Islam and Western Leftists: False Friends? Response to Valerio Renzi

Insight by Youssef Siher, researcher

In his piece for Iconografie titled "False Friends", Fanpage.it journalist Valerio Renzi attempts to analyze what he describes as the "red-green alliance, where the green is not ecological but rather that of the Muslim Brotherhood. An alliance that naturally has no political or operational basis but is generating a new political discourse that deserves open discussion." So let's discuss it. Fundamentally, the author's analysis is not entirely incorrect. Personally (and like many other Arab Muslims—and not only those following events post-October 7th), I share the premises and part of the conclusion, but not the perspective, and especially not the qualitative judgment given in some parts. Renzi's analysis presents various problems and contradictions that need to be unpacked to clarify the perspective of those who, against their will, find themselves "on the other side" (and no, I am not engaging in identity politics, but I do believe that, in line with the words of Puerto Rican sociologist Ramón Grosfoguel, subaltern identities can serve as an epistemic starting point for a radical critique of Western paradigms and ways of thinking).

It is true that Islam (not Islamism, political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other Western category applied to Islam) and Western leftists are, in the case of the Palestinian issue, false friends. This is because Western leftists—and with them, the affiliated emulating movements in the Third World—that do not fully adopt a radical idea of breaking with the current Western system are themselves considered part of the colonial problem by those leading the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. This is why few in the West, on October 7, 2023, could understand—without ifs or buts—the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation for what it was: a revolutionary act of decolonization. What they cannot accept is not the act itself but the fact that it was carried out by a national liberation movement that does not ideologically align with "Western values." This ideological delegitimization of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, which, however, finds its reflection in the mainstream critique of the method, is perhaps the most subtle aspect of a broader Islamophobic attitude and an Occidental-centric approach to the Palestinian issue.

Do You Condemn Hamas?

The author of the piece starts by addressing the much-discussed question, "Do you condemn Hamas?" The response, according to the author, "must be articulated exhaustively [...] to build and articulate a coherent discourse." Renzi explains that "there is an answer to this question that should not have been difficult for radical leftists, and indeed many have managed to articulate it (including the EZLN): we condemn the massacre of innocent civilians and the war crimes committed on October 7, but these are the result of the apartheid regime imposed by Israel, the shattered hopes of millions of Palestinians, colonial policies, and systematic violence." The author then criticizes those who, instead of bringing a "purely political, non-moral point," awkwardly adhere "to the political project that enacted it." What is not clarified, however, is what kind of morality is being discussed. A common mistake made by those who, willingly or not, live and view the world through the eyes of privilege is to use the perspective of the "zero point" when describing the actions of "others": it is the "God's-eye view" that always hides its local and particular perspective under abstract universalism. By hiding behind a theory of "universal morality," the author tries to forcibly label the act as politically sensible but "morally" condemnable. The author, therefore, tries to diminish the revolutionary significance of the act by attacking not its legitimacy (as the Western mainstream does) but those who carried it out, i.e., "the political project that enacted it."

What needs to be clarified here once and for all is that decolonization is "a historical process: that is to say, it cannot be understood, nor find its intelligibility and become transparent to itself, except insofar as the historicizing movement that gives it form and content is discerned". Decolonization is, in fact, a break from the status quo of the subjugation of racialized indigenous masses, and therefore dehumanized, for the benefit of the colonial class. It is a process that necessarily implies upheavals, social unrest, and conflicts, paving the way for a new social and political order that reflects the aspirations and values of the liberated people. The Al-Aqsa Flood Operation is, in this sense, an act of liberation—part of the broader decolonization process—in which the Palestinian resistance fighters from Gaza freed themselves from the concentration camp where they were confined. 

They all emerged from the prison, touching, for the first time in their lives, their ancestral land that they had only heard about in the stories of their grandparents. Before being part of a “political project,” these individuals are colonized people and should therefore be considered as such. According to the Franco-Caribbean psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, colonized people are the product of violence, as violence is the cornerstone of the entire colonial system. However, this process of initiation into violence does not only serve as a mechanism of collective control; it also represents an accumulation of energies that, under certain circumstances, can be converted, transforming violence into a tool of resistance and reconfiguring the colonized into a revolutionary.

