Role of the Shi’i clergy in modern Iranian politics ‒ Azar Tabari [Afsaneh Najmabadi]

2020-07-11T12:52:25+03:00October 10, 1981|Categories: Articles, Khamsin 9|Tags: |

Analysis of the political evolution of Iran's Shi'ite clergy from the late 19th century to their seizure of state power in the February 1979 revolution, looking specifically at how they were able to sustain themselves in politics for so long and why, in the latter half of the 1970s, they experienced a militant revival.

Tragic heroes and victims in zionist ideology ‒ Toine van Teeffelen

2020-06-13T12:06:05+03:00October 10, 1981|Categories: Articles, Khamsin 9|Tags: |

A common image employed in interpreting the Israeli-Arab conflict views it in terms of a moral symmetry: both parties ‒ Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab ‒ are in the right, both have a legitimate claim to the same country and are engaged in a tragic struggle with each other for possession of the land. But beneath the surface its basic message seems to be that the one party (Israel) is human and the other one is not.

Editorial

2020-06-28T10:31:25+03:00July 10, 1981|Categories: Articles, Khamsin, Khamsin 8|

In the Arab world, not only has there never been a serious bourgeois-liberal challenge to religion and clericalism, but the left too has for the most part avoided the issue or pussyfooted round it.

Iran: Islam and the struggle for socialism ‒ Mohammad Ja’far [Kanan Makiya] and Azar Tabari [Afsaneh Najmabadi]

2020-10-11T13:12:17+03:00July 10, 1981|Categories: Articles, Forbidden Agendas, Khamsin 8|Tags: , |

None of the expectations, predictions and prognoses of left circles, whether inside or outside Iran, have been confirmed by the passage of time. The speed with which a highly repressive and deeply reactionary regime has emerged, in the wake of colossal mass mobilisations involving millions, has left many in political shock and disillusionment.

Book review: Nawal Saadawi’s “The Hidden Face of Eve” – Magida Salman (Mai Ghoussoub)

2021-05-31T13:47:57+03:00July 10, 1981|Categories: Articles, Khamsin 8|Tags: , |

Saadawi criticises western feminists who isolate the problems of women from the political and economic situation. But Saadawi heads for another precipice, one that would cast into the abyss the very Arab women she has taught so much. It is the precipice of a nationalist defensiveness that ultimately minimises the injustices of Arab society and denies all authentic reality to the struggle the author herself strives to serve.

Letter (on Palestinian nationalism) ‒ John Bunzl

2020-06-27T14:33:53+03:00July 10, 1981|Categories: Articles, Khamsin 8|Tags: |

I don't see any contradiction between the struggle for the Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and the struggle for a Palestinian state. I also don't see a contradiction between this struggle and the struggle to build bridges to the Jewish proletariat and for the gradual erosion of the ideological hegemony exercised by the zionist leadership ‒ a struggle which is absolutely necessary and should be supported by all means.

Down with the war regimes!

2021-01-12T20:51:12+02:00January 10, 1981|Categories: Articles|

The workers and peasants serving on both sides of the front have no interest in fighting each other. They have no interest in defending the "revolution" that brought their exploiters and oppressors to power.

Eli Lobel

2013-12-29T04:54:06+02:00July 10, 1980|Categories: Articles, Forbidden Agendas, Khamsin 7|Tags: |

Khamsin is bereaved. Eli Lobel, editor and founder of our journal, has died tragically on Thursday, October 4th 1979. The life-story of this outstanding revolutionary socialist and great internationalist is, in more than one way, the story of a whole generation, the tragedies and noble struggles of a whole epoch.

The early history of Lebanese Communism reconsidered ‒ Alexander Flores

2021-10-08T20:12:46+03:00July 10, 1980|Categories: Articles, Khamsin 7|Tags: |

The three men who prepared the meeting that is considered the birth of the Lebanese communist party represented three important components in the formation of the party: Yusuf Yazbek, the romantic Lebanese liberal with a radical socialist streak; Fu'ad Shimali, the worker who had gathered his trade-union experience in Egypt, and Joseph Berger, the Palestinian Jewish communist of Polish origin who provided the relations with the Comintern.

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