From an Understanding to a Securitizing Discourse: The British Left’s Encounter with the Emergence of Political Islam, 1978–2001

Abstract

The outburst of The Iranian Revolution in 1978 generated fear and hope at the same time for several political forces across the West and the East. The emergence of Islam as a political force came as a surprise across all political spectrums in Europe, even though religion was already at the time becoming a determining variable in the field of international relations. The echoes of The Iranian Revolution precipitated even further the making of several organizations of political Islam in the Middle East, forging transnational identities. Through primary and secondary sources drawn from mainly British leftist organizations, this study aims at examining the responses of the British Left towards Islamic revivalism. Thus, this article gives an historical outline of the intellectual production and the strategies of interpretation adopted by the British Left during the period of 1978–2001, by exploring the main historical events that involved (political) Islam, such as The Iranian Revolution, the Lebanese civil war, the Palestinian Intifada and The Algerian Civil War. The main argument postulated is that interpretation trajectories by the British Left were highly dependent on ideological and geostrategic lineages and respective synchronic political alliances, resulting in putting the centre of gravity sometimes on Islamic activism’s regressive nature and sometimes on its anti-imperialist perspectives.

1. Introduction: The “Death” and “Insurrection” of God

Religion and faith defined and framed various aspects of social and political life for centuries; undermining God’s authority could be connected, in a linear intermingling, to casting doubt on social order while leading to moral corruption and mutiny (Malik 2014). Yet, as many scholars claim, the Enlightenment gradually brought a paradigm shift, disempowering religion from its omnipresent influence. As experience shows, God appeared to be dead in many various ways during the 19th and 20th centuries (Von Der Luft 1984); many scholars kept religion in the margins of their analysis, claiming the dormant role of religious feelings and the core value of rationalism.

Still, God was reinvigorated and used in several ways during early modern European history and during the age of modernity. The Westphalian order did not witness the desired retreat of religious sentiment; on the contrary, the modernization era was abundant with religious orders, which were accommodated by the European empires while expanding their colonies, whereas it involved historical contentious episodes framed by religious discourse. At the same time, the norms of social and political movements in the Middle East before and during the modern period, show how powerful and meaningful was—before religious revivalism—religious framing. Examples of various and heterogeneous Islamic discourses (i.e., millenarianism, purism and Sufism), paved the ground for a political–religious incubator that would gradually forge middle eastern political cultures (Chalcraft 2016).

Thus, the “return of God”, as Charles Taylor persuasively observed, was not and is not narrowed in private spheres; it has been, since the beginning of the 20th century, a matter of altering public discourse and transferring its centres of gravity in a dubious manner; first, towards a new personal moral and ethical quest, and second, towards a mounting influential modality in articulating political discourse (Taylor 2007, pp. 1–24).

Accordingly, this article examines an issue that has largely been left outside the field of research, whether historical or political science: the Left’s encounter with political Islam. Putting the subject into a larger framework, relevant studies hardly exist on the historical responses of the European Left towards political Islam. This study intends to discuss the issue of the British Left’s acquaintance with Islamic activism. More specifically, first, the article discusses the relevant literature regarding the issue, the main points of departure for this study and, briefly, the outcomes of the research. Before moving to the core discussion, we try to succinctly define our “protagonists”: political Islam and the British Left. Furthermore, the discussion is divided into three parts. First, the tense years of The Iranian Revolution and its influential regional aftermath. Second, the decade of the 1980s with the Lebanese civil war and the Palestinian Intifada, which both functioned as an accelerator for Muslim mobilization. Third, the 1990s which witnessed the emergence of a transnational Islamist mobilization with the bloody Algerian Civil War, which posed on Europe the dilemma of “junta or Islamism”. Lastly, some basic conclusions are drawn, highlighting the importance of further examination on the issue in order to dissolve any nebulas with regard to the threat of an “Islamic-left” and to underline the importance of opening a window to further research concerning cross-ideological alliances.

2. Relevant Literature and Results

A long literature exists on the relations between religion and politics. However, religion was, for most of the 20th century, absent from the analysis of modern politics, not only in the European context but also in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The Westphalian order of analysis excluded religion as a factor for international relations (IR) arrangements; moreover, religion and faith were considered as a premodern and reactionary component of modernism, while being an indicator of historical and political backwardness. All the same, many scholars failed to identify religion not only as a growing factor in the modern and post-modern era but at the same time as a key component in national liberation and progressive movements. The 19th century witnessed a tremendous emergence of world religions framed by missionary, educational and cultural policies with huge impacts (Bayly 2004, p. 325). In tandem, MENA nationalism also had religious factors. Anti-colonial struggles, such as the iconic Algerian one, also embedded religious discourse as a defining factor of cultural distinctiveness (Malley 1996). Then, in turn, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a whole bulk of nationalist movements emerged dynamically, incorporating strong religious rhetoric in their outreach, such in the case of MENA, the Balkans, the Caucasus, but also in the European context (Juergensmeyer 1996, p. 4; Roussos 2020).

Notwithstanding, already since the late 1960s and early 1970s, religious discourse and political practice was gaining more ground in the public and political spheres of MENA countries. New forms of religious contentious politics were claiming space and expressing grievances for chronic socioeconomic malaises, but, most importantly, against, as they coined them, the reactionary Arab regimes. In addition, a great deal of Arab leftist intellectuals (i.e., the Egyptian Adil Husayn and the Palestinian Munir Shafiq) excommunicated secular and leftist ideologies, advancing consciously towards the Islamism camp (Browers 2009), or even combining leftist and Islamic traditions, such as the Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi with his journal Islamic Left. The involvement of an Islamic language in political discourse generated the emergence of political Islam; sometimes captured as a reactionary political force and sometimes perceived as an ally alongside anti-imperialist struggle, forces of political Islam gained a special momentum, especially with the outburst of The Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Overall, Islamic assertiveness was not given special attention during its emergence; its points of departure, its denominations and its heterogenous character were largely left untouched, notably grounding the analyses lenses on Islamic essentialism and its inherent anti-modernism, while, concomitantly, also on general conditions of economic backwardness. This essentialist approach forcibly blurred the picture of the analysis. At the same time, major Cold War powers, such as the USSR and Britain, tried to follow the pathways of political Islam’s patterns; for example, Moscow adopted several systems of analysis concerning the origins, nature, and perspectives of Islam and its politicized forms since the beginning of the 1920s, in its attempt to manipulate Islam for its socialist project (Fowkes and Gökay 2009, p. 2).

In turn, as early as the 1950s, both the State Department and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) managed to spot the emergence of Islamist discourse, such as in Egypt and Iran. Washington and London fought to maintain an equilibrium between extremist and moderate forms of political Islam that would meet their national needs (Maghraoui 2006, p. 27); this meant that while Washington’s and London’s approach granted support to some aspects of Islamism politics—such as the case of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt—they tried in tandem to contain other forms of contentious Islamism politics—such was the case of Iran or Lebanon.1 However, Downing Street, while trying to maintain close ties with its Arab-Muslim allies by gradually renouncing its imperialist policy, at the same time it tried, especially after the 1970s, to leverage from the fruits of USA’s imperialist stance (Çavuşoğlu 2018, pp. 39–42). In particular, London analysed political Islam through mainly four hermeneutical schemas during the second half of the 20th century. These were mainly related to the growing influence of religious networks and non-state actors, the rise of sectarian politics, the consolidation of Islamic solidarity based on Islamic exceptionalism, and on the worrisome project of Islamist-leftist alliance against western nation states (Shabana 2020, pp. 60–68).

The last approach paved the way to gradually equalize Islamism and leftist ideology, and, indeed, to de-legitimize them evenly under the lenses of the Cold War and, after 1991, the “End of History”. During the Cold War, academic scholarship corroborated the mounting ideological and operational convergence of Islamist and leftist forces in order to impinge constitutional democracy and political and personal liberties. According to B. Lewis (1954), Islamic radicalism comes from the same matrix as communism; thus, Lewis proposed that apart from the “accidental”, meaning several historical conjunctures, Islam and communism have a more inherent and identical lineage. What Lewis actually suggested is an integral authoritarian element grounded in Islam and communism, targeting overall democracy as a notion. Similarly, E. Gellner (1991) proposed that Islam and Marxist ideologies have many things in common; the first is the blatant lack of a civil society in both the eastern bloc and the Arab world, leading to a subsequent democratic deficiency. The second element is “religious-related”; Marxism and Islam have the same foundations of blind faith, something that leads to a democratic torpor. Accordingly, based on this mindset, further demonization took place by a new generation of scholars, such as Karagiannis and McCauley (2013), and Hansen and Kainz (2007), that drew a linear connecting line between Islam, the Left, Third-Worldism and “Islamofascism”. Ever since, academia has been highly engaged with gauging common variables and characteristics between social movements and new religious movements; for instance, what has been underscored, such as in John Hannigan’s schema, are the common roots, i.e., cultural and not class-based, and shared prospects for future mobilization, such as cross-ideological alliances (Hannigan 1990). Moreover, as Morten Valbjorn has shown in his seminal paper (Valbjorn 2004), a much-desired interdisciplinary opening in the field of Middle Eastern Studies between different disciplines, such as historians, IR scholars and area specialists, stepped up pace after 1991, giving fertile outcomes. The “Mesopotamian Turn”, as it was coined, proved fecund in dynamically involving identity and religion in the study of the history and politics of MENA (Solarz 2020).

