COMMUNISM

Both communism and Islam pose solutions to social, moral, economic and political order. Their differences, however, are numerous and fundamental. Communist movements have developed throughout the Islamic world but they have been limited to a narrow social base, and have most often been composed of non-Muslims. Communist groups became deeply involved with debating the Marxist-Leninist theoretical reasons for this failure to obtain mass support. These debates further fragmented most communist movements in the Islamic world. Communism in the Middle East was never a serious contender for power, and the collapse of the Soviet Union further marginalized communism worldwide.

Islamic scholars critiqued communism in several areas. Foremost, communism denies the existence of God. In doing so, it is directly opposed to Islam and Islamic tenets of faith. Further, Islam views history in a different way than does communism. Rather than the communist dialectic, and the movement of history from capitalism to communism, Islam views history as a search for faith and truth. Historical development of society ends when Islam is accepted, not when capitalism is swept away by communism. Finally, in seeking social justice, Islam does not seek to make all persons equal; it accepts that some will have more than others. Islam achieves social justice through acceptance of the obligation of those with more to provide for those with less, through processes such as zakat (alms giving).

Before the Second World War, communist movements in the Middle East consisted of small groups of intellectuals, drawn to its anticolonial stance. The post-war environment, with Soviet expansionism and the collapse of the colonial powers, was initially considered by most communists as an opportunity to reach the masses. Soviet support to these groups was not automatic. The Cold War saw the Soviet Union faced with often-contradictory policies of supporting communist revolutionary movements and supporting governments aligned with Soviet interests. For instance, support to the Egyptian government under Jamal ?Abd al-Nasser was valuable to Soviet interests, but conflicted with addressing the needs of the Egyptian Communist Party. In other cases, such as Iran, the Soviets provided clandestine support to the communists. Meanwhile, under the Eisenhower Doctrine, the United States formalized its opposition to communist movements in the Middle East. Under this doctrine, the United States intervened militarily in Lebanon in 1958, and formed the Baghdad Pact against Soviet expansionism. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union fully understood the driving forces of the area, as was demonstrated to each in Iran and Afghanistan in the late 1970s.

In Egypt, Palestine, and Lebanon in the 1920s, well-to-do intellectuals founded communist or socialist political groups. After the Second World War, the Syrian Communist Party, which had attracted support from Kurds and other minorities, grew to some importance in the 1950s, but never became a serious contender for power. The Lebanese Communist Party, outlawed until 1970, never gained more than a few thousand members. The Egyptian Communist Party shared the anticolonial views of Nasser, but he banned the party and imprisoned its leaders following his 1952 coup. Since then, communism in Egypt has been represented by a number of peripheral splinter groups.

In Iran, after the First World War, a major communist movement developed in Iran, where contact with Russian communists in Azerbaijan resulted in the formation of the Adalat Party, in 1917. In 1920 this became the Ferqeh-ye Komunist-e Iran. Outlawed in 1929, it was reestablished as the Tudeh Party in 1941. This was outlawed in 1949, but continued to develop underground. Party membership consisted mainly of intellectuals, military officers, and other elites, and its leadership was heavily factionalized. Following the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddeq (1953), the Iranian government took firm action against the Tudeh, and decimated the Party. Splinter communist elements continued to be active in Iran through the late 1970s, playing a role in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. These groups were eliminated or driven out of Iran as the clerics consolidated their power.

The Iraqi Communist Party (ICP, founded in 1934) has played a role out of proportion to its size in Iraqi politics, beginning with its participation in the independence movement against the British. The overthrow of the Hashemite kingdom in 1958 brought the party to national importance. The ICP mobilized a quarter-million demonstrators against a conservative coup attempt in 1959, and had its own armed militia. Its rival, the Ba?th Party, a secular, socialist movement espousing Arab unity and anticolonialism, immediately was plunged into conflict with the ICP after seizing power in 1963, and quickly outstripped it in influence. In 1974, all opposition parties, including the ICP, were consolidated into the Progressive National Front (PNF), which allowed the Ba?ath to firmly control the opposition movements. From 1978 to 1979, the government arrested and executed many ICP leaders, while others fled the country.

Only one Middle Eastern state, the People's Republic of Yemen, has had a Marxist government. While a British colony, a violent independence movement developed with Soviet support. Following independence in 1967, the Soviet-funded National Liberation Front, a Marxist group, took and held power. The Front was convulsed by factionalism, and quickly became more ideological and repressive. To divert popular dissent, the Front fought skirmishes with neighboring Oman, Saudi Arabia, and North Yemen. When the Soviet Union collapsed, South Yemen no longer received Soviet aid, and the long-standing attempt to merge North and South Yemen under a single, noncommunist government, officially succeeded in 1990, although outbreaks of unrest still occur.

The late 1960s saw a resurgence of splinter communist movements among students and intellectuals, as Maoism and Guevarism became popular. These movements had no significant mass appeal, but because of the violent tendencies of the groups, they had some political impact as governments attempted to control them. Some Palestinian groups absorbed these ideologies and their emphasis on violence and revolution. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) all combined Marxist-Leninism with Palestinian nationalism. In most countries, there were no more than a few hundred adherents of these revolutionary communist ideologies, and these were often splintered into several groups with narrow ideological differences.

The model of communist revolt, involving mobilizing the proletariat, failed in the Middle East. Attempts by some communists to adapt their principles to local conditions failed due to the ideological rigidity of communist leadership. Other factors included the suppression of communist movements by almost all regional governments, ideological infighting and factionalism among the communists, and the availability of alternative social and economic structures that satisfied most of the populations. The collapse of the Soviet Union left most communists further isolated from public opinion.

See also?Abd al-Nasser, Jamal ; Ba?th Party ; Political Organization ; Political Thought ; Socialism .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Batatu, Hana. The Old Social Classes and the RevolutionaryMovements in Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Ba?thists and Free Officers. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Cottam, Richard W. Nationalism in Iran. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979.

Ismael, Tareq Y., and El-Sa?id, Rifa?at. The Communist Movement in Egypt, 1920–1988. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990.

Richard C. Campany, Jr.