There is no such thing as the "clash of civilisations": the clash in the world today is between fascists and antifascists

IssueMarch 2005
News by Sarah Masters

In January, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) participated in the Feminist Dialogues II and the World Social Forum 2005. Discussions focused on militarisation and war, fundamentalisms and neo-liberal globalisation, underlining the strategies that the women's movement has used or may use in the future to confront those forces. WLUML issued a statement which called on the democratic movement at large, on the anti-globalisation movement gathered in Porto Alegre and, specifically, on the women's movement, to give visibility and recognition to progressive democratic forces and to the women's movement within it, that oppose the fundamentalist theocratic project. Women have experienced on various occasions - starting with the Cairo UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) - the mutual support that various forms of fundamentalists and extreme right forces give each other. Therefore, it is vital that women's movements support one another against these reactionary forces.

Left in collusion

Disturbed by the discrimination and exclusion that more than often affect people of migrant descent in Europe and North America, progressive forces in the West are keen to denounce racism and rightly so. But subsequently, they often choose to sacrifice both women and our own internal indigenous democratic progressive opposition forces to fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship, on the altar of anti-racism. Or they censor their expressions of solidarity with us for fear of being accused of racism. Fundamentalisms are not a legitimate response to situations of oppression. They seek to perpetuate oppression. WLUML calls upon its friends and allies to join together to end this unholy alliance between sections of the left and extreme-right politico-religious groups.

Topics: Religion, Women