Day by day I begin to wonder more and more if I can even call myself a communist anymore. Its becoming hard to really reconcile my faith with communism if the ideology itself is theorically opposed to it. Bukharin’s book, “ABCs of Communism,” has an entire section on Chapter 11 that directly talks about why religion and communism are incompatible. Communists believe history is driven by class struggle and material conditions. Religious people believe in stuff like divine intervention or divine will. A communist would probably look at islam (my faith) and be like “No prophet was sent a message by God and acted upon it, it was their material conditions that made them act.” I don’t see how one could believe both, it feels like its either or.
Sure, it is perfectly possible for religious people to largely agree with Marxists on such things as historical materialism and present-day class struggles, not to mention struggles for national liberation, against racism, etc. It is possible be anti-capitalist and fight for a classless, moneyless, and stateless society where MOP is colletively owned but at the end of the day, there is philosophical tension.
I feel at best, I can be an ally, but the way I see it, I will never be one of them. I do not belong. My voice does not count equally and my beliefs make me suspect. I have faced hostility from leftists that are atheist and hostile towards religion and been called a revisionist. If this is how me and others are gonna be treated just because of our faith, I’d rather die than simply be used as cannon fodder in a revolution.
You have to remember that the extremely militant atheism of the Russian and Spanish revolutions were in response to the clergy aligning themselves with the ruling class and reactionary forces. This is because the class interests of the clergy, as property owners, was aligned with that of the aristocrats and bourgeoisie and was inherently at odds with socialism. I do think certain parts of the revolutionary movements overcorrected in reaction but it’s understandable why they zero’d in on religion so strongly with this context.
It’s also worth mentioning that there were (and are) many instances of liberation theology all across the global south.
Thesis: The majority of people in the global south are more religious than westerners are
Antithesis: Socialist movements have historically been anti-religious
Synthesis: For the greatest chance of success and popular support, socialist ideology has to fit into a narrative that does not contradict religious teachings
Did I do it right?
Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis is Fichtean, not Hegelian.
But yes socialists have to act in accordance with their material conditions. If the workers are mostly religious then anti-religious sentiment needs to be toned down. Of course there’s a difference between antitheism and anti-clericalism.
You’re reacting to the anti-religious antics of people who don’t have enough of an identity that they need performative atheism to feel superior to others. That’s not communism, and it’s certainly not limited to communism. Lots of capitalists behave the same way.
Yes, Marxism is a materialist philosophy. It does not allow for things like morality and the supernatural to be used for explanatory purposes. That doesn’t mean you can’t believe in those things and it doesn’t mean you can’t practice organized religion. What it means is that you can’t use the contents of your religious beliefs as the basis for supporting an argument.
This should be pretty obvious for any plural society though. You can’t say that the reason we should have Law 4815-D is because it’s God’s will. You can’t say that the reason we should execute this prisoner is because of crimes against God. That will only work in a society where everyone believes mostly the exact same things. As soon as two or three religions coexist in a society, they’re going to disagree on what God’s Will is or what constitutes a crime against God. How do you build a pluralistic society in this case?
So go ahead and be religious and also be a communist. But understand that communism is a scientific analysis of the way society actually functions. It doesn’t care why a specific prophet said a specific thing at a specific time (though it may have an opinion). It cares about what we need to do to build a sustainable society of liberated people. It’s like any science. How can you be a rocket scientist and be religious? How can you be a cancer researcher and be religious? How can you study chemical catalysts and be religious? You simply don’t use your religion as the analytical tool for that domain. You don’t say the rocket launch failed because it was God’s Will - you study the data and run experiments. The same is true of communism.
Once you come to terns with that, let the performative atheists know that they’re harming the revolution.
Thank you, you give me some hope and relief. I once though brought up your point about scientists and other professionals still believing in religion to an atheist and they responded with “There is a cognitive dissonance. Relativity of simultaneity automatically rules out most religious metaphysical interpretations.”
Again, because these performative atheists are acting like scientists who are religious are constantly battling with interpretations like “the rocket moved because God pushed it with his hand”.
And listen, if you’re belief system is that God personally intervenes in everything and nothing can be understood except by interpreting everything as God personally does each thing, then yeah you’re going to have a hard time in communism, but also in capitalism, and in any science, and honestly anything you ever do. Why did he break up with me after I betrayed his trust, is it because God made him do it?
