This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

On converting to Islam: the invisible schism in the international communist movement

October 23 2007

41 years ago on October 15 the Black Panther Party founded itself, an important date for MIM's ideology. In a video statement in September,(1) Osama Bin Laden has asked Amerikans to convert to Islam. Recently, Limonov in Russia converted and newspapers report that Al Qaeda linked people are talking about Malcolm X.(2) Malcolm X was the local spiritual inspiration for the Black Panthers, while Mao was the ideological and scientific inspiration. In this essay we will try to place our thoughts about converting to Islam in an accountable way.

The current writer only started studying Islam relatively recently. We have found that we reached Muslim Sultan- Galiyev's conclusions independently from him, mostly from an in-depth examination of the labor theory of value. Sultan-Galiyev was a leader from Lenin's and Stalin's circles.

Stalin and Sultan-Galiyev agreed on the "uneven development" thesis, and over the long haul of history, that has turned out to be more important than the points they disagreed on. Because Stalin eventually repressed Sultan-Galiyev, the sector of the communist movement inspired by Sultan-Galiyev remains unrecognized, unseen by Western eyes. This is especially sad, because recognition of Trotsky's descendants cannot be avoided in the imperialist countries.

The main blame for the split of Stalin and Sultan-Galiyev rested with Stalin, because Stalin did not see the next 75 years and he felt too much pressure from Trotsky--the concentrated expression of an incipient Russian labor aristocracy and already existing Russian settlers moving into Muslim territories. Even if Sultan-Galiyev were guilty of bourgeois nationalist excesses as charged including conspiring with rulers of non-imperialist states, it is always going to be a question of which is worse, errors to the Third World bourgeois side or errors toward the Western labor aristocracy bourgeois side. We hope to have neither error, but that is impossible except in the individual minds of ideologues. Communist movements will always be impure. Like us, Sultan-Galiyev belonged in the "uneven development" camp stressing parasitism.

Now we know that German revolution did not happen and more importantly, the Third World did not become equalized and homogenized as if it were 10 or 20 years behind Germany in economic development. When we speak of dialectics and Stalin now, we refer to "uneven development." Some academic expressions of the same idea have arisen with the idea of "underdevelopment" or "core" and "periphery" concepts. Samir Amin has written most extensively along these lines. Excluding the Russian Revolution, the drive for revolution has existed almost solely in the "periphery" or what Stalin and Sultan-Galiyev referred to as the colonies.

The labor theory of value is the only real explanation for uneven development--imperialist exploitation. With the labor theory of value, we have an explanation of capital accumulation and hence change. Other explanations are usually self-congratulating ahistorical ideologies of Western superiority, including Trotskyism. Entire countries find themselves relegated to the "reserve army of unemployed," such that some countries find it better to be super-exploited than unemployed. Wealth and wealth- producing politics end up sucked out of the Third World by imperialism; thus, "uneven development" happens. The Trotskyist theory was that imperialist global expansion would bring advance to the Third World, until the West and colonies became "level" with each other. The dynamic element in Trotskyism is the advance of the Western working class in organization and technical skill with growth of the productive forces. In contrast, with MIM and Sultan- Galiyev, the dynamic element is that capital accumulation in the West extends to the so-called workers to bourgeoisify them.

The original split in the international communist movement sent non- internationalist social-democrats to their isolated-to-imperialism future. Although Trotskyists would claim to be internationalist, the same thing as happened with the social-democrats happened to Trotskyism, which is just a particularly coherent and articulate version of Menshevism. What has happened in the West is a dialogue between Stalin and Trotsky followers within communism, and MIM has always been known as quite unhappy with that, as that particular historical split ends up giving Trotsky much more scientific due than deserved. Trotsky manages a simultaneously Liberal, dissident and revolutionary image among the deluded. On the other hand, followers of Sultan-Galiyev have become outside the stream of scientific communism, and one can only suspect that this has meant an improper relationship of intellectuals to the exploited.

Sultan-Galiyev has to be given his scientific due to correct the relationship of intellectuals to the exploited. Those who have been reading MIM already know Sultan-Galiyev's main economic development theses; even though, MIM arrived at the joint dictatorship of the proletariat of the oppressed nations before knowing of Sultan-Galiyev. When we look at MIM and then credit Sultan-Galiyev's followers invisible to Western-chauvinists-posing-as-communists, Trotsky's demerits will stand out more clearly.

The typical impression we receive from the imperialists and their pseudo-Marxist defenders is that Muslim nationalists are hopelessly irrational. In the current international situation, the hopelessly inaccurate perception of the oppressor population regarding Islam has positive and negative points.

