We want to underline here some aspects that should be understood after the attacks on Friday, November 13th, in France i.e. in Paris, to have a correct and complete overview of the events. We make here a common document about it, because both our countries are concerned.

We say that the Islamist project is a synthesized ideology, an expression of feudal forces, that have been in the situation to free themselves, in a relative manner, from the relationship to bureaucratic capitalism.

Thus, as Saddam Hussein was overthrown in Iraq, bureaucratic capitalism was put aside and the feudal forces could develop themselves freely. It was also directly the case with certain countries, where oil and natural gas were abundant. Unlike countries like for example in South America, there were countries in the Middle East where no bureaucratic capitalism was really formed, only feudal forces that have modernized themselves.

The present investments of the Emirates of Qatar consist precisely in the construction of a bureaucratic capitalism by feudalism. There is here a convergence between fractions of the bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries and the “petro-monarchies” of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Nevertheless, in this process appear organisations like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, which are the most radical fractions of this feudalism. They build structures that are developed following their strategy, with the aim of realizing everywhere the ideal conditions for feudalism, economically like culturally and politically. It is of course impossible and that’s why it comes to barbarity and nihilism.

It would be therefore wrong to think that those fundamentalist movements would be only marginal phenomena, only existing though armed actions. Their background must be correctly understood, otherwise it could be possible to think it would be mere individual adventurism.

Concretely, what happened in Paris is the product of a network: some people having taken part in the actions in Paris are from Belgium, a country which plays an important role for Islamic fundamentalism, as a hub, especially with Molenbeek-Saint-Jean / Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, a municipality of the Brussels-Capital Region.

During the 1990’s there was there a revolt of the youth against oppression, particularly racism; Molenbeek, with nearly 100 000 inhabitants, has a high proportion of migrants. To control it, the city has made Imams coming from Saudi Arabia – “Wahhabis” imams.

This development of islamic Fundamentalism follows a massive presence of the propaganda coming from Saudi Arabia, which began when this country gave financial help to families affected by the “L’Innovation” Department Store fire of 1967, where 323 people died. In return, the Belgian King gave, as headquarters of the Belgian Islamic and Cultural Centre, an oriental pavilion built during the World Exhibition Brussels of 1897, and Islamic fundamentalism deployed itself sharply through massive propaganda and the financing of Saudi Arabia.

In this process, Molenbeek became an Islamist stronghold. A special role had here Philippe Moureaux, who belongs to a family, the Blaton, which became wealthy through building societies in Brussels.

Previously famous for having passed as a minister in 1981 an anti-racist law, he conducted a massive clientelism in direction of Islam and particularly Islamic fundamentalism as socialist mayor of Molenbeek from 1992 to 2012; on his side he even married, being 71 years old, a woman from the Muslim community which was 35 years younger.

Molenbeek plays since that an important role for Islamic fundamentalism. The attacks in Paris have been coordinated from Molenbeek and some people involved have lived there.

That was also the case for Abdessatar Dahmane, who was involved in the killing of Ahmad Shah Massoud in Afghanistan, for Youssef Belhadj, Mimoun Belhadj and Hassan El Haski who were involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, for Mehdi Nenmouche who led the 2014 Jewish Museum of Belgium shooting, in Brussels. Have found weapons in Molenbeek Amedy Coulibaly who attacked a kosher supermarket in Paris at the beginning of the year, and Ayoub El Khazzani who had tried to practice an attack in a Thalys train in August 2015.The attacks in Paris were thus the result of a long process. It was worked decades long to build networks. So it is a mistake to ignore the practical “autonomy” of Islamic fundamentalism and to see it as a controlled “product” of imperialism.

The attacks in Paris are not a product of the imperialist war, but of the social conditions that have been chaotically formed by imperialism. So, there is a contradiction between imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism, as a product of the decay of capitalism.

We wish also to point to the situation in Bangladesh, because parallel to this Islamist project in Europe, this country has been conceived for years by the Islamists as a laboratory and in the recent months there have been several bloody attacks, with machetes, against religion critical intellectuals; there was also for the first time an attack on the Shiite Muslim minority, practiced by the “Islamic State”.

This is an increase in aggression, which is absolutely not “anti-imperialist”, but only the product of the crisis of capitalism and the consequent tendency towards imperialist war. It is absolutely logical that feudalism can only progress where the inter-imperialist contradictions are the strongest.

The Nazi movement in Ukraine – both in the West and the East – are just the product of feudalism and its anti-democratic romantic logic, in a context where the inter-imperialists contradictions are the strongest, like in Africa or in the Middle East.

We would also like to stress that this development is full of contradictions, because it depends in substance of the decay of capitalism.

France fights against Islamists in Mali, which are supported by Qatar, on the one hand; on the other hand, France has opened the doors for Qatar by abolishing tax and politically supporting it. Qatar bought luxury homes, hotels, the football club Paris Saint-Germain, made investments in large French companies (EADS, Suez, Lagardère, Veolia), while France has become the main supplier of arms of Qatar. Scholarships, 10 000 euros “cultural” Qatar prizes were also distributed, for example to the well-known illustrator Plantu, etc.

These practical contradictions exist also ideologically. In recent years, this convergence brought a combination of post-modernism as a « post-democratic » and « post-historical » concept on the one hand, and Islam as an anti-capitalist romanticism on the other.

That was of course not without contradictions between those ideological forms, but also in the bourgeoisie. In France, Marine Le Pen is fighting against this alliance with Qatar; Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister in the federal government Jan Jambon follows a same line and said he shall “personally” care of Molenbeek.

The risk for the masses is therefore to believe there would be only as alternatives religious fanaticisms, nationalism, or post-modernism. Actually, all of these forms are only an expression of the decay of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism.

Therefore, the Communists call for democratic revolutions in the semi-feudal semi-colonial countries and for socialist revolutions in the imperialist countries.

It can’t exist without dialectical materialist analysis of history, culture, economics, politics. It can’t exist without a program, with positive demands, clear indications on the revolutionary path.

The Islamists are an expression of feudalism, and so their actions are hopeless and suicidal, nihilistic !

Imperialism must be overthrown in the imperialist countries, just like feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism in the oppressed countries !

People’s War until Communism !

Marxist Leninist Maoist Center of Belgium’s
Communist Party of France (marxist leninist maoist)

November 2015