United in hate

20 August 2005

Douglas Davis shows how secular Marxists and Islamic fundamentalists have buried their differences to wage war on the war against terror

The fact is the coalition has been a godsend to both sides. The Left, a once-dwindling band of communists, Trotskyites, Maoists and Castroists, had been clinging to the dregs of a clapped-out cause; the Islamists could deliver numbers and passion, but they needed a vehicle to give them purchase on the political terrain. A tactical alliance became an operational imperative. Indeed, the first to advocate the Black–Red alliance was none other than Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden and ideologue of al-Qa’eda. In a message delivered in August 2002, he called on sympathisers to seek allies among ‘any movement that opposes America, even atheists’. This sentiment was refined in London by Abu Hamza al-Masri, the hook-handed Islamist from Central Casting who is currently fighting extradition to the United States on terrorism charges. ‘We say to anyone who hates the Americans and wants to throw the Jews out of Palestine — Ahlan wa Sahlan (welcome). The Prophet teaches that we could ally ourselves even with the atheists if it helps us destroy [the] enemy.’

But the Tora Bora Award for Chutzpah goes to George Galloway, veteran champion of Arab and Islamist causes. Appearing on al-Jazeera television last month, he attacked the West while extolling Islamic virtue. ‘It’s not the Muslims who are the terrorists,’ he declared. ‘The biggest terrorists are Bush and Blair, Berlusconi and Aznar.... We believe in the Prophets, peace be upon them. [Bush] believes in the profits, and how to get a piece of them. That’s his god.’ Marx meets Mohammed. High theatre meets low farce. The savvy Galloway, now more godly than gorgeous, has created a conduit through which Islamofascism pumps its poison into Britain’s political bloodstream. It would be quite funny were it not so serious.