Hence, the point of departure for this research is as follows. Despite the alleged marginalization of religion in the modern and post-modern world, and its alleged belonging to the sphere of the individual and irrational, religion is observed as intermingling, with a fast pace, with several disciplines, such as IR, history and sociology. Culturalism and religiosity, which reinforced the endeavour for de-colonizing post-colonial identities, became, in many regions such as the Middle East and Europe, a tool for identity assertiveness. Correspondingly, the British Left developed a toolkit of interpretations for critically approaching religious revivalism, which, of course, was not characterized by homogeneity. Based on the present research, the hermeneutical schemas developed, which mostly were not clear-cut diversified and sometimes overlapped, were the following. The first schema maintains that, under the lens of the Cold War, the ideological imprint had a great effect and ideological alignment was essential in forging an approach. For example, with the outburst of The Iranian Revolution, some leftist forces, unhooking themselves from overarching narratives, witnessed a new revolutionary spirituality and invested in movements that were perceived in terms of “national liberation”. The second schema manipulated political Islam in terms of geostrategic alliances and portrayed it either as a friend in the antiimperialist camp, or as a foe. For example, the communist parties aligned themselves with Khomeini and The Iranian Revolution vis à vis American interventionism. The third analytical schema uses both positions to combine a more holistic approach. For example, Algeria’s civil war or the political and geographical rearrangements that took place across the Balkans, which included Islamic activism, was perceived both with exclusive and inclusive predispositions amongst the Left. Nonetheless, this was mostly based on the grounds of Britain’s “global role” and, especially after 1991, on the disposition of an imminent and inevitable “clash of civilization”, a term coined by liberal scholars to explain (political) Islam’s hostility towards the West.

Scope of the Paper and Methodology

That being said, this paper arrogates to explore the encounter and the reactions of the British Left with political Islam. The period the paper examines is the turbulent years of The Iranian Revolution in 1978–79, moving across to the end of the 1990s when the end of the bloody Algerian Civil War took place. We do not include the momentum of the 9/11 incidents, since a paradigm shift and a general transformation of the discourse was observed. The events of 9/11 brought into the discussion a great deal of ideological and political debates across the leftist spectrum, leading, on the one hand, to excommunicating political Islam as a mere cauldron of reactionary political forces and, on the other hand, to including Islamism humanist critique as part and parcel of the global justice movement (Aydin 2006), capitalizing on the heritage and knowledge of Michel Foucault (Afary and Anderson 2005, pp. 1–37) and Jean Baudrillard (Almond 2007, pp. 156–75) with regard to progressive Islamist activism.

Britain, as a sample, exhibits three major interesting elements. The first lies in the fact that Britain was a key colonial power and has an extensive colonial past. Britain’s possessions, its global role and the effort to preserve its imperial influence and its overseas interests following the decolonization process affected all parties, including those across the Left spectrum, with regard to their political discourse. The second factor, relevant to its colonial past, is related to Britain as a host country of Muslim migrants already since the early 20th century, with Muslim migration reaching its heyday after the 1960s. Third, Muslims in Britain, from an early stage and with several examples, played an active role in internal politics by developing their organizational structures and even entering the pollical arena, cooperating with political parties such as the Labour Party. This “army” of British Muslims played a crucial role in mediating and interpreting Islamic ideas, ethics and philosophy in the country.

This research is based on evidence drawn from three heterogeneous leftist parties in Britain, the first being the Labour Party. Being one of the two most historical and biggest parties in Britain, the Labour Party has been one of the most powerful and, at times, inclusive parties in the country. Throughout most of the years that this research covers, the Labour Party was in opposition. Despite aligning with Britain’s global role, internal ideological conflicts between the “right” and the “left” caused thought-provoking debates as far as Middle Eastern politics is concerned. Labour committees on the Middle East dedicated much space to MENA politics, reflecting on important issues such as political Islam. On top of it, the Labour Party included many smaller organizations and groups (through rank-and-filism), with the Trotskyist ones, such as the Militant Tendency, being one of the most prominent, while accommodating Muslim candidates after 2002 (Dancygier 2013, pp. 2–8). Moreover, as far as our field of research is concerned, primary sources and studies show that leftist parties and politics in Britain, and in particular the Labour Party, has traditionally relied on votes from the Muslim constituency, while at the same time Muslim populations have supported, with major vicissitudes during and after the Rushdie affair, the politics of the Labour Party. More specifically, after the election of the New Labour Party in power (1997), MPs meticulously tried to build a new solid relationship with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) in order to re-establish damaged relations with Muslim communities in the country and de-radicalize the discourse (Jones 2013, p. 556). Eventually these efforts bore fruit, with British authorities financing during the 1990s and 2000s the platform, Radical Middle Way, which emerged from the British–Muslim magazine, Q-News (Jones 2013, p. 558).

The second case, the Communist Party of Britain (CPGB), as a communist party, most of the time reflected the views of Moscow or the respective Arab communist parties. However, the CPGB did occasionally champion Downing Street’s positions on foreign policy, especially during the 1990s when much of its influence was dissipated. Further to this, two interesting elements characterized the CPGB; on the one hand, its cultural imprint on the ideas of the British Left and its intellectual heritage, as reflected by the intellectual production of many influential personalities and scholars connected with the CPGB; on the other hand, its impact on the British Trade Union Congress (TUC), which frequently disseminated a highly politicized discourse.

Furthermore, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a very engrossing example for mainly two reasons. Founded by an anti-Zionist Jew, Tony Cliff, from an early stage (International Socialist Group), the SWP engaged with MENA politics at a high level. In due course, their range of engagement grew to include analysis not only on Middle Eastern politics but also on its social and cultural history, showcasing, thus, their internationalist perspective. Second, in the same vein, the SWP were involved in domestic Muslim identity politics in a dual way: on the one hand by including Muslims in its ranks, such as activist Farid Kassim who later became a Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s (HT) spokesman (Sadek 2018, p. 42), and on the other hand by becoming involved in single-issue politics with anti-fascist, anti-globalization and anti-war movements, ending up in cross-ideological coalitions, such as the Respect platform, with members of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) (Benedek 2007, p. 153).

Therefore, examining religious revivalism from the perspective of the British Left has chiefly a twofold research interest and objective. Revisiting the reactions, the intellectual trajectories and the perceptions of a predominantly secular ideology, as allegedly is the Left, paves the ground for going deeper into the strategies of interpretation of an overtly religious ideology, as political Islam is, which, however, simultaneously had anti-imperialist and anti-colonial manifestations. A key element in this interpretation has also been the understanding that the Arab Left and the Arab-Muslim communities concomitantly had on deploying hermeneutical scenarios for the rise of political Islam, which operated as a mediating lens for the British (and European) Left. Furthermore, the British Left’s historical consciousness and fields of experiences are intriguing, since it is an heterogenous ideological force deriving from the “global centre”, rather than the “periphery”. Thus, an examination of which identity outweighs each time and why is a fecund field of research. On top of this, given the alleged ideological and organizational affinities between political Islam and the Left, coined as the Red–Green Alliance (Karagiannis and McCauley 2013, pp. 169–73), further research on the topic is imperative in order to go deeper in examining the genealogy of this discourse. This study draws on archival and unpublished material from the aforementioned leftist parties held in Britain. Yet, archival research on leftist material has some barriers; primary sources, including archival material, newspapers and published journals are, without any doubt, fragmented. Archival material is sometimes spatially scattered and not efficiently documented, while some material is missing. This made following the sequence of the discourse more difficult.

