. This paved the way for a deeper unequal exchange since the Orient is backward at least at the level of industrial production and later in agricultural as well on the one hand, and is deeply affected by consumerism on the other.
Unequal exchange in the Arab Homeland was based and cemented in the last decades by alliance between:
- The capitalist class in the core capitalist countries as the center of financial, administrative and decision making of the world economy;
- And the comprador capitalist class in periphery.
This alliance comprises the components of the Globalized Capitalist Public sector,[2] follows the disintegration of the socialist camp where the world market became a monopoly for this alliance but in a trickle-down manner.
Marx and Orientalism
Many arguments and critique have been devoted to place Marx with or anti-Orientalism. Some apologize, some criticize and others defend. While each group has its own logic and ammunition, the worst is the Zionist opportunists who used both Marx and Orientalism as ammunition to justify and support the first terrorist Orientalist state project at the heart of Arab Homeland which is the Zionist Ashkenazi Regime (ZAR). The vivid examples for those opportunists are the Zionists Ber Borochov, Shlomo Aveniri and Noam Chomsky.
But, before dealing with their arguments, it is important to note that we must differentiate three levels of the Marxism of Marx himself which are:
- Marxism as a scientific and revolutionary philosophy historical materialism aiming to uproot capitalism and change the world.
- And Marx’s analysis which is close to the theory but might lead to wrong results especially as long as the available information is little about this or that subject, i.e. the Asiatic Mode of Production.
- And deduction/prophecy might deviate more from theory than in the case of analysis.
It is worthy to mention that Orientalism is a formal western state capitalist project more than a “neutral” academic and cultural one, came different and even negation to Marx’s analysis and expectations which are based on his enthusiastic argument that advanced nations will drag and oblige the backward ones according to theirs own style of development dominated by capitalist mode of production. (The Communist Manifesto).
Marx and Engels were motivated by revolutionary thrust for capitalization of the world in general as the shortest route to transcend capitalism and embarking towards socialism. Their optimism led them to believe that the industrial bourgeois revolution will breed human revolution in the form of capitalizing the rest of the world despite of the pain caused by capitalization process, i.e. transformation deserves the sacrifice. Their revolutionary romanticism led them to fall into Hegelian racist position against undeveloped, i.e. unindustrialized nations whom he defined as nations without history.[3] This Hegelian influence trapped Marx and Engels into two problems:
- An optimistic expectation of a historical and human role of developed capitalist nations (Europeans),
- And Eurocentric position towards other nations.
One of the factors that encouraged Marx and Engels to fall into that wrong conclusion is the experience of White Settler Colonial countries which were artificially created by and follows capitalist Europe.
What Marx and Engels ignored, or did not know, is that those new capitalist formations dominated by capitalist mode of production were planted by Europeans after the termination and even genocide extermination of the aboriginal people. The white settlers brought with them the European level of industrial capitalist development, in addition to the fact that the core capitalist countries were plundering non-European colonies and invest in the White Settler Colonies, i.e. from India to North America.
The sole version of white settler colonialism after Marx’s time was ZAR which is the first version of Orientalist Terrorism (OT) in the form of a deliberate plan to inject a state in the heart of Arab Homeland.[4] This will be discussed later.
Other than WSCC, the role of capitalist West towards poor and colonized nations was blundering wealth, blocking development and alliance with the most reactionary groups or classes in those countries enabling them to rule by repression. The most obvious example is the Arab Oil renter rulers.
Engels “called the revolution of Abdulqader in Algiers against French colonialism as struggle of the desperate case of barbarian society and he praised the French invasion as “an important and happy fact in the progress of civilization”.[5]
“Upon the whole it is, in our opinion, very fortunate that the Arabian chief [Abd-el-Kader] has been taken. The struggle of the Beduins was a hopeless one, and though the manner in which brutal soldiers, like Bugeaud, have carried on the war is highly blamable, the conquest of Algiers is an important and fortunate fact for the progress of civilization. .. And the conquest of Algiers has already forced the Beys of Tunis and Tripoli, and even the Emperor of Morocco, to enter the road of civilization”[6]. Engels’ discourse here is diplomatic more than revolutionary.
Marx and Engels passed away many decades before Algeria defeated French colonialism, even settler colonialism which exploited, plundered and blocked development of that country. France, decided to “donate” Tunisia and Morocco their independency 1956 because it worried that the Algerian revolution will radicalize the other two MaghribArabi countries which might create a revolutionary block there. The Tangier Conference /Protocol (April 1958) was a copy of Sykes-Picot plan which divided the Arab Mashriq.
