At Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly, an account of a meeting with Muslim Brotherhood, Hizballah, Hamas, and Western Marxist idiots; I’ve used that headline before, but this is a truly mind-boggling example of Total Moronic Convergence™: Anti-globalists reach out to Islamists.

Ali Fayyad of Hizbullah backed up Mazraani, though he complained that, “many socialists in Europe still refuse to work with us, calling us ‘terrorist’”. He admitted that Islamists are conservative and often don’t want to work with the left, especially extremists like Al-Qaeda, which “will not work with anyone and will fail”. Then there are the liberal Muslims who don’t care about the war and occupation, lack a clear position on imperialism, and as a result, actually ally with it. “The differences of Hamas and Hizbullah with the left are minor — family and social priorities — and at the same time, the Islamic movement must apply democracy, which is really the same as shura. Democracy is a bridge to cross to a better world. We should avoid intolerance in governance, whether it’s Islamic or not, and forcing religion upon people.” He referred to Gramsci’s argument about creating a common front at important historical junctures to induce historical change, after which the different groups can go their separate ways. What a lovely irony to have an Islamist quoting a Western communist theorist.

“By working with Islamic groups in an open way, the left can have a positive impact on Islamic movements, and vice versa.”

The international left, as represented at the conference, emphasised practical ways to reach out to the broader Muslim community, as reflected in conference forums on such projects as twinning UK and Palestinian cities, countering the boycott of the Hamas government in Palestine with a boycott of Israel and Western firms that provide military equipment to Israel, countering Islamophobia — in a word, citizens’ diplomacy.

James Clark of the Canadian Peace Alliance described how the anti-war coalitions are now supportive of Muslims who find themselves targets of racial and religious profiling and no-fly lists, and that there is active work in the peace movement to counter Islamophobia, “which the governments use to fan the flames to generate support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are committed to defend all civil liberties. ”On the wall of the prayer room at Ryerson University in Toronto, someone’s spray painted ‘Die Muslim’. The administration refused to condemn this as hate crime, so we organised a petition and a campaign to counter Islamophobia, and as a result, the head of the Islamic students’ organisation was elected president of the students’ council. So you can use such incidents to educate and mobilise people.“ Clark vowed that the Canadian peace movement, inspired by the Arab resistance in Lebanon and Iraq, would work with Muslims to defeat imperialism.

Johannes Anderson of Denmark criticised the Danish left for not standing behind Muslims during the cartoon controversy, allowing a weak prime minister to emerge unscathed. ”I’ve changed through the past years and grown through criticism. We should not be afraid of it. We fight for democracy in the Middle East and Europe against neo-liberalism which is taking away our rights everywhere.”