On the plus side, the frivolous concern with style questions(3) among the oppressors renders them more subject to attack. As is often the case, it is perhaps better that the labor aristocracy and gender aristocracy stay true to their natures. On the downside, one cannot help remembering that delusional belief in Hitler meant years of strife in World War II involving millions of unnecessary deaths for the simple reason that the Germans would not give it up. After Maoist revolution in Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia, there will come a point where we hope U.$. imperialism will give it up. It is probably unrealistic to expect that the Amerikans will give it up before then; though, MIM will certainly try to persuade the other imperialists to make an acceptable two-state offer to the Palestinians and get out of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to long-time CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, Osama Bin Laden is very practical, not inclined to irrationality. In fact, he says that Osama Bin Laden is more realistic than his own political leaders, and this is among other reasons that numerous CIA analysts had to resign from Mideast duties: "I fear, al Qaeda sees the world clearer than we."(4) Michael Scheuer says the united $tates is either going to have to fight a more intense and realistic war(5) or give in.

Given the poor quality of our media, the topic of Al Qaeda is one we can be sure we do not know much about. If Scheuer is correct in his historical depiction of Al Qaeda, then Al Qaeda is the most significant anti-imperialist organization in the world. It operates armed struggles in Africa, the Mideast and Asia. Meanwhile, in the West, we have the books but not any connection to armed struggle or masses of exploited and oppressed people. Recently, armed struggle has put Al Qaeda in contention for ruling Pakistan, as Bhutto's entourage learned.(6)

Instead of facing continuous chauvinist pressure from Trotskyism and other kinds of Menshevism, the international communist movement should see what Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are doing. We have put the question this way: there is more reality to "Allah is coming" than "the Western worker is coming." The people of Islam are already on the move as oppressed and exploited people. The Taliban member on average is less utopian than the average phony communist globally pretending that Euro-Amerikan workers are exploited and still about to rise up at any minute. The Taliban knows about war against imperialism concretely, while the Western so-called "working class" knows about the couch. Liberation fighters in Afghanistan have known the joy of defeating Soviet social- imperialism and now some of the same people are fighting U.$. imperialism. Unfortunately, the Trotskyists in contrast, are able to spout the same worthless tripe for more than 80 years running without a single revolution to their credit since Lenin's death. So things became upside down: the Trotskyists claimed to be scientists though completely unconnected from reality and the Taliban claimed to be religious though composed of fighters of considerable practical experience against imperialist troops. That is the dialectical sort of twist Marx prepared us for but did not expect. In his day, it looked like Europe would be the center of struggle's advance. Stalin expressed this best when he said that Marx was wrong and revolution would happen in the "weakest link." Afghanistan and Somalia are proof of Stalin's thesis.

There is a wing of Islam that needs to receive 1000 times more weight in our global understanding as communists than Trotskyism does. Islam by itself was always internationalist and anti-racist, as stated right in the holy book, the Koran. Anti-crusader Saladin brought us the concept of bourgeois social revolution called defensive jihad. Although the Bible also has some glimmerings of communism, Saladin's anti-Crusade struggle and its legend is a firm Islamic historical basis for social revolution useful to this day.

Along came Sultan-Galiyev. He added the need for a vanguard party, the theory of economic development, criticism of settler political economy--all of the main MIM theses in outline form. Contrary to popular belief, he was also for equality of wimmin--the pioneer of feminism in Islam as a matter of fact.

We are hoping that new cells espousing Sultan-Galiyev will arise in the imperialist countries. The most difficult part of our struggle with the MIM line in the West and Islam will be the womyn question for the simple reason that it is most difficult to put it into meaningful form for 12, 13- and 14-year-olds apt to study colonialism and imperialism. As yet, only MIM is really attempting to develop a gender theory appropriate for the imperialist countries. If we get to youth early with the MIM line including a version of the gender line digestible enough, we can hope for new durable cells.

Following from Sultan-Galiyev were various organizations, some more loyal to his work, others less. We can find ourselves in the midst of Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda if we trace back their intellectual ancestors, and so the imperialist jibe about "Islammunism" has a grain of truth. Western intellectuals do not know this for the simple reason that rumor says Stalin executed Sultan-Galiyev and then Sultan- Galiyev's works never received translation into English or any European language other than Russian. People who know Russian and Turkish know more about Sultan-Galiyev.