Try not make everything about whether people accept your beliefs. Believe what you believe. Keep your beliefs within your community of belief. Share with people outside that community after you trust them. For people who just voluntarily say things like “religion should be eradicated” go ahead and push back, but for the most part, treat your religious life as mostly separate from the practical workings of society while simultaneously integrating it into everything you do. It’s a difficult process but it’s not cognitive dissonance. It’s the real life experience of humanity to exist in multiple interpretative layers of reality simultaneously.
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You have summed it up perfectly. Also people who are saying that religion was co-opted by reactionaries in the past, the same is true for Islam as well. Each and every muslim country today is a servant to the US empire and its interests and they staunchly oppose communism. So it’s kinda ironic how OP has an issue not with the whimsical fantasies of Islam but people who rightly point out the hypocrisy
Each and every muslim country today is a servant to the US empire and its interests and they staunchly oppose communism.
- Iran
- Palestine
- Syria (under Assad)
- Lebanon (not the puppet government, but Hezbollah has popular support)
- Yemen (Yes, Ansar Allah governs ~80% of the population of Yemen, It does not matter how hard the “international community” denies it)
- Afghanistan
- Libya (under Gaddafi)
- Iraq
All of the above countries contradict your boldly-stated claim. There were many liberationist and pan-arab movements that were independently stomped out by the US / EU, causing hundreds of millions of deaths in the region via land invasion, drone strikes, or economic blockades.
While you could argue that many Muslim states are western puppets, many of those states were literally created by the British drawing lines on a map after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, only legitimizing those who fall in line to the “international community”.
Why would the west spend trillions of dollars toppling socialist governments or resistance factions in WANA?
We have seen dozens of instances where resistance in any form has been met with total annihilation of these countries societies. Libya was a flourishing Muslim nation that wanted to unify Africa and steer away from the unipolar world order. They were bombed, starved, public infrastructure completely decapitated, and now they have literal slave markets.
Gee, I wonder why the other countries have fallen in line with western hegemony.
So it’s kinda ironic how OP has an issue not with the whimsical fantasies of Islam but people who rightly point out the hypocrisy
This is just smug, redditor-level atheism that I don’t even want to entertain at this hour.
Thank you for handling that
There are millions of communist Muslims, surely. With almost two billion Muslims in the world, and 26 million in China alone, the statistics are in your favor. I am a communist Muslim and I know many where I live in a non-Muslim region. Beyond that, communists of other religions would be in the millions as well, especially Christians in LatAm. As others have pointed out, you just need to be able to 1) ignore anti-social people like the types of atheists you are describing. They are never going to be able to organize anything because of their anti-social behavior. Even if one is an atheist, most people are not and if you are mocking them they will be against you.
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separate your personal relationship with Allah from your material analysis. If undertaking a material analysis, you can only rely on material data that is empirical.
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understand that communism is what we were put here to achieve. An equitable world of peace and prosperity is the vision, and communism is the vehicle to get there. Our faith is what allows us to be dedicated to that mission instead of being constantly pulled off track by self gratification
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I’m not a big intellectual guy, so I don’t really have a ton to add to the discussion. BUT! I do know that a lot of South American Catholic Socialists have ton a ton of work on trying to square that circle between Socialism and religion through Liberation Theology.
I don’t know of any great resources to read about it. Maybe Cowbee has something in his back pocket on the topic? He’s the smartest guy I know about Communism stuff.
I’m flattered! I will say, I have not studied much on Liberation Theology (as of yet), as I am not religious myself and have prioritized other areas of study. You are correct, though, that this is an area being actively developed, especially in South America. I have also seen Statesian orgs advancing this line, at least from local observation, not to replace dialectical materialism but as an avenue for religious socialists.
Dialectical materialism: our ideas are our social material conditions reflected imperfectly in our brain
Religious folks implementing the above: god set the above matter in motion
A sensible communist would understand that religions themselves reflect the political economy (eg UAE salafist islam with their concentrations of captial and imperialist comprador class is significantly different to the Islam of Hamas and their revolutionary anti-imperialism despite both being Sunni. One could make a similar argument for say the Catholicism of cuba vs catholicism found in USA), and athiesm does not make you an anti-imperialist let alone having a scientific understanding of capital.
And to hit it really on its head: consider all these Western Marxists refusing to support those on the ground fighting imperialists; they are essentially liberals cosplaying with a sickle and a hammer.
