RELIGIOUS FANATICISM AND THE LABOUR MOVEMENT

Religious Fanaticism and the Labour Movement

• Keeping the historical record straight.
• Organizing inter-cultural education at the local level.
• Strengthening the psychological and ideological foundations of tolerance.
• Promoting a universal and humanist view of world culture.

The bloody civil war in Algeria, in which the murderous terrorism of Islamic fundamentalists has been matched by massive human rights violations by the military regime, is one example.

Another is the spectacular success of the extreme right-wing Christian Coalition in U.S. politics, which has succeeded in redefining America's social agenda.

In India and Pakistan, the world has witnessed an intensification of religious fanaticism which, if not checked, may result in a bloodbath dwarfing anything seen so far in Bosnia or Rwanda.

The extreme Jewish religious-nationalist right was openly hostile to Israeli democracy, prompting the Labour government in Israel to take the unprecedented step of declaring two such organizations illegal.

Even in today's Japan, an insane cult of religious fanatics has attempted mass murder in the Tokyo subways.

Of course, one cannot equate the various fanaticisms. Even though there have been the occasional bombings of abortion clinics in the United States by the extremist fringe of the Christian Right, on the whole that movement has followed a non-violent, albeit dangerous, course -- and with marked success.

On the other hand, Islamic fundamentalism certainly seems to have the greatest global reach and the bloodiest record. From the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City to the threats to kill the Pope during his visit to the Philippines, the Islamic fundamentalist "International" represents the most significant international terrorist threat since the days of the Stalinist Comintern.

What these fanaticisms have in common is that they threaten democracy. And any threat to democracy is a threat to the labour movement. In many cases, they target the labour movement as a primary enemy. This is in part because the labour movement competes with the fundamentalists for the same audience -- working people and the poor.

But it would be unfair to paint a negative picture of the world's religions and their relationship to the democratic Left and labour movement. Obviously, we are talking only about the fanatics, and not about mainstream religious institutions which have been, by and large, supportive of democratic institutions.

There are expressions of social justice and freedom in all the world's religions, ranging from the movement for "liberation theology" in Latin America to the "Torah and labour" ethos of Israel's religious kibbutz movement. Islam, too, proclaims a message of peace and justice, which is inscribed on the banners of those brave journalists, human rights workers, and trade unionists who are on the front lines of the battle for democracy in North Africa, Iran and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

By viewing the rise of fanaticism in its global context, perhaps we can develop a kind of global response. At least that was the idea behind the words in the IFWEA charter.

In other words, our answer to the "International" of fundamentalist terror is a revitalized "International" of the democratic labour movement.

Islamic fundamentalism's war on trade unions

The labour press has been filled recently with accounts of repression and resistance, and of a trade union movement's will to survive in the face of unprecedented attacks and dangers.

For example, the IUF's news bulletin recently reported that the governing body of the USTMA (Union syndicale des travailleurs du Maghreb arabe -- the regional trade union organization for workers of the Arab Maghreb), meeting in Algiers last year, denounced all forms of "fundamentalism, extremism and intolerance" as a threat to democracy. Elsewhere in this issue of Workers' Education, you'll find an interview with a USTMA leader who makes absolutely clear the antithesis between Islamic fanaticism and the democratic labour movement.

USTMA is not the only international trade union organization which has spoken out forthrightly against Islamic fundamentalism. The African regional organization (Afro) of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) has warned of the dangers of religious fundmentalism "which is leading increasingly to serious abuses of human and trade union rights," according to the ICFTU's monthly newspaper, Free Labour World. The general secretary of the USTN Niger, Ibrahim Mayaki, insists that "we must strive to prevent the spread of fundamentalism. Women already cannot say what they think, they can't meet, they can't dress or speak the way they did before."