The author then attempts to downplay the fact that the Palestinian issue should be considered primarily a colonial issue. By explicitly adopting a position generally defined as post-Zionist, he considers the Zionist colonial occupation of 1948 as a concluded historical fact—and thus somehow legitimate—identifying the settlers present as the main problem in dismantling the Zionist settler colony, since "the majority of Israeli citizens now did not choose to live in Israel, they were not emigrated, they were born there." However, the question that the author of the analysis does not ask is this: why is the right of return not recognized for the native Palestinians in these lands and their descendants?

Accepting the State of Israel as an indisputable historical fact automatically means denying these 7 million Palestinian refugees their inalienable right connected to the anti-colonial struggle. The creation of the State of Israel is based precisely on the ethnic cleansing of all of Palestine, a tool that was fundamental for the existence of the colonial entity since it resolved the main problem of the Zionist project: the issue of the demographic majority of the Jewish population over the Arab one within the controlled borders. And this is how the author's fundamental error is understood: Palestinians who die or are exiled are victims of political issues, while Israelis are victims, period. The death and expulsion of the former are condemnable only insofar as there is condemnation of the policies of this or that Zionist government. The death of the latter is always condemnable, no matter the reason. In this way, "morality" is applied only to the latter, fully conceived as human beings. Above all, all Palestinians in the diaspora, perpetually exiled from their ancestral land, are not considered victims of Zionist colonialism.

Islam, the Great Nightmare of the West

Another significant mistake the author of the piece makes, in contradiction with some parts of his own analysis, is to consider “Islamists,” obviously with a purely negative connotation, as an indivisible whole. Indeed, the author rightly explains that one of the most common mistakes is assuming that "the same subjects who produce identity politics are often willing to uncritically adopt the point of view of Arab and Palestinian political subjects who come here to us." However, what is noticeable is that the author himself ends up ironically using the same tool he criticizes when he poses the following question: “How can one think of Hamas as an anti-colonial movement without considering its relations not only with Iran but also with a regional power like Erdoğan’s Turkey, with Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and with the petro-monarchies of the Gulf?” In this way, the author intentionally assumes, following the clash of civilizations theory, that there is a “we” and a “they” that cannot coexist: namely, Western civilization and Islamic civilization.

And you know what? If framed in these terms, I agree with his assessment, and I'll explain why. I agree with the premise that there is a “we” and a “they”: in this “capitalist/patriarchal, Western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world-system”, there is indeed a colonial imposition of Eurocentrism (we) on all subaltern peoples (they). This condition of the world-system is not an objective fact (as the author would like, in agreement with the view of American political scientist Samuel Huntington, theorist of the clash of civilizations) but rather a distinctly Western imposition in the approach to the other. And only in this way can we understand that what the West (and with it its leftist subsidiaries in the Third World) cannot accept is the fact that it has no role—neither political nor ideological—in the process of Palestinian decolonization, and that this process actually undermines the very foundations on which it has based the entire modern/colonial civilization. And why does this happen in the Palestinian case? The answer is simple: Islamophobia, in the true sense of the word. Islam is indeed the great nightmare of the West, and with it, the capitalist-colonial system on which it has built its global hegemony. “How can one not find a contradiction between praising pro-Iranian militias and taking to the streets shouting ‘woman, life, freedom’?” the author rhetorically asks, addressing those who populate Palestinian protests. In fact, the contradiction exists insofar as Western women cannot impose their ideas of liberation on Muslim women. Just as ideas of Western democracy or liberation cannot be imposed on non-Western peoples.

In this historical moment, subaltern peoples are rediscovering, through a very difficult process of decolonizing thought, new tools and methodologies for building epistemologies that draw from their history and culture. One of these elements is Islam itself, which is central to the theorization of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle and the conceptualization of popular revolution against Arab regimes. Only in this sense does Valerio Renzi’s conclusion seem to hold: “The imaginary alliance between some sectors of the left or the internet left with Islamists ultimately risks having little success and harming, first and foremost, the mobilizing capacity of civil society”. This conclusion is true when we understand, keeping in mind the premises I have outlined so far, that the contradiction does not lie in the Palestinian liberation movement. It is socialism that has lost, in the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle and in the decolonial struggle of subaltern peoples, its role as a revolutionary matrix for national liberation and the oppressed peoples. The Western leftists, gripped by the hysteria of seeking a position within the Palestinian liberation movement, find themselves in the difficult position of having to relinquish many of their ideological stances, revealing an existential void that will inevitably lead to their implosion if they do not take on the arduous task of decolonizing their historical analyses by overcoming their inherent Eurocentric limits.