The Koran is centered on the origins of the Arabic language. So Islam has a great national significance to the Arabic people, not just a religious significance. One author claims that the Koran was intended as concrete manifestation of monotheism for the Arabic people and in fact many to this day do not approve of translating the Koran out of Arabic.(7) This again is similar to Mao's idea that there is "no Marxism that is not concrete." Juche has some similar concerns about the leap to the universal. In the case of the Koran, the fear is that the devil would infiltrate the translation process.

With this understanding of Islam as a national cultural expression, we can see why MIM's line has not been in the least sectarian. The organization-focussed labor-aristocracy-obsessed parties could not see how we broke with the RIM. Then we broke with the ICMLPO and even tossed our own Russian comrades of the Russian Maoist Party. Each split MIM ran through involved class, concern for millions and billions of people. We had not the slightest concern about individuals or organizations we lost along the way. Nonetheless, MIM's influence at the moment is at its historical height.

The other organizations told us again and again to make questions one of voting and picking leaders. They said we were arrogant. Yet, when it came to the millions and billions of people, there either is a Western labor aristocracy as MIM says or there is not. There either is labor aristocracy collusion with the attacks on Islam as MIM said or there is not. It is not a persynality conflict. The fact that there are only a few allied people occupying MIM's political space is not proof that MIM is wrong. People who think that way have to be tossed from scientific organizations. They'll never be able to focus on substance in a fashion independent of imperialism.

The correct way to go about line production is to break with pragmatism, sectarianism and sizeism. The class and national structure comes first, the strategy and tactics second and third respectively. People who cannot get that much straight have to be tossed from vanguard parties as hopeless opportunists. The reason rational knowledge has to play the role it does will either be understood or not and we in the imperialist countries cannot afford those who are going to do whatever it takes to rally at least 50%+1 as what is needed as line. That and any species of thinking like that is inherently back-asswards opportunism.

MIM has followed a scientific method of line production. Now we are in position to be able to expose the invisible schism in the international communist movement and point to a potential cure for the separation of the body from the head. According to Osama Bin Laden, the reformers and revolutionaries among Islamic scholars end up in prison. "In normal circumstances, he says, Muslim scholars, jurists and clerics 'should be at the head of the ranks [of jihad], lead the action, and direct the march.'"(8) The other intellectuals end up bought to spout the line of the Arab monarchies. This further exacerbates the separation of the body from the head. In the West, this separation has existed so long that the head no longer recognizes its own body.

The international result can be summed up as follows:

To MIM's right are those labeling exploiters proletarians. MIM has spent decades now arguing with people incapable of ever specifying where in the world the 10% enemy lives. The reason is that in practice there is only 0.1% of the world as enemy or maybe 0% for these people attracted to Liberalism, anarchism and New Age ideas masquerading as Marxists. In practice, these chauvinists also believe that the Islamic countries are enemies while Euro-Amerikan females are paragons of virtue to be copied. MIM has now pitched all those with any connection to such trash.

Concentrated in the imperialist countries and among weak Third World organizations following them, those to our right include the traditional social- democrats and Mensheviks. Most organizations in the world calling themselves followers of Mao have confusion to MIM's right as well. We wish these organizations would abandon Marxism entirely and take up either social-democratic internationalism or outright Jacobin internationalism in solidarity with those countries still carrying out revolution against semi-feudalism.

There are almost no organizations with MIM who can identify even 10% of the world's people as enemy concretely speaking. There is almost no one in MIM's political space. Because the various white trash parties cannot really identify enemies correctly, the ultra-left casts a pox on all self-identified "Marxist" houses.

To MIM's nominal left are those saying that some nations' proletarians are exploiters and that some nations' minor exploiters are imperialists. According to Scheuer, the Islamists sometimes use the word "imperialist" and "missionary" interchangeably. To the ultra-left is where we find the body, and to the right is where we find contemplative materialism. There is some small hope that we will win over some individuals and organizations to our right, but not much hope as we have seen in 20+ years of struggle with people, many of whom have ended up as counter- intelligence trying to disrupt MIM's work. The main danger is the head, contemplative materialism, right opportunism: it is impossible for the imperialists to buy off the body, but they have already bought off the entirety of the organizations to MIM's right in the imperialist countries without much difficulty. MIM's lack of knowledge of Islam is typical of MIM's potential for rightist errors or deviations. MIM has spoken with dogshit rightists and only dogshit rightists for so long, there has to be a sinking suspicion that MIM can only be a degree less decadent than the morass it emerged from.