Free Labour World recently ran an interview with a woman journalist from Algeria, Ghaniz Oukazi (of the independent Algerian daily "El Watan"), in which she was asked to comment on the role of the labour movement. "The unions," she replied,

     particularly the General Workers' Union of Algeria (UGTA) are doing
     a remarkable job. They are one of the rare forces that still
     represent hope for Algerians. They are active on social issues,
     they make things happen and they win improvements for workers.
     Personally, I take my hat off to them, because trade unionists are
     also targeted by the extremists. There was an attempt on the life
     of the UGTA's general secretary for example.

     is one of the rare organizations in Algeria that really fights for
     women's emancipation. Recently a trade unionist approached all the
     papers to denounce sexual harassment by a big factory boss. He had
     drawn up a case file, formed an association for the factory's women
     workers, and alerted public opinion. I believe the boss concerned
     got the sack.

"The Palestinian trade union position concerning religious fanaticism and fundamentalism is not clear at all. For what I know, I never saw or heard about any trade union statement on this issue," says Hasan Barghouti, Executive Director of the Democracy and Workers Rights Center (an IFWEA affiliate), based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

"The Democracy and Workers Rights Center is the only organization related to the labour force which has openly expressed condemnation of terrorist acts perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists," says Barghouti. The DWRC condemned the brutal attack earlier in the year on a bus station filled with Israeli troops.

But opposing Islamic fundamentalist terror does not mean the DWRC won't engage in dialogue. "We also are trying to involve the Hamas trade union's members in our program of training and education courses to moderate and discuss their positions," says Barghouti, speaking of the main Islamic fundamentalist group in the West Bank.

Algeria: Put down your pens or die

The killing of journalists in Algeria by Islamic extremists was going to be in the news anyway at the time, for the end of May marked the second anniversary of the beginning of a wave of killings of journalists. More than 40 journalists have been killed so far.

Though the Algerian government is as guilty as the Islamic extremists in using force and violating human rights, the targetting of journalists seems to be a unique feature of the Islamic terror. As one section of the terrorist FIS told journalists, they have a choice: "put down your pens or die."

The first journalist to die in the violence in which thousands of security force members and Islamic militants had already been killed, was T. Djaout, who was shot on 26 May 1993, shortly after writing the prophetic words: "You (Algerian people and journalists), if you keep quiet, you will be killed. If you speak, you will be killed. Then say it, and die." It took him a week to die from his wounds.

In commemoration of the second anniversary of Djaout's murder, journalists and anti-fundamentalist political figures gathered in Press House in central Algiers to protest against the continued killing of journalists who have been shot, stabbed or had their throats slit. "We demand the killing stops," an Algerian woman journalist shouted into the microphone of state-run radio. Women, usually immune to public violence in Muslim Algeria, have been brought into the conflict, including a 22-year-old journalist killed inside her home east of Algiers on 22 May 1995. A day later, Benaouda Bakhti, a former journalist on a government newspaper, was shot dead in the western city of Oran.

The international labour movement has not been silent. The International Federation of Journalists and the Association of Algerian Journalists produced, in co-operation with the ICFTU, a brochure entitled "Pens versus bullets", an account of the ordeal of the journalists who stayed in Algeria, and has been monitoring the killing of journalists and protesting.

Trade Unionism Besieged: Interview with Mohamed Mongi Amami

Islamic fundamentalism, he said, "is an extremist movement whose unsettling rise in recent years has been characterized by its official and public objective of taking control of the state by any means. Even though the movement is integrated in the democratic game, it affirms that democracy is foreign to its traditions, indeed that it (democracy) constitutes a heresy. We have, in effect, the sad privilege of having given birth to the only political movement in the modern world which does not hide its objective of throwing society back fourteen centuries."

The fundamentalists, he noted, consider "people as different as the Indonesians, Moroccans, Iranians and Turks as one nation which needs to be unified, by force if necessary, in a single theocratic state, of course. It doesn't recognize actual states or borders."

"The history of the Maghreb trade union movement is free of any religious reference or influence," he asserts. And this is the case in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. The unions have always supported modernization. "The trade unions were in favor of freedom for women," he notes, and supported the creation of universal, secular educational systems for boys and girls."

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1980s "was totally foreign to the trade union movement. In fact, one of the biggest failures of the fundamentalist movements was their inability to penetrate the trade union movements in those three countries."

