Why Liberals Love Islam
It’s always seemed bizarre to me that liberals love to champion Islam. Doesn’t Islam represent everything liberals love to hate? Islam assigns women subservient social roles. It condemns homosexuality and other "sexually deviant" practices. At least in recent years, it has given rise to numerous violent extremist movements, and, even more alarming, a non-trivial percentage of Muslims seem to be supportive of them. Nothing remotely comparable has been seen from Christians or Jews in the modern era.
So it seems like liberals should despise Islam with a white-hot hatred, but instead they love to defend it, to label it the “religion of peace”, and to champion the rights of Muslims to religious freedom (even while they remain indifferent to the other two Abrahamic faiths in their struggles for similar freedoms). I’ve often wondered about this, but yesterday I had an “insight” into the question. I use scare quotes here because I’m not certain whether my theory is actually true. But here is my thought: liberals love Islam because it represents their idea of what religion is supposed to be.
In saying this, I am drawing mainly on my experiences living in the Muslim world (mainly in Palestine and in Uzbekistan), and on the numerous conversations that I had with serious Muslims there about how they understand their religion. I am not an Islamic scholar, so I won’t attempt to quibble with those who want to claim (as some do) that the religiosity of actual Muslims today is a far departure from what Islam was intended to be. This could be true. I wouldn’t know. And I recognize that there are limitations to what one can learn from the rank-and-file faithful of any religion. A person who simply talked to 50 lukewarm, liberal Catholics about their faith might get some very funny ideas.
Still, the people I have in mind did not regard themselves as lukewarm. And, in my experience, living Muslims take a markedly fideist approach to their faith, meaning that they don’t expect that rational evaluation should yield greater insight into its teachings. The Koran should be followed because it is God’s word; to expect more understanding than that is folly and even possibly a sacrilege. Islamic resistance to textual analysis of the Koran is legendary by now. And it's also true that Islam has many, many concrete rules; unlike Christianity, it has little flexibility for adapting to different political systems. Muslims, in my experience, are far more concerned about external action than they are about internal spiritual states. Christian and Jewish attention to virtue seems strange to them.
One Muslim friend actually told me that she found the Christian focus on thought and feeling to be alarming. “I don’t want God looking into my head and heart all the time,” she said. “If I do what I’m instructed to do, that should be enough. My thoughts should be my own.” She was horrified by my admission that evil thoughts might be the sort of thing a Catholic would feel moved to report to her priest in the confessional. I thought that was interestingly revealing of differences between the religiosity of Christians and that of Muslims.
Corresponding to this, Muslims expect to be rewarded or punished for their religious practice in fairly external and obvious ways. Carrots and sticks are very central to the Islamic understanding of obedience and submission to God. So, for example, the pleasures of Islamic heaven seem to be straightforwardly sensual. My Muslim friends were tickled when I told them about the Beatific Vision. “You just get to look at God?” They wanted something a little more tangible, like a harem of virgins.
Islam doesn’t offer many resources for finding redemptive value in poverty or suffering. I actually think that the rage of the present Muslim world is partly related to this defect in Islamic spirituality. Their faith gives them no constructive paradigm through which to view their own material and political struggles. It makes no sense to them that the West should prosper while they, the practitioners of the true faith, languish under poor and corrupt regimes. Some very normal-seeming (which is to say, not visibly crazed or violent) Muslims offered this to me as a rationale for violent jihad. “How could God not enable the true faith to prosper? If only we had the will to fight, God would necessarily hand us the victory.”
This is the picture of Islam that I developed through my years in the Islamic world. Fideist, rule-oriented, and focused on the material advantages that God has promised to those who obey without question. Now, doesn’t this sound like the liberal vision of what religion should be?
Of course, that still doesn’t explain, per se, why liberals love Islam instead of just despising it from top to bottom. I wonder, though, whether the story is something like this: liberals like to think of themselves as the enlightened teachers and leaders of benighted, backwards religious people who cling to their gods and guns as a lifeline in an insufficiently-liberalized world. Christians and Jews keep defying them by proving themselves to be far more rational than the liberal narrative would suggest, and by showing that their religiosity is, contrary to expectation, generous, fruitful and humane. This is maddening, and makes it difficult to bring Christianity and Judaism to heel. But Islam seems to fit the paradigm much better, and, conveniently, there aren’t enough Muslims around (at least in the United States) to burst the liberal bubble when they imagine themselves condescendingly plucking their benighted Muslim brethren out of the muck of their broken undemocratic regimes and their backwards faith.