Marxism is a science, and this includes the science of how capital works and how to build socialism from it (“from” in a dialectical materialist sense). If a person practising a religion can also be a scientist then the same coul be said for a social scientist.
Develop the vanguard that will help the peoples you want to emancipate scientifically, everyone else is just wasting your time.
(My background: I am an athiest but my ancestor’s homeland would not have ended formal western colonisation without revolutionary socialist muslims. Period.)
❤️🫡
I am a Christian and a Marxist-Leninist. I don’t think this is a big problem. My practical politics is based on diamat analysis and the study of theory, not idealism. My personal drive is a wish to help create a better world through altering the material conditions here and now, with more space for love to flourish - why does it matter if I am personally motivated by faith in God in addition to just secular love for my fellow humans?
The critique of religion, while it can wary between ML-theorists, usually either rest on a practical opposition to the clergy class (and personally I am just as eager to oppose and stop MAGA megachurch supply-side Jesus christians as I’m sure the bolsheviks were to stop the tsarist orthodox clergy) or a philosophical position (I am sure there is a lot of nuance and things one could get into here, just writing from what I’ve seen when reading. I do not intend to argue against a strawman, just to be brief). Philosophically, it either rests on pure materialism and non-dualism; which is a fair position to take, but which is inherently also an unprovable metaphysical position, and one which I personally disagree with - or on an idea that religion is used to resolve alienation from our limitations in the psyche. I rather think that faith is an innate part of what we are as humans, and even if Marxs critique of religion as a way to counteract alienation of the self, societal progress is still not going to solve the core human issues which faith deals with: interpersonal relations and issues, the meaning of life and existence, growing as human beings, and our meeting with death.
The primary thing to avoid is to let politics be influenced by idealism. Comrade, atheists and agnostics do not automatically avoid this! Racism and other xenophobia, bro science, unexamined belief, imperialism and social chauvinism, liberalism - in many countries today strands of non-religious ideology and thought are problematic just the same as the most problematic expressions of faith. The tendency to idealism is innate in humanity, the matter is to discipline the mind, to be aware of ones biases, to spend the time and effort needed for clear and examined thought, and to think collectively to transcend our individual limits. Comrade, you can do this just as well as anyone else!
The non-dualism comes more into the problem of religion and scientific analysis. If your philosophical world-view posits that there is a power outside of nature that can influence it independently of nature itself, then how can you square the circle with the science of observation and testing of hypothesis. Surely every time you prove that things are only influenced by their material surroundings and conditions, then you are narrowing, constantly, the scope in which a dualistic power can act upon the world. If you have a divine power that ultimately has no outside observable influence on the world, then you end up falling back to spinoza’s monist view of the divine and nature, the basis for most materialist atheist philosophies.
For a short piece pulling at this thread from Engels: https://redsails.org/shamefaced-materialism/
Fair point!
I might say that more strictly, it observably reduces the scope of which we know that a hypothetical outside power chooses to act upon the world in our time. Of course, if you spend all your life looking for unicorns, but never find one, it is perfectly reasonable to think they don’t exist, so I understand your point.
By equating science with metaphysics, you are elevating Occam’s Razor to an universal metaphysical qualifier to select the least presumptive explanation as the truest explanation - that is of course very useful in science, and also a very fair metaphysical standpoint to take. It’s just not “provable” in a strict sense that this “best theory” is necessarily metaphysically “true”, as the scientific method does not really attempt to define “metaphysical truth”, but rather that “this is our most useful model of the truth”. Still, it is fair to assume it is as true as it can be in our time.
I guess I’m trying to say that I think it is perfectly reasonable to not be religious. For me it is more about a personal faith relationship and faith as a “extrarational” mode of thought (ala Kieerkegard). I also find some of the conclusions one might draw from a purely atheist viewpoint a little absurd: A universe exists, possibly the only one, for no known reason and possibly for no reason at all, which we to a large part do not understand the nature of, and which happened to have the exact conditions possible to not just make life on at least one, and possibly only one, planet; and not just life, but human life, and not just human life, human life which can have a subjective experience of connection with the divine, and not just that kind of human life, but us specifically, and everyone we know and everything we do, and that then all this will pass, we will, human life will, all life will, possibly even the possibility of life and advanced structures in the universe - all for no reason at all, lost into nothingness through time. Maybe it’s just my ego, but I don’t find this a satisfactory explanation to why we exist - it seems to me absurd to think that it all just happened to randomly work out that way (sure, if it didn’t, no one would know, but the fact is that we don’t know about an infinite or large amount of other universes with different configurations where we don’t exist, so we are still faced with the problem of existing in the one provably existing universe in which we do exist). I’d rather think that love is the reason and that love even defeats death in the end, but I totally get that not everyone needs to agree.
