Here's an idea: instead of relentlessly trying to organize your workplace or college campus into socialism, why not agitate leftists to mass convert to Islam, go into the mosques, and change Islamic theology from the inside-out in order to promote genuine socialism and turn all these would-be jihadis into radical leftists? Shia Islam, in particular, has a history of promoting social justice as one of its pilars and socialistic economics.
Realize no one in the Middle East or North Africa is going to give up their relationship to Allah even if it's for the sake of fully-automated luxury communism. You can't promote a politic entirely rooted in hard materialism without any aspect of spirituality. There's a reason why the MENA turned away from secularism after the Iranian Revolution did what Nasser and secular Ba'athism could never do. Also, Sufi Islam promotes feminism and egalitarianism; they'd probably go for something very close to anarchism.
One of the five fundamental pillars of Islam is a tax(explicitly a tax not charity or other bullshit) on accumulated wealth. Good luck with turning this into socialism.
Blake Williams
That's only for Sunnis. Shias have something more in-line with a property tax which actually goes after the rich rather than everyone.
Owen Wood
US backing of the Council of the Islamic Revolution? Operation Cyclone? Western insulation of the Sauds who chose to acquiesce to the cultural demands of wahabists after the seizure of the Grand Mosque?
Nathan Brown
So only 85-90% of all living Muslims. Cool.
Jace Bennett
You can't reduce it all to US imperialism. For example, Hamas and Hezbollah and even the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood win supporters through charity work (all Islamic parties have to give anything from 10-12% of their money away in charity).
Muhammad loved the poor but never the rich.
Eli Jackson
Only reason why Sunnism is so big is because of all the Saudi money flowing around. If Iran became the hegemon of the MENA Shia Islam would be growing expidentially.
Ryder Cruz
Muhammad was a polygamist slave-owning merchant warlord.
Eli Rivera
So what?
Wyatt Young
Yeah. We are just going to convert a billion Muslims to another faith and then to communism. What a great plan.
James Baker
So it's problematic to support a reactionary ideology that regards this person as the timeless role model that has to be emulated.
Lucas Thompson
Why not combine the two? Shia Islam has an entire history of producing socialist thought. And again, NO ONE is going to abandon their religion for the sake of communism, an ideology they don't even see as being organic to them or their culture.
Asher Morales
Well Muhammad was also very compassionate to the poor and advocated social welfare when others of his day did not. Also, prophets themselves are not perfect, only God is.
Samuel Smith
But they are going to abandon it for another one? You are genuinely crazy, haha.
Matthew Carter
Unironically fucking kill yourself. People like you need to be shot asap
Hudson Smith
Hi Jason.
Bentley Green
Oh I see. This obviously negates all of his misdeeds.
Historical relativism originated in Western thought that is not shared by a billion Muslims on this planet.
Josiah Roberts
Education. Sunni doctrine is more full of holes than swiss cheese.
David Jackson
What do you mean? The Qur'an is very similar to DiaMat in that it describes historical struggle.
Asher Roberts
And you can't reduce it to some immutable religious characteristic to the people of the region.
Carson Hughes
Stop looking at Islam as if it's a monolith. Islamic doctrine and theology varies greatly from sect to sect, school to school. It's not a pest which needs to be wiped out, but a potential springboard for new opportunities within socialism.
Alexander Ross
Are you dumb? The Quran and the prophet are considered to be timeless by the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world. They are not considered to be historical products of a certain agem i.e the Bronze age. By saying 'well the prophet had some faults' is already adopting a historical perspective that is grounded in Western thinking. This view is not shared by the overwhelming majority of Muslims on this planet.
Joseph Williams
I didn't say anything of the sort. Stop putting words in my mouth.
Andrew Wright
Overwhelming majority doesn't mean all of them. There are plenty of Muslims who take an entirely historicist view of their prophets.
Camden Myers
A small westernized elite in Muslim countries and within the diaspora that doesn't even amount to a full percent.
Samuel Rodriguez
Good luck trying to get 1.8 billion people to give up their religion.
Lincoln Wilson
The Chinese send their regards.
Chase Myers
Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism are not Islam. You don't need to believe in God for the former three, for the latter you do.
Luis Gutierrez
I'm confused. Are you arguing for or against Islam's compatibility with socialism? Because now you are doing the latter.
Lincoln Watson
So shouldn't we convert all Muslims to Confucianism then?