Is it plausible, or no?
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Comments:
Jul '12
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Liberals don't love Islam - they fear it. In Islam they see a muscular religio-political system which has the capacity to foist itself without self consciousness upon weaker foes.
It seems to me that despite all of their disgust for members of the opposite political persuasion, leftists are fundamentally sort of a gang of sissies; occasionally you run into militant ones like Van Jones or the Occupy Nutters, but these are generally pacifist weenies who want to accomplish their odious goals through the grinding, inexorable wheels of statism.
In Islam, they are nakedly unafraid to express their political will via violence; Liberals fundamentally fear this, and give it a wide berth.
Edited on February 22, 2013 at 5:58pmSep '10
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Your post is extremely informative and interesting. However, I think the reasons for this phenomenon are mundane. Leftists hate and fear their immediate threat, American conservatives, devout Christians and Republicans. In the enemy of my enemy is my friend thinking, Republicans *hate* Muslims, Islamists hate Jews (many lefties secretly hate Jews too especially right wing Israeli types) and Christians so there is an alliance right there.
Radical Muslims are victims and right-wing Americans who made them that way. Sure they don't like the radical Muslims but it's not their fault (more condescending racism) it was colonials and Bush who made them hate us.
Furthermore all muslims aren't bad. The ones I know (narcissistic solipsism) are nice and they are discriminated against and misunderstood by ignorant right-wing bigots.
So you see, it is at once complicated and simple. The simple-minded leftist thinks the issue is complicated and they think others are being simplistic and ignorant.
Felling superior and nuanced is very enjoyable for them.
Sep '10
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
You're on to something. Liberals also are attracted to totalitarianism, and Islam has some of that flavor too.
As for fideism, I've noticed a pretty strong streak among Christians right here on Ricochet – not exactly a bastion of liberalism. Don't many Christians extoll the virtues of faith over reason? I don't think of that as an especially liberal view of religion. On the contrary, the ideal liberal's religion is Unitarianism, which brings us back to Majestyk's insight.
Mar '12
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Liberals love Islam because they despise Christianity (and Judaism). Also, I agree that liberals like Islam because it fits into their worldview of a religious people as unsophisticated.
Liberals also see in Islam a similar thought pattern to liberalism - belief based on "talking points" not on evidence. Also, liberalism and Islam are hyper judgmental. If you disagree with them, you are not just wrong, you are evil.
However, if the Judeo-Christian religions disappeared, liberals and Islam would become sworn enemies.
Jul '11
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
I think there is misrepresentation in your original statement. Liberals do not love Islam Statists do. Both Statism and Islam are all about control. Therefore, it is of no surprise to me that the two camps agree in tactics even though they may differ in principle.
They are cut from the same cloth, despite difference in doctrine.
Nov '11
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Islam has a natural ally in Socialism. Both want their belief to dominate in the world and to achieve that goal they both need to dismantle Western Civilization. They are allies with a common enemy.
Here in the USA the goal is a bit simpler. The Democrat Party controls thought and speech by means of political correctness. It is racist, bigoted, homophobic or xenophobic for anyone to discuss the shortcomings of any member of the Democrat coalition, even if one part of the coalition wants to destroy the another part. The average progressive is well versed in the dogma of the left and is instructed by that dogma that Islam is the religion of peace and Israel is an apartheid county; any other thought (or speech) would be blasphemy.
Jul '11
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Schrodinger's Cat
Liberals love Islam because they despise Christianity (and Judaism).
Back in the day when Christianity was also all about control, it too loved Islam; at least it did under British India during the Raj.
Dec '11
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Schrodinger's Cat
I couldn't agree more; this would also explain the liberal infatuation with Mao and Castro.
Mar '12
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Barkha Herman: I think there is misrepresentation in your original statement. Liberals do not love Islam Statists do. Both Statism and Islam are all about control. Therefore, it is of no surprise to me that the two camps agree in tactics even though they may differ in principle.
They are cut from the same cloth, despite difference in doctrine. · 1 minute ago
Well put!
May '10
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
I think you're all over-thinking this one.
The left hold this view because they see the Muslim world as victims of Western Imperialism. If things are crazy in the middle east, it's because the west made it that way.
Jul '11
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Schrodinger's Cat
Barkha Herman: I think there is misrepresentation in your original statement. Liberals do not love Islam Statists do. Both Statism and Islam are all about control. Therefore, it is of no surprise to me that the two camps agree in tactics even though they may differ in principle.
