Communists Encounter Islamic Antisemitism and Misogyny, 1917–1957

Abstract

Abstract Contemporary far leftists deny, trivialize, or even endorse, Islamic antisemitism. The response of Communists and fellow travelers to Islamic antisemitism in the four decades after the Bolshevik revolution was more complex. Communists were initially inclined to accept Karl Marx’s view of Islam as reactionary and an obstacle to progress. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviets made concerted efforts to overturn Islamic beliefs and eradicate Muslim practices in their Central Asian republics. But the Communists’ rigid adherence to narrow class analysis led them to vastly underestimate the influence of Islamic teaching about Jews in Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, and often to downplay the worst outbreaks of antisemitic violence. The two lines of the Communist approach to Islamic societies were the Muslim subjugation of Jews and women, each of which they viewed as an obstacle to progress. But while their insistence on overturning the Muslim confinement of women remained unrelenting until late in the period under consideration, their challenge to Islamic subjugation of Jews was inconsistent. This article analyzes Communist responses to Muslim pogroms against Jews in Mandatory Palestine, Algeria, Tripolitania, and elsewhere. It also assesses the commentaries on Islamic antisemitism by Communists and fellow travelers from the West who spent considerable time in Soviet Central Asia in the 1930s. The final section considers the twenty-first century far left alliance with Islamists, which embodies the worst features of the earlier Communist outlook.