This seems the best way to deal with islam. Leave it to ex-Muslims (rather than ex-Christians and ex-Jews). Unfortunately this is not a debate with real Muslims but with a breakaway sect, the Ahmadiyya, who are not regarded by orthodox muslims as muslims and are in fact persecuted in Pakistan and Iran.I heard Maryam Namazie speak at a meeting of SW London Humanists. She’s good. She’s also a member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran which has the same definition of socialism/communism as us.
Quote:
The immediate aim of the worker-communist party is to organise the social revolution of the working class. A revolution that overthrows the entire exploitative capitalist relations and puts an end to all exploitations and hardships. Our programme is for the immediate establishment of a communist society; a society without classes, without private ownership of the means of production, without wage labour and without a state; a free human society in which all share in the social wealth and collectively decide the society’s direction and future. Communist society is possible this very day. (….)The essence of communist revolution is abolition of private ownership of the means of production and their conversion into common ownership of the whole society. Communist revolution puts an end to the class division of society and abolishes the wage-labour system. Thus, market, exchange of commodities, and money disappear. Production for profit is replaced by production to meet people’s needs and to bring about greater prosperity for all. Work, which in capitalist society for the overwhelming majority is an involuntary, mechanical and strenuous activity to earn a living, gives way to voluntary, creative and conscious activity to enrich human life. Everyone, by virtue of being a human being and being born into human society will be equally entitled to all of life’s resources and the products of collective effort. From everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their need – this is a basic principle of communist society. [From here]
The trouble is that they are Leninists and have a minimum programme of democratic and social reforms to be implemented under capitalism.And I don’t think she reveals that she wants (like us) a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society when she’s speaking as a secularist-humanist. Pity.