Max Planck would like a word.
I mean 2 million years ago humans didn’t exist but lots of other life did. Why are we some kind of pinnacle? Some kind of special extra-natural entity? It’s a very human/andro centric approach to viewing the world.
Sure, I agree! It is a very human centric approach to viewing the world.
I would say that I believe that we are special because we can have a different type of relation to ourselves, to each other, to the world, and to the divine than other animals (atheisticly, this might be just imaginary, but still special that we are able to, no?). I mean isn’t it a little intriguing that humans is the only species line which has these traits? I guess I just feel like it is an awful lot of random chance if it is all random
EDIT: Or to put it in another way, isn’t it peculiar that the dialectical development of the universe has included humans, us, beings capable of understanding it? I can’t get a grasp of why it has worked out that way without approaching it from a faith perspective.
Other animals exhibit the same traits, the more we learn.
I’m reminded of the Hindu laughing and crying goat; and the Himalayan devolution into yeti.
i’m going through the same process as you do, i’m supposed to be a muslim and i live in a muslim majority country, but i don’t think i’ll be keeping my faith any longer. there’s a lot to say against islam that is valid. what helps me is to try understand the context in which islam came to be, and the context of why laws are the way they are, basically try to look at it through a materialist lens
Isn’t it possible to be culturally part of a religion without necessarily believing in the supernatural parts of it? In the sense of looking at the religion as a historically constituted shared social and moral framework rather than a metaphysical statement about the nature of reality?
I’m pretty sure some of the famous Islamic philosophers and writers of the Islamic golden age were probably somewhere on the spectrum between materialist atheism and metaphysical theism. It didn’t make them any less important to Islamic history and culture.
People, especially intellectuals, tend to privately hold very heterogenous beliefs, even when outwardly they perform the appropriate rituals of their respective culture. I suspect a lot of Christian monks in the Middle Ages were skeptics too.
A lot of Christian priests, pastors and nuns. As well as Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, Buddhist, Jainist, Zoroastrian…
in my opinion: you can’t be only culturally part of islam,
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the practice of the religion is at it’s core fundamentalist, any deviation from it would make you excluded from the religion (in theory), at best it makes you a bad muslim,
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it is also in it’s core principles conservative, by that i mean it’s goal is to be preserved and never evolve, it’s a structure that aims to never be in movement, contrary to culture which is constantly evolving, because why would god make laws that evolves when he can make perfect divine laws? isn’t he all powerful?
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it’s not a individual believes/faith system but a framework of how a society must work and how those individuals should behave in it, and faith is your engagement and submission to those laws,
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taking example of muslims that are more progressive or that use atheistic methods to explain the world is like the “good landlord” argument, we’re not talking about good or wrong or moderate, religion is a structure that has a function in class society, which (not only) is protecting it,
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as a movement we kinda need ideological purity to achieve our goals down to the philosophical base (i may sound like an ultra but 😛), personally i don’t care about the believes of people in general, i (principally) defend freedom of cult, but you can’t be part of both, you can’t fence-sit because you’d end up excluded from both sides,
i have no theory to back up what i’m saying tho, i’m just trying to echo what i understood, but for me it makes sense, also sorry if i made errors english is not my first language
the practice of the religion is at it’s core fundamentalist, any deviation from it would make you excluded from the religion (in theory), at best it makes you a bad muslim
This would seem to be contradicted by the diversity of ways in which Islam is practiced around the world, adapted to local cultural conditions, and merged with local pre-existing traditions. In Asia for instance it is not uncommon for certain Muslim groups to have a tradition of drinking alcohol. In Africa Islam frequently coexists with indigenous traditions. Fundamentalism certainly exists and is in fierce opposition to all of this, but fundamentalism exists in every religion, no?
