While many Muslims have settled in the West over the years, a question that always stays in the back of the mind of most people is how come these Muslims who have certain values that hardly fit with western ideas find allies in western society. This question is very hard to answer with empirical evidence, mainly because it is easy to get cancelled in the modern-day for barely speaking the truth. Good thing is, that it is not rocket science to answer such questions. All one needs is a little bit of travelling and the capacity to engage in conversation with the public and you will get an answer to this very simple mystery. In this article, I will share my findings on how Muslims in the west have found an ally among western liberals and what makes this Alliance of Islam and Western Liberals an irony.
There are two kinds of people among the Muslims that settle in the West. While one has abandoned the religion and others still believe in traditional Islam. For those who typically have no idea, we can describe the two versions of Islam as the extremist version and the rather modernized version which is called moderate Islam. While both versions have an identical base, they are two different religions ideologically. Modernized Islam is a liberal version of Islam whose followers according to most (if not all) Muslim scholars will be considered apostate.
These moderate Muslims very much align with liberal values mainly because they don’t believe in the religion but only carry the tag in form of a brand or maybe only because they are afraid of religious prosecution by radical Muslims. However, most radical Muslims have found shelter alongside these moderate Muslims by claiming things that seem rather appealing to Western Liberals. Not only this but this alliance is also a result of a common foe which is Right-wing anti-immigrant politicians in the west. Although theoretically, the radical Muslims and Western Liberals are the total opposite, they both align for their own benefits.
Let’s do a contrast of Islam and Western Liberal thinking about some famous political topics of the day. To your surprise, you will find western conservatives are more aligned with Muslims compared to western liberals.
- The first thing we can discuss is abortion, although Islam does permit abortion in rare cases it mostly prohibits it. While one of the key stances of western liberals is to allow free access to abortion in any case whatsoever
- The second most common topic of discussion is LGBTQ+ rights. While Islam does address the rights of the Trans community, it believes in a total ban on the LGBTQ+ community aside from the intersex people which can be considered a derogatory term by western liberals.
- Also, when it comes to the feminist movement which is now against the scope of even the trans movement, Islam has a totally different meaning of women’s rights compared to western values. Truth to be told Islam is totally the opposite of the feminist movement.
While I have already highlighted a few reasons that make radical Muslims a friend of western liberals there are many others to be discussed. Including one of the most prominent ones in my opinion which is the wars in the Middle East.
While it comes out as a shocker, the war in the middle east got the western liberals and the radical Islamists very close to each other. The western liberals have supported the war in the middle east and have done a great effort to fuel the burning fire. With each was in the middle east the Islamists kept gaining influence and power in the region which makes the like the liberals for their what one might call “foolishness”. At the same time, liberals got attached to these Islamists because of how they are supposed to sympathize with everyone.
This is just one example of how the west aligned with Islamists, one can enlist several of these and most of them are not because they want to achieve something similar but because of the mere fact that they both have a common enemy to fight.