Most Catholics who are paying attention realize by now that the left-leaning Obama administration is no friend to Catholics, and that it constitutes a threat to crucial freedoms that Americans have long taken for granted

Double Trouble: 

The Leftist Threat and the Islamist Threat

by William Kilpatrick

Islamists and leftists constitute a double threat. This is not to say that the alliance will last forever. At some point, one of the parties will decide that their “useful idiot” allies have served their purpose and can be dispensed with. As Recep Erdogan said in 1998, four years before his Islamist party swept the secularists aside, “Democracy is just the train we board to reach our destination.” Once they have attained sufficient power, Islamists in the West can be counted on to ditch their leftist friends.

I am sometimes criticized for focusing too much on the Islamic threat to the West and not paying enough attention to the more immediate threat from the political left. One of the reasons I concentrate on the former is that the threat from the left is more obvious and is widely covered by numerous columnists in major periodicals. Most Catholics who are paying attention realize by now that the left-leaning Obama administration is no friend to Catholics, and that it constitutes a threat to crucial freedoms that Americans have long taken for granted.

Focusing on Islam, however, does not preclude worrying about the left. Both are worrisome. More to the point, they are not unrelated threats. It is unrealistic to think of the two ideological movements—the one secular, the other religious—as separate and distinct, as though we can afford to tackle the immediate threat first and the remote one later. In reality, leftism and Islamism are best understood as a combined threat. Radical leftists and radical Islamists share similar ideologies and goals and have formed numerous alliances, both tacit and not-so-tacit.

In this regard, I should point out that there is a debate among scholars as to whether Islam is primarily a religion or a political movement. Another debate revolves around the question of whether or not the political aspect of Islam can be separated from the religious aspect. Those who think that the political and religious aspects can be treated separately tend to use the terms “Islam” and “Islamic” when referring to the religious side, and “Islamism” and “Islamist” to identify the political side. Since I am one of those who believes that the Jekyll and Hyde sides of Islam cannot be easily separated, I will use all four terms interchangeably.

The words “Islamism” and “Islamist” were chosen because of their similarity to “communism” and “communist,” but the ideological similarities between Islam and communism were noted long before the politicized terms came into common usage. The list of philosophers, historians and intellectuals who have likened Islam to communism includes Bertrand Russell, Arthur Koestler, Whittaker Chambers, Jules Monnerot, and Bernard Lewis. More tellingly, the three most influential Islamic theorists of the twentieth century—Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Maulana Maududi—were all deeply impressed with Soviet communism. Though they rejected the atheistic element of communism, they recognized its affinities with Islam, and their writings reflect the influence of leftist thought. Take this passage from Maududi:

In such a state, no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect the Islamic state bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states. (Islamic Law and Constitution, p. 262)

And apparently from other aspects as well. For example, both ideologies look upon themselves as transcending race, language, and nationality. Here’s Maududi again:

In reality, Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals. (Jihad in Islam, p. 8)

Thus, ideologically-minded Muslims don’t think of themselves as Turks or Saudis or Egyptians, but rather as members of the umma—the worldwide Islamic community. According to Maududi, “Islam requires the earth—not just a portion but the whole planet.”

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