Andrew Lee
Literally the same thing as
Xavier Phillips
ITT: delusions
I was raised Muslim and can confirm Islam is an absolutist ideology. Taking away things Allah has permitted or permitting things Allah forbids isn't allowed.
You linked to an article by Hakim Bey. Realize no one would accept this guy as a Muslim at all. He admits to committing a range of things which would get him killed in a true Islamic State namely shirk, fornication, homosexuality, treason (it's against the law to be an anarchist), etc. Perennialist Sufis in the west are way different from Sufis in the Middle East.
Chase Evans
The interviewer is Muslim. Obviously PLW was Muslim enough to have lived freely in the Islamic World.
Isaac Myers
Mao appealed to Chinese culture. Socialist groups in Latin America appeal to culture. African socialists appeal to their indigenous cultures. There's nothing wrong with doing this in fact you have to do it in order to be pragmatic.
Gavin Murphy
And all those movements ended horribly, for the people at least, Mao was bretty gud he just did a horrible job of setting things up.
Ryder Hughes
Which sect? Sunni or Shia? Also you don't speak for all Muslims. Human experience is highly limited in regards to the amount of truth it can tell us.
Gavin Smith
Stop trying to reconcile your spooks with socialism.
Sufism is irrelevant wanking material of Western ivory tower dwellers.
Carter Collins
All Sufism? Also, your anti-intellectualism is showing.
Owen Brooks
Sufism itself is literally an invention by Western intellectuals and orientalists like you.
Luke Taylor
Sufis were the original religious rebels, basically egoist anarchists centuries before egoist anarchism was a thing. They would reject much of the dogma and break Islamic Law in private without getting caught. It fuels an anti-authoritarian mentality and the willingness to shake off all spooks. youtube.com/watch?v=CO-xxJIsw34
Explain. Also, assuming your statement is true, it would mean that there was a time in Islam's history where it permitted such unorthodox behaviors and rituals.
Kevin Evans
Sufism was a huge influence on the Muslim Brotherhood.
Carson Johnson
Sufism doesn't really exist. It's like the Western concept of Ninjas. It's some romantic notion of Western intellectuals that was fabricated and has never existed historically. Read a fucking book or two.
Eli Powell
[Citation needed]
Also, WHICH Sufis?
Daniel Brooks
Good one.
Dominic Kelly
They will do as they're fucking told, or regret it.
Jonathan Perry
Good one.
Thomas Turner
Yup.
Dylan Stewart
Worked for east Germany 0.0% religious people in the
Brody Taylor
How do you know they were atheists? How do you know they weren't secretly religious?
State Atheism is the secular equivalent of the Inquisition.
Jaxson Martin
If you can't turn workers to socialism, you won't turn religious zealots. Now fuck off to /islam/.
Josiah Gonzalez
Eat shit.
Nicholas Johnson
Well, what are they? You think they became Buddhists? What's wrong with a secular inquisition?
The truth is that you can't be revolutionary in one sphere and then be reformist in the other one. You have to be revolutionary in both.
Jace Green
Hoxha was a Sufi in his youth. Don't you think Sufi doctrine inspired him to become a communist?
Jaxon Parker
See:
Levi Reed
No. All worthwhile leftists renounce religion entirely.
Owen Thompson
Every adherent to religion is religious first and a socialist second.
Jose Hall
Yeah, and the ninjas were the bravest and most cunning warriors of feudal Japan. Please stop perpetuating this dubious and ahistorical nonsense.
Oliver Harris
Explain how Sufism is a "western invention". To my knowledge, Sufism was all over the MENA, some of the greatest Islamic scholars such as al-Ghazali were Sufis, and Sufis have a very long history of esoteric doctrine which sets them apart from dogmatic, orthodox Islam.
Dylan Hernandez
Sufism came into being, not by Islamic texts or Sufis themselves or whatever but by British Orientalists who wanted to create an artificial divide between what they found attractive in Islamic civilisation (i.e. Islamic spirituality) and the negative stereotypes that were present in Britain about Islam at that time. These British orientalists, therefore, fabricated a divide that was previously non-existent.
This is a generalization. Yes, British orientalists may have written about a divide, but it still doesn't mean Sufis follow orthodox Islam.
Nathaniel Brown
For ex: read Rumi's poems were he openly talks about sex, wine-drinking, and his love for all religions.
