Why Muslims resort to violence and not to left-wing politics to express Islam

Why Muslims resort to violence

and not to left-wing politics

to express Islam

It is a matter of custom that the concept of “right”  among Muslims is associated with good, and that of “left” with evil. The danger is that this is not confined to a purely religious register (as the concept is of religious extraction), but it has somehow spread into the political register.

In modern-era politics, however, left-wing has always meant good; it is activism opposed to oppression and repression, to mercantilism and winged liberalism, to terror and despotism, and so on. Likewise, right-wing still indicates you are more of a tradition-driven citizen, avid for power, greedy for money, turning your back on people’s misery and seldom putting your back into the attempts made by the downtrodden to better their living conditions.

Which haphazard or topsy-turvy mechanism has so far misled Muslims on their way to emancipation from poverty and alienation? Which erroneous thread can one clutch at in a bid to comprehend what can have led up to bloody events like 9/11 or like countless other bombings against innocent creatures and disarmed civilians even if this always took place somewhere there “smelled” of hegemony and world-centered despotism. There is no excuse for terror. And terror is not akin to Islam.



It goes without saying that there is never smoke without fire, but we Muslims should refrain from finding excuse for misbehavior. Resolving such a burning issue as the Occident-Orient “clash” or the North-South conflict or whichever other name one may apply to it, should start from the very basics of a Muslim’s political culture. In other words, have we got a smattering of the very culture that had launched western societies into the highest spheres of human-centered pluralistic arena of political coexistence? If the answer is ‘yes’, why should our intellectual elite not thought of initiating the masses to an adequate form of peaceful left-wing activism?

There is, in fact, an answer within the answer, to this question. To be short, let us acknowledge that, on the one hand leftist political movements in Arab-Islamic societies have never been able to comply with the aspirations of their corresponding peoples. And the reason is crystal clear: leftist activism is Islam-free on grounds that Islam is, by default, a rightist religion, so to speak. This is a fallacy.

One should also admit that, on the other hand Muslims have never had, in any thought-tank whatsoever, any re-shuffle of religious-born concepts in light of the requirements of modern-era political science, which may – to a certain extent - remove the blame from our left-wing militants, but will by no means leave the intellectual and educational elite leisurely savoring the lush of their shortsightedly built five-star holiday suite. For it is they who have to lend their ears , on one side, to contemporary culture as driven towards us by Western thought, and on another side, to intrinsic, religiously learnt concepts. They are required to make the best of the two cultures, not by means of mend-and-repair techniques, but through an integratively devised scheme.






The very first step of such an undertaking will be to make it clear that “right” and “left” in Islam merely mean the converse in Politics. Thus, how can you expect a Muslim, who must hold the Koran with his “right” hand, to gulp down the idea of the “left” being the more religiously oriented wing in political struggle? Likewise, do we not have to make use of the “right” hand to perform the nobler tasks such as eating or writing (I am sorry for left-handers!) or drawing money. In the such mindset, how can a Muslim envision the ”left” as some power that can boost their struggle against people who sponge the money and wealth of the needy, or against obscurantist forces that sustain illiteracy, or against the various trends that regard bribery, swindling and deceit as part and parcel of life success, when it is etched in their minds that the people of the right (“Ahl al-Maymana”) as opposed to the people of the left (Ahl al-Maysara”) are the very believers that deserve a place in Heaven?

All things considered, many more implications of such lethally confusing  inversion are still to be demonstrated, but so far we wonder if the right-and-left game has not given Muslims so strong a headache that it is high time they reflected upon their condition and went off the beaten track of flawed tradition in a bid to embark on some raft-like ark
for “leftist believers”?!                   
m.h