They are cut from the same cloth, despite difference in doctrine. · 1 minute ago
Well put! · 3 minutes ago
This is why I refuse to call them liberals. The confusion arises when we subconsciously start thinking liberty has anything to do with their stances.
IMHO, it is important to re-claim this word.
Aug '10
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
I think it's simpler than all that.
I think it's because Islam is, as far as I'm aware, the only major religion that commands its adherents to provide financial support to "the poor", under penalty of the religion's leaders.
Other religions talk a lot about the virtue of helping the poor, but Islam is the only religion (AFAIK) where it's a commandment to be enforced here on Earth.
This Crashcourse video on Islam also (perhaps unintentionally) gives a few clues about why the Left champions Islam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpcbfxtdoI8
Edited on February 22, 2013 at 6:57pmSep '10
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Barkha Herman
This is why I refuse to call them liberals. The confusion arises when we subconsciously start thinking liberty has anything to do with their stances.
IMHO, it is important to re-claim this word.
It would be nice to reclaim it, but that ship has sailed. The same goes for progressive. No one is more retrograde than a contemporary Leftist, except possibly Islamic fundamentalists. Maybe that explains the affinity.
Mar '11
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Loved your post. It was extremely insightful into the Muslim paradigm. Like many others however, I think the real affinity the left has for Islam is Islam's defiance of the West and all that represents. Perhaps the thinking for some goes deeper than that and touches on the points you made but I suspect for most it is a knee jerk sympathy for the hatred Islamists show toward modernity.
Mar '12
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Schrodinger's Cat: #4 I agree that liberals like Islam because it fits into their worldview of a religious people as unsophisticated.
Wonderful insight.
I also believe that Kofola's comment in #10, about Muslims being the victims (a perfect liberal word) of Western imperialism is correct.
I suspect that the liberals will hold on to their positions until they are unpleasantly surprised to find out that they, their wives, their sons and their daughters are at that point subject to sharia.
Should that happen, they will long for the days when Christians and Jews had voting rights, and did not force them into baptism or circumcision.
How does it go? A conservative is a liberal who was mugged? The liberals who champion Islam haven't been subject to the benefits of sharia. Yet. And they are too dumb to see what is happening in the Islamic world, not merely among competing sects within Islam, but also to other religious people (Copts, Catholics, Protestants, et al) in countries ruled by Muslims enforcing sharia on everyone.
Edited on February 22, 2013 at 7:00pmNov '10
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
9/13 Conservatives understand why liberals love Muslims. It’s not complicated. Those who favor the explanation of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” are right.
A “9/13 conservative” is someone who may not have been particularly political on 9/11 and didn’t realize they were conservative just because 9/11 occurred. It wasn’t the falling of the twin towers that awakened their natural conservative political instincts.
It was the bizarre blaming of America for 9/11 by liberals immediately afterward that got them. The sickening apologies and excuses that liberals came up with to justify 9/11 was a great awakening to the 9/13 conservatives; they realized for the first time that liberals really do hold reprehensible beliefs about their own country. They realized, reluctantly but surely, that liberals have nothing they truly believe in. They just hate America.
Edited on February 22, 2013 at 7:00pmMay '11
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Kofola: I think you're all over-thinking this one.
The left hold this view because they see the Muslim world as victims of Western Imperialism. If things are crazy in the middle east, it's because the west made it that way. · 20 minutes ago
You hit the nail on the head. The left is willing to ignore anything to advance the idea that Western Civilization is the root of all evil. I once heard a lefty commentator admiring the piety of the Aztecs since they were willing to perform human sacrifice for their beliefs.
Apr '11
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Majestyk took the words right out of my mouth.
Fear primarily, along with the bits already bandied about regarding Islam fulfilling a stereotype of what religion is from the modern, progressive mindset (i.e. fideistic, credulous, law-based/works oriented), a good dash of "the enemy of my enemy...," and you've got it pretty well covered.
But mostly, it's fear, plain and simple. It's a reasonable fear, actually. Imagine that. "Liberals" can still reason.
Sep '12
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Hey, let's call them 'Progressive Fundamentalists.'
Rachel Lu: thank you for explaining your experiences, that is very enlightening! I tend to think liberals cozy up to Islam out of boredom; Judeo-Christian is so 5 minutes ago, you know?
Jun '11
Re: Why Liberals Love Islam
Excellent comments all, to which I can add only a reference -- to the inimitable Dennis Prager and his book Still the Best Hope (people on Ricochet are going to start thinking I get royalties from this guy). An excellent book for understanding the interplay between, as Prager calls them, Leftism, Islamism, and American values.