gilbert achcar, religion and politics today from a marxian perspective (socialist register 2006)

(60): "it is this 'elective affinity' between Christianity in its charismatic phase and a communistic social programme that explains the ability of a Thomas Muntzer in the early 16^th century to formulate in Christian terms a programme that Friedrich Engels described, in 1850, as an 'anticipation of communism by fantasty.'" [this makes no analytical sense, whatsoever. The implication here, then, is that other traditions would not have made this 'programme' available to Muntzer (who, remember, was a radical cleric that justified Peasant rebellions that were already underway; not a leader of the rebellions themselves). Is that really a Marxist claim? The notion that more than a thousand years later, the ideology he mobilized still bore the imprint of its origins? It seems to me that this fundamentally misunderstands ideology. millenarian peasant revolts abound through history--the fact of their millenarianism is hardly enabled or explained by Christianity (throughout chinese history, most notably)]

(64): "it is this same 'elective affinity' between original Christianity and communistic utopianism that explains why the worldwide wave of leftwing political radicalization that started in the 1960s... could partly take on a Christian dimension..." [very odd. (1) surely you will admit the fact that leftwing demands can be expressed through alternative religious registers, a la shi'ism? (2) if the claim is that this gets co-opted, then this claim obviously applies to christianity as an ideology of left-wing latin american movements, a la nicaragua? i just cant' make sense of the argument]

(64-65): pointing out facts that seem to explain the necessarily co-opted character of islam (its integration into juridical/political networks; the fact it wasn't touched by colonial powers; the fact it wasn't challenged by rebellions against western domination (really? nasser?); etc., etc.); the whole discussion is thoroughly ungrounded and unconvincing. and in fact it suggests an extraordinarily stagnant conception of the middle east that makes the non-islamic into an aberration, which is quite confusing, since he would not want to say that otherwise.

(66): the central problem of the article is that he compares christianity's best-foot forward, to islam's worst-foot forward, in essence. why not reverse the situation, compare shariati (or somebody else, for goodness' sake) to ratzinger, or something? would we still be screeching about 'elective affinities', then? the notion that the 'fundamentalist' affinity of the two traditions in his model (muntzer and islamic 'fundamentalism' writ large) can tell us anything, at all, and that the notion of stripping away accumulated superfluity is unique to these two, is nonsense of the highest order.

(66): "by no stretch of the imagination..." he wants to argue, could islamic fundamentalists want to return us to a society where class differences no longer exist. fine, but islamic fundamentalists do not, at all, monopolize the islamist tradition; you could very easily imagine many islamic thinkers that would mobilize islam to make that case. what's more, if you asked ratzinger to go to the basics, you think that would give us communism? this is just so nonsensical.

in sum, really: the idea that his notion of 'elective affinity' has any analytical purchase seems a classic example of assuming that ideologies can do work outside of material context and practice. it is categorically not marxist.