Soviet scholars balanced anti-Islamic propaganda with recognition of Islam’s progressive movements

Evidence

Belyaev, for example, accepted that the Prophet was a historical figure. His Arabs, Islam and the Arab Caliphate in the Early Middle Ages placed heavy emphasis on the role of the physical environment in the rise of Islam. More specifically, Islam was a religion that arose to serve the interests of the slave-owning mercantile bourgeoisie of Mecca and Medina. The Qur’an was not revealed by the Prophet, but concocted after the latter’s death. Early Islamic society made the transition from a slave-owning patriarchal society to a more advanced feudalism. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 418 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

For the Russian revolutionaries on the far left, though, insofar as they thought about Muslims as political actors, they eventually folded Muslims into the wider body of the ‘oppressed’ whose supposed zeal could be unleashed in a broader anticolonial struggle against the tsars and imperial rulers everywhere, and whose faith might be reinterpreted as a prelude to socialism. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 547 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Soviet historiography explained Islam as bourgeois class ideology — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists…, 418; Far-left Russian revolutionaries reframed Muslim zeal as anticolonial potential — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 547

Related

• Soviet historiography explained Islam as bourgeois class ideology (similarity 0.91)
• Far-left Russian revolutionaries reframed Muslim zeal as anticolonial potential (similarity 0.84)
• Russian antisemitism and anti-Muslim hostility drew directly on Western European texts (similarity 0.79)
• Soviet promises of Muslim freedom concealed campaigns of suppression (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Soviet historiography explained Islam as bourgeois class ideology #qualifies (0.85) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 418
• Far-left Russian revolutionaries reframed Muslim zeal as anticolonial potential #expands (0.80) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 547