Anti-Capitalist Muslims and Others

Yesterday on RT in a comment by an English-language newspaper editor in Istanbul I heard the term ‘anti-capitalist Muslims’ for the first time.The day before that a commentator used the term ‘cultural Muslims’.

These terms reveal to know-nothing Westerners the complexity of the Muslim world at a time when the West’s future depends in part on understanding it.

In an interview about European citizens joining the fight against Assad in Syria, RT today raised the specter of these fundamentalists coming back to their home countries to practice their fighting or terrorist skills.

Of late I have become convinced that Europe - which is after all a peninsula of the Eurasian continent - will eventually become a majority Muslim area, and these comments would tend to confirm that opinion.  There are many kinds of Islam, its practitioners are gradually making their way there from Africa and the Middle East, as the welfare state crumbles under an American-based financial assault, leaving Europeans vulnerable to competition for benefits from new arrivals.

According to former Canadian diplomat Peter Dale Scott, American foreign policy is in fact devoted to realizing a goal enunciated in the nineties, which is to effectuate regime change in Middle Eastern countries allied to Russia: Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria. Now it so happens that until the U.S. intervened, these four countries were all in one way or another ‘anti-capitalist’.

Although access to oil has been a major reason for America’s recent aggressions, I strongly suspect that ideology plays a key role: Syria, after all, has no oil, and the explanation that it is an ally of oil-rich Iran and Russia simply doesn’t convince me: it this were true, we would have to invade dozens of countries.

What is undeniable is that the United States has played a key role in the European financial catastrophe that now threatens its status as the poster-child for the welfare state.

Is it far-fetched to suggest that the basic thrust of American foreign policy is to ensure that welfare states as well as those practicing ‘Arab socialism’ whether under the Ba’ath Party or a Shi’ite theocratic regime, come to an end?

Bashar al-Assad is accused of ‘killing his own people’, and I have no doubt that he has been as ruthless in defending his power as anyone.  What we need to realize is that by aiding the rebels we are siding with religious extremists against a secular regime where women are not veiled but enjoy equal rights with men, and the government considers itself responsible for health and education.

Following President Obama’s decision to arm the rebels, and after months of speculation as to whether this or that policy might favor Islamists, one is forced to entertain the thought that the United States definitely prefers fundamentalist/capitalists to progressive Muslims.  Hence our support for Turkey's Erdogan, who has been turning his country into a capitalist showcase, even if his police overdo it.