Muanis Sinanović

In 1882, Karl Marx traveled outside Europe for the first time and set foot in one of the colonized lands with which he had previously engaged only in theory. He landed on the coast of Algeria and soon after wrote to his daughter Eleanor, “For Mussulmans, there is no such thing as subordination. Inequality is an abomination to ‘a true Mussulman’ (a Muslim), but these sentiments ‘will go to rack and ruin without a revolutionary movement.”

Nearly a century and a half later, his prediction appears grimly accurate. Much of the Islamic world remains marked by profound inequality, while it stands by, restrained and fragmented, as the genocide unfolded in Gaza. Further east, in Saudi Arabia, the Hajj pilgrimage proceeds as a commercialized touristic version of a sacred rite, where even the expression of solidarity with Palestinians is forbidden.

Despite noble sentiments, expressed in the everyday conduct of hundreds of millions through their ethics, charity, and longing for justice, the masses remain largely powerless – and repressed – in the months that have followed. Injustice and tyranny continue to appear omnipresent. Yet many Islamic intellectuals continue to reject the thought of the theorist who so precisely grasped the condition of Muslims and anticipated the trajectory of their political fate.

The Muslim world is more divided than ever. Nevertheless, the idea of the ummah endures, testifying to the depth of Islamic spirituality and to the far-reaching, world-historical significance of the revelation received by the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

Yet the ummah is increasingly losing touch with concrete reality, struggling to translate lofty spiritual spheres into practical life. The idea of the ummah alone cannot feed the hungry masses, provide security from imperialist barbarism, or satisfy the need for justice, solidarity, and order. The Islamic world, therefore, risks losing its living connection to its own religion – a process that has already primarily occurred in the imperialist core. When a religion ceases to live as a material practice, even its spiritual dimension is called into question. The proof of Islam has always been its practical effectiveness and its ability to establish a functioning civilization.

Even among the sharpest political commentators of the Islamic world, one rarely encounters attention to class struggle. Most Muslims are its double victims. First, as peasants, proletarians, or as the lumpenproletarian masses of unemployed urban poor and displaced refugees, they suffer under the domination of the ruling classes within the Islamic world. Second, as part of the Global South, they remain subordinated to the caprices of the Global North. The comprador bourgeoisies of many Muslim-majority nation-states continue to serve the interests of the North’s imperialist bourgeoisie.

In earlier modes of production, a partial unity between the ruling and the ruled within the Islamic world could still exist under the umbrella of the ummah, where those in power least attempted to address the social needs of the poor. Today, this is no longer the case. In their pursuit of political power, rulers now overtly serve foreign interests.

It is therefore necessary to revisit those parts of the Qur’an that warn against envy toward the wealthy and are often read in ways that normalize social inequality. Clerics friendly to imperial subordination frequently invoke these verses – usually without malicious intent but out of anti-intellectualism – to justify capitalism. The Qur’an was revealed at a time when free trade among relative equals was still possible. Such trade enabled a form of competition that, while producing some social stratification, could still benefit society as a whole. Capitalist competition, however, is structurally deceitful. Mass inequality endures globally as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer under a dwindling American hegemony.

Capitalism legalizes the separation of workers’ interests from those of capitalists. By separating the means of production from the workers, it enables capitalists to pursue profit beyond the will of the majority. Second, at the international level, through unjust trade agreements and imperialist wars, it destroys the sovereignty of the peoples of the Global South.

For imperialism to succeed, it relies on the artificial division of Muslims into nation-states of its own making. These states then compete among themselves for the benefit of local elites, further dividing the Muslim masses.

Because of delayed industrialization and slower proletarianization (due to decades of imperialist destabilization and resource extraction), a considerable part of the Muslim world struggles to develop a coherent class consciousness. It has not aligned itself with imperialism at the global level. The lower strata of Muslim societies continue to inhabit a mental world shaped by the idea of relatively harmonious relations between rulers and the ruled. Moreover, they venerate the idol of the nation-state, which mainly serves the interests of national bourgeoisies. Even in religious matters, these bourgeoisies often align themselves with the interests of the Global North, subordinating religion to those interests.

In some countries, ruling class Muslims advocate European-style liberalization. Liberals in Turkey and the Balkans often express contempt for Islamic heritage and, in doing so, worsen the condition of the poor Muslim masses. They harbor racism toward darker-skinned Muslims, and, in a pattern that echoes colonial hierarchies, act as “house slaves,” leaving the role of “field slaves” to darker-skinned Muslims.

In other countries, the adaptation takes a more overtly reactionary form. There, they often despise secularist Muslims – such as those of the Balkans – while simultaneously idolizing the tribalist nation-state in direct contradiction to the universalist concept of the ummah, and worship profit as a golden calf. This profit flows mainly from oil sales to the capitalist center.

Reactionary states, which preach political passivity and contradictory consumerist hedonism, compensated by a charade of meaningless rules meant to soothe consciences – states that claim to be the refuge of faithful Islam – simultaneously persecute Muslim refugees and brutally exploit Muslim immigrant workers. This is, in short, the complete perversion of Islam.

Neither liberalism nor reactionary interpretations will solve the problems of the Islamic world. Only class consciousness can, and it can emerge only if we take the theoretical and rational insights of historical materialism seriously. Such consciousness drives the struggle against the ruling classes of Muslim countries that act against the interests of the ummah, and against tribal liberal or reactionary nationalisms that prevent the coordinated action of the ummah.

Into struggle together with the workers of the imperialist core: with Italian dockworkers who blockade arms shipments to Israel, with workers who can halt and paralyze European cities in response to genocide against Muslims, and with the workers of South America whose hearts beat in solidarity with the oppressed Muslims.

Only then can we begin to discuss how to secure a dignified life for Muslims and for all humanity, how to dismantle the empire itself, rather than remaining trapped in debates over atomized religious rules marked by false moral superiority and indifference to the cries of the oppressed.

The vast number of Muslims living in the Global South bears a responsibility to join the world’s struggle against capitalist imperialism. If this responsibility is recognized, it becomes possible to reclaim a role once held by Muslims in history, not through symbolism but through material struggle. The wretched of the world continue to wait for a response. Only then may we truly become an ummah in the genuine sense of the word—something that remains impossible under capitalism.

Muanis Sinanović is a Slovenian poet, writer, and critic.

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