In criticism of the ultra-left, MIM would say that anti-militarist strategies among the proletariat only appear sometimes ineffective. We have to stick to these strategies even when opposing ethnicities seem quite chauvinist, if the countries involved are not imperialist. There are many problems among nationalities that cannot be solved without the centripetal force of a genuinely communist Soviet or caliphate. We should try to put the conflicts among proletarian nations on hold till the time a larger Soviet system can form and make people forget their old concerns and hatreds. The right to travel or seek business or a profession within a large nation makes irrelevant much of the world's intra-proletarian fighting. Pre-revolution fighting among ethnicities that hate each other will slow down the advance of revolution once it does occur.

The attractions of Trotskyism and Liberalism are the same among intellectuals of the Third World Islamic countries. For that matter, there are some supposed Maoists indistinguishable from CIA Liberals. These problems stem from the incorrect relationship between intellectuals and the exploited that has arisen along a fault line that few have identified. Perhaps only MIM has identified the true fault line. The international split in the working class that Lenin identified has taken cultural form, because intellectuals have allowed it to. Passive reflective types have claimed so-called science, what Marx derided as contemplative materialism, now best exemplified by Trotskyism. These contemplative materialists also exert dominating influence among those calling themselves followers of Stalin and Mao. As a result, the body, the exploited have taken up culturally Islamic forms of armed struggle and they are unaware of and sometimes even hostile to true Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. In the Mideast in particular, the body has a higher degree of scientific knowledge than the Trotskyist head of the Western so-called communist movement. The Taliban is much more scientific than the Spartacist League. We in the West are good at coming up with internally consistent ideologies that can keep our dreams afloat, but not so good in doing that and keeping an attachment to reality as good as the Taliban's. This is a sad state of affairs, again generated by uneven development and the resulting split in the international working class Lenin spoke of.

George Bush has transformed Iraq into a conventional battlefield for Islamic revolutionaries. As such, the Iraqi insurgents now have more experience battling imperialism than any people calling themselves "Maoist" except some aging veterans in Korea, Vietnam and China. We cannot dismiss this issue as "terrorism" anymore under conventional Maoist military doctrine. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the question is well beyond "terrorism," as strictly defined in military terms. Only arch-criminals pose the question this way in order to prevent the oppressed from taking up Mao as their own scientific military experience. Mao is much more the property of the oppressed Islamic people than the Western critics throwing around the term "terrorism." We say to the Islamic people, that Mao is theirs, not the property of their oppressors. At one point after 9/11, we had a report that Al Qaeda was down to 180 fighters.(9) In 2007 we heard the U.$. military saying it was killing 1500 Al Qaeda fighters a month in Iraq.(10)

The current writer understands neither the Bible nor the Koran yet. It takes work. Nonetheless, we call on the so-called "Maoists"--all of whom became "Maoist" after MIM--to recognize the real form that the split in the international working class is taking and that they and their organizations are in fact representatives of the philistine stream, the labor aristocracy stream. The absolute chaos created by the split in the working class between the real proletariat and the Western labor aristocracy has created an incorrect relationship between the body and the head--the whole reason for this essay. Not only did intellectuals end up disproportionately in the rich countries as one would expect, but when they ventured out of the ivory tower, they chose only to interact with the petty-bourgeoisie misidentified as a proletariat. Therefore, Western intellectuals had dual barriers to a grip on reality less deluded than the Taliban's--the ivory tower itself and the labor aristocracy of the "outside world."

The split in the international working class Lenin spoke of is not between small organizations in the West with no exploited masses to lead and other small organizations in the West in the tradition of Trotsky or Brezhnev or the Third World parties that ally with such. That is a white lie. The location of the split in the international working class is showing up most clearly in the question of why Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah formed instead of Maoist parties. When we see that the vast majority of organizations now calling themselves "Maoist" cannot tell exploitation when they see it, it's not hard to see how we ended up in the political situation we are now. "Marxism" is becoming another word for Liberalism and exploitation in the minds of the oppressed and exploited. The stench of the labor aristocracy is strong. Osama Bin Laden has said the following:

"The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government, yet time and again, polls show the American people support the policies of the elected Government. . . . This is why the American people are not innocent. The American people are active members in all these crimes."(11)

In a September 2007 video, Osama Bin Laden mentioned two of the "pillars" of Islam. The most important one is monotheism, the "witness to faith." Bin Laden adds the usual point that Judaism and Christianity are monotheisms included within Islam, that the God in each of these religions is the same God. Then he mentions zakat, the requirement to give donations of at least 2.5%, but he also talked about usury. The interpretation of zakat is not clear in Islam where there are mortgages and other forms of usury. Usually zakat has to be at least 2.5% of income calculated in a certain manner. According to Andrew Rippin, some radical Islamists insist only on the monotheism pillar.(12)

