Galloway "confident" MAB will join "Respect"

Submitted by martin on 8 December, 2003 - 3:18

By Sacha Ismail
Last Friday night, 5/12/03, George Galloway declared that he was "confident" that the Muslim Association of Britain would "come on board" the "Respect" Unity coalition.
It was at a meeting which Nick Clark and I attended, organised by the Muslim anti-war/"social justice" organisation Just Peace and the "young Muslim professionals' group" City Circle.
Why did we bother? Because the speakers were none other than George Galloway and French Islamist Tariq Ramadan (who caused such controversy when he spoke at the European Social Forum).
There were about 120-30 people there; overwhelmingly young Muslim people, plus six or seven SWPers. George Galloway used the platform to plug the Unity coalition; his speech included the following points of interest:
- He denounced Labour ministers who had voted for tuition fees and the abolition of student grants as "pulling up the ladder": despite the fact that he himself voted with them.
- He said that to be credible the left must oppose the "feudal monarchs and 99% of the vote generalissimos" who dominate the Middle East! (I restrained myself from shouting "Sir! I salute your strength, your courage. . .")
In response to a question from the floor about how revolutionary socialists and Islamists could agree on a joint political platform, he replied that everyone would "have to leave something at the door".
During the anti-war movement, when the AWL criticised the decision of the Stop the War Coalition to co-organise its demonstrations with the MAB, the SWP (plus the CPGB etc) argued that this was quite different from the illegitimate act of organising a joint electoral front with Islamists. Now the full logic of their political alliance with such people has become clear!
After Galloway had finished, Tariq Ramadan spoke at length; he was astonishingly rambling and incoherent, but the gist of his argument was as follows.
The anti-capitalist movement should include everyone who is against the current neo-liberal world order (it doesn't matter what your alternative is - feudal lords and revolutionary workers unite!); the problem with the left (particularly the French left, with their strong emphasis on secularism) is that it is "economically progressive, but culturally imperialist".
In other words, sections of the left dare to oppose both capitalist globalisation and more primitive forms of reaction in the name of working-class democracy and solidarity. Quelle horreur!
We distributed an English translation of the French leaflet distributed by the Feminist Collective for a Secular Alternative Globalisation at the ESF, which aims to make Ramadan's reactionary, Islamist politics clear. The organisers thought this was "disrespectful to the speaker" and asked us to stop; but the most hostile response we got was from the SWPers present.

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