Lewis explored these thoughts in the context of the Cold War in its 1950s stage. He did not examine Communism as an abstract concept or set of concepts, but rather as the concrete reality of Soviet Socialism. The transition from Stalin to Khrushchev had indeed led to some detectable changes in policy and practice, but the core ideology and goals of Soviet Socialism remained unchanged.
Among those goals was the spread of Socialism throughout the world.
The Soviet Socialists were, in fact, actively engaged in attempting to introduce Socialism into majority-Muslim nations, not by starting a dramatic violent rebellion and overthrow of the governments in those lands, but rather by a more subtle and gradual approach. This diplomatic approach included economic assistance, military assistance, technical assistance, propaganda aimed at anti-colonial nationalism, support for local communist parties, educational exchanges, and cultural diplomacy.
Recipients of Soviet Socialist aid included Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, and after 1958 Iraq. Socialist propaganda hoped to reframe anticolonialism and antiimperialism as opposition to market economies and opposition to property rights. The Soviets offered overt and covert support to Communist parties in Iran, Indonesia, Syria, and Iraq.
While these Soviet efforts led to improved diplomatic relations with some Islamic states, because of mutually beneficial arrangements, these efforts did not lead to a large-scale embrace of Soviet Socialism in Muslim-majority nations. In 1953 and 1954, however, this result was not yet known, and the non-Communist nations were concerned about the possibility of Islamic republics joining the Warsaw Pact nations.
On the one hand, the free world sought comfort in the notion that “Islam is after all a religion based on revelation, belief in which is clearly incompatible with Marxist ideology,” as Bernard Lewis phrases it. Anyone who has carefully studied Islam and carefully studied Marxism will agree that the two are irreconcilable. But that degree of study and analysis will be limited to a few lonely academic souls.
On the other hand, “in the present competition between the Western democracies and Soviet Communism for the support of the Islamic world,” there might be “factors or qualities” present “in Islamic tradition, or in the present state of Islamic society and opinion, which might prepare the intellectually and politically active groups to embrace Communist principles and methods of government, and the rest to accept them.”
Rather than compare and contrast Marxist-Leninist doctrine to Islamic theology, Lewis is asking whether, in the street-level reality of the majority-Muslim nations, there were significant numbers of people, and especially influential people, who might embrace Soviet Socialism, and whether the masses would be willing to follow them. He is arguing that it is not a theological or philosophical question, it is a social and political question.
The Soviet Socialist diplomatic outreach to Islamic nations included educational exchanges, in which Muslim students were invited to study at universities in the Soviet Union. The diplomacy also included cultural exhibitions, scientific exchanges, athletic competitions, and publications and radio broadcasts in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and Indonesian. Soviet diplomats also assured Islamic leaders that the Soviets respected religious freedom; the Soviets knew that the Muslim nations would not accept the absolute atheism demanded by doctrinaire Marxism. This put the Soviets in the awkward position of praising religious freedom abroad while imposing atheism domestically.
In the end, the Soviet Socialists formed some mutually advantageous alliances with Islamic republics, but there was no flowering of Socialism in the Muslim world in the 1950s.
By the time of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the reader will imagine that the foreign policy experts in the free world were thankful that, despite some military and economic cooperation between a few Islamic nations and the Soviet Union, there had been no massive wave of revolutionary Soviet Socialism in those countries.
Although the West may well have felt a sense of relief in 1991, it would have been surprised and disappointed to learn that, 35 years later, phrases like ‘Islamo-Socialism,’ ‘Islamo-Marxism,’ and ‘Islamo-Communism’ would be used with increasing frequency to describe events, movements, and political leaders in the United States.
Although the Soviet Union is long gone, the ghost of Soviet Socialism is alive and well in Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed, and Yousef Rabhi. Although only two of those three are currently official members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), all three of them propose policies which are directly derived from Soviet Socialism: government owned housing, not as an emergency safety net, but as an ongoing way of life for a large percentage of the citizenry; government owned and operated grocery stores; free use of public transportation for everyone. (Of the three, the one who is not a member of the DSA has nonetheless spoken at and otherwise attended DSA events.)
One could cite many other examples of how policies advocated by Islamo-Socialists are echoes of Soviet Socialism’s policies. The three political leaders named above are not alone; they are merely the most famous of their type in the year 2026. Preceding years have featured others, and in 2026 there are many others as well. One can anticipate more of the same in 2027. (Although Yousef Rabhi does not label himself a Muslim, he has not expressed any critique of Islam; his father's family is Muslim, and one can reasonably assume that he has a familiarity with Islam.)
The notion of rephrasing 1950s Soviet policies in ways to make them palatable to Islamists of the 2020s almost seems like a comedy skit from Saturday Night Live.
An “Islamist” is not the same as a “Muslim” in twenty-first century usage. The current wave of Islamo-Socialism in the United States devotes effort to avoid appearing Islamist.
What is Islamo-Socialism? And what is it in contrast to other versions of Socialism? As noted above, one aspect of it is its presentation. It places less emphasis on the Marxist demand for atheism. It leans more heavily on the authoritarian nature of the state to impose whichever Socialist or Communist measures are being taken at the time.
Bernard Lewis identifies three features of Islam which the Socialists can leverage.