The implication of radical Islam with a focus on monotheism is the development of mental faculties to conceive of an overarching, all- powerful God--what we would call the power of abstraction and universality. The concept comes at the expense of polytheists of Hinduism and perhaps Buddhism and various other pre-monotheistic worships. One might think Hinduism is more easily built to support Liberalism, with its tolerance and the orderly roles of various gods, not to mention mixing of religious practices we see in India today. By comparison, Islam might be much simpler, with no priesthood in Islam's origins. All this is by way of what Sultan-Galiyev was dealing with when working as a Muslim.

One might be inclined to think that Sultan-Galiyevists would be more inclined to delusion than other communists, because Sultan-Galiyevists permit of God. This is something that has to be observed in practice. MIM has observed a great deal of idealism of the non-religious kind among Western intellectuals and alleged communists. In practice, dialectical materialism does not go over well with either secular or religious people. One needs to consider whether it is possible that the Sultan-Galiyevist wing of the communist movement is actually less idealist than the supposedly atheist wing. A reason why Sultan- Galiyevism might be less inclined to idealist errors is that it finds its practice among more combustible people, with a better, more healthy relationship between theory and practice, a better praxis. It's a question of geographic chance.

Maybe, maybe by focusing on monotheism, the "witness to faith" and "defensive jihad," which all Muslims are borderline as including as a sixth pillar of Islam, maybe Islam has more revolutionary potential than the various Trotskyist, neo-Trotskyist and crypto-Trotskyist doctrines combined. This is how we would suggest our comrades internationally approach this problem.

Perhaps in all comrades there is idealism, as defined in the Marxist philosophical sense, and that leads to errors. However, we need to look at the cost of not allowing of some idealism. First, in Arabic, there is no way to take up the national question as conceived by Stalin without the Koran. That's just how the language was put together historically, not to mention that the leading business on the Arabian peninsula for many years before oil was the religious pilgrim business. Secondly, we can try to import Mao on dialectics. Yet that will take time and the Islamic people already have the idea of external conditions and social revolution from their Saladin legend. It seems that the proper approach is to use Mao to reinforce what the Islamic people already know from their own culture and to raise up the "defensive jihad" to its universal level internationally. Again, the point is that there is no Marxism that is not concrete. It's one thing to teach Mao strictly from Mao's books and then it is another thing to guarantee comprehension. As MIM said, even among the Cultural Revolution-trained people of China, the comprehension of Das Kapital is on a questionable level. It is always a matter of what concepts are already present among people, what reference points of understanding. For whatever reason, Mao did not publish "Peking Review" in Arabic and if Mao could not do it, we have to suspect that we at MIM have our reasons for supporting Sultan-Galiyevism.

Of course there are Christian and Jewish Arabic peoples. To reach a large portion of masses though it is really analogous to a question of language. Today, there is the additional reinforcement that Russian settlers come from an imperialist country and the Chinese appear as Amerikkkan lackeys. Hence, transit points of discussion of universal principles come under suspicion as racist or national chauvinist, something that Islam has always disallowed. Not the West, not I$rael, not Russia and not China--so in our times the entry point of discussion has to be Sultan-Galiyev or Osama Bin Laden himself.

With disgust, we must point to the Western professoriat that knows nothing of Marxism except as a precursor to middle-class integrationist schemes of political correctness. Most of these professors are wildly more utopian than the average Taliban member.

Just to name one dogma obscuring Western intellectual vision, we should point to pseudo-feminist white nationalism. One has not pierced the white supremacist veil if one has not encountered resistance from pseudo-feminism. Once one really starts to shake the labor aristocracy in the West, the female oppressor--the bitch is already starting to think, "uh, oh, my turn is coming, what am I going to do? Agree on the labor aristocracy but not on gender? Or maybe neither? Or just listen to my Ipod?"

We actually have one organization that supposedly agrees with MIM that the principal contradiction globally is between oppressed nations and imperialism. Yet when it came time for March 8 2006, we found this organization and its criminal hangers-on basically saying the principal contradiction is the principal contradiction, except when it is necessary to give up fantasies about oppressor females. If requiring Iran's wimmin to be more like oppressor females is not part of the picture, these so-called communists get off the boat and abandon the principal contradiction. Thus, pseudo-feminism becomes an excuse to give up the principal contradiction, in direct opposition to the very definition of "principal contradiction." So often times we find that the labor aristocracy is at the front lines, and once we puncture that front line, the true last line of defense is the gender aristocracy prop of white nationalism. Here we will find white wimmin, Iranian-Amerikans and their admirers demand more gender privilege in Liberal forms, because the oppressor always prefers Liberalism. The point of Liberalism is distinction among individuals.