3. What We Talk about When We Talk about British Left and Political Islam: Framing Political Islam

Analysing the character and the regimes of historicity of both the British Left and MENA’s political Islam is beyond the scope of this paper. However, succinctly framing the British Left’s and political Islam’s historical orientations and aspirations caters to understanding the motivational framework behind political choices and alliances. The notion of political Islam as a sub specie aeternitatis usually blurs the picture of its diversity and its several manifestations. The perceptions of the indivisible with regard to the political and the religious in Islam and its non-dynamic character have been two of the main nexuses of interpretation according to dominant narratives, while Christian historical tradition is often mainly presented to be permeated by a constant historical and intellectual evolution.

For the sake of our argument, we intend to divide political Islam according to Q. Wiktorowicz’s (2006, pp. 209–15) definition: the purist, the political and the jihadi. Theological and dogmatic differences between these three variations are not fundamental. All strongly believe in tawhid (oneness of God), condemn shirk (idolatry, polytheism) and seek the implementation of shari’a (Islamic law) in order to build a strong, purified and just society. The first category focuses on the spiritual and intellectual tenets of Islam. Indeed, it practices dawa’a (preaching) as a means to influence Muslims and help them return to “the straight path”, while avoiding political involvement. The second category consists of the biggest and most influential faction of political Islam. Its involvement with politics is a means of societal transformation and a way to reach the implementation of shari’a. Political and electoral participation, organizational framework and social work has been, however, not without divisions and vicissitudes, which are key elements and functions of their political imaginary. Their social work, especially, including operating hospitals, charities and educational institutions, coupled with lucrative financial activities, are crucial for their existence. An important aspect though is the establishment of concomitant armed wings. Armed struggle highly depends on the political milieu in which they operate and the level of state repression these groups encounter, deploying each time a cost–benefit functioning. Last, jihadi Islamists, the third category, adopt armed struggle and guerrilla warfare, a tactic practiced especially since the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan in 1979 and the internationalization of Islamic jihad. Jihadi Islam moves, due to its objectives and tactics, more in a transnational level, unlike political groups which mostly operate among nation-state boundaries.

The paper’s objective is to focus on political Islam, the second category, which is simultaneously the largest of all the three groupings. This focus is based on three standpoints. Being the largest segment, political Islam’s history dates back to the late 19th century and its influence is vast within Islamist thought. The second reason is pluralism, with regard to its adopted methods; politics and armed struggle produce a hegemonic, in Gramscian terms, political discourse, that is combined to a lesser or to a greater extent by social work in the field, aiming at the practical encroachment of public and political space. The third reason lies in the fact that this category involves the most interesting organizations of political Islam: both state and non-state actors, such as Khomeini’s Islamic Republican Party, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that are discussed throughout the paper. These organizations leveraged political opportunity openings or even created their own in order to consolidate their power and ideology in their respective countries, but also beyond them.

3.1. Framing British Left

The British Left has always been a heterogenous political force with the legacies and the pathologies of an empire. Its historical and geographical position on the world map differentiates it from other examples of leftist politics, especially from southern Europe’s leftist forces; the long history of parliamentarism, its early engagement with the country’s industrial itineraries, its encounter with colonial and empire politics, but also its intellectual tradition in vanguard leftist thought, which renders leftist forces in a hegemonic position. However, we do not argue that the British Left has always been either radical or reformist; during the lifespan of our research period, various transformations among the parties and organizations of the British Left took place. On top of it, the history of Islam—and its many manifestations—in the country helped shape the way leftist politics on Islam were articulated.

The Labour Party has, indisputably, dominated the British leftist sphere for over half a century; its multiple transformations and its subgroups have covered a scope of politics from socialism and radical leftist policies to liberal economic trajectories (Thompson 1997, pp. 133, 142–62).2 Nevertheless, the new forms of political identities articulated by the new social movements during the 1970s and 1980s decisively affected the Labour Party’s identity; putting aside the reformist trends in the party, expressed during the late 1970s by James Callaghan, the National Executive Committee (NEC) and the Annual Party Conference (APC) expressed a growing trenchant critique against neoliberal policies adopted by the Conservatives. Especially after Thatcher’s victory in 1979 elections, the party’s equilibrium was further impinged by factions who postulated the endorsement of more democratic procedures through party instruments, the reframing of Labour’s political identity and its stance against Thatcher’s inimical policies (Hannah 2018, p. 166). Leading on from here, Labour’s political milieu reflected the whole tug-of-war and transformations among the British Left. Later, in 1994 when Tony Blair was elected head of the Party, the New Labour, as an actually liberal political party, was born, leaving behind fundamental founding texts, such as Clause IV (Tudor 1996, p. 98), while also transforming a rather neutral foreign policy to a more interventionist one (Wood 2010, p. 8). By then, the Labour Party would abandon any critical discourse to Britain’s “global role” and would utterly position itself under the service of Britain’s interests (Finn 2019, p. 7) as the carriers of the idea of “empire” (Sassoon 1997, p. 167).

In tandem, one of the main identifying features of the British Left has been its silent or consensual identification with Britain’s “global role” in its foreign policy. For example, the CPGB, although a small party, had a decisive impact on the Left’s political agenda, such as in the anti-war and nuclear disarmament movements (Kelemen 2012, p. 86). The CPGB propelled with prowess engagement with its Arab counterparts and the main social democratic parties in the Arab world, which helped it maintain close monitoring of the events in the Middle East despite its stance towards the Arab–Israeli conflict, which, at least until 1982, favoured Israel. However, a continuum of resignations during the late 1970s which renounced the party’s policy of concessions with governmental policies weakened the party’s electoral and also its ideological influence (Smith and Worley 2017, p. 8).

Trotskyism was, in tandem, an influential political force in the political geography of Britain during the period under research; influential, not so much with an electoral imprint, but with a strong impact among movements and inside the Labour Party, with the entryist policy of the former. Indeed, Labour’s leader in 1995, Neil Kinnock, labelled the Militant (an International Socialist’s newspaper), a “worm in the body of the Labour Party” (Eley 2010, p. 772). Its internationalist orientation and the commitment of the Trotskyist movement to the Middle East and its causes propelled its organizations in a continuous discursive analysis in a quest for the anatomy of the problems of the region, while sometimes designing the architecture for a solution. Especially, after the fall of the USSR, the SWP showcased a deft versatility in trying to lead the leftist movements, which were affected by various forms of identities such as antiracist, feminist and ecology (Smith and Worley 2017, pp. 6–12).

Almost all parties, depending however on the period and the international and internal contexts, perceived the Middle East as a privileged turf for exercising internationalist politics, be it for British interest or for dogmatic reasons. Thus, the main leftist parties adopted a binary desideratum. First, according to what the archival material discloses, leftist parties embedded in their discourse, to a greater or a lesser extent, the national interest as a nexus. Then, hindering the spread of radical ideas in the region—whether communist or Islamist—was a major concern; this meant that promoting mediocre forms of nationalism or political religiosity, especially in light of a rejuvenated militant Islam, was at the core of the political agenda of the broader Left in Britain. In general, and particularly after the 1990s, sponsoring financial development coupled with political stability—especially in the form of democracy—was, beyond question, a caveat for the British Left (Callaghan 2007, p. 211).

3.2. The Many Faces of British Islam

Notwithstanding, the agency of Muslims in Britain in perceiving the emergence of political Islam was of fundamental importance. Thus, in order to understand the encounter of the British Left with the rise of political Islam in the Middle East, a succinct approach to the various trends and itineraries of Islam in Britain is necessary. This approach is dictated by two interrelated reasons; on the one hand British Islam, which accounts for approximately two million people (Modood 2002, p. 113), has been an influential mediating lens for the British Left. This means that several historical events taking place in the Middle East were explained and analysed by either secular-socialist Muslims or by Muslim organizations. For example, The Iranian Revolution or the Lebanese Civil War paved the way for several interactions with regard to explaining the mindset and the organizational framework of political Islam. On the other hand, several British Muslim organizations, such as the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), adopted a lobbyist attitude vis à vis the British governments, putting themselves in a position of “pressure” groups and equal interlocutors (Sadek 2018, p. 2).

As political scientist Q. Wiktorowicz (2005, pp. 11–30) has suggested, under the light of identity seeking, European Muslims launched various versions of Islamic “enterprises” via three main stages: religious seeking, cognitive seeking and resource mobilization. This is the third step advancing the utilization of political openings at certain moments.

These trajectories end up in differentiated forms of (political) religiosity in Britain, related as they are with the long history and the character of Islam in the country. In Britain, the main three variables that have helped shape the paragons of British Islam are the aqidat (dogmas), the madhahib (schools of thought) and the tariqat (orders). In addition, Britishness and, subsequently, the way the term was perceived by Muslims, and ideological inclinations were two critical factors moulding the character of Islamic groups (Shain 2009). These variables cemented the milieu of British Islam throughout the second half of the 20th century and anchored the formation of many Islamic organizations, such as the early UK Islamic Mission or organizations such as the Young Muslims or the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT) (Sadek 2018, pp. 6–8). For example, in Britain the two main Islamic tariqas: the Barelwi and the Deobandi (mainly derived from the south-eastern Asia Islamic traditions), held sway in Britain during the post-war period (Sadek 2018, p. 6).

