Vol. 79/No. 45 December 14, 2015

SWP campaigns against war
drive, witch hunt of Muslims

BY NAOMI CRAINE

In response to stepped-up war moves and attacks on workers’ rights by the capitalist rulers following the terrorist assault by the reactionary Islamic State that killed 130 people in Paris, the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom are campaigning against the imperialist war drive and the witch hunt against Muslims.

“When a section of the population comes under attack as Muslims are today,” New York SWP Chairman Norton Sandler said in a statement released by the party there and printed in last week’s Militant, “the working-class vanguard must immediately come to its defense. The ultimate target of the rulers’ assault on Muslims is the working class.”

SWP members joined a Nov. 29 rally of several thousand protesting the rulers’ assaults on the environment — similar to one planned in Paris but banned by the French government — on the eve of the international climate summit in Paris. Two young participants from France subscribed to the Militant, saying they oppose the government’s attacks on Muslims and state of emergency banning political demonstrations.

Four SWP members went to the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn after Friday prayers Nov. 27 and talked with people in the area.

“Everyone we spoke with expressed outrage at the murders of civilians in Paris by Islamic State attackers,” Maggie Trowe reported.

“As Muslims we believe that all lives matter,” Muhammad Harby, owner of Muhammad’s Place Islamic Books next to the mosque, told her. “We are harming our humanity when people do this. We have to stand up for justice.”

“Do you have more copies of that?” a halal butcher asked, pointing to the statement by Sandler, when Trowe went into his store. “I want to pass them out.” He, his son and a customer bought copies of the Militant. “In all we sold eight papers that evening.”

When members of the party visited a coffee shop in Fremont, California, where there is a large Muslim community, one of the baristas subscribed to the Militant and others got copies, Betsey Stone reported. “Islamic State is not Muslim,” said Noor Ben Ali, whose family is from Tunisia.

Ben Ali said she participated in the 2011 popular revolt there that began what became known as the Arab Spring. “I saw people standing up together, united, sharing,” she said. “The police that supported the dictator disappeared from the streets and we formed our own security. Once you see people standing up, you know it can happen anywhere.”

She explained there is an island in Tunisia called Djerba, where a lot of Jewish people live. “The Jewish people are Tunisians just like us,” she said.

Evan Kurzrok, a 20-year-old student at Broward College, signed up for a subscription when SWP supporters from Miami went door to door in Hollywood, Florida, Cindy Jaquith reported. “To mark people by their religion is exactly what Nazi Germany did to the Jews,” he said.

“Kurzrok asked why we thought there were so many ‘radical’ ideas, such as Donald Trump’s proposal to register Muslims,” Jaquith said. “We said that as the capitalist crisis deepens workers look for how they can change things. Some are attracted to Trump because he scorns the powers that be and appears to be outside the ‘establishment.’ But what working people need is to organize ourselves politically independent of all the capitalists and their parties, which is what the Socialist Workers Party campaigns for.”

If you’d like to join in this campaign, contact the party branch in your area, listed on page 8. And please send in reports, and photos, so we can share these experiences in the pages of the Militant.

SWP campaigns against war drive, witch hunt of Muslims

SWP campaigns against war
drive, witch hunt of Muslims