Frustrated by their failures, the fundamentalists attempted to create an Islamic trade union in Algeria. They also employed violence; Amami lists "the attempted assassination of comrade Abdelhak Ben Hammouda, the secretary general of the UGTA, the assassination of a few Algerian trade unionists, the death threats sent to the Secretary General of the UGTT Ismail Sahbani and other Tunisian trade union leaders" and others.

The trade union movement in the Maghreb is "impermeable . . . to the model of a theocratic society," he says, that kind of society being "the complete negation of the idea of trade unionism and all democratic values."

"There is a total antagonism between the democratic project of the trade union movement and the theocratic project of the fundamentalist movement," Amami believes. The project of building democracy in the Maghreb means for trade unionists the transformation of "the dominant system of values" as it traditionally existed. Those values did "not allow human beings to become masters of their own destiny." They "centralized power and authority." And they maintained and sanctified "inequality and discrimination between men and women."

"We want democracy," he says. "We want democracy at the level of our states, our factories, in the family and in the school. The fundamentalist movement is the antithesis: democracy is a heresy, the only remedy to our problems is to go back 14 centuries."

"The Maghrebian trade union movement," he says, "has decided to fight it (fundamentalism) as a matter of existence, and of the existence of what we got by blood and pain." What is at stake, he believes, is not only the labour movement and what it has won for its members, but the very existence of democracy in northern Africa.

Taslima Nasreen hosted by Austrian IFWEA affiliate

Nasreen came to Vienna at the invitation of the Dr. Karl Renner Institut (an IFWEA affiliate) and the social democratic Minister for Women's Affairs, Johanna Dohnal. A medical doctor by training, the 32 year old author must fear being killed because of her active engagement for women's rights and outspoken criticism of religious fanaticism.

Accusing Nasreen's books -- especially Laija ("Shame"), a 1993 novel on the tribulations of a Hindu family in Bangladesh -- of being "blasphemous" against the Muslim faith, Bangladeshi authorities issued an arrest warrant against the author in June 1994, thus forcing her to live underground. (Islamic fundamentalists had already pronounced a "death sentence" on the forthright feminist the previous September.) International pressure forced the Bangladeshi government to drop the arrest order and allow Nasreen to leave the country. Since then, the author has lived in Sweden under strictest security precautions and undertaken extensive lecture tours throughout Europe.

Nasreen used her speech in Vienna to underline her principle demands: a separation of Church and State and the implementation of a secular constitution which guarantees the equal treatment of men and women. She stressed that she had witnessed the oppression of and violence against women in Bangladesh -- whose lives most often resemble a "series of shackles" molded on the basis of tradition and religion. Nasreen sees her writings as a means of both calling international attention to this deplorable situation and of "opening the eyes of the women in my country."

A self-declared atheist, she warns that fundamentalist tendencies -- whatever the particular religion -- invariably oppress women: "fundamentalism is the misuse of religion as an instrument of power for political ends." Although grateful for the substantial backing that her battle for human rights has found in the West, the Bangladeshi feminist nevertheless stressed the need to support all of the world's persecuted authors.

Austrian Chancellor and SPO head Franz Vranitzky praised Nasreen's courageous efforts against the oppression of women, tough stance against religious fanaticism and clear rejection of any forms of ethnic discrimination or conflict. Vranitzky emphasized that Austria would continue to raise its voice in protest against any violation of human rights. The claim that such criticism represents an unjustified intrusion into the internal religious affairs of another sovereign state is only valid when one doesn't show sufficient respect vis-a-vis a foreign culture. "No religion, no culture and no ideology can negate the obligation to respect human rights," he said.

Women's Affairs Minister Johanna Dohnal also stressed that "those of us in democratic societies are obligated to engage ourselves on behalf of the oppressed." Invitations and the granting of prizes should not be allowed to serve as "substitutes for solidarity". Dohnal is convinced that the suffering that women are exposed to through religious fundamentalism will be an important theme at the UN's upcoming World Conference on Women in Beijing.