During the 1980s and 1990s, due to the enrichment of British Islam with new generations, new social and political identities and the society’s fleshing out with even more ethnicities (many Islamist exiles also arrived at that period from MENA), organizations of British Islam were reinvigorated but also further dismantled; in the same vein, the Rushdie affair of 1989 epitomized the fragmentation of Islamic organizations in Britain, since a rupture was witnessed between those supporting the Satanic Verses’ free fictional prose and those denouncing it as blatantly “anti-Islamic”. In tandem, the rise of a diffused fascist discourse and anti-Islamic policies, alongside the internationalization of the Middle East chain of events during 1980s and 1990s, resulted in closer discursive but also operational cooperation between Islamic and leftist organizations in Britain. The promotion of a docile British Islam from above, especially after 1997 (Jones 2013, pp. 550–66), and the domination of the New Labour, created further antagonisms between the organizations of British Islam as to who would spearhead Muslims in the country (Sadek 2014, p. 113).

A set of events related to education, religion, and internal and external politics paved the way for crossing over from preaching to politicization. For instance, in 1982, the head of the Islamic Council of Europe, Salem Azzam, asked his counterpart in the TUC to mediate “in order to influence the government” to establish Islam as one of the state’s formal religions.3 Azzam’s lobbying was not a nonrecurring phenomenon, as many members of Islamic organizations tried to influence high ranking politicians for vested interests. Another example comes from the Union of Muslim Organizations (UMO) in 1989, when, during the Rushdie affair havoc, its members lobbied the Labour Party’s leader, Michael Foot, for the sake of “Muslims’ interests and respect”.4 This rallying around single-issue politics, as Maha Abdelrahman describes it, was rather more temporary than permanent, especially due to the different actual goals that rendered these consensual alliances fragile (Abdelrahman 2009, pp. 39–40). Indeed, as it has been claimed, the Labour Party viewed Islamist organizations mainly as “interest groups”, cooperation with which could lead to win-win situations (Kaufman 1983, pp. 82–83).

4. The Islamist Conundrum: The Iranian Revolution

Religion and politics affected the post-war intellectual history of the Left in Britain. The New Catholic Left, as it was dubbed, initiated an open dialogue between some leftist political philosophers and the religious field. For example, A. Cunningham and T. Eagleton established a dynamic dialectic relationship by launching the Slant journal during the 1960s associated with Cambridge University. In the manifesto, Christians Against Capitalism, what was at stake for the New Catholic Left was the embeddedness of the social aspirations of Catholic philosophy into the alternative sphere of the Left, with one and only goal: social change (Williams 1966, p. 75). Meanwhile, T. Eagleton, building also on Gramsci’s philosophy, devoted his writings to producing a New Left Theology, taking pride in incorporating critical egalitarian and emancipating elements from the Latin American liberation theology paradigm (Boer 2008, p. xvii). Bearing in mind this intellectual milieu, Morning Star, the CPGB newspaper, hosted several articles that dived into the political collaborations and shared aspirations between the Catholic church and the Left’s forces.5 In fact, in the heyday of the anti-apartheid movement, Morning Star highlighted the activities of the rather small British Christian Socialist party against social segregation and apartheid in South Africa.6

Therefore, an encounter with the rejuvenated Islamic political religiosity in the Middle East was not something of a surprise for some parts of the Left in Britain. However, as documents and newspapers from the period reveal, the outburst of The Iranian Revolution in 1978–79 showcased both the surprise and aversion towards the emergence of political Islam. However, as we shall see, the roots of the ‘Islamization of the discourse’, as Maurits Berger termed it (Berger 2010), were rather present with an orientalist and Islamophobic approach from some parts of the British Left. On the other hand, others viewed this revival with more attention, while others, as was the case with Gerry Healy and the Worker’s Revolutionary Parry, fiercely identified themselves with the revolution in Iran, labelling it as progressive and anti-imperialist. By and large, the fear of a general “Islamist” takeover in the Middle East was prevalent across many constitutional parties, while, in tandem, the fear of an Islamist–communist alliance against the West (Shabana 2020) was expressed by diplomatic and more conservative (mainly anti-USSR) circles, and temporarily gained ground.

The Labour’s right wing, mainly through the Daily Mail, was aghast by The Iranian Revolution and the advent and prevalence of Khomeini in power. In early 1979, D. Tattersall suggested that the revolution was a “retreat from the 20th century”7; at the same time the actual fear for some factions in the Labour Party was the peril for British interests in the country. However, omitting to actually analyse what was happening in Iran and acknowledging the rich mosaic of political and ideological manifestations in Tehran, the newspaper brought to the front the unprecedented attack on the rights of women and westerners, describing The Iranian Revolutionaries as “fanatics” and “murderers”.8 While often the events in Egypt (Camp David Accords and the murder of president Sadat) or Lebanon (the Lebanese civil war) overshadowed The Iranian Revolution, the Middle East sub-committee (MEsC) in 1979 declared its support for the revolutionaries in spite of the fact that it was not possible to agree with all the movements fighting against the Shah. The small entryist International Marxist Group harshly criticized in 1978 the leftist forces that supported religious factions, with the pretext of the Iranian masses being politically immature to express otherwise. Its member Saber Nickbin elaborated:

The Left has used such interpretations in order to justify opportunistic politics to liquidate its own program and end the religious leadership. […] Under this type of interpretation every failed political force has managed to hide behind religion.9

Britain’s guilt for its colonial past combined with its inability to lead global imperialism in the post-war 20th century—which led to the “imperialism by treaty” dogma (Callaghan 2007, pp. 270–71)—is reflected in many publications with regard to the Middle East. The Iranians’ anger is mostly attributed to Britain’s share in Iran’s debacle, something that, as Labour Weekly stressed, is understandable, since Britain “widely supported the Shah” in the past.10

The issues of exporting The Iranian Revolution, and the conservative and religious turn in the Iranian constitution and leadership, were widely debated by the Left. The former issue was mainly addressed under the flag of exporting the revolution through armed struggle and by means of terrorism. This notion, which was, in retrospect, coined as the “fourth wave of terrorism” by D. Rapoport (2013), created alarms for parties and policy makers; however, as documents from the FCO disclose, this was highly unlikely, mainly due to different ethnic/religious formation characteristics and social/economic objectives in neighbouring countries, such as Iraq and Lebanon. Interestingly, the Shia community in Iraq was attributed a “Calvinistic talent” with regard to solving ethnic/religious disputes.11

The Trotskyist magazine Militant deployed the use of Marxist methodology to address the advance of The Iranian Revolution and its Islamist component. The nationalization of the main industrial sectors, including oil and the workers’ committees established in factories, were seen to corroborate the intention of the masses to upend capitalism and exploitation from private capital. Ted Grant, a leading member of the Militant Tendency, wrote in 1979 that “all the elements for a socialist revolution are present”, utilizing Trotsky’s theory of a combined development.12 Delving further to the Iranian movement, the Socialist Worker (SW) acknowledged three bifurcations in mid-1979. First and foremost was that of the industrial workers and peasants, which was clearly the revolution’s pinnacle. The second was the religious trend, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, which was starkly more organized. The third comprises various oppositional trends which make the National Front. Without a bias towards Khomeini, as he underlines Khomeini’s anti-socialist character, Nigel Harris of the SW observes:

Khomeini’s role is to constitute an inspiration into a unified movement to destroy Pahlavi’s dynasty, being a meeting point for various opposing forces. From the moment that this goal will be achieved, the contradictions will emerge, contradictions in which Islam will be equally divisive, as unifying it is now.13

Religion, as a variable in social and political environments, already existsed in the discourse of socialist and communist organizations. Notwithstanding, the anatomy, the nature and the aspirations of political Islam were left uncharted; the pendulum between the regressive and the progressive character of the Islamist wave was endlessly swaying. A case in point is that in the wake of The Iranian Revolution, two Labour MPs, A. Faulds and E. Moorman, embarked on a fierce discussion in the newspaper Labour Weekly, with regard to whether the religion of Islam—and subsequently its political manifestations—is actually reactionary. In this discussion, A. Faulds, who was (as the chair of Poale Zion and of the Zionist Federation in Britain) a committed Zionist, was accused by E. Moorman of being pro-Islamist.14

