The Left and Islam

Martin Bright appears to be held in high regard in media circles. I am not sure why because what I have read of his writing appears to be long on dogma and short on thoughtful analysis. He used to be editor of the once highly respected New Statesman - a weekly I read regularly in the 1960s - until he was kicked out for being too critical of Gordon Brown's government. He now writes a blog for the Spectator's Coffee House - I assume amongst other activities.

His place at the New Statesman has been taken by one Mehdi Hasan who apparently has this to say:

“The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as; not of no morality, not as people of no belief - people of “no intelligence” - because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Quran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.”

What is more dispiriting is Martin Bright's response:

What can I say? Nothing at all. I am speechless.

Fortunately most of Martin Bright's respondents are not speechless and most were able to provide good analyses of the state of affairs we have come to, whereby the left have unthinkingly embraced Islamic thinking because it is not Christian or not Jewish.

We have all grown up in ignorance of Islam. Most of us were taught about Christianity and Judaism as we were growing up and to a degree these religions have become thoroughly westernized. There were flirtations with Arabism 100 years ago by such as T E Lawrence but such interest never entered the mainstream, so now when we have to belatedly pay attention we are caught without any framework of knowledge to properly place Islam.

Most people on the left of politics in the 1960s could reassure themselves that the policies they were pursuing would make society a better place. There was an ideology worth fighting for. We may now look back on that period as the high water mark of state socialism. The inexorable trend to excessive central control, capture of programs by special interest groups has led to a gradual undermining of all those good intentions. Worse, many of these services are downright counterproductive. Almost everyone now realizes that, even at an unconscious level, and this has left many adherents to the left with an attachment that has been stripped of its core ideology.

Vacuums will always be filled and it is perhaps no surprise that those with highly defined viewpoints, like the IRA or militant Islam will fill open minds.