Joseph Hernandez
The Bektashis use images of Hoxha in their temples…
Ayden Watson
Go away, Saudi Arabia. We're not going to promote your terroristic ideology and put bags over women's heads in the name of socialsm.
Isaiah Myers
Wrong type of Islam, bro. I'm talking about Shia.
Luke Harris
in their bunker shaped temples
Anthony Smith
Just like how Russian nationalists combine Soviet and Tsarist imagery.
Luke Collins
sufism is irrationalism, therefore there's no problem
Easton Sanders
"Irrationalism" is a stupid concept. How do you justify irrational behaviors? Either with rationalism or with feels over reals.
Gabriel Evans
There are salafi Sufis. Muslim Brotherhood was founded by Sufis and Sufis have been jihad preachers in the caucus and Central Asia.
Ryan Brooks
Sauce?
David Walker
Sufism isn't a fucking monolith.
Anthony Lee
Yes Hakim Bey the white man is the biggest expert on Islam.
I grew up Sunni but Shias aren't much different in terms of what they consider blasphemy, shirk, etc. Bey would have been severely punished under shariah if he was caught doing any of the things he's been open about doing.
Pro tip: Islam isn't something you can just modify to your liking.
Eli Allen
Yes it is, elites do it all the time. You're close to mystifying Islam if you ascribe an immutable essential quality to it.
Angel Johnson
Muhammad was a monogamist throughout most of his life, he only became a polygamist for political reasons, in order to unify the various Arabian tribes and clans. Also Muhammad discouraged Muslim men to marry more than one wife and he legally limited polygamy up to four wives, with the husband being obligated by law to treat all of his wives equally and his wives having to agree to him marrying another wife.
Nothing wrong with enslaving tribalists that refuse to unify into a community based on non-tribal unity. Also enslaving your conquered enemies was standard procedure in the ancient world, everyone did that way before Muhammad was born.
1. What's wrong with being a merchant? Products aren't going to transport by themselves. 2. He ceased to be a merchant after becoming a socio-religious activist, he became a "warlord"/military leader after the Elite of Mecca, the Quraysh (his own tribe), persecuted him and his followers. 3. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Makhno, Mao and Che Guevara were also warlords. Don't be a hypocrite.
Wyatt Moore
...
Robert Miller
PLW studied with Sufi mystics in Iran and traveled several places in the Middle East and South Asia. He's met with syncrotist Shias in India who combine Sufism with Hinduism and yet are still regarded as Muslims by other Muslims. He is absolutely an expert in Islam.
Jason Price
Read what OP is trying to do: entryism into a religion they obviously know nothing about just for the sake of political recruitment.
No devoted Muslim will rely on secular philosophy like Marxism or anarchism for the sake of becoming a better Muslim. Al-Ghazali banned non-Islamic philosophy for this reason.
Pick one.
The "Sufism" of Hakim Bey, Rene Guenon, Titus Burkhardt, Frithjof Schuon, Martin Lings, and other western perennialists is not at all what Sufism is in the Muslim World. "All religions are true, Sufism is just the glue" has zero scholarly backing from real Islamic scholars. Rumi has been heavily whitewashed by western lit critics, he was just not some Perennialist new ager like the people I listed.
Read a fucking book.
James Fisher
...
Brody Price
Sure, but you don't go for the devout muslims. There are plenty of hangers on unschooled in the finer points of it all. In that Islam is like any religion. Really devout people of almost any religious belief can only ever be sidelined (preferable) or eliminated in the long run, there is no point in thinking up ways of appealing to them.
Christian Powell
You're proving my point. Orthodox Islam and Marxism will never mix. If devout Muslims truly believed their faith was socialist then they'd be promoting socialism over an 8th century Arabian economy.
Benjamin Bell
we already tried that
Nolan Sullivan
shutup op, you are an idiot
Jacob Thomas
...
Jayden Jones
So you leftists will become Dönmeh in order to promote 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧socialism🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
Delightfully devilish OP
Andrew Myers
...
Brody Howard
Islamic Gommunism is real, with jinns instead of spooks
Jordan Turner
Communism is an ideology for european countries and countries which were built by europeans, like, USA, Australia and Chile.
Leave the muslims be and they will stop seeing "the west" as the enemy and will proceed afterwards to have their very own 30 years war over which islam interpretation is the correct one :D