One of Labour’s internal committees related to the Middle East, the MEsC, addressed in 1981 the issue of “Islam of the working class”. In this outline, the members of the MEsC deemed that in order to obtain a more complete picture of Islam’s societal function, one should view the religious feeling of the working class in comparative relation with other social groups. As the committee asserts, the term Islamic fundamentalism blurs rather than defines the character of the political movement. It also adds that “class relations and contradictions have in fact a growing differentiated importance in Islam’s practice and the ways that religion is being viewed from various social groups”, meaning that religion, rather than being a unifying feature, can, in tandem, mobilize sectarianism.15

The advancement of The Iranian Revolution and the eventual crackdown on the liberal and Marxist opposition led some organizations to gradually declare their expostulation towards the Islamic Republic. Both CPGB and SWP were active in organizing events and demonstrations in solidarity with the Iranian people. SWP also established its Socialist Workers Party Middle East Group, engaging in various focus group discussions such as the revolutionary perspective, the mounting role of Islam and, primarily, on gender roles in the Middle East. However, the SW received many letters from Muslim women expressing their discomfort towards the SWP for not engaging enough with Muslim women’s emancipation.16 Deriving from this need, the Campaign for Solidarity with Iran and the Iranian Women’s Solidarity Group were established in 1979, supported by leftist organizations based in London, such as Women’s Voice and Socialist Feminists. Confirming the aforementioned thesis, the Iranian feminist social theorist Val Moghadam (1987) attributes this, among other factors, to the failure of the Iranian Left to influence political events.

SWP’s Chris Harman was prolific on the role of Islam in Iran and the Middle East. He timely acknowledged the efficient organizational framework that the Islamist movement already had in Iran, while at the same time he slated Khomeini for trying, through his secret police and the Revolutionary Guards, to crackdown on socialist ideas.17 In the same vein with V. Moghadam, the SWP member J. Bearman, reproached the Iranian Left for letting Islamist forces gain power, highlighting that the Left in Iran “failed to discern between support and dependency” as far as their relation with the Islamists was concerned,18 while he condemned the prospect of an Islamic dictatorship. The British Marxist historian Ian Birchall suggested that Islam can operate as a dual mechanism; it can be disguised both as a force that expresses the material demands and aspirations of the people and also as a mitigating mechanism for class struggles, as the case of Afghanistan suggests.19

The CPGB, and its Iranian counterpart, Tudeh, was one of the main supporters of Khomini’s Islamist project as a means to fight imperialism and capitalism. Hence, the communist forces, the Morning Star’s journalist Chris Myant asserted, should champion the “socialist facet of the Iranian clergy”.20 Moreover, British historian, Thomas Hodgkin, and author of the book The Revolutionary Tradition in Islam, wrote in the Morning Star that an open dialogue between the Left and the progressive forces of Islam is welcomed.21 Tudeh’s mediation here was fundamental. In 1979, a member of the Iranian communist party declared in an article in the Dunya magazine that Islam, and its Shi’a element in particular, has a long history of revolutionary struggles, while the Tudeh per se has strong religious, and thus revolutionary, roots (Tabari and Moin 1979, pp. 29–30). Under the lens of the Cold War, and in the context of the American assault against The Iranian Revolution, Tudeh promulgated in 1982 that:

The feverish campaign of ‘Islamization’ is, in fact, an attempt to denigrate Khomeini’s line, to disintegrate the revolution and marginalize the anti-imperialist and the radical social reforms.22

In fact, the “imperialist conspiracy”, as it was often dubbed by communist forces, included the two powerful and influential forces of the Iranian political sphere and revolution: the Mujahideen e-Khalq and the Fedayeen e-Khalq. Both organizations were de-legitimized by the Tudeh party and Khomeini, as they were both perceived as carriers of the foreign dependency in Iran and the West’s influence over the country. In 1980, the secretary general of Tudeh, Nouredin Kianouri, expressed his views, influenced by Soviet theories about Islam and Marxism (Kemper 2008), concerning the compatibility of Islam and Marxism, while viewing the assault over Khomeini’s Islam as a “history repeating itself” coup, such as the one that took place in 1953.23

The Iranian Resistance Committees

Most of the Left was shocked by the events in Iran and the dynamic emergence of political Islam. The infamous academic Fred Halliday admitted in 1979 that he could not foresee Islamist politics coming with such a speed.24 However, Iranians were more familiar with Islam and politics. Many Iranian exiles in Britain, following the outburst of The Iranian Revolution, established “resistance committees” supporting the Iranian cause depending on their ideological affiliations. Without any doubt, these committees served as a mediating lens for the British Left, laying the ground for explaining notions such as Khomeini’s political philosophy, velayat e-fiqh, introducing a more in-depth analysis of the revolution’s ideologue, Ali Shariati, and, undoubtedly, building an intellectual tradition on issues such as Islam and gender roles. The interesting element was that this anatomy was mainly given with the use of Marxist tools in an attempt to deconstruct stereotypes. Even though many of them did not endure, these committees gave a lively picture apropos of Khomeini’s gradual diehard suppression of Iranian opposition.

The assault against the Iranian opposition, alongside the Iran–Iraq war, was the main field of controversy among forces of the British Left and the resistance committees. For example, the National Committee for Resistance (NCR), which included multiple oppositional forces, was supported by the Labour Party. The Mujahideen of Iran, a rather radical Marxist organization, was, nevertheless, viewed as a conspirator by the CPGB, causing many disputes over the subject between the latter and the Labour Party. The undiminished crackdown of Iranian opposition would continue to be the point of convergence between the British Left and Iranian opposition. In the 1983 Labour Party congress, a resolution was adopted against the mass murders of Iranian political dissidents, while urging the Labour party per se and the Left in general to support the operations of NCR and its leader Masoud Rajavi.25 A few years later, in 1987, the Labour Party would propose the cease of British arms sales to Tehran in order to force the Islamic Republic to halt its war with Iraq, to stop the mass extermination of Iranian dissidents and prevent the export of the Islamic revolution.26

The Iranian Women Solidarity Group and the Organization of Democratic Youth and Students of Iran in Britain were some of the first committees to be established in Britain. The latter, in a brochure published in 1981 entitled “Facts about Iran”, stressed the need to further engage with the relations between politics and religion, since Iran offers a great example, while Shi’a Islam, it proclaimed, has an established historical revolutionary nexus.27 Another important committee was the Committee for the Defense of the Iranian People’s Rights (CODIR). CODIR established some correspondence with the Labour Party, in particular with the Labour Middle East Committee (LMEC), informing the British party with regard to hunger strikes of Iranian dissidents in London and human rights violations in Iran. Some examples are drawn from the mass executions (more than 1.000 political prisoners) that took place in Tehran prisons or the one in Qom, both in 1988.28 The fear of executions being carried on British soil by the Iranian secret police further urged the committees to forge closer relations with the Conservatives, trying to convince the latter to safeguard them. CODIR was also a fierce opponent against the armed struggle of the Mujahideen e-Khalq and tried to propagate the Mujahideen’s counter-revolutionary and poignant political mistakes due to their terrorist methods.29 As many documents and contentious episodes reveal, the status of the Mujahideen e-Khalq was a main point of controversy among the Iranian Left, which was also bestowed to the British.

Finally, organizations such as the Fedayeen e-Khalq developed organizational resources in order to translate, print and distribute brochures among the Iranian people in Britain and the leftist groups. By doing so, they tried to present their struggle and sacrifices against imperialism and their local servants, as they were coined, such as Khomeini.30 Last but not least, Peykar, a radical Marxist group was also present in London publishing a newspaper under the same name. It engaged with multiple issues such as Iranian politics but was also vocal during the Rushdie affair in 1989.

5. The Lebanese Civil War, the Palestinian Intifada and the Responses of the British Left

The echo of The Iranian revolution influenced the face and the character of political Islam in MENA. The constant rise and empowering of organizations of political Islam, either as state or nonstate actors, in the 1980s, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, was one of the main characteristics of the Middle East. Meanwhile, the changing face of the British Left under transformative social and political junctures, while functioning under bipolarism, were determinant factors for building a contextual framework to deploy several readings over political Islam. However, parts of the British Left, while leaving behind them a “marriage of convenience” with Israel and moving to a poignant “divorce”, as P. Kelemen coined it (Kelemen 2012), engaged in an Islamophobic discourse in the wake of the Rushdie affair.