A feminist view

As we all know, these are countries governed by Islamic law where millions of women are compelled to live imprisoned in their own homes, subjected to polygamy, sexual mutilation, torture -- disgraceful and inhuman treatment. But it is only now that the United Nations -- which in 1948 approved the Declaration of Human Rights ratified by the majority of member states -- has passed some sort of declaration against governments, parliaments, and states which allow and encourage slavery, torture and the killing of women.

We must make it very clear that this behavior is not taking place in small isolated communities. Neither is it defended solely by Islamic fundamentalist groups nor practiced only in Iran, governed by a theocracy, or under military dictatorships like Iraq. In Saudi Arabia, women are treated as worthless objects. After declaring his daughter defiled, a father has the right to strangle her in front of the family as an exemplary punishment. In the United Arab Emirates, adulterers are publicly stoned to death. In supposedly democratic Egypt, polygamy was legalized and clitoridectomies are performed on thousands of young girls every year. From Mauritania to Bangladesh, 80 million infant girls are sexually mutilated annually. But the United Nations has never made any declaration of condemnation against these countries.

The international community subjected South Africa to an economic embargo for its notorious policy of apartheid. But it is unthinkable that similar action would be taken against Islamic countries which treat women no better or worse than whites treated blacks in South Africa.

. . . The danger posed by Islamic fundamentalism has only recently become the object of public denunciations, especially after extremist groups in Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia began targeting writers, journalists and professors. From the moment a civil war between men breaks out, Islamic fundamentalism is transformed into a problem with open bloodletting and state bankruptcy. While the dead were only women, no mention was made of it.

Lidia Falcon, President of the Spanish Feminist Party (Reprinted from New Politics magazine)

Speaking in Many Voices: The Church in Latin America

It is not a coincidence that the Theology of Liberation was born precisely in Latin America, stronghold of the Catholic Church and of misery. It is not a theology in the philosophic sense of the word. It stems from a social vision well-rooted in the Christian sources, combined with the daily exercise of the ecclesiastic workers in the field. Leonardo Boff, one of the most important voices in the Theology of Liberation, says that he aspires for a "molecular revolution" that will take place in small groups, in communities.

The social theory on which the Theology of Liberation is based explains the so-called underdevelopment of certain regions as a consequence of their dependency upon the "developed" zones. That means that the poverty of one part of the world is the direct consequence of the richness of the other part. And, again according to this theory, more than for a constrained development, people must fight for liberation.

Due to the fragmented action of the field priests, working each one in his own community, it isn't possible to talk about a unified theoretical body, about a monolithic Theology of Liberation. The social work of these priests is to organize people who throughout history saw themselves as the passive objects of both Church and government, and create in them a new conscience, not only of their being "equal before God" but also equal as citizens with the right to take an active part in political action.

Those militant priests "earned" themselves a lot of enemies, people who suspected them, or were frankly hostile. The authorities of the Church, who at first examined from a safe distance the apparition of this creature, recycled part of the "liberation" discourse for their own uses, and finally expelled it under the accusation of "Marxism." Some bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries in Latin America joined the movement and denounced from their pulpits the socio-economic situation of the majority of the people of the Americas. Of course, the government of the United States was not indifferent to this new aspect of a Church which until then was considered, together with the army and the oligarchy, a pillar of stability.

The reactionary governments from which Latin America is slowly rehabilitating, murdered and incarcerated hundreds of priests, and Rome replaced them with traditionalist priests. But the theologians of liberation are still militant and very much so, even if nowadays they are confronting various ideological problems as a consequence of repeated attacks of social scientists to the dependency theory and the apparent success of free market liberalism, which they oppose strongly, considering it unjust and a source of inequality.

Another aspect of the Catholic Church action in Latin America during the last ten years is its new approach to the different American cultures. The first step was taken in Brazil, where after centuries of fighting against synchretism, mostly among the black population, part of the church now accepts it, even favoring rituals combining elements of both cultures. To this we may add the action for indigenous, non-Christian peoples of the Amazones, the social work of priests who are not missionaries.

