Western Islamophobia – the Left, the Neoliberals, the Neocons, the Christians, the Libertarians – All on the very same Page

With very rare exceptions among libertarian bloggers like Michael Rivero, Xymphora (and here) and Moon of Alabama, when it comes to the Iran elections, everyone else, even Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com, is on the same level: Ahmadinejad´s victory was a “blatant fraud”.

When the issue of Iran is at play, logic and objectivity goes down the drains.

Let´s look at one undisputed fact: the elections had an unusually high voter turnout (84%). Western media and bloggers tell us, this would have favored Mousavi.

What kind of logic is that?

In all elections everywhere in the world the people most likely to vote are the middle class, the educated and the priviliged. Many of the poor and less-educated people stay home. They believe their votes don´t count anyway – those powerful “up there” do what they want, no matter what.

When there is a low voter turnout the candidates with their power-base among the middle classes and above will have an advantage. If, however, the voter turn-out is high, this would suggest also a high turn-out of the lower classes. A candidate with a power-base among those classes would be favored by this.

Ahmadinejad´s base is mainly rural poor and religious or urban poor and religious. The majority of Iranians are still religious and rural or urban poor. Under these conditions a Mousavi victory would have been highly unlikely.

The reaction of the mainline media and their support for Mousavi´s claim is not at all surprising, it´s a blatant and unconcealed effort to once again destabilize Iran, encouraging violent uprisings, not so different from what happened in the past to a certain Mohammed Mosaddeq and of course in line with the CIA sponsering of terrorist groups who have been very active in the last weeks before the elections.

The motives of the alternatives are another matter, they are more moved by emotionally ingrained ideology, plain old Islamophobia.

For Christians the motives of Islamophobia might be an- often even unacknowledged- but historically founded religious intolerance and superiority complex. (b.t.w. I´m a Christian myself, I can see the attitude, and I don´t like it).

For left-wing Progressives and Libertarians the reasons lie in a general hostility towards religion and an unreflected loyalty to modern day feminism.

Marx has called religion “Opium for the people” and his followers especially in the Soviet Union and China thought they needed to fight a special “anti-drug war” causing literally millions of deaths. Fighting religion was one of their ways of creating the “New Communist Man”, a reeducation program which they promised would lead from a state-controlled authoritarian socialism to a no-state libertarian communism. It didn´t work.

Modern day Progressives are less doctrinal and a bit more tolerant, as is shown by occasional alliances with left-wing Catholic groups in South America. They reserve their anti-religious hostility mainly for Islam. Feminism is the driving factor in this now, and there they join hands with left- and right-wing  libertarians.

While Marx believed that women´s rights would automatically improve together with the rights of the working classes, modern-day lefties allied with liberal feminists have now adopted the doctrine, that the struggle for women´s rights and against a patriarchal system must be fought independently from the struggle for social justice, but is still a vital part of the left´s ideology.

This doctrinal take on the matter of women´s rights makes for enormous contradictions in the attitude of the western Left to the Islamic world. We now have western left-wing Progressives supporting neoliberal often ultra-rich politicians, – whose wives, daughters and other female relatives are the back-bone of the women´s liberation movement – in the Middle East, while denouncing the more social justice minded as reactionary hard-liners. (Third world lefties do not have this kind of problem with Islam, as the attitude of the Venezuelan Hugo Chavez  and the Bolivian Evo Morales towards Mahmoud Ahmadinejad show quite plainly.)

In my opinion the Left should at least consider to get their priorities straight. For in this case Marx was indeed right, women who are struggling for their everyday survival together with their man-folk just don´t have the strength and power to struggle for equal rights against them. Social justice or the rise to at least moderate economic security must come first, women´s rights will follow. We can see the same pattern in environmentalism. Only in countries where the majority enjoys middle class economic security, there are large grass-root movements calling for the protection of forests or wild-life. Poor people just don´t have the time or mind to care for environmental matters unless it directly endangers their survival as in the pollution of their agricultural lands, the poisoning of their breathing air or drinking water.

As for Libertarians the opposition to a theocratic minded Islam is quite natural. Secularism or at least a strict division between church and state is part of libertarian culture. However while this concept is an integral part of our western culture and our democratic history, for the people of the Middle East it looks quite differently. For them western secular culture has so far only come with the additional baggage of western financial imperialism, a take-over of land and resources often with the additional help of military operation or covert war-fare by destabilization efforts. In the eyes of many Middle-Easterners the interests of the majority population to live independently and in dignity, allowing them to profit from their own´s countries resources can only be achieved or protected by political Islam.

In my opinion the people of developing countries should have the right to make their own choices in line with their own culture and history, develop their own way towards economic and social progress without self-righteous western interference. And do I have to remind you that on the democracy and human right level we in the West haven´t been doing so well lately either.

And as a P.S. on the situation of women´s rights in Iran: the admittance of female students at Iranian universities lies by about 60% (meaning only 40% males). This is surely higher than anywhere in the Middle East and possibly anywhere in the world. Female literacy rate of young women in Iran has risen to near 100% after the islamic revolution and Iranian female scientiests and inventors have received many international prices.

Well educated and economically independent women have ever increasing opportunities to achieve more equal rights by their own power. They do not need western money and interference. Indeed western support for Iranian feminism is counter-productive since it makes their organisations look like western imperial stooges.

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