And to the point that it is supposed to be eternally unchanging, that doesn’t sufficiently explain how various denominations and sects emerged throughout history that reinterpreted the doctrine sometimes in quite radically different ways. Or am i wrong?
the point is, i am not talking about islam in practice, in Algiers where i live, most people don’t fully follow the laws, a lot of women don’t wear the hijab, some people drink, some have intimate relationships out of marriage, BUT we all understand and accept that islam (at least suni islam) is one true religion that must be unchanged, tho we compromise or try to excuse, but it’s in vain because it’s written very explicitly that you can’t change or deviate from the text, if you don’t follow the text or you don’t care you’re just an unprincipled muslim (at best),
and not only the practice, but the believes also, if you don’t have faith in god, it’s prophets and messengers, the books, the angels, the day of judgment and the divine decree, you’re not considered to be a muslim, it’s a take it or leave it situation, bending the religion to suite the cultural practices may be a reality, but it’s in direct conflict with what the religion says, and that conflict mostly is resolved by repenting fully and accepting religion and it’s believes as is, and that process is weaponized by the bourgeoisie as a counter-revolutionary tool,
And to the point that it is supposed to be eternally unchanging, that doesn’t sufficiently explain how various denominations and sects emerged throughout history that reinterpreted the doctrine sometimes in quite radically different ways. Or am i wrong?
(currently) most of the muslim population is sunni (like 90% or 80%), the existence of some random cult doesn’t really matter as a contradiction because it’s a really small minority, (tho the shia community is also a major part of the religion but idk about them), we all follow the same version (dictated by Saudi Arabia) no matter the part of the world,
islam through history was struggling for it’s conservation, the fact that it fails or not doesn’t contradicts what it stands for, it’s just an impossible task because everything is in constant movement
what i mean is, keeping faith is a burden, because it will always pull you backward, we can’t reconcile those contradictions so we have to liberate ourselves from them
Very informative, thank you. I can only observe this topic from the outside and as a history enthusiast, since i am not religious myself.
You’re welcome, tho it’s only based on my observations and my understanding of where I stand, I don’t have actual theory to back it up but I hope I’m making sense 🤓
Didn’t ksa have a more moderate Islam before CIA interference led to Wahabbism? Genuinely asking.
the fact that it turned into that shows that keeping that “moderate islam” is a vulnerability ready to be exploited by the bourgeoisie, most religious ppl would choose religion if they have to choose, and that choice is not imposed by secular revolutions but by religious authority
most religious ppl would choose religion if they have to choose, and that choice is not imposed by secular revolutions but by religious authority
Maybe it’s a difference of region, education, material and emotional stability. Western Europe used to be pretty religious and relinquished it fairly rapidly, imo. I speak in very general terms, obviously.
Is @ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world banned here? I’d be interested in their perspective. Mathmachristian as well.
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You may be interested in this discussion between Adnan Husain (professor of Medieval, Mediterranean, and Islamic World History) and Breht O’Shea (host of Rev Left Radio): Spiritual Materialism? Left Politics and Marxian Mysticism w/Rev Left Radio’s Breht O’Shea
What does spirituality on the left look like? In a Ramadan special, Adnan discusses Buddhism and Sufi Islam, the distinctions between mysticism and mystification, spiritual practices and ethics as well as the liberation of the soul w/Revolutionary Left Radio and former co-host of Guerrilla History, Breht O’Shea. In a wide ranging and deep conversation about the inner life and the outer world, what it means to be truly human, and transformation socially and personally, Adnan and Breht explore the intersections of left politics and spirituality from the alienation of consumer corporate capitalism and the degradations of imperialism to the defiant dignity and faithful resilience of Gazan resistance.
If this interests you, I believe these two have been on each other’s podcasts a few times discussing related topics and you may find other episodes of theirs talking about it.
Rumi 😍🥰
holy fuck i’m so sorry. who tf told you this btw? please don’t listen to those atheist nerds if you are religious. tell them to go choke on barbed wire /lovingly (5serious: hard boundaries are important here, your religion is a personal matter).
you’re not just an ally and you know it. you are one of us. you belong here. your voice is equal and your beliefs make you beautiful. you have value regardless of any of this, ok?
i don’t have to reconcile anything, not with myself or with others. i am an atheist pagan witch nerd and i don’t want nor need to explain what that means to anyone but myself(s). does it bleed through my words and actions? yeah, at times. again, it is strictly a personal matter. lenin wrote about this if i remember correctly.
I suggest you learn about waqf and compare it with communism. It will surprise you. And I heard Umar II did something amazing.
I have faced hostility from leftists that are atheist and hostile towards religion and been called a revisionist. If this is how me and others are gonna be treated just because of our faith, I’d rather die than simply be used as cannon fodder in a revolution.
Just ignore them, my Islamic communist friend. They are still beginners.
