From: Mohammad Farooq <farooqm@trxinc.com>
Sent: Monday, January 17, 2000 11:24 PMSubject: Toward a Marxists-Muslims Dialog (not debate) - Part I
Dear friends at Shetubondhon,
Salam and greetings.
In line of my previous postings related to building bridges by finding common grounds, what follows is my initial ideas in related to Marxists-Muslims relationship, particularly in the context of Bangladesh. I hope to continue to develop this further in future and a fuller and more complete work would be posted at my personal homepage (http://www.globalfront.com/farooqm ).
Finding the common grounds might be the most important step we can take in reducing tension, conflict, and violence at various levels that do not necessarily we have to live with. And, those trailblazers are the ones the humanity is earnestly awaiting, who will begin to emphasize the
common grounds and work conscientiously, actively and creatively toward reducing the differences to a minimum.
Best regards.
Farooq
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Dr. Mohammad Omar Farooq
Upper Iowa University
Personal homepage: http://www.globalfront.com/farooqm
Nazrul site: http://www.globalfront.com/nazrul
I. Introduction
That rough-and-tough-looking, heavily-bearded and mustached, German man Karl Marx evokes a lot of emotion among many people around the world. The day he declared "The laborers of the world, unite!", a very special, powerful bond was created between him, his vision and ideology, and those hapless workers to many of whom he was a kind of prophet. The powerful legacy of Marx did create a huge tremor in the existing world order. It inspired a revolution in Russia (unforeseen by Marx) through his (somewhat heretic, self-anointed) ideological "apostle" Lenin, which was followed by the (not left-right, but left-left - all left) long march of Mao in China,
and parallel to that there was new global fraternity of the comrades. [We will ignore the sibling rivalry, which is common to virtually all families, including within the Marx-inspired family.] The wave of his liberating, invigorating message reached the far corners of the world, including the shores of Bay of Bengal and beyond.
This same man enraged a whole bunch of other people by pronouncing judgment on "religion" as "the opium of the people." [Tucker, p.54] By suggesting that "man makes religion", (Tucker, p.53] he alienated most of his non-comrades. Going even further, as he asserted that "the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism" [Tucker, p.53], he burnt any possible future bridges with those non-comrades.
Of course, like any other ideology or religion, Marx's legacy has been manifested through many different denominations (firqa's). But for our purpose we will ignore those differences of shades, just like the followers of Marx don't distinguish the mullahs who like "kacha-golla of Natore" or
"chomchom of Porabari". The relationship between those who associate themselves to the ideology of Marx (that is, who wholeheartedly and passionately believe that "left" is the "right" ideology) and those who in the context of Bangladesh identify as Muslims (and believe that no one in the "right" mind can go to the "left") has deteriorated to the extent that leftists - depending on their appetite and taste - won't mind a few anti-comrades as "breakfast" and the religious ones won't mind having a few comrades for "iftar."
Does it really have to be this way? In this write-up I am trying to formulate my own scattered thought to see whether some convergence or tangency exists or not for a better relationship that would and could do all of us so much good. I might be a day-dreamer, but at least it's not a crime
yet. I do strongly believe that if we sincerely make effort to find some common ground among us to reduce tension and antagonism, a new era can usher in based on better trust and mutual respect, where our creative energy and ability can be channelled toward collaborative effort. Let me add an early disclaimer here that I have not undertaken a project to write a treatise on this subject; rather, I intend to highlight certain aspects that might help us lay the ground work for further dialogue.
This particular dialog is especially important, as its tangency includes secularism, atheism, and several other aspects.
References:
Robert Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader (Norton, 2nd Edition, 1978).
Marx-Engels Archive (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1837-pre/1835-ref.htm )
[... continued in Part II]