Latin America is mainly Catholic, and as such, it has been free for many years of Catholic missionary work. But there has been a missionary and fundamentalist campaign going on in the subcontinent for many years, and it has been carried on by diverse Protestant sects. And as it happens everywhere, when poverty prepares the ground for fundamentalism, the results are astonishing. Until the 50's there were practically no Protestants in Latin America. Nowadays, the estimate is that 25% of Bolivians, 30% of Guatemalans and 35% of Mexicans are Protestants, mainly of evangelical and fundamentalist persuasions.

It is known that certain evangelical communities and conservative politicians within the United States maintain a close relationship, the latter attributing an essential role to the missionary work of the North American Protestants in the mission of stopping Communism and its "secret organization" -- the Theology of Liberation.

The evangelists and fundamentalists offer Latin America "modernization" in the framework of a capitalist world economy, minus the emancipating aspects that come with modernity: social justice, equality, political participation and social security. They oppose categorically the politicization of individuals, the critical approach, political and social protest, and every kind of rebellion.

Its appeal, especially among the poorest and the most rootless, those crammed in on the fringes of the cities, lies in its being the religion of the successful. They offer redemption based on an individualistic ethic. The unjust distribution of land, resources, power or poverty, they say, is not a problem of society but of individuals, so it doesn't justify a collective action. They present the values of occidental society as the values people must yearn for, breaking their ties with their own culture in the process.

It happens, in many cases, that members of those religious communities who are trade unionists or belong to other social emancipatory organizations, combine the egalitarian and activist aspects of the evangelical doctrine and the social reality, resulting in social action that is emancipatory.

The Latin American churches do not sing in unison. Instead, they reflect the diverse aspirations and needs of their believers.

This article is based on information contained in the excellent dossier on religion and development included in issue No. 5/1993 of the Spanish edition of D+C, edited by DSE, Berlin.

Caste and Religion in India -- Devastates the Labour Movement and Endangers Democracy

George Fernandes

Fernandes was first elected to the Indian parliament in 1967, and has been repeatedly re-elected. He served as General Secretary and Chairman of the Socialist Party from 1969-77, and during the mid-1970s was President of the All India Railwaymen's Federation. In 1974 he led the railway strike and during Mrs. Gandhi's "Emergency" went underground. Fernandes has also served several terms as a Union Minister in India's national government, authored three books, and edits two periodicals, including the English-language magazine, "The Other Side."

IN BRIEF

Euro-WEA: emphasizing practical cooperation

The seminar began with the presentation of four case studies by four different affiliate organizations. The themes discussed were the development of language materials (Germany's Arbeit und Leben); job-switching (presented by AOF Denmark); the "European partnerships" program of the Belgian CESEP (which hosted the conference); and East-West cooperation (Bulgaria's OKOM). These four presentations in turn led into workshops which continued throughout the seminar.

A highlight of the seminar was the appearance by Marie Paule Connan of the Task Force for Human Resources of the European Commission, who called upon the European workers' education movement to play a more active role in forging the educational policies of the European Union. She spoke -- and replied to a number of questions on -- the Socrates and Leonardo programs which the European Union has launched to promote vocational and adult education. But she went beyond the issue of raising EU money for projects and urged a political approach by the delegates to the Euro-WEA meeting.

The workshops allowed the kind of networking that makes a conference like this one successful, and discussed issues which have often been mentioned in the pages of this magazine, including the remarkable Danish-Scottish-French joint experiment in job-switching, or Arbeit und Leben's ongoing effort to teach European trade unionists English, French and German. CESEP's "European partnerships" program was new to us, and we're covering it in a separate article (see below).

On the final day of the conference, delegates got down to the business of reviewing the organization's finances, preparing a budget and action program for 1995, and electing new officers. Rita Bladt was reelected Chair of the Euro-WEA, and Dave Spooner of the British WEA was elected the new General Secretary, replacing Lars Pedersen of the Danish AOF. A new Euro-WEA Committee was also elected, and a decision was taken to add additional members from southern European countries which were poorly represented at the event.

The organization's action program for 1995 is a rich one, including the following conferences:

IFWEA NEWS

"We have much work to do"

     On this May Day 1995, the day of international labour solidarity,
we invite our colleagues around the world to join us in thinking anew
about the problems and challenges facing the labour movement.

