Asalamu Alaikum.
The media has been abuzz about two main topics:
The Ft. Hood shooting and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
If you would like to hear my opinion about the Ft. Hood shooting, check out my last blog post.
Long story short, subhanAllah as long as the wars in the Middle East are funded with with US tax dollars, promoted by the US establishment, and carried out by US soldiers (even though most soldiers go to war against their will since the majority are against the wars), this sort of tragedy will only repeat itself.
The fact is, to paraphrase Howard Zinn: “war poisons everything and everyone involved.” This comes from a man that was a pilot in WWII. Mash’Allah.
Nidal Malik Hasan was psychiatrist that had to listen to horror stories from soldiers that suffered from PTSD and saw the savagery of war. SubhanAllah this affected him.
Nidal Malik Hasan had to work at Walter Reed Hospital, a hospital that was notoriously underfunded, understaffed, and poorly managed. Working day in and day out in a situation where he had to see people daily that he knew needed desperate help, but were not being helped because of the mis-management of Walter Reed had an affect on him. SubhanAllah.
SubhanAllah many other soldiers, non-Muslim soldiers, have murdered and/or raped their comrades. To bring up his religion as the reason for this is to deliberately ignore the fact that this war is driving its own military members insane.
Moreover, to bring up Nidal Malik Hasan’s religion is to deliberately invoke racism, Islamophobia, and to encourage hate-crimes against Muslims. SubhanAllah it is simply racist.
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But to the main point of this post: The fall of the Berlin Wall. Socialist Worker, the newspaper of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) did a perfect series to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall in a classic socialist way: to put it in context!
The major media outlets and politicians refer to the fall of the Berlin Wall “as the triumph of the US and Capitalism over the USSR and Communism.”
But is that really what happened? To be sure, the USSR and its eastern bloc were not typical capitalist states, but they were also not communist either. SubhanAllah, we in the ISO would argue that there has never really been a truly communist country.
As Marx defined “Socialism” and “Communism” they were defined by “worker’s power” and “worker’s democracy.” They are about the end of hierarchy and about the extension of democracy beyond simply the state apparatus, but into the workplace.
Genuine democracy, Marx would argue, would have to begin at the grassroots in our work places and extend out. “Bottom-Up Socialism,” as opposed to the USSR’s “top-down socialism.”
Insh’Allah, please read the links from Socialist Worker’s FALL OF THE WALL SERIES to learn more about our perspective on the fall of the Berlin Wall and how that struggle in fact represented a reawakening of a genuine working class movement and struggle.
Another important thing that I wanted to raise, is that while the Berlin Wall has fallen, there are other walls that need to be demolished as well. As a Muslim and as a Socialist, Alhamdulillah, I do not want borders and I do not want border walls.
As a Muslim and as a Socialist, insh’Allah I believe that we need to abolish all borders and have one world for all people.
This means we also need to abolish the border walls between Mexico and the US, insh’Allah.
As well as the border walls between Palestinians and israelis, insh’Allah.
For more about that, please read the article by The Nation about BERLIN, israel, MEXICO.
FROM MEXICO TO PALESTINE: BORDER WALLS ARE A CRIME!
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Series: The fall of the wall
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The regimes of Eastern Europe that collapsed 20 years after a series of mass rebellions were the opposite of what we mean by socialism. November 3, 2009
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Long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a history of workers’ struggle against the self-described Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. November 6, 2009
