arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

On Students Movement Struggle Against Political Islam

from .. - 01.05.2005 12:43

It seems that ever since the invasion happened and the occupation began, the political Islamists organized around Sadr have been organizing and maintaining militias (not largely recruited directly from students) on every campus.

These militias seek to systematically impose and enforce what they assert to be Islamic law and Iraqi tradition. In practice this means forcing women students and staff to wear the veil, trying to prevent students from having sex, condemning homosexuality in such a way as to slam the closet door shut (with the clear message that opening the door even a crack will lead to death, literally), making lecturers begin all lectures with praise to God, and opposing with force any tendency of students and staff to behave in ways they believe to be insufficiently devout in areas such as clothing, hairstyle, socializing, etcetera. This policing also extends to the content of lectures, and all of these rules are violently imposed, with bashings, often very severe, a very regular occurrence.

In the bigger cities in particular, and on the bigger campuses, these attempts to violently impose a reactionary agenda and ultra-conservative forms of life clash with what is still a significantly secularized and cosmopolitan culture, and also one in which Islam does not have a monopoly of organized religion even apart from the existence of atheism and of forms of religious practice that appear in ways analogous to that of many self-described Christians in Australia i.e., they say they are Christians on the census form while living in a variety of ways, probably almost never even thinking about what the Bible says when considering what to do and how to live.

A few weeks ago in Basra a group of students were having an outdoor social gathering when they were set upon by one of Sadr's Islamist militias. The militia vigorously condemned the students for partying together, men and women, and disapproved of their forms of dress, which they said, in effect, showed the women to be sluts dishonoring the national traditions of Iraq. They began to forcibly strip the women right there, with the apparent intent to publicly humiliate them in front of their peers. They physically assaulted the men also. When one of the students - a Christian man - tried to intervene to oppose the assault on the women, he was shot and killed.

From all accounts this was the (very large) straw that broke the camel's back: thousands of students gathered and began to take action, collectively opposing the self-appointed role of the militias in policing their everyday lives. The discourse of the campaign made it clear that the students blamed the occupation forces for the destruction of Iraqi society such that Islamists could simply act with impunity to use fear and violence to try to impose their reactionary social and political agenda. The students started to take political action, which politically became a student strike. This in turn spread to other campuses and ended up involving many thousands of students, estimated as being, nationally, in the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, in political action. Students clashed en masse with Sadr's gangs, with real battles involving rocks and Molotov on the student side, and guns and knives on the side of Sadr's gangs. Hundreds of students were injured, many quite seriously.

While a variety of political tendencies have emerged or have attempted to play roles in these movements, the movements have a momentum of their own based on the accumulated anger and frustration of people from a sophisticated, educated social milieu now having ultra-conservative religious rules imposed upon them by violence and its threat. To my mind it is to their credit that these students not only acted to resist these forces, but also understood and clearly communicated the degree to which the occupation has made possible the development of powerful forces of political Islam willing and able to use fear and violence for these purposes. In photos of very large student demonstrations large banners with 'end the occupation now' are prominently displayed.

The scale of the student movements and the evident willingness to directly confront the Islamist gangs forced Sadr's mob to publicly and abjectly apologize to the students, promising to financially compensate those students who had been hurt and the family of the murdered student, and agreeing to stop systematically intervening in the everyday lives of students and staff. There was debate in the student movements about this 'deal', which some felt was not enough - they wanted the militias off-campus once and for all, amongst other things - but this was nonetheless felt by most to be a significant victory.

New student organizations have been formed in the process and wake of these struggles, highlighting a variety of progressive demands and opposing the influence of both the occupation forces and the reactionary Islamists, trying to create spaces of relative intellectual and social freedom. These organizations and the student movements generally in Iraq need the support of progressive people.

I believe that meaningful solidarity from people in the West, solidarity with progressive movements in Iraq, can have a real impact on the future of that country (and beyond), on the lives of millions, in a volatile situation in which these progressive movements are all that can genuinely oppose the complete domination of one or another incurably violent terrorism: either the US/UK whose current occupation is tangentially destroying all that is even minimally benign in Iraqi society, or else the political Islam or fascistic Ba'athism that is currently benefiting from opposition to the occupation. Other forces are desperately needed, and I think that the beginnings of these forces can be seen in the mass organizations that have been formed since the occupation began or are being formed now: the student movements, organizing committees and student unions; the Unemployed Union of Iraq; the radical trade unions of the Federation of Workers Councils and Trade Unions of Iraq; the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq; and possibly the newly-formed Iraq Freedom Congress, which at least some of the students organizing in Baghdad and Basra seem now to be joining.