Day by day I begin to wonder more and more if I can even call myself a communist anymore. Its becoming hard to really reconcile my faith with communism if the ideology itself is theorically opposed to it. Bukharin's book, "ABCs of Communism," has an entire section on Chapter 11 that directly talks about why religion and communism are incompatible. Communists believe history is driven by class struggle and material conditions. Religious people believe in stuff like divine intervention or divine will. A communist would probably look at islam (my faith) and be like "No prophet was sent a message by God and acted upon it, it was their material conditions that made them act." I don't see how one could believe both, it feels like its either or.
Sure, it is perfectly possible for religious people to largely agree with Marxists on such things as historical materialism and present-day class struggles, not to mention struggles for national liberation, against racism, etc. It is possible be anti-capitalist and fight for a classless, moneyless, and stateless society where MOP is colletively owned but at the end of the day, there is philosophical tension.
I feel at best, I can be an ally, but the way I see it, I will never be one of them. I do not belong. My voice does not count equally and my beliefs make me suspect. I have faced hostility from leftists that are atheist and hostile towards religion and been called a revisionist. If this is how me and others are gonna be treated just because of our faith, I'd rather die than simply be used as cannon fodder in a revolution.
You have summed it up perfectly. Also people who are saying that religion was co-opted by reactionaries in the past, the same is true for Islam as well. Each and every muslim country today is a servant to the US empire and its interests and they staunchly oppose communism. So it’s kinda ironic how OP has an issue not with the whimsical fantasies of Islam but people who rightly point out the hypocrisy
All of the above countries contradict your boldly-stated claim. There were many liberationist and pan-arab movements that were independently stomped out by the US / EU, causing hundreds of millions of deaths in the region via land invasion, drone strikes, or economic blockades.
While you could argue that many Muslim states are western puppets, many of those states were literally created by the British drawing lines on a map after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, only legitimizing those who fall in line to the "international community".
Why would the west spend trillions of dollars toppling socialist governments or resistance factions in WANA?
We have seen dozens of instances where resistance in any form has been met with total annihilation of these countries societies. Libya was a flourishing Muslim nation that wanted to unify Africa and steer away from the unipolar world order. They were bombed, starved, public infrastructure completely decapitated, and now they have literal slave markets.
Gee, I wonder why the other countries have fallen in line with western hegemony.
This is just smug, redditor-level atheism that I don't even want to entertain at this hour.
Thank you for handling that