As a MEsC document reveals in 1982, shortly before the Shabra and Shatila massacres, Labour’s alignment with Britain’s “global role” and with US foreign policy in the Middle East created havoc and gave leeway to the development of regressive politics in the region.31 MP and head of the Trade Union Friends of Palestine, Arnie Ross, suggested that it was high time for the Labour Party to align itself with the Palestinian cause and make a great leap towards justice.32 In the same vein, Ted Knight scathed Israel and its proponents among the Left, since Israel, he highlighted, works “hand in hand with the Nazi-phalangists in Lebanon’,33 remarking also on the discourse of the Israelis, which resembles that of the Nazis against Jews.

In due course, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict became, for the Left in Britain, a raison d’etre, introducing “Palestinization” as a core hermeneutical tool. The issues of Zionism and its critical approach from the Left was brought into leftist media and the political fora, sometimes with emotional overwrought rather than with political insight. The LMEC, with its head David Watkins, initiated critical campaigns and initiatives in order to bring the Palestinian cause to the forefront. The objectives of these campaigns, even since the early 1980s, were the transformation of the core policy aims and targets, mainly referring to the reconfiguration of Labour’s foreign policy and their position towards the Palestinians, as, for example, D. Watkins claimed in 1982 ahead of the 1983 elections.34 Furthermore, the academic and member of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, Edward Said, stated in 1981 that pressure on western powers for a whole repositioning on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is observed, which actually claims the abandonment of classical approaches for the protection of economic interests (oil, investments, etc.) in favour of the reappraisal of human and political rights.35

Yet, religious awakening was not observed by many, let alone its roots and implications. Labour’s MP Dennis Healey apportioned responsibility for the rise of religious radicalism to patrimonial divisions but also to the imposition of technical and oblique borders in MENA, a region he considered as a sphere of violent disputes—religious, national, racial and sectarian’.36 In the wake of the Hama massacre in 1982 and the extermination of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, he goes as far as to say that:

These conflicts have already caused greater bloodshed than this of the Israeli—Palestinian conflict and the blooming of a theocratic fundamentalism in the Muslim world, from Nigeria to Indonesia, introduces a new element with which the western world was not familiar for thousands of years.

(Healey 1983, p. 194)

However, the Hama massacre of February 1982, which was underestimated by leftist media outlets, was not perceived with the same manner by the Left, revealing an abundance of commentaries on political Islam. Some among the Labour Party aligned with the position of the then ambassador of Israel in London, Shlomo Argov, who assessed that the Arab leaders, with Hafez al-Assad as a revealing example, classified the Islamist peril as greater than Israel. Directly opposed to this view was the position of CPGB, who, mediated by the position of Moscow, stated that the Muslim Brotherhood’s insurrection in Hama was designed and directed by Washington and the CIA in an attempt to undermine Assad’s anti-imperialist bloc.37

SWP’s Jonathan Neale tried to omit the disparaging and skewed claims for “mad mullahs” and “Muslim fanatics” that often appeared in the British media. Undoubtedly, he ratified the danger that religious radicalism brought but he underlined that a “Red–Green Alliance”, the alliance between socialist and religious forces, despite appearing alluring against a common adversary, it could only harm the Left, since political Islam serves the interests of the bourgeoisie.38

5.1. Interpreting the Lebanese Civil War and the Emergence of Hezbollah

Britain’s involvement in the Lebanese civil war—with British soldiers being held hostage by militant Islamists—inevitably blurred the analysis of the leftist parties and organizations in Britain. The discourse depicted, almost exclusively, the Islamist among all religious organizations and fighters as “extremists”, “fundamentalists”, “gang of terrorists” and “fanatics”, showcasing the gradual demonization of Islamist politics. Religious sectarianism and the mounting impact of religious-orientated nonstate actors in Lebanon was the point of departure for the analysis of the British Left, even though some, such as MEsC member Michael Gilsenan, lucidly asserted that religion is not the only decisive factor for politics formation and conflict in the war-torn country.39 CPGB’s thesis suggested that the Lebanese conundrum was to be solved by giving more economic and political space to the Muslim elements of the country, while rejecting Gemayel’s support for Israel.40 At the same time, the roots of Shi’a mobilization are attributed to their exposure to radical ideologies and arms with their involvement in the Palestinian struggle and in transnational political networks built in the region by the Islamic republic, which tried to export the revolution, as British academic Roger Owen underlined in Marxism Today.41

Even though Hezbollah was rarely mentioned in the British media, when it appeared, it was described as a group with terrorist methods. One of the first records referring to Hezbollah was made by SW, however not before 1989. In an attempt to approach the Lebanese Shi’a organization, the SW wondered “who are finally these ‘terrorists’?”. While not omitting mentioning that Israel has been the pipeline for the mushrooming of armed resistance against it in the country, the article corroborated what other analysis offered; that the members of Hezbollah were derived from the lower strata and the deprived slums of Lebanon,42 rendering Hezbollah’s Islamism as a genuine popular movement.

What strikes us is that Hezbollah, for example, was not part of the analysis with regard to the rise of political Islam and its growing political, economic and social influence. However, it is even more electrifying that one of the main organizations of political Islam in the Arab world, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and several other countries, was not included in the analysis, let alone its ideological reflections to other organizations of moderate or radical political Islam. The assessments regarding political Islam, concentrated on the toilsome Shi’a politicization and its transnational expansion attempts; Sunni radicalization was mainly left out of the picture during 1980s, mainly for two reasons. On the one hand, most of the Islamist organizations, despite being transnational and even internationalist, were principally preoccupied with adjusting to national contexts, and even forging alliances with other political forces (Bennigsen 1958, pp. 351–60), developing what Juergensmeyer (1996) coined as religious nationalism. Hence, the religious component was sometimes included in a more opaque and oblique way in the analysis. On the other hand, Shi’a political mobilization was regarded as more progressive, anti-imperialist and even anti-capitalist by some analysts. Their involvement in the communist movement in Lebanon and Iraq during the 1950s and 1960s, their armed opposition to Israel, their equalitarian political discourse which targeted the deprived (Hazran 2010), and their popular base framed the “progressive” orientation of Shi’a Islamism.

5.2. Hamas, the Intifada Struggle and the Oslo Accords, 1987–1993

Theorizing the ideology and the transformations of the Islamist movement of Hamas in Palestine is beyond the scope of this paper. However, incorporating Hamas into the tenets of the Social Movement Theory (SMT) could generate some revealing information regarding its ideological context, its organizational framework, its strategies and its mid- and long-term political objectives (Robinson 2004). However, the British Left’s mechanisms of interpretation did not leverage these readings when in December 1987, the first Intifada broke out in the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Islamist resistance movement was actually born. Several political and social malaises deriving form Israel’s occupation paved the ground for the first Intifada, such as mounting inflation, poverty and growing political and economic dependency on Israel, just to name some of them. On top of this, the Palestinian national movement, with its major representative, the PLO, was in decline and in a constant whirlwind of corruption, falling into distrust. This presented a leeway for the emergence and empowering of other organizations, such as Hamas, but also the more traditional leftist currents such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. However, as evidence shows, this leeway was gradually channelled to the Islamist current, especially on the Gaza Strip.

In this political juncture, the Socialist Workers Review (SWR) focused on the events in the Occupied Territories. It detected the rising wave of religious feeling that was reflected from the launch of episodes of political contention after the Muslim prayers. In addition, while the Islamist current “may present itself as the most implacable resistance to Israel” what it finally achieves, according to SWR, is to blur the line towards the most effective way to confront Zionism.43 Further to this observation, SWP’s Clare Hill, emphasized the unreasonable weight put on the dynamics of political Islam in the Intifada; however, in tandem, she acknowledged that its growing power is alarming, which actually is a corollary of three variables; first, the material and ethical support provided by the conservative Gulf monarchies; second, the failure of the secular Palestinian leadership, and third, the crisis of the USSR and its inability to maintain ideological and material influence over the Middle East.44

Clare Hill’s observations were important since she gave the leftist audience an important insight into Islamist dynamics. She further goes on to discern the two Islamist currents: the moderate and the radical, including Hamas in the former current. Even though she did not explicitly mention it, her insights offered the actual twofold objectives of Hamas: the controlled use of violence and the gradual takeover of political and military leadership, resulting from PLO’s corrosion. What the Left should take into account, Hill mentioned, is not to fall into the trap of developing close organizational cooperation with Islamist groups, since their character is mainly regressive and serve the elites’ interests (note 44). Furthermore, as Nick Wrack from the Militant noted, “the leaders of the different fundamentalist groups represent parts of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoise” and he continues by mentioning that the “fundamentalist leaders condemn the atheist communism and are acrimoniously anti-socialist”.45

The mediation of the Palestinian Communist Party (PCP) in the interpretation of the events for the CPGB was fundamental. Through a wide correspondence during the Intifada, the PCP informed its British counterpart that it was of high priority to support the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, which involved several political factions, including Hamas. It also stated that brochures and leaflets distributed to the Palestinian people, in which the PCP seemed to attack the Islamist forces, are mere, as it underlined, Israeli machinations in order to create ruptures in Palestinian resistance.46 The PCP stated in detail:

The purpose of these attempts is to undermine the support of the global public opinion, especially in the West, where the religious currents are automatically connected to Khomeini and fundamentalism. In fact, part of the religious current is taking part in the uprising and when it actually does, a cooperation is built among them and our comrades.

