En Passant

In light of the Islamophobic rallies on the weekend, and the support socialists give to Muslims in fighting this oppression, Erima Dall looks in depth in Solidarity magazine at Marxism, Islam and religion. Click the link to read the whole informative article, Marxism, Islam and religion.

‘Tomorrow we are going to be hitting the streets to convince people to boycott ANZC Day,’ Mr Neville Nazi-Nutter said. ‘We need to get the word out there that ANZAC Day is a great big Muslim plot. All us great patriots need to unite around this. That is why The ND are saying “Boycott ANZAC Day. Boycott Gallipoli.” ‘ The ND.

The ND.

NO ONE CAN have anything but the profoundest condemnation for the attacks on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. [However] the latest attack will lead to a greater backlash and greater levels of Islamophobia. But it is not Muslims who are the problem but the foreign policies that have helped create terrorism. That is what needs to change.

This government is pushing racism and Islamophobia to win support for its war in Iraq and to detract attention from its rotten austerity Budget. A war footing and jingoism are the breeding grounds for the ruling class to push fear of the other. The Labor Party is rushing in to support Abbott. As the war deteriorates and the economy worsens the anti-Muslim dog whistles from our politicians will become claxon horns. Opposing the war and fighting against the Budget are linked, and must join up with the fight to defend our Muslim bothers and sisters.

The fight for Palestine is the fight for a treaty and sovereignty here. The fight for a treaty and sovereignty here is the fight for Palestine. One struggle. One fight.

As the Australian economy worsens, the turn to more and more vicious forms of racism, including attacks on Muslims, will proceed apace and the cacophony of lies about Islamification will reach a crescendo.

This will distract and weaken the working class and make them more and more at risk from their real enemy – capital and its attacks on living standards and jobs.

It remains the task of the left to build the fight against both overt and covert racism, against the vilification of the other that is the hallmark of both major parties, against the systemic racism that pervades our society and against the system that breeds racism.

I am looking forward to riot police raiding Alan Jones’ office, beating the shit out of him and charging him with incitement to violence for his comments about putting the Prime Minister in a chaff bag and dumping her at sea. Oh, he’s white isn’t he and not a Muslim. And he’s powerful. All the things the Muslim demonstrators aren’t. Maybe, just maybe, that explains the difference in treatment?

As well as unleashing more Islamophobia and racism across the country, the police attack on Muslim demonstrators in Sydney will be used as cover for the further brutalisation by the O’Farrell Government of lives across New South Wales.

We need to build a political movement that fights against racism and the other forms of oppression, including religious repression, which flows from capitalism itself. That means building a fight against the economic exploitation at the heart of the system and joining with all those who resist capitalism in its many manifestations, economic, political and social.

The demonization of Islam is the ideological face of the U.S. drive to control the flow of oil from the Middle East and to project its military and political influence around the world.

There is nothing liberating about being told by the state what you can and cannot wear, nor in being banned from public places dressed however you are comfortable.