Workers Solidarity Movement

Sevinc Karaca, a Turkish anarchist and feminist, describes the fine line that Muslim women must navigate between Islam and the West. "In all Muslim countries, women had to wait until the 1970s and 1980s for a feminist movement that questioned the practise of religion and its role in the oppression of women. As Feminists in the West beat around the bush with an air of multi-culturalist political correctness and go out of their way to show respect for exotic religions, there is a growing number of feminists in countries like Turkey and Iran and among the diaspora in non- Muslim countries whose policies and strategies for feminism do not take the route of Western Liberal Feminism. The majority of feminist ideologies and activism in the developed world today do not address and support the struggle of their Muslim comrades openly, directly or sufficiently."

A decade ago the US First Lady Mrs. Bush’s went on the radio in the first solitary address of any president’s wife in U.S. history to dare all decent people of the world to join the US and its allies in freeing the women of Afghanistan from the “brutal terrorism” of Islamic fundamentalism. Almost ten years later this explanation continues, Time Magazine weighed in with its July 2010 headline, What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan. This story about ‘freeing’ Afghan women only became politically expedient when the aim of capturing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda proved harder to do than anticipated. So the Bush Administration asked Laura to polish off that erstwhile story of the savage East in need of an altruistic West, and they cleverly reinvented orientalism in the guise of “the woman question.”

Turkey has been under the spotlight this year, due to the threats of the Army against the possibility of an Islamist party taking the presidency. This move came to pose a number of questions to the European establishment, as Turkey has been negotiating its entry to the EU. The apparently uneasy two alternatives of government in Turkey are political Islam or the old fashioned authoritarian Kemalist secularism, which has the army as its vigilante sector of the ruling block. The European bourgeoisie has been quite keen to support the ruling AKP Islamist party, instead of the military, sending a clear message that they won’t favour a dictatorship in the vein of that of 1980. Actually, they have compared the authoritarian tradition of Turkey to Greece, saying that entry to the EU would eventually help to democratise it.

Marwa is a ten year old refugee from the village of Marwaheen in the south of Lebanon. Following an Israeli ultimatum Marwa’s family decided to flee. While driving away from the village the Israeli military fired on the pick up truck they were travelling in. Marwa recalls “The wind carried me far away, I woke up on the nearby rocks. Next to me, Mama and Mirna were sleeping. I went to them to wake them up but the plane saw me and came towards me so I ran away. My brother Wissam was hit in his leg and he could not reach me, he was hiding behind a rock and when the ambulance came he was waving to them to stop. Mirna was sleeping the whole time”. Marwa was sent to hospital for treatment for her burns and wounds. Her sister Mirna, 12, her brother Hadi, 5, and her mother Zahra, 51, were all killed (1)

By now we are all familiar with the cartoons commissioned and published by the Danish magazine Jllands – Posten which aroused such anger in the Muslim world and in Muslim communities worldwide.

Text of a letter recieved by the WSM from the Workers Communist Party

In Ireland we have seen the Hezbollah flag flown on demonstrations in Dublin and chants of 'God is Great' raised. On some London demonstrations it has been reported that chants of "Slay the Jews" and "Death to the socialists" have been raised. Another report on the same demonstration revealed that "ultrareactionaries of such organisations as Al Muhajiroun, ... held placards reading, 'Palestine is Muslim'. They chanted, "Skud, Skud Israel" and "Gas, gas Tel Aviv" .. In Trafalgar Square they hurled abuse (and a few missiles) at Tirza Waisel of the Israeli group, Just Peace."[1]