The shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in front of the Jewish Museum in Washington last month was an example of the threat Jews face around the world today. The attacker had shouted the slogan “Free Gaza" as he opened fire, killing a young couple. Early this month, global media fondly reported how environmental activist Greta Thunberg sailed up on Israeli shores in a boat laden with just a truckload of aid supplies for the Gazans. But the ideological significance of these two events lies beyond the “liberation" of Gaza.

The Washington incident bore all the hallmarks of an Islamist terrorist attack. But the terrorist in this case was not an Islamist, but an activist from a far-left political party. Similarly, what lies beneath the delicate veneer of Greta Thunberg’s activism is a stark portrait of the New Left politics. For the Left, all the problems in the world are caused by colonisation, imperialism, the Western capitalist system and, of course, the “genocide" they accuse Israel of carrying out. The majority of those on board the “Freedom Flotilla" boat with Greta Thunberg were either extreme leftists or those who openly support Hamas-Islamist terrorism. Prominent among them was Rima Hassan, a far-left French politician and member of the European Parliament, who praised the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, and shamelessly called it legitimate.

The emergence of leftist ideology as a tool of political Islam is a phenomenon that has been widely observed around the world in recent years. French researcher Pierre-André Taguieff coined the term “Islamo-leftism" in 2002 to describe this. He said that political Islam and the Left are joining hands for some chosen common goals, and that this is a threat to republican values, Western culture, and secular norms. On the surface, this cooperation may seem impractical. The leftists see religion as a bane, but ironically jump into bed with the political Islamists who plan to install theocratic governments. These two ideologies are at opposite ends of the political spectrum, going by their stated missions, but they cooperate to fulfil their ulterior motives.

This paradox might look intractable, but recent developments show that both these groups have no qualms about engaging in this opportunism. There are certain ideas that act as the catalyst for this convergence. Some of them include the hatred for Jews, blind opposition to the United States, hostility to Western culture, and, in India, the demonisation of nationalist politics. In fact, these two groups are birds of the same feather in their stance on democracy as well. The constraints on building a society based on Marxist-Leninist thought are nationalism, market capitalism, and a social system driven by religion and morality. Political parties that stand for strong nationalism are the thorn in the side of the Left all over the world. Similarly, for the Islamists, nationalism is the first hurdle in their attempts to establish religious state enclaves wherever possible in the world. Only nationalist movements and governments can stop them from skillfully using their demographic advantage to create the ultimate theocratic empire.

The primary foe of all nationalist political movements around the world is Islamism. The next is the Left. And these two are the closest allies in fighting nationalist movements in democratic countries. This can be seen in India, France, Britain, the United States and elsewhere. In return for helping their causes, political Islam gives unconditional support to the so-called anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial policies of the Left. Beyond that, Islamists also implicitly, and perhaps deceptively, support the neo-liberal ideologies espoused by the Left. The contradictions that emerge from this cooperation can be glaring. For example, ultra-left feminists join Islamists in their pro-Gaza marches, turning a blind eye to the fact that the Islamists are the ones who have scaled the pinnacle of misogyny. LGBT people are coming under rainbow flags to fight alongside Islamists, who sentence homosexuals to death in countries where they have established their preferred social order. Such conflicts are no longer news to us.

In Kerala, some years ago, an Islamist extremist movement held marches against the central government’s Citizenship Amendment Act. The........

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