     Our beliefs, values, vision and symbols are under attack by our
enemies and are questioned by our friends. In the face of this
unprecedented challenge, the international labour movement must conduct
an in-depth and yet broad discussion of where we have been and where we
are going. In the course of such a discussion, we will also learn who we
are.

     The labour movement will emerge from such a discussion stronger and
better equipped to continue the struggle for a new society in which the
well-being of men and women are at the center of the human enterprise.

     We live in a time of nationalist, ethnic and religious resurgence,
a time in which millions of our fellow human beings seek to express the
infinite variety of the human experience by searching for what makes
them, their tribe, community or nation, unique and different.

     But we also live in a time when the forces for universality are
enormously powerful. The global village has been made possible by
extraordinary advances in science and technology, in transportation and
communications.

     Today more than ever before, working people and the poor need the
international solidarity which our movement has always promoted. The
ruling elites, transnational corporations, and dictatorships around the
world, all understand this. They do their best to promote division and
conflict. It is time for the labour movement to also understand this,
and to turn its rhetoric about solidarity into reality.

     We have much work to do.

     We must fight against the trends in labour markets to replace
collective bargaining agreements with individual contracts. The very
existence of the organized labour movement is on the line here.

     We must struggle against the concentration of mass media in the
hands of a few corporate powers. We must work to promote independent and
diverse media, including widespread popular use of the Internet.

     On May Day 1995, fifty years after the defeat of Nazism and
Fascism, there must be a universal outcry, lead by the labour movement,
against those who express their national, religious or ethnic
specificity at the expense of others. Our thoughts and our hearts are
with the peoples of Bosnia, Chechnya, Rwanda, Algeria and Iran, to
mention only a few of those who are victims of intolerance, dictatorship
and hatred.

     The workers' education movement knows that its most important task
is to develop conscious citizens worldwide. Education is our main tool
in organizing working people in the struggle for human liberation.

     Long live May Day!

Nine new members admitted

Seminars planned

Two pamphlets to be published

IFWEA and UNESCO

Next General Conference - in Belfast

Coming up in Workers' Education

Very briefly . . .

PALESTINIAN WORKERS: Palestinian and Israeli IFWEA affiliates -- the Democracy and Workers' Rights Center and Efal -- are exploring the possibility of opening up a training center for Palestinian workers in Ramallah, with the eventual support of UNESCO and other international organizations.

SONGS: As we reported in earlier issues, Ole Askvig of the Danish AOF has been putting together a collection of about 100 labour songs from around the world. He has recently created a committee within the AOF to edit the book, which will include both lyrics and music for the songs.

FRENCH EDITION ON ITS WAY: With the recent affiliation of a number of important Francophone trade unions and institutions, the IFWEA has begun exploring the possiblities of producing this magazine in a French language edition. The organization's Executive voted to set aside a special fund for French language publications.

FACING HATRED DATABASE: The idea of an international database of educational experiences in the struggle against racism was first broached at the October 1993 "Facing Hatred" seminar organized by the IFWEA. Recently, the Secretariat has established contact with an organization which might be funding the creation of such a database. We'll keep you informed in upcoming issues of Workers' Education.

UNESCO POSTER CONTEST: IFWEA affiliates are encouraged to participate in UNESCO's international poster competition on the subject of "Tolerance in Daily Life." Proposals should be sent to the IFWEA Secretariat before July 31, 1995.

ONLINE

IFWEA is First Global Labour Group on Web

In the near future, the site will also include texts of Workers' Education in Spanish, as well as additional materials in the IFWEA's four official languages.

Individuals and organizations with Internet access can use the site to download IFWEA information and reprint articles (without retyping them) in their own publications.

In the first few weeks of operation, more than 2,500 individuals from all over the world accessed the IFWEA site, and many letters were received from organizations in Peru, Canada, Brazil, the U.S., Britain and elsewhere.

The IFWEA site is being hosted by the Economic Democracy Information Network and may be reached at the following address (URL):

Please write to us and tell us what you think!