As we have frequently noted here. An approving article about this phenomenon comes from Egypt: "Anti-globalists reach out to Islamists," by Eric Walberg in Al-Ahram Weekly, with thanks to LGF:
What is striking about this latest conference is the growing cooperation both within the Muslim world and between the anti-global left and Muslims. This should come as no surprise, considering the traditional focus of the left on defending victims of torture. Who are the biggest victims of torture in the world today? Of course, Muslims, primarily in Iraq and Palestine, but everywhere in the West, and just about in every country that is predominantly Muslim.The left realises this and is finally overcoming its traditional resistance to the cultural conservatism of Islam, and likewise Muslims are reaching out to the left -- clear examples are Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood's (MB) prominent role in this conference and Lebanon, where Hizbullah was prominent at a similar anti-imperialism conference last November in Beirut. Organised by Al-Karama (Dignity), Al-Ishtirakyin Al-Sawryin (Socialist Revolutionary Party), Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood) and Al-'Amal (Labour), and held at the Egyptian Press Syndicate, the conference attracted close to 600 participants and observers from around the world, including a delegation of 80 South Koreans and 20 Canadians.
But what can we make of the overwhelming prominence at the conference of the MB and their very professional brochures and CDs, well translated into English? One pamphlet quotes MB deputy Khairat El-Shater assuring the reader "No need to be afraid of us" and "We do not promote an anti- Western agenda". Certainly we can condemn the military tribunals where 40 prominent MB members are being tried under emergency laws, in violation of the constitution. Belal Diaa Farahat, a business student at the American University of Cairo told Al-Ahram Weekly how his father Diaaeddin Farahat, a prominent businessman, was arrested along with 39 others "merely because he was successful and a member of the MB." After three months in prison and acquittal in a civil court, these men were re-arrested and will face a military tribunal next week.
Ahmed Shawqi, a student activist at Al-Azhar, said that all the delegates at the conference were unanimous in condemning the tribunals. Delegates from London, Canada and Greece promised to demonstrate, and organise petitions to protest against the military tribunals and invite MB representatives on speaking tours in order to explain their position. Shawqi added, however, that an important aspect of the MB's platform is not to work against Egypt in its international relations. In a sense, the Brotherhood "stole the show" at the conference, with their very real oppression fitting the international delegates' human rights agenda. Coincidence or act of God?
The key forum at the conference: "bridge building between the left and Islam" focussed on re-evaluating the relations of the left and the Islamists, as well as on practical ways to increase cooperation.
Mohamed Ghozlan, an MB Al-Azhar student activist, described the underlying misunderstanding: "the left thought Islam was just an anachronism, while Muslims accused the left of trying to destroy their way of life. However, with both sides being repressed by dictatorship, we are able to cooperate now on the basis of human rights and the fight against the war in Iraq and globalisation. Such Latin American leaders as Hugo Chavez have accelerated the cooperation, reaching out to the Muslim resistance." He explained the greater repression of Muslim than leftists in Egypt to be due to the fact that "the government sees us as the greater threat to it."
Read it all.
The ironic part is that the left have more to lose under Islamic law than the right.
...I think it has always been there...only now it is becoming openly apparent....
....The dhimmicrats and leftists never met a terrorist they did not like....
The far left at its core hates Christianity. Many on the left see in islam a willing and active partner in its battle to marginalize Christians.
Even on this website where everyone sees the dangers of islam, potshots are still taken at the Christian faith.
Many Liberal Christians deny the authentic teachings of their faith (whether Protestant or Catholic) and see in islam an "oppressed" people who should not be challenged on the tenants of their faith and should not be converted because of misguided liberal PC (imperialism, multi-culturalism, etc.).
The alliance between the left and islam will continue to grow....
george galloway's "respect" party is a great example of an extreme left wing party merging with members of radical islam, an uneasy alliance.
"The far left at its core hates Christianity."
.....100%.......
Meanwhile, the Left in the Muslim world (yes, Virginia, there are home-grown Arabic and Persian Socialists and Communists) is, according to Amir Taheri, feeling increasingly betrayed by the Western Left and acting increasingly pro-American. Same old story - they know which devil is blacker.
The lies here are astounding. Western leftists are "repressed by dictatorship"? The MB is *not* anti-Western? The MB fights against globalization? Since when, I thought they wanted Islam to rule the globe.
It's a matter of collectivism, not conservativism. The right are individualists. Both the left and the islamists are collectivists.
That could be true, gozz, but I think the greater common denominator is expressed by none other than the old axiom that The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend.