In due course, the Oslo Accords nurtured by the Intifada became a point of contention among Palestinian political factions. The Ten Front alliance, born in 1991 with the initiation of the Madrid talks, brought some political factions together under single-issue politics, condemning the peace process and normalization with Israel (Mishal and Sela 2006, p. 83). This process led to a cycle of violent contentious episodes during the mid-1990s, with suicide bombings and armed attacks from both sides, that were puzzling to the British Left. The cycle of violence, nonetheless, was attributed by most of the leftist organizations to both sides; on the one hand, Israel’s denial to grant legal recognition to Palestine and implement the Oslo Accords and the divisions and fragmentation of the Palestinian Islamist movement which led, partly, to its radicalization. For example, a member of the Israel Communist Party, Abdul Hamid Abu Eita, while condemning political violence, perceived Israel as the perpetrator for the escalation of violence, while he scorned PLO’s policies of corruption.47

Political Islam, during that period, occupied more and more space in both the European leftist parties’ discourse and its Arab counterparts, as evidence reveals. Hence, a closer monitoring and evaluation of the Islamist current in the region during the late 1980s is gradually occurring. For example, the Labour Party, which was going through a series of ideological and identity transformations, created a set of conservative policy recommendations, including the Mediterranean basin, as the 1988 “Britain in the World” Labour report discloses. As far as our subject is concerned, one of the main challenges that the Labour Party detects for the new decade is religious fundamentalism as a factor in international politics.48 However, this challenge is actually perceived as a security one, revealing the growing influence on addressing political Islam as a threat, which could be intercepted by a chain of activities combining security measures and financial incentives for development. Furthermore, the oppositional discourse, as many in the Left described, was expressed by Islam’s language and organizational structures in the quest for escaping poverty. As Nick Wrack from the Militant observed, this phenomenon “reflects the desperate attempt of the suppressed masses to find a resort” and escape from poverty and injustice.49

6. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Left’s Strategies of Interpretation for Political Islam

The “short 20th century” released waves of contentious politics despite the declaration for the “end of history”. The dawn of 20th century’s last decade brought more waves of contentious Islamism, alongside the fundamental event of The First Gulf war; the “Desert Storm” Blitzkrieging moved the centre of gravity of political Islam from Shi’a to Sunni political activism. Especially, after the return of the “Afghani” militants to their home countries, with the end of the Soviet-Afghan war, militant Islamism was reinvigorated. Coupled with the echo of the Rushdie affair in Britain and the overall rise of political Islam in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, the Balkans, the Caucasus (with the fall of USSR), etc., The Algerian Civil War became a turning point for the perception of political Islam as a terror threat by the main political forces in Europe, including the Left, while its incompatibility with western political and social values became evident. Moreover, the 1990s was also the decade that some scholars, such as E. Gellner (1991), tried to equate Islamic ideas with communism, positioning Islam in the cluster of radical ideologies alongside fascism and Marxism. This framing developed the idea of a cultural collision between the West and the East, with the latter being perceived as the “enemy of liberty”.

Further to this, one of the main characteristics of the 1990s was the transformation from a largely understanding and explorative framework to a “securitization” approach towards political Islam. This securitization took place in the midst of a general changing identity orientation among the British (and western) Left; on the one hand, it showcased a growing mitigation of ideological cleavages between forces of different political orientations (Berg 2016; Sassoon 1997; Thompson 1997; Eley 2010). This mitigation was mainly operated in the context of defending European interests in regions under crisis, such as the Middle East, adopting notably common strategies in the field of foreign policy (Agnantopoulos 2010, p. 10), while advocating a common European identity and cultural heritage vis à vis other belligerent communities, such as the Islamic. On the other hand, newly forged and more radical social movements, based on wider political and social platforms, emerged. These movements, such as the anti-war and anti-globalization movements, claimed further political space and the dissemination of their discourse, while seeking wider political and social alliances (Smith and Worley 2017).

Respective fragmentation and the emergence of a heterogeneous political discourse was also advancing among political Islam forces in the same period. As C. Rosefsky Wickham accurately shows (Rosefsky Wickham 2013, pp. 2–3, 83) during this period, three main elements were attached to the movements of political Islam; first, the constant question with regard to ideological accommodation or direct confrontation with the Arab regimes; second, the emergence of several rejuvenated political platforms endorsing elements of liberal and democratic reformist policies; third the appearance of a new generation in various movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which claimed leadership in their cadres, leading to a more radical way of political intervention. As M. Browers (2009, p. 9) suggests, Islamist movements led by the political openings of the 1990s, together with state repression, chose to collaborate with forces from the political spectrum of their countries introducing new cross-ideological political ideas and introducing a new political culture. Thus, various political movements, such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1987 and FIS in 1990–91, chose to participate in national elections attracting a large number of constituencies.

Algeria: Between Democratic Values and Entrenched Interests

Algeria’s war of independence and the post-colonial state based its legitimacy on anti-imperial, nationalist and socialist ideologies. Nevertheless, Islamic discourse and religious institutions, as an ethical foundational myth of the state and the people, were not absent, assisting in building a strong edifice maintaining the social fabric, despite socioeconomic malaises (Ghanem 2019, p. 2). The notion of social justice drew elements of both socialist and Islamic ideologies, with the latter, however, being a clear and proud distinguishing variable vis à vis the Christian colonizers. Put otherwise, Islamic identity was reframed and reformulated, gaining increasingly more depth and importance, especially after Chadli Bendjedid’s accession to power in 1979 and the gradual loss of Third-Worldist symbolism for newer generations (Chalcraft 2016, p. 467). Over and above, the British embassy in Algiers noted in 1978 the government’s endorsement of Islam; more specifically, this happened due to the fact that Islam “was not French” while “being one of the pillars of national unity”,50 involving at the same time socialists and nationalist.51 Even earlier than that, in 1982, MEsC observed that in Algeria, inveterate socioeconomic problems are the root causes for the emergence of Berberic separatism and Islamic fundamentalism.52

These observations were, if nothing else, alarming for European policy makers. Algeria was not Iran; Algeria was part of the French—and therefore European—Empire, Algerians were part and parcel of the French social fabric and migrants’ communities, while geographical and linguistic proximity made the spill over of an Islamist resurrection a terrifying perspective for the whole of Europe. Suspicions were strengthened when in 1988 riots broke out across Algeria against the country’s shrinking economy, caused partly by the second mass oil crisis of 1985 and Benjedid’s fiscal policy implemented through the Structural Adjustment Programs, and dictated by the International Monetary Fund (Malley 1996, p. 222) in line with the Washington’s Consensus policies in the Global South (Westad 2007, pp. 360–61). “Reaganomics in the tropics”, as J. Castaneda labelled Benjedid’s economic policy (cited in Malley 1996, pp. 208–10), was not the only driving force for the Algerian youth. Political change and the opening of the electoral landscape was equally fundamental for the new generations. Islamists’ involvement in the orchestration of the riots, and at the same time in their de-escalation, was fundamental (Volpi 2003, pp. 37–54). However, the Left in Britain failed to witness Islam’s involvement in the 1988 riots.

Islamic activism was part of the general Islamist conundrum for the British (and European) Left. Most of the analytical tools and the roots of Islamic revivalism were left out of the narrative by many leftist movements. Even if academic circles run late to comprehend and integrate political Islam into a SMT analytic framework, some scholars hesitantly started to adopt comprehensive studies on facets of political Islam’s articulations and manifestations with a cost–benefit analysis. The emergence of FIS in 1989 and its triumph over the then-overarching National Liberation Front (FLN) in the 1990 elections was considered puzzling for the Left. FIS and, eventually, the Armed Islamic Group’s (GIA) growing political violence and their popular impact was seen as an apocalyptic terrorist tragedy for MENA and, subsequently, Europe.

