We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support the resistance, for if the resistance fails, the “Bush gang” will attack another country. If they succeed, a grievous blow will be suffered by the Bush gang.

For these reasons, it is absurd to condemn the resistance to the U.S. occupation in Iraq, as being masterminded by terrorists or insurgents or supporters of Saddam Hussein. After all if the United States were invaded and occupied, would everybody who fought to liberate it be a terrorist or an insurgent or a Bushite?

The Iraqi resistance is fighting on the frontlines of the battle against Empire. And therefore that battle is our battle.

Like most resistance movements, it combines a motley range of assorted factions. Former Baathists, liberals, Islamists, fed-up collaborationists, communists, etc. Of course, it is riddled with opportunism, local rivalry, demagoguery, and criminality. But if we are only going to support pristine movements, then no resistance will be worthy of our purity.

One wasn't urging them to join the Medhi army [in Iraq] but to become the resistance, to become part of what ought to be a non-violent resistance against a very violent occupation," she said.

That is to redefine what resistance means, you know we can't just assume that resistance means terrorism because that would be playing right into the hands of the occupation.

All three articles are, in different ways, reminders of why it is worth staying to fight within the left, for a new left and why the arguments several of us in the blogosphere have been engaging in over the past two years are worth having.

As the situation in Iraq goes from bad to worse, it would be easy for anti-war activists to pat ourselves on the back and say "I told you so". But the left has no reason to be smug or complacent; the last year has revealed its own glaring errors. Many individuals and organisations on the left have been found uncritically supporting reactionary groups, and failing to offer solidarity to the secular left in Iraq. While our comrades in Iraq have been fighting the battle of their lives against both imperialist occupation and the threat of a fundamentalist tyranny, too many socialists have ignored their struggles and offered support to bitter enemies of the left.

The roots of these disastrous errors can be traced back to the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. In this crucial period, not enough attention was paid to the voices of the Iraqi opposition. Many Iraqi exiles supported the proposed invasion, because they were understandably desperate to see the Ba'athist regime overthrown. The left was certainly not obliged to agree with them, but they deserved the courtesy of a response; instead, they were mostly ignored, or dismissed as lackeys of Washington.

......The errors continued after the fall of the regime. The Iraqi left and labour movement quickly re-emerged from decades of repression and began to organise; they were entitled to expect solidarity and encouragement from their comrades in the west. Instead, many socialists took the easy option and became cheer-leaders for the so-called "resistance".

Motivated more by hatred of the US and British governments than by love for the Iraqi people, many so-called leftists support a “resistance” that, if victorious, would bring to power Baathists, Islamic fundamentalists and pro-al-Qaeda militants. Is that what the left now stands for? Neo-fascism, so long as it is anti-western?

The left’s political somersaults and ethical acrobatics are most striking on the issue of Islamic fundamentalism. Muslims should be defended against prejudice and discrimination. But that does not mean that human rights violations by Muslims (or anyone else) should be ignored.

A strange alliance has arisen: from conservative members of the Muslim Association of Britain, the SWP, to London’s Mayor, all are in an uproar about "Islamophobia". Ken Livingstone has taken it upon himself to criticise the French move to ban wearing ostentatious religious symbols in schools. He has also given lessons on religious freedom by defending a cleric, al-Qaradawi, who supports female genital mutilation.1 This bloc draws support from the mainstream of the Anglican Church and Prince Charles to, with rare exceptions, the bien-pensant pages of the Guardian.

....The immediate cause of this polemic is the progressive decision of an otherwise right-wing French government to ban the veil (le voile), and other divisive badges of faith from the public educational sphere. This was supported by the immense majority of the French left. Even most of those opposed to a formal interdiction admitted "the veil is an oppression" (that is the position of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire). Nearly all sides have pointed to the simple fact that men, under dominant interpretations of the Qur’an, are not required to cover their hair, and that women are obliged to do so because it is held that the sight of female coiffure will cause sexual feelings. Members of the North-African feminist movement, Ni Putes Ni Soumises, were at the forefront of the battle against the veil. Fadela Amara has declared that, whilst a believer, she sees the veil as "a tool of oppression, of alienation, of discrimination, an instrument of power by men over women".4 These brave feminist voices have aroused the violent hostility of the French Islamicists, the tellingly named Frères musulmans (Muslim Brotherhood). Only a tiny minority of the French left, inspired by the British Socialist Workers Party, or post-modernist relativism, defended the absolute right to be oppressed.

This has not been the stand in Britain. As we have seen, a majority appears to align with Islamicists against secularism....