It could be as simple as that.
This axiom also explains why some survivalist, Ruby Ridge-types in the US, who also hate the US government as oppressive, parrot the 9/11 conspiracy lie, which finds them aligning themselves with the Left and with the islamists.
What do the left and Muslim immigrants have in common? They both target the tax base that feeds them through the democratic process. This game won’t last another decade.
Head of British Navy, Admiral Band, praises conduct of hostages: ‘considerable dignity and a lot of courage’. British interdiction in Gulf ‘suspended’.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/48571.html
FOX News: New US citizens may be allowed to bring in hundreds of relatives. Three office workers shot in Detroit (to keep things fair for our sensitive British friends).
37 trillion in unfunded liabilities. My dad grew up with chickens, I love the stories about how they run around without a head. My mom ate rabbit and squirrel. This season I’m going to grow a really big garden. Maybe figure out how to build a chicken coup. How much land do you need to raise pigs?
Well, duh!
Now if only this appeared in an American newspaper.
One thing I’m not going to miss is the plus-size actress on kids PBS who just taught me how to greet others in Arabic. A good episode of Curious George though (I do have a job).
This is the Left at its most childish and naive. Lazy, ill-informed, simplistic thinking which goes something like this: "The Islamists hate the West. We hate the West. Therefore we support the Islamists."
When I explain to the leftists that I meet about the realities of Islamic rule, and how it oppresses religious and sexual minorities in Iran, in Pakistan, in the PA areas, and all over the Islamic world, they shrug.
These blinkered people, who, whenever they can, loudly and publicly proclaim their support for gay rights, feminism, equality, freedom of speech, and freedom of belief, are aligning themselves with an ideology that denies - often by extreme violence - all of these ideals.
They remind me of the traditional conservatives who, in Weimar Germany, believed that they could piggyback on Hitler's popularity and mass appeal, and then quietly ease the funny little man aside once they were in power. In reality, they ended up either fully-fledged Nazi Party members or else in the camps with the rest of his opponents.
To see the truth about how leftists fare under Islamic rule, one only has to look at Iran. Amil Imani, the Iranian-born, US-resident pro-democracy activist, remembering the socialists and trade unionists who had supported the 1979 Revolution, only to be imprisoned, exiled or killed when the mullahs took control, once wrote a stark warning for the West:
"The lesson is clear. Beware of the Useful Idiots who live in liberal democracies. Knowingly or unknowingly, they serve as the greatest volunteer and effective soldiers of Islam. They pave the way for the advancement of Islam and they will assuredly be among the very first victims of Islam as soon as it assumes power."
So when are Abdullah and Naseem going to appear on "The View?" Rosie should love both of them, but I recommend that Abdullah keep his islamic hatred of gays to himself. No big deal though, they can all spend the time with all those warm and fuzzy thoughts of the evils of Christianity.
Perfect example of Blair's law!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blair's+law
If only the Left in dar-ul-Islam were to hate Islam more than they hate Western imperialism...
The third world is nowadays finding itself in hate, racism, and Islam. And meanwhile the US Democratic Party has itself moved leftwards and merged with Islam as it continues to take money from the US mosques and make an ever-bigger travesty of liberal democracy and western civilization with its current (and ridiculous) political platforms.
What a revolting state our planet is in. And, alas, no ideology however militant can EVER get the world out of this or any other sort of mess. But neither the leftists or the developing nations are apparently able to see this.
José Bové, the quasi-anarchist anti-globalist Leftist who gained fame by leading the partial bulldozing (with a tractor from his farm) of a McDonald's in southern France a few years back has also participated in pro-Islamic seminars and protests over the years.
The French Muslim website "Oumma.com" this past February wrote a piece supporting José Bové for President of France, on the basis they say that he represents an "anti-racist Left" (une gauche "antiraciste") and that he has gone on record in supporting concrete measures to help the "grievances" of all those "youths" in the Paris and outlying ghettos who have been rioting for years.
I would point out that "anti-globalism" is not confined to the Left; there is an amorphous current of disaffected and alienated people in the "Center" and Right who have also been affected by this curious anxiety that, in turn, emanates out of neo-Gnosticism.
This anxiety is not new: as Eric Voegelin points out, major dislocations of Western (i.e., Mediterranean and Middle Eastern at the time) societies began in earnest with the "Ecumenic Age" beginning with Alexander the Great's conquest and increasing with the rise of the Roman Empire, and these major dislocations were not only personal, material, social and political, but had spiritual repercussions as well, reflecting and expressed by a bewildering explosion of syncretistic cults, religions and philosophies.