First, “the Communists are against the West and for that reason can at once count on important elements of support in the Islamic world.” What Lewis probably did not foresee, in 1953, was that this would not take place by means of Soviet propaganda efforts in Islamic nations, but rather that it would take place in the West itself — in NATO and EU countries — by means of ideologues who outlived the Soviet Union but remain attached to its doctrines.
Second, Lewis wondered if the Soviets could exploit “the present discontent of the Islamic World, and more specifically the social and economic discontent.” Again, while the Soviets of the 1950s failed to integrate the Islamic world into the Warsaw Pact, 70 years later, the doctrinaire Marxists in the West have been able to lure a substantial segment of Muslims into the Socialist camp.
Third, Lewis points out that a sweeping generalization about all Muslims is wrong. There is a particular segment of the Muslim world which will be drawn into Socialism, and there are other segments who will remain independent of it:
The center of danger is not the starving peasantry so often referred to, but rather the aspiring mechanics, who are the main recruits to the Communist cause. The peasantry are still, to a large extent, integrated in their traditional social units, and sustained by the loyalty and cohesion of the family and village group. It is the semi-skilled or un-skilled laborers who are uprooted from their tribal and village communities, deprived of the support of their usual system of social relationships and mutual aid, and placed in alien and unfamiliar surroundings. In the Communist cell the transplanted proletarian or mechanic may hope to find some substitute for his lost social armature, as well as encouragement in the ambitions and resentments that he acquires together with his new skills.
With a few adjustments in wording, this text by Bernard Lewis translates neatly into the twenty-first century. The “peasantry” and its “village communities” are the immigrants, who’ve settled in Europe or North America, and have a sense of “loyalty and cohesion” and “social relationships and mutual aid.” These people are sustained by “their traditional social units” and are not seeking a new sense of home among the political radicals of the far Left.
On the other hand, those Muslims who are suffering from a sense of dislocation, culturally, linguistically, and religiously, are attracted to Islamo-Socialism, because they have been “uprooted from their” communities and “deprived of the support” of those communities. Being culturally, socially, and psychologically dislocated, they find themselves “in alien and unfamiliar surroundings.” This could apply not only to immigrants, but also to the children of immigrants, and perhaps even to the grandchildren. Being distant, either emotionally or geographically, from family is another source of dislocation which makes individuals susceptible to the lures of Islamo-Socialism.
How does Islamo-Socialism cooperate or coordinate with its political allies? The DSA and other socialist-leaning groups in the United States include a wide smorgasbord of ethnicities, religions, and cultures. Consolidating such coalitions is an important part of twenty-first century electioneering in the United States (and perhaps in other countries as well).
One feature of postmodern and post-Marxist socialisms (note the plural) is the abandonment of the strictly economic definitions of the classes to be liberated. Socialism is to liberate not only those with little or no income, little or no capital, and low standards of living, but also those who are in any way oppressed — with the definition of ‘oppressed’ being large, malleable, and ever-changing.
The Islamo-Socialists can find common ground with the other socialists by identifying some people (their supporters) as oppressed, and labelling other people (their political opponents) as oppressors.
Another vocabulary item which connects Islamo-Socialists with the broader Marxist audience — and for the present purposes, the ambiguous borderlines between socialism, marxism, communism, leninism, and maoism may be ignored — is the phrase “seize the means of production.”
This is an orthodox Marxist phrase, and Zohran Mamdani is clearly documented as saying that one of the “issues that we firmly believe in” is the “end goal” was “seizing the means of production.” This phrase cements Mamdani’s place in the socialist camp. It also is a phrase that would have been, until very recently, unlikely to come out of the mouth of a self-identified Muslim.
The confusion and conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is another bridge which links Islamo-Socialism to the broader far-Left community. On the one hand, there is opposition to particular actions and policies of the nation-state of Israel. On the other hand, there is a desire to discriminate against Jews around the globe. The refusal to distinguish between these two ideas allows for a connection between Islamo-socialism and DSA-type movements.
Any variant of socialism requires a reduction in personal freedom and political liberty: an ongoing diminution of property rights and free markets. Both socialism and Islam are quite comfortable with regulating both individuals and communities, as Bernard Lewis writes:
Many attempts have been made to show that Islam and democracy are identical-attempts usually based on a misunderstanding of Islam or democracy or both.
Lewis reviews the societies and civilization in which Islam has flourished. Almost none of them feature governments composed of freely-elected representatives. Almost none of them encourage individual expression or thought. Culturally, Islam has learned to feel at home in authoritarianism and in absolutism. Islam is therefore comfortable when socialism restricts property rights and regulates a previously free market. Lewis continues:
The political history of Islam is one of almost unrelieved autocracy. I say autocracy, not despotism, since the sovereign was bound by and subject to the Holy Law, and was accepted by the people as rightful ruler, maintaining and maintained by the authority of the Holy Law. But still, it was authoritarian, often arbitrary, sometimes tyrannical. There are no parliaments or representative assemblies of any kind, no councils or communes, no chambers of nobility or estates, no municipalities in the history of Islam; nothing but the sovereign power.
It appears clear that Islam will not in the near future articulate, embrace, and endorse the principles of Soviet Socialism; atheism and a few other cultural details are not palatable to Islam.
It also seems apparent that Islam is comfortable enough with Soviet Socialism, especially in its current DSA repackaging, to tolerate it, to coexist with it, to go along and get along with it.
Islam and Soviet Socialism are not entirely congruent, but they are in some ways similar and in some ways complementary, so that they can collaborate.