The form of white nationalism that Liberal pseudo-feminism takes is that criticism of the labor aristocracy is OK, but struggle against females is not allowed. Females are allowed to be petty-bourgeois, have things both ways, just because they are females. And so this becomes the last line of defense of white nationalism, and especially the petty-bourgeoisie inclined to vacillation. People afraid of the words "ho" and "bitch" need to be tossed out of the way.(13) Instead, try to raise such a struggle and one will find the utopian professoriat tossing you. Wearing a white sheet is only a quaint form of white nationalism: it is not the main kind and has not been for a couple generations. Ours is a philosophy of both struggle and feminism. That means wimmin can struggle and can be enemies--and they generally are enemies in the imperialist countries.

There is so little rebellion of any sort away from white nationalism in the Western imperialist countries, but if it arises in even the vaguest way from drunken or otherwise high lumpen in gangsta rap, we can be sure that the white nationalists will whip up a campaign against it. Their real agenda is political correctness--a strategy to integrate the oppressed and exploited with the imperialists. That is just the most recent way of uniting the oppressed to the oppressor or in other words, making the oppressed forget their oppression.

Because the supposed scientists (predominantly Western) were so far off as not to be able to identify who is exploited and who is not, the more scientifically inclined members of the proletariat took up Islam. That sounds like a contradiction, but it is not. It is simply an ironic and unhappy truth in a world that we can only vainly wish would be a little more straightforward. The Western bourgeoisie bought off the Western intellectuals and corrupted Marxism to the core, a fate Karl Marx did not deserve in death. There is still no substitute for the labor theory of value and dialectical materialism, but one would never know from the people claiming them in the West. This sort of result is inevitable when people with some sense of reality take up Islam while the most utopian people continue to take up Marxism.

Up to now, we have not fully identified the split in the international communist movement. We have preferred to force a scientific economic discussion of what the fault line has to be. The drawback of announcing the sociological and political truth is that opportunists--"hypocrites" in Islamic language--will flock to our banner once they see what they could not see before. Inducing the truth from a head-counting approach to politics is pragmatist opportunism and sizeism.

We have no inclination to florid language. Khruschev claimed to be a "salt of the earth" peasant, but he was a buffoon. For Khruschev to stand against a Mao or Zhou Enlai just by virtue of his upbringing is a joke. So, it is not our point to create an identity politics of the exploited, but it is simply reality that Islamic insurgents are less utopian on average than Western intellectuals including those calling themselves "Marxist." The ultimate underlying reason is that uneven development caused a split in the working class internationally. Those with more leisure time are disproportionately distributed to the West where they have occupations on the intellectual side of the division of labor and the gender aristocracy side of gender. The exploited including their most intellectual element have ended up disproportionately in the Islamic world. This has made our job as Marxists more difficult in a dialectical way. The first step in healing the communist movement is to recognize the invisible schism.

Notes:
1. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/sept112001/wtc091007.html
2. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20070930_Converts_to_Islam_playing_role_in_attacks.html
3. Micahel Scheeur, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005) p. 39.
Scheuer, 2005, p. 39.
4. Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006), p. xxi.
Scheuer, 2006, p. xxi.
5. "We still manifest an aversion to military casualties so intense that we have overestimated the impact our air power and military technology have made on al Qaeda and the Taliban. We have shown our might, but we have not inflicted it with full effect. . . . Simply put, we have failed utterly to kill enough Taliban or al Qaeda fighters."
Scheuer in Scheuer, 2006, p. 278.
6. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hjX0ZhdxLa-2ZtDQQbhUi3NrVdYQ;
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IJ20Df01.html
7. Thomas W. Lippman, Understanding Islam: An Introduction to the Muslim World (NY: Penguin, 1990), p. 59.
8. Scheuer, 2005, pp. 132, 151.
9. Scheuer, 2005, p. 67.
10. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071022/engelhardt
11. Scheuer, 2005, p. 157.
12. Andrew Rippin, Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, Vol. 2: The Contemporary Period (NY: Routledge, 1993), p. 135.
13. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/cong/languagetheory2004.html