Gnosticism was one of the myriad ways of coping, by articulating a myth that expressed a key to salvation through escaping the painful dislocations of life under the pressures exerted on so many peoples by the vastly impersonal forces of ecumenic Empire-building and Empire-dissolutions -- by means of a radical escape from the Cosmos altogether (usually conceived as occurring after death, for those special few who have found the "knowledge" or gnosis of their "true" origin and destination, far away from the evil mess of this life).
And, as Voegelin often said, the Ecumenic Age is still with us. Since the 19th century -- and increasing in intensity with each passing generation -- it has become literally global. And Gnosticism never vanished from the West, but only went underground during medieval Christendom, later to re-emerge with the Protestant Reformation and subsequent radicalization and secularization of the West with the Age of Revolution (beginning with the French Revolution of 1789). A neo-Gnosticism -- in various amorphous manifestations of varying degrees of coherence -- is one major sociopolitico-psychological force today, and expresses the search, more or less incoherently, for ways to assuage the anxiety of the new Ecumenic Imperialism of "Globalism" by which the individual mythopoetically enhances, with conceptions of sinister cabals of powerful evil groups of one sort or another, his existential angst and anomie of being a mere pawn to greater forces, thus melodramatically magnifying normal personal problems and setbacks that occur in all societies and at all times in history (losing your car, your job, your girlfriend, etc.) and endowing them with some special meaning and significance -- one's very victimization becomes one's vehicle for recovering one's dignity, by constructing a gigantic Bogey-Man or Cabal of Bogey-Men who are Out To Get You (and All Us Ordinary Folks).
I have seen hints and signs of it creep into various comments at Jihad Watch for years among otherwise anti-Islamic posters who from other statements they make do not seem to be Leftists.
Not for the first time in history, two sides make a political alliance, with the express intention of betraying and destroying the other when it's expedient. The only question is who kills first.
My money's on the Muslims, they have ferocity on their side. The left will still be too busy slapping themselves on the back when the bad news hits.
Whoever wins a free press will be a no, no. Who'd want someone constantly pointing out the difference between rhetoric and reality?
I look forward to a comment on this phenomenon from Dinesh D'Souza, who with his apologist mentor Mustafa Akyol (can a well-paid trip to Turkey be far behind?) is pushing the "traditional Muslims" and "American conservatives" have so much in common, can form a natural alliance against the bad old Infidel left and the bad old "extremists" who have been so busy hijacking the perfectly good religion of Islam.
In fact, I will wait for his comment on this piece. And within the day, if he decides to pass over the story in silence, the fair-minded will agree that he deserves one last tribute.
Read it all.
I don't know how much more I can take.
islam and the left have much in common. They both idolize a dead murderer. One is called che, the other mahomet.
both islam and the left are collectivist systmes based on the exploitation of productive elements in favor of those who for whatever reason refuse to be or cannot be productive for themselves.
Both islam and socialism are institutionalized destroyers of productivity.
From the article describing this rally of protest and hate directed at the Americans:
"Among the snapping flags and giant banners, leaflets fluttered to earth, exhorting the marchers in chants of 'Yes, Yes to Iraq' and 'Yes, Yes to Muqtada. Occupiers should leave Iraq.'
Salah al-Obaydi, a senior official in al-Sadr's Najaf organization, called the rally a 'call for liberation. We're hoping that by next year's anniversary, we will be an independent and liberated Iraq with full sovereignty.'
And the head of al-Sadr's parliamentary bloc, Nassar al-Rubaie, blasted the U.S. presence as an affront to 'the dignity of the Iraqi people. After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded.'
A key Washington official saw it differently.
'Iraq, four years on, is now a place where people can freely gather and express their opinions,' Gordon Johndroe, the National Security Council spokesman, said aboard Air Force One. 'And while we have much more progress ahead of us — the United States, the coalition and Iraqis have much more to do — this is a country that has come a long way from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.'
Col. Steven Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman and aide to Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, praised the peaceful demonstration and said Iraqis 'could not have done this four years ago.'
Gorden Johndroe, a "key Washington official," expresses his delight that Iraq "is now a place where peple can freely gather and express their opinions" even if those opinions consist of burning American flags and screaming hatred at the Americans. Remember, those Americans have so far spent on rescuing Iraq from Iraq, and the Shi'a Arabs and Kurds in particular from the despotism of Saddam Hussein, an effort that so far has required American spending (in past, present, and future committed costs) of $880 billion dollars, that is, more than the total cost of all American wars in the past, save World War II, put together, and lost 2,375 men and had nearly 25,000 seriously wounded, in order to rescue the very people who were the first victims of the previous regime, and who came out not to express gratitude for their new-found ability to exercise free speech, but to use the occasion to express their rage against, their hatred for, the Americans who allowed them to do what "Col. Steve Boylan, U.S. military spokesman and aide to Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq" noted they "could not have done...four years ago."