I am sorry if my english is bad and I am a radical centrist.
❤️ Your English is fine. I can’t address whether or not you’re a radical centrist, but I appreciate your perspective. Thank you.
I can’t address whether or not you’re a radical centrist
I’m sorry if I confused you, my communist friend. Radical centrist can be confusing because radical centrist is taught to be willing to use non-compromising solutions.
No sorry needed, but thank you! Can you please give me an example?
- when freedom of speech proves bring trouble (example: fascism) then radical centrist must be willing to put restriction on speech.
- when private property proves not to bring prosperity and regulation (example: tax) alone proves insufficient to bring prosperity (example: tax avoidance) then radical centrist must be willing to nationalize.
- when state feudalism proves insufficient (example: deregulation) then radical centrist must be willing to agree with socialist.
Thank you!
Religious people believe in stuff like divine intervention or divine will. A communist would probably look at islam (my faith) and be like “No prophet was sent a message by God and acted upon it, it was their material conditions that made them act.” I don’t see how one could believe both, it feels like its either or.
You might be dealing with people who are mixing up mechanical materialism (see: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Mechanical_materialism) with dialectical materialism.
I’m pretty sure a dialectical materialist view would say that somebody receiving a message from a god is part of their material conditions (if they did indeed receive such a message). From the other end of the belief, that they imagined the message somehow / that it was made up in some way, it might be more accurate to say the superstructure (beliefs level of things) is more of a driving factor in that, but either way, it’s still a real thing impacting them.
We could put it in a context that’s less charged with theological debate and belief for comparison: Suppose the president of the US were to text me directly and tell me that if I don’t do X, they are going to do Y threatening thing to me. Is it likely the actual president texted me? No. But that doesn’t make it totally impossible. Either way, if I believe that he did and if I believe that if I don’t do X in response to his message, then Y is going to happen (that I perceive as bad), then I’m going to be pretty motivated to do X if Y is bad enough. Now maybe I ignore the text and Y never happens, and I assume I was scammed. Or maybe I ignore it and Y does happen, and now I’m terrified. With the first outcome, I probably don’t change my behavior as a result. With the second, I probably do.
I don’t know if I’m making the point clear, but basically what I’m trying get at is that dialectical and historical materialism is a process of understanding the world as we know it, but I don’t think it is equipped to weigh in on whether deities exist (I’m open to correction if people believe otherwise). It can weigh in on religious systems, however, and what kind of impact it has when people believe in them and act upon that belief.
As to something like divine intervention, I don’t think it’s very practical (from a tactical point of view) for a communist to believe in it because you don’t want to be in a situation where you are literally at war, struggling to survive, and instead of working out what weapons and tactics will win, you sit aside and pray to be saved. However, you could probably believe in divine intervention insofar as pray helping you win, as long as you aren’t losing sight of tactics. And you might even be right in a sense, regardless of whether there is a deity who is willing to intervene on your behalf, in the sense that people believing in something beyond themselves and being collectively empowered as a result can be motivating and keep them strong in times of struggle.
Note that the point about prayer vs. action is even found in a well-known religious parable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_drowning_man
The parable of the drowning man, also known as Two Boats and a Helicopter, is a short story, often told as a joke, most often about a devoutly Christian man, frequently a minister, who refuses several rescue attempts in the face of approaching floodwaters, each time telling the rescuers that God will save him. He finally drowns in the flood and, standing before God, asks why he was not saved. God replies that He sent the rescuers that the man turned down.
I would say, at the end of the day, it’s less about religion itself and more about the form it takes. If the exploiting classes use X religion as part of their ruling power, you may have to forcibly change things about a particular religious institution in order to take power. If you are a believer in that particular religious institution, you might view it more as a theological fight over what is correct doctrine and practice. If you’re secular, you might view it more as deposing manipulative religious power. Either way, the nature and form of political power has to be taken seriously. No matter what you believe, if you want to take power seriously, you have to take seriously what institutions are tangled up in it.
I hope that makes sense.
Also, to the point about hostility from atheists, keep in mind that some of us come from pretty awful experiences with religion and the hostility is probably not personal, but is a side effect of that.
