[Debate] Revisiting Samir Amin's "Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

There are parts I agree with and parts I disagree with in Samir Amin's
2007 essay "Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism."  I think
Amin's explanation of the emergence and development of "political
Islam" is too simple.  But his conclusion is something that I think
all leftists would do well to revisit.  Most of the activists on the
(extremely loosely and broadly defined) left in or for any or all of
the "Arab Revolts" focused only or overwhelmingly on "those that
proclaim their nationalist past (but are, in reality, nothing more
than the degenerate and corrupt inheritors of the bureaucracies of the
national-populist era)," to the detriment of their own political
fortune and to the benefit of right-wing Islamists.

<http://monthlyreview.org/2007/12/01/political-islam-in-the-service-of-imperialism>
Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism
Samir Amin

. . . . .

Today, political conflicts in the region find three groups of forces
opposed to one another: those that proclaim their nationalist past
(but are, in reality, nothing more than the degenerate and corrupt
inheritors of the bureaucracies of the national-populist era); those
that proclaim political Islam; and those that are attempting to
organize around “democratic” demands that are compatible with economic
liberalism. The consolidation of power by any of these forces is not
acceptable to a left that is attentive to the interests of the popular
classes.In fact, the interests of the comprador classes affiliated
with the current imperialist system are expressed through these three
tendencies. U.S. diplomacy keeps all three irons in the fire, since it
is focused on using the conflicts among them for its exclusive
benefit. For the left to attempt to become involved in these conflicts
solely through alliances with one or another of the tendencies*
(preferring the regimes in place to avoid the worst, i.e., political
Islam, or else seeking to be allied with the latter in order to get
rid of the regimes) is doomed to fail. The left must assert itself by
undertaking struggles in areas where it finds its natural place:
defense of the economic and social interests of the popular classes,
democracy, and assertion of national sovereignty, all conceptualized
together as inseparable.

The region of the Greater Middle East is today central in the conflict
between the imperialist leader and the peoples of the entire world. To
defeat the Washington establishment’s project is the condition for
providing the possibility of success for advances in any region of the
world. Failing that, all these advances will remain vulnerable in the
extreme. That does not mean that the importance of struggles carried
out in other regions of the world, in Europe or Latin America or
elsewhere, should be underestimated. It means only that they should be
part of a comprehensive perspective that contributes to defeating
Washington in the region that it has chosen for its first criminal
strike of this century.
-- 
Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://mrzine.org/>