From Celeb Big Brother to the Clash of Civilisations

The Wall Street Journal's favourite biographer of Rosa Luxemburg he may be, but Norman Geras does put some interesting stuff on his blog from time to time. For instance, this on George Galloway:

'The last unconquered territory'

There are interviews here with George Galloway. Their most interesting feature is that they display in the clearest possible form how far, for Galloway, the role assigned in classical socialist thought to the working class, now falls to Islam. Even allowing for the fact that the interviews took place in Egypt, what he says is extraordinary:

[I]n recent years, after the fall of the Soviet Union, unconquered Islam was the only territory free from the globalisation of capitalism and its imperialist foreign policy. The only people still resisting in the world, other than the Cubans, are the Muslims. This brings them into conflict with the tyrants, because Islam forbids its believers to accept tyranny and injustice. It commands the believers to stand up against injustice. And as Bush and Blair and Co. speak the very language of injustice and are, themselves, establishing tyranny around the world, inevitably this brings them into conflict with Muslims.

Now, the good thing is that there [are] millions of people in non-Muslim countries, millions of non-Muslims, who are equally opposed to globalised capitalism and the imperialist war machine which comes from it. So, the Muslims have allies amongst non-Muslims and this is the phenomenon we have seen over the last few years. The development of a massive anti-war movement around the world where Muslims and non-Muslims were on one hand because they share a rejection of occupation, war, exploitation, despoliation of the earth, its environment.
.....
Islam is the last unconquered territory. The Soviet Union is defeated. Socialism is defeated. Nationalism is depressed. But, Islam is unconquered. And because Islam commands the believer to reject injustice and tyranny, this makes Islam automatically in a collision course with these tyrants, Bush and Blair. And, Islam has millions of soldiers. Millions of soldiers to resist this globalisation.

Neo-Conservatism or Militant Islam...bloody hell, there has to be something better than those choices, hasn't there?