The Strange Alliance Between the Woke Left and Islamism

From London to New York, a growing political convergence reveals tensions that the West still struggles to explain.

In several of our articles we have asked ourselves how it can be explained that the left appears as a defender of Islamic fundamentalisms.
In another matter, Pope Leo XIV has recently been criticized for decorating the Iranian ambassador to the Vatican with the Pontifical Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX. Although these may seem inexplicable things, they do not have, by any means, the same root.
This latter event has simply fallen victim to the systematic disinformation that floods us.
There is no connection whatsoever between the two issues.
The combination of the woke left with Islamism is quite evident.
It is enough to see how the flags of Palestine and Iran coincide with images of Guevara at an LGBT march, in a hardly credible mixture.
By contrast, the criticism over the papal decoration of the ambassador is taken out of context.
The Vatican has a practice of decorating ambassadors who retire after having served at least two years in the performance of their duties.
On that occasion, one of the thirteen to whom it corresponded was the ambassador of Iran, and he received it as part of that group.
Does that imply leaning toward the theocratic regime in conflict?
Not at all! It was a routine protocol act.
But the mixture between the left and Islamism is undoubtedly more intriguing.
Writing in 1938, Hilaire Belloc referred to Muslim civilization as follows: “those temporal things [modern science and war] are the only ones that now give us superiority over it, while in the Faith we have fallen lower than it.”
Belloc saw an Islamic resurgence before “the decay of Christianity today.” The historian maintained that cultures arise from religions, and that this conception of the world and of life is what sustains their energy.
Thus, he argued that an increasingly secularized West was, in 1938, on the road to dissolution.
Following Dr. Lorenzo Vidino, an Italian-American PhD scholar specializing in Islam and author of several works on the subject, let us look at this interesting and curious process.
Since the 1950s, Vidino observes, Islamism has fascinated broad sectors of the Western left.
Anticolonial positions, its rejection of what it understands as Western impositions, and its anti-American and anti-Zionist stance have led them to look upon Islamism with sympathy.
The idea that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” although this saying must be accepted with reservations, led the left toward the idea of seeking a rapprochement.
In the early 2000s, this became a reality.
Stop the War Coalition, a British pacifist organization led by socialists and communists, Vidino says, sought to integrate the Muslim Association of Britain into its activities.
After the internal struggle produced by the unexpected proposal, and it is easy to understand how difficult it must have been for Muslims to form an alliance with Marxists, atheists and homosexuals, a pragmatic criterion prevailed and the proposal was accepted.
Nevertheless, they reserved the right to maintain their own agenda, conditioning the agreement on the “presence of halal food, faith-respectful accommodation, and gender-segregated meetings and demonstrations.”
The leaders of Stop the War Coalition accepted the conditions despite resistance from certain sectors.
The agreement even led to the founding of a political party.
Over the last twenty-six years, similar alliances have emerged in various Western countries.
Although not all Muslims who reach positions of government come from left-wing parties, profiles have become so blurred that it is often difficult to discern which positions are left-wing and which are not.
Thus, in January 2026, the Muslim socialist Zohran Mamdani obtained the mayoralty of New York, which prompted former president Obama to say that “the future looks a little brighter,” although he did not clarify for what.
In London, Labour’s Sadiq Khan was reelected mayor for a third time in May 2024. A practicing Muslim, he not only voted, as a Member of Parliament in 2013, in favor of “equal marriage,” but as mayor he presides over the London Pride parade.
But the explanation would be incomplete if it did not include how the left made woke culture its own, and then projected it toward Muslims.
We will see that in the next article.

The convergence between Western progressivism and political Islam.
Anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism as ideological bridges.
The cultural crisis of the West behind the phenomenon.

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