The blending of geopolitical and ideological readings by the Left were, so far, overarching in the period’s literature in the leftist media. FIS and GIA, even if their differences were at times formidable, were perceived as hostile to western values, modernity and democracy. On the other end of the spectrum, FLN was seen as the afficionado of socialism and the guarantor of democracy and political and social liberties. Indisputably, the rise of Sunni radicalism in the Balkans and the Caucasus helped shape this portrayal of Islamic activism. Hence, foreign policy in the Middle East during the 1990s was mostly dictated by the fear of religious radicalism and migration flows. Thus, some parties on the Left spectrum, such as Labour and the CPGB, endorsed a set of measures proposed by the EU to outface the aforementioned issues that was mainly dual: first, Islamism was approached as an outcome of economic shortages in the respective middle eastern countries; second, its manifestations and networks, be they radical or moderate, were addressed with surveillance and suppression methods.

Benjedid’s resignation in early 1992, after FIS’s victory in the parliamentary elections, brought an unprecedented crisis in Algeria which the Morning Star presented as the Algerian’s people will not to accept a fait accompli of an Islamist rule.53 Leftist media, citing Islamist leaders, such as that of FIS, A. Hachani, openly discussed the prospect of jihad by the Islamist camp against the Algerian security apparatus. The Militant, however, mentioned the prospect of an Islamist rule in 1993:

If fundamentalist Islam came to power would not solve any of the economic or social problems that the masses address. Without any solid economic or political platform for societal change, the leaders of fundamentalist Islam would attack the democratic rights and the quality of life of both workers and farmers.54

The Algerian’s Left mediation for the European Left (in this case the French Left position was critical) with regard to Islamist mobilization was critical for the support of secular dictatorship. The Berber Rally for Culture and Democracy and the Socialist Forces Front, which were regarded by the Militant Tendency and the SWP as rational political outlets, were clearly aligned with the national army,55 especially when the civil war clashes became harsher in 1993. Furthermore, through the lens of the Party of Socialist Vanguard (PSV), the communist party of Algeria, the Labour Party and the CPGB openly championed the military’s positions.

For parts of the Left, the materialist character of the Algerian mobilization gradually became more evident, regardless of the political affiliation. Since the roots of the bloody confrontation were economic, the forces of political Islam, as the leader of the PSV assessed, would gladly accept their share in the Algerian economic restructuring; he mentioned in 1993 predicting a historical compromise with FIS. As David Cameron, a member of Militant Tendency highlighted in 1994, “Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria is not a force that comes outside of the military or the political establishment”.56

Yet, the “Islamist cause” crossed the Mediterranean and shook France with the bombing of Saint-Michel in 1995, creating fear from a new generation of radical Islamists. Many newspapers, such as the Daily Mirror, the Independent and the Guardian, presented Islamic activism and religious assertiveness as the matrix of evil, referring even at outlawing Islamism. However, in an attempt to compromise positions, J. Fath from the French Communist Party mentioned in 1998 that it is critical to understand how political Islam was born and gained support, and whether a military intervention, as it was discussed throughout that period, would solve or further deteriorate the situation in Algeria.57

In the same vein, SWP attempted to meticulously examine the nature and character of the Islamist movement in Algeria. More specifically, SW underlined that even though FIS do not have a great base of popular support, the crackdown on opposition by the Algerian government leads more and more young people to its embrace. ‘FIS’, according to the SWP, “is not the alternative”, since it is “devoted to the principles of free economy”.58 SWP put the crucial question in 1992, wondering whether political Islam is a “fascist threat of the voice of the poor”. Albeit, the question was not answered, though SW assured its readers that it is normal for people to be channelled to the Islamist camp, since the leftist alternatives are almost non-existing, while Algeria is not going to become a new Iran,59 without, however, explaining why. For SWP “western socialists must oppose the army’s suppression, however they must also recognize that FIS does not constitute any alternative for workers and peasants”60.

The Trotskyist party decried the image moulded for Islamists by the British media as ‘barbaric Islamists at the threshold of Europe’, while rejecting the term ‘Islamofascism’. As Chris Harman wrote, FIS, even if it is a regressive party, is not fascist. In his essay The Prophet and the Proletariat, published in 1994, Harman addresses the thorny issue of political Islam with the eyes of the Left. He scolded the equation by some leftist factions of political Islam and communism, while he criticized the position that political Islam is far more inimical than capitalism (Harman 2003, p. 9). Furthermore, one has to delve into the diversified currents of political Islam in order to understand its rich mosaic, continued the British political activist. A pitfall for the Left’s understanding, according to Harman, is this analytical dearth that leads to a dual analytical simplification. First the analysis which holds that political Islam is “a form of fascism” and which bears examples from Iran, Egypt and Algeria. Second the approach which perceives Islamic activism as anti-imperialist and progressive, since it deems USA and its allies as adversaries (Harman 2003, pp. 14–15). Harman also highlights religion’s capacity and versatility, as the example of Christianity also shows, to express contradictory interests and social groups at the same time, such as the traditional bourgeoisie, the new capitalists, the poor’s Islamism and the new middle-class intellectuals and educated youth that seek their share from economic development. He claimed that both analyses are misguiding, and he proposed a new reading with regard to political Islam:

For these reasons we cannot support the state against the islamists. Those who do so, in the context that islamists are threatening secular principles, are simply facilitating the islamists to present the Left as part of the ‘infidel’ and ‘secular’ cooperation of the oppressors against the most impoverished parts of the society. […] However, as socialists we cannot support the islamists too. That would be like calling for one change of oppression to the other […] that could make capitalist exploitation to continue unfettered, as long as it takes an ‘islamic’ disguise.

(Harman 2003, p. 37)

Yet, Chris Harman found himself having to make a statement in an attempt to dissipate confusions. He asserted that a coalition between leftist and (moderate) Islamist forces, as long as it is controlled, temporary and equal, could bring more effective results in political desiderata.

7. Conclusions

Manifestly, as it becomes clear through writings and sources with regard to hybrid political cultures and ideologies, the notion of building hybrid ideologies or joint political forces against imperialism has been at stake since, at least, The Iranian Revolution. Overall, notions of hybrid utterances have been dynamically articulated in the post-colonial context, opening spaces for changing definitions of political identities and cultural politics. After having hitherto addressed the transformations of political and cultural identities through the lenses of translocality in the post-colonial milieu (Mandaville 2001), what we have argued is that hybrid political identities developed in Britain’s political space that were highly influenced by a general intermingling between otherwise conflicting political ideologies, such as that of the Left and political Islam. Having said that, we do not deem that the above political ideologies joined forces; in contrast, the former was to a great extent critical of the latter and vice versa. What we discovered is that, in terms of crucial elements and issues of the synchronic political agenda, such as anti-imperialism, racism, social and political rights and middle eastern politics, these forces joined voices reaching a wider audience, while at the same time, functioned like pressure groups. Cross-ideological political coalitions, such as the World Social Forums and the Respect movement, did not come into existence until 2001, and the paradigm shift that 9/11 and its subsequent wars brought.

Overall, interpretations of political Islam did not have the same itineraries throughout 1979 to the late 20th century. As already observed, several variables determined the analytical and hermeneutical approach of the British Left’s encounter with political Islam. Some of these variables, however not exhausting, were The Iranian Revolution, the Lebanese civil war, the Palestinian cause, the fall of the USSR alongside the demise of Yugoslavia in the Balkans and the post-Cold War order, as well as the long Algerian Civil War during the 1990s. All the same, interpretations, at times, were not the corollary of these historical events, but rather an interrelation of them with ideological transformations across the leftist political terrain, especially in the post 1991 era when large parts of the British (and the European) Left embarked upon the vehicle of the Europeanization of their foreign policy, privileging European interests and cultural identities. A common denominator though, with some exceptions, was the lack of depth in the analytical approaches developed by the British Left.

By the same token, primary and secondary sources showcased that for the British Left, geostrategic analysis and ideological identities did coexist in order to infer interpretations over political Islam. Undoubtedly, ideological transformations, geopolitical alliances and the Left’s regimes of historicity shaped leftist discourse. Thus, according to the readings of the events involving political Islam, the British Left deployed mainly three approaches depending on the historical period. The first period concerned The Iranian Revolution and its consolidation mostly until 1981, which was predominantly perceived with anti-imperialist expectation and under the lens of the Cold War. During the second period, which covered most of the 1980s, the spirit of a heated bipolarism and the observation of a general religious revivalism all over the world held sway, while the foundations of political Islam as a regressive ideological platform were laid. With The First Gulf War, the fall of the USSR and its domino corollaries and the armed confrontation between secular and religious forces in Algeria, political Islam was linearly connected with terrorism and, under the term of the “clash of civilizations”, bequeathing to the 21st century world a menacing image of Islam.