Showing his pleasure of the white settler United States’ occupation to Mexican land Engels describes the Mexicans as “Cow thieves”.
Engels and to a large extent Marx were ridden by the desire of capitalizing the whole world at any price. The enthusiast and poetic language of The Communist Manifestoconfirms my point. “The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communications, draws all nations, even the most barbarians, into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obtainable hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their modest, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image”.[7]
It is strange that The Communist Manifesto considers other nations as barbarians! The Manifesto of Marx and Engels derides other nations despite the fact that Marx and Engels themselves criticized the brutality of colonialism. This shows that they were tension of praising capitalism’s progressive and criticizing its brutality at the same time.
“England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is: Can mankind fulfill its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.
Then, whatever bitterness the spectacle of crumbling of an ancient world may have for our personal feelings, we have the right, in point of history, to exclaim with Goethe:
[“Since they thus have swelled our joy,
Should such torments grieve us, then?
Doth not Timur’s rule destroy Myriad souls of living men? “[8]
In fact, Marx was right in saying that his journalistic writings on Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) causes him headache, “These journalistic garbage disturbing me, but the pure scientific works totally different”[9]. Unfortunately this never wiped his and Engel’s failure to avoid the previous mistakes.
Despite Marx’s definition of his journalistic writings as garbage, he and Engels failed to comprehend why colonized nations hated foreigners. It is because foreigners here are the colonial powers[10].
According to Terner, Althusser simplified and rejected Marx journalist writings on colonialism as transitional analysis which was replaced by scientific analysis of the mature Marx[11]. This never wiped the falls and mistakes on the one hand, but at the same time proves that Marx and Engels are human beings, albeit they were genius and revolutionaries. They might fall into wrong positions and reach wrong conclusions.
Marxism was never limited to Marx himself. Marxism is all theoretical and revolutionary, materialist theorization, struggle and achievements which follows Marx/Engels works until today and the future. Bolshevic revolution and Lenin’s understanding and support of colonized nations struggle for freedom and independence and recently the theorists of the World System School (Frank, Amin, Wallerstein and Arrighi) especially the theorization of center/periphery contradictions did in fact develop Marxist analysis and cured it of disease of Orientalism and Euro-centrism.
It is a great failure and shame that Althusser himself stand for French colonialism against Algiers. And it is an irony as well, that Turner did not criticize this Althusser’s collusion.
Western Terrorism:
Kidnapping Christianity and absorbed Islam
In his book, Black Athens, Bernal challenge the western false pretence that the Greek civilization is a Western one. His work is a challenge to the whole edifice which western modernization is built on.
Samir Amin wrote as well that Europe kidnapped Christianity and reproduced it as if it was originally European. The goal is to show that Europe is the mother of every human civilization and that the rest of the world must subject and follow. This approach is the best and least expensive way of making each European a racist, proud of his race and color, which made him ready to plunder, and to kill others for any reason, i.e. millions in Philippines, Algeria, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya…etc “dragging” those peoples for democracy marketed by the white man who as a prophet sent by a “Civil Society” to civilize and democratize them[12]!
But what is interesting for us here is deeper. It is the changing of Christianity from a religion of peace to a capitalistic religion that justifies and even encourages bloody colonialism. It became a:
- Western capitalist religion
- A tool for colonialism
In the white settler colonial countries, the white settlers not only slaughtered the original nations but fought each other fiercely. The Boer war in South Africa and the British/French/ American wars in North America are well known. By the name of Christianity, the white settlers in South Africa and the United States pretended that those countries are a promised land[13], granted to them by God, and according to God’s promise they slaughtered the “barbaric” native peoples. The westernization and capitalization of Christianity breeds the worst and most dangerous politicized religious sect Judeo-Christianity and at the political level the neo-conservatives.[14]
Kidnapping Christianity and the production of its new versions were the bridge to attack Islam, swallow it and reproduce it in a terrorist Islamic version.
The terrorist version of Islam came in parallel with Orientalism and colonialism. Its beginning was a joint work between British colonialism and Bin Abdul Wahhab in Hejaz.[15] It is important to note that the mother of Evangelism is Britain.
Wahhabi rejection of any Moslem sect which did not share their ideology is contradictory to the long history and tradition of Islam even towards non-Moslems. The bloody history of Wahhabisim is, in fact, borrowed from British colonialism. This relationship but even alliance is the base and the beginning of Terrorist Orientalism. It is more than cultural Orientalism which is marketing western culture and life style including consumerism. It is the creation of an internal force, local one, with no mercy towards any body, supported and commanded by colonial powers and devoted to fight Arab nationalism under the banner of Islam.