Personally, I try to be accommodating about it, but I had to go through a lot of introspection and reasoning in order to reject my religious upbringing and find my way to atheism, so there is a certain amount of staunchness behind it that can be hard to sugarcoat and I mostly just refrain from getting into that subject with people. Some religious claims are absurd to me to a strong degree, which is part of the reflex I developed for rejecting the beliefs in the first place, and I’m aware it might upset a religious person if I voiced my thoughts about their claims in blunt terms. But it’s also not really fair if I’m supposed to be nice about it, but when they are fervent to me about what they believe, that’s fine; this is more an issue with proselytizing though, than anything else.
Nineteenth‑century thinkers such as Aaron Shmuel Liberman (1845–1880) and Elia Benamozegh (1823–1900) had already tied Kabbalah to Marxist and universalistic aspirations, and twentieth‑century Jewish thought expanded on this trend when thinkers such as Avraham Yitzhak Kook (1865–1935), Yehuda Ashlag (1885–1954), Leon Askenazi (1922–1996), and many others claimed Kabbalah as the centerpiece of their Jewish politics.
Exploring these to get a better understanding of the faith in which I was reared, along with Judaism in general, the Ethiopian Bible, and numerous other faiths, Omnism, and a healthy dose of skepticism is how I reconcile it.
Someone long ago claimed to me that to embrace communism meant to destroy all religious art, literary, visual, all religious texts and services. I’m skeptical of that, too. My faith and understanding is important to me, but not so important it’s worth sacrificing a strong community that cares for each other, and preserves and shares resources for the good of all. Ironically, it’s this faith journey that brought me here.
Let me ask you something: being a sunni/shia affects you capacity of collaboration with shias/sunnis?
Hello, no not at all. In fact, being a sunni, I’m very proud of the revolutionary fighting that Iran (that is predominately Shia) is doing compared to sunnis in other Middle East countries that choose to side with imperialists. I’ve actually been working on getting rid of the prejudice that my mother has towards Shias by showing her the work they’ve done and explaining their differences which aren’t a betrayal of Islam.
As a shi’ite brother, thank you for helping fight sectarianism. It can be very difficult to organize when suspicious of eachother’s true intentions. My experience with organizing for Palestine has brought me into working with Sunni comrades, and we’ve never had an issue. I just hope that this tendency amongst the youth can carry back over to our elders.
On the Shia side of things, it’s been helpful to identify Hamas’ valiant struggle and compare it with our Imams as a way to break the paranoia some Shia often have towards Sunnis. If you’re mother is accepting of Iranian anti-imperialism, then may I perhaps suggest bringing up the works of Ali Shariati?
He was a Marxist inspired sociologist, whose work has basically defined the trajectory of revolutionary Iranian political thought. His works build upon other Muslim socialist works like “Abu Zarr: The God-Worshipping Socialist” which he translated to Farsi from Arabic, originally written by Abdul Hamid Jowdat-al-Sahar, an Egyption author. There should be quite a bit of common ground to look through, but it’s unfortunately difficult to find any translated works (very few exist in English).
Assalamualakum brother, I am with you. I will take your suggestion into account. Though bringing up philosophers, their philsophy, and explaining all these terms like socialism might be a little hard for her to understand. I think on top of the things I already show and explain to her (Beliefs, culture, anti-imperialism, etc.), the next step is probably to explain to her the violence our sect (sunnis) have done to shias in an effort to gain sympathy from her.
Hello comrade, something i would suggest is to not to go to her with these concepts directly. As someone who has debated (over)religious people and other prejudiced groups of people, most of the times speaking of such concepts (philosophical, political, etc.) can cause them to put their gaurds up and not agree on things even when it makes sense to them. Instead, I would suggest to take a more indirect approach. Recommend her some short stories, documentaries, or fiction that discusses such themes first. Maybe read/watch them together and then talk about it, analyse it. You could then in your talks bring up your analysis, shaped by dialectical materialism, anti-imperialism etc, which might make sense for her and might help her to question her prejudices herself, especially since she has gone through the emotional journey of the story, she will be less gaurded and more understanding.
The anti-religion militant-atheist vein of Marxists are conflating faith and religious institutions. Its bad analysis because the only religion they had experience with was a “state religion.” The Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church were state institutions. Priests were essentially cops. They were eventually replaced by social workers and psychologists in secular society.
Most religious institutions are reactionary and exist to uphold classism more than to uphold the spiritual teachings they espouse. Its very similar to how factories under capitalism are built to make money for their owners not to produce goods, but that does not mean the factory must be destroyed and no factory should survive the revolution.
The bourgeois perverted religions institutions must be seized by the faithful.
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