Pollyannas, in Washington and in Baghdad, missing the point. Dumb, or just pretending? It hardly matters.
"Radical Chic and Mau Mau-ing the Flak Catchers" lampooned this self-loathing, and yet paradoxically sublimely-smug folly nicely.
The extreme leftists think that they can outwit the simpleton Islamofascists and use them to destroy the one traget they both agree upon: that ole evil US war-making machine, without becoming the next dish, themselves, on the grim menu of intolerant Islamic Imperialism.
As the proverb goes:
He, who upon the tiger would ride,
Shall soon find himself residing inside.
The Collusion between left wing jopurnalists and Islamist has been the subject of reams of exposure and none more so than the despicable treachery of BBC ME anchor men.
So it was inevitable that a story like this would emerge at some point.
'Palestinian security forces are investigating the possibility that missing BBC correspondent Alan Johnston staged his own kidnapping, an Arab newspaper reported Monday.
According to London-based Arab language newspaper, Al-Hayat, Johnston staged his capture by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip after he received a notice from his superiors that he would be fired in the near future'.
from the jerusalempost,com
Ironically the post-war division of Germany represented this ideological divide within all Western Nations.
Of course theere were many Leftits in West Germany and there were many Freedom-lovers in the East.
I would venture a guess their numbers were somewhat reciprocal.
While the Freedom-lovers of the East would risk life and limb to get to the West.. tthe Western Communists had no inclination to make the ardous trek Eastward. They were much too busy enjoying the benefits pf Western "capitalism". And they really wished to subjugate all to their form of government.
But what if we'd exchanged all our West-German Lefties for all the Freedom-Lovers of the East?
Now imagine all Western LAnds were divided among these lines?
I, for one would rather live in a smaller BUT FREE territory.. FREE of Lesftists and their missionary agenda.
So if these Lefies wished to be UN-observant and habve all the 'emmeeegrants' and 'refugees' and islamists they care so much about - LET THEM! In THEIR part of the former Nation!
We should have a referendum in all Westen Lands.. and count the votes!
Then divvy up the lands accorsding to percentages!!
That way we Freedom-lovers could be SPARED the presence of moslem Freedom-haters in our lands!
Lety the LEFT live with that evil spawn they are unleashing upon us all!!!
I'd be happy with only West Germany if it were FREE from islam!!!!
I bet more than a few Frenchmena dn others would think the same!!
Let's let the LEFT live with their islamic masters. But leave US out of it!!!
I am TIRED of them dragging all of us down!!!
We need NEW THINKING!!!
We can form a union with Free Poland and France and Free Ityaly and so on..
And no food aid once the shit hits the fan which it inevitably will!!
Let the LEft suffer the consequences of their idiocies!!!!
I am SICK and TIRED of having to suffer for the vain indulgences of the LEFT!!!!!
In the case of the Caliphate Muslims, they see much more clearly than westerners can that co-existence is not a possibility. Even if they wished it, which some of them might, it has to be clear to them that the vitality, openness and power of the west will eventually cause their totalitarian controls to disintegrate. This is why they feel humiliated. They know that the simple fact of our existence is fatal to them. Or theirs fatal to us.
The left feels kinship with them because they share that same doomed feeling of futility and humiliation. The Modern Left knows that with the fall of the Soviet Union, the Capitalization of China, successful modernization of India, Mexico and much of the old Soviet block and the defection of the best minds (Hitchens, Podhertz, Kristol, et al) they are no longer the “Modern Left”, they are merely “What’s Left”. It has never been more apparent that their ideas are mawkish, cheap and unworkable.
Both the left(overs) and the Caliphate Muslims are compelled to destroy us out of their envy, stubbornness and hurt pride. We don’t humiliate them- they humiliate themselves and that infuriates them.
This is not to say that the battle is won, far from it. If we cannot wake up our fellow westerners who have been put to sleep by the excess of power and safety that we have had since WWII, we can lose.
We need to stop getting into futile shouting matches with the progressives and socialists and find ways to talk meaningfully to the parts of the liberal left and center that is as yet unaware of the two monstrous evils at the gate. Our survival depends on it.