Any careful reading of the history of the Saudi regime reveals that it is a regime that is in continuous alliance with colonialism to terminate Arab nationalism.
What follows are some clear facts:
- In 1967, the Saudi King Faisal encouraged US imperialism to terminate Naser’s regime in Egypt;
- The Saudi regime financed al-Qaida since its foundation;[16]
- The Saudi regime was and still interested of getting rid of its two main surpluses by exporting them as terror against the Arab nation especially against Arab secular regimes and even against countries in a terrorist project sponsored by the “civilized” West. These two surpluses are:
o The oil rent surplus, i.e. people’s wealth!
o And the educated Wahhabi terrorist surplus, i.e. people’s labor power!
The point is that imperialists swallow and occupy Islam. This form of occupation transcends and is different from the kidnapping of Christianity. It is not an adoption of Islam. It is a process of turning it from religion to ideology and an education of Moslems inside Islamic countries to hate others and to enjoy blood shedding. They created an Islam that is full of hatred and terror and that is oriented against any other Islamic sect. It is an Islam manufactured in intelligence, academic and Orientalist Western circles and then reoriented against Arab and Islamic countries to practice terrorism on behalf and for the interest of foreign enemy. This process of re-orientation is the new version of Orientalism, the Terrorist Orientalism (TO).
While Wahhabism was designed by British intelligence, al-Qaida was initiated by French intelligence director Alexander de Mernche, and welcomed by the US department and financed by the Saudi regime. The same regime which had, for decades, educated, financed, and graduated local Saudi youths as Wahhabism and recruited, educated and financed many Moslem youths in a large army of fanatics from several countries to invade Arab Homeland in a wave that is similar to those of the Crusade wars and even with similar slogan, i.e., the Crusaders pretended that their invasion was to protect Jesus tomb, and al-Qaida, ISIS and their articulations pretend that they are fighting to rescue Islam. Terror is the project which is designed to get rid of youth labor force, instead of employing them for production and development.
The main difference between Terrorist Orientalism and the traditional ones is that most of the forces of the new TO are from the Orient itself, and their goal are to destroy their own societies, i.e. not even to colonize.
Cultural Orientalism targeted local cultures and discourses of other nations to lure and encourage them to consume western commodities on the one hand, and to feed the feeling of inferiority on the other. All of this to serve the main goal which is to enable the capitalist center to easily plunder wealth by several means.
Western colonialism, whether it is Orientalism or not, recruits local reactionary and comprador classes and local Intellectual of Sixth Brigade (ISB) and has reached the edge of pushing Arabs out of history as Fawzi Mansour wrote. But TO is embarking on a project aiming at the general genocide of the Arab nation. The master mind that is operating them is located in the West and its local forces are:
- Regimes of Politicized Religion (RPR);
- And Forces of Politicized Religion (FPR).
Accordingly, ISIS is not the only terrorist group, all regimes and forces of politicized Islam that ally themselves with imperialism and Zionism are the same, the difference between al-Qaida, al-Nusra and ISIS only in degree.
At its best case, the TO is leading Arab Homeland to be more divided into tiny, corrupt, dependent and sectarian entities fighting each other. This form of regimes is the best for the ZAR which will be the strongest in military and economy, and might be the largest in both, population and geography in Arab Homeland.
The irony is that TO is supported by large sectors of forces which are traditionally against Orientalism in general, i.e. those forces are from nationalists, Naserists, Marxists, Trotskyites and Islamists from Arab and other countries. Otherwise, how come a list of intellectuals from several countries wrote and signed declarations in support of so-called revolution in Syria.[17]
I will refer only to the Marxist Sadeq al-Azm, the Syrian intellectual who wrote extensively since the 1960s a critique to the religious thought. He was protected by the same Syrian secular regime which he is now standing against it in favor of Counter Revolution and OT! The same al-Azm who criticized the late Edward Said’s compromise with US imperialism[18] is now standing now in the same CR front led by the US against Syria.
In fact, Azm’s deterioration started much earlier and before the CR war against Syria. While the wild globalism was in its peak of controlling the world especially the 13 years of criminal siege and sanctions against Iraq (1990-2003) and few years before occupying Baghdad. Azm early on praised Globalism.[19] It is important to note that many Arab intellectuals deteriorated after the collapse of the Soviet Union to play the role of organic intellectuals of the CR.