Why are Islam and Liberalism so Similar?

Timothy Birdnow

On Facebook Bob Clasen asked why Liberals seem to have such an affinity for Islam. I answered him as follows:

Rousseau, the father of Socialism, was very enamoured of Islam because it was monistic; in Islam there was no division between church and state, nor between life and religion. It was all one, indivisible. This greatly appealed to Rousseau who sought to incorporate it into his philosophy.

Rousseau created socialism. Socialism is monistic too in that it seeks control of all aspects of life.

I would add that one of the first things Muhammed did and later Muslims employed when they conquered a territory was to declare all debts canceled. This bought the general public, who usually owed money. Of course it also wrecked the national economies of these nations, which allowed the Muslims to become the sole provider for the newly unemployed. This necessitated further conquest to seize the plunder to pay for the damage done to the last conquered country's economy.

The Left saw how that worked and loved the idea. Muhammed was a great redistributor of wealth. He was also an egalitarian, elevating those who had been previously outside of the machinery of power. His was the model for the egalitarianism of the 19th and 20th centuries.

I would also add that this was equally employed in the so-called "right wing" Fascism/Naziism. Rousseau fathered these national socialist ideologies as well. It was Rousseau who advocated deification of the People and their Collective Will as gods and the State as his unholy church. He wanted that as a tool to break the power of Christianity in the West. It grew directly in Fascism just as the internationalism spawned by him was adopted in communism, which Karl Marx only defined more carefully. Most people don't realize communism was around before Marx. Marx called his version "Scientific Socialism" and gave it the veneer of true economics but it was just a repackaging of an old idea. Both stemmed from Rousseau, who adopted things from Plato and others. Socialism and Islam are kissing cousins.

Oh, and as Ross Douthat has pointed out, Liberalism can be seen as a Christian heresy, in much the same way as Islam was an heretical idea. Both are diseased branches of the Christian root.

Muhammed heretically rejected Jesus as anything but a precursor prophet to himself and Leftism rejects Him as a superstition even while employing Christian messages and parasiting off Christian thought. Leftism can be viewed in a way as Christianity without Christ just as Islam can be seen in much the same manner. Islam actually functions like Judaism except without Jews, too. Sadly, that is the appeal of Leftism to many Jews, who no longer believe in God but retain the cultural trappings.

In the end both Islam and Leftism sprout from the same heretical ideas.

Islam is the old Arian heresy updated for the Arabs. It also has elements of a number of other influences in the region at the time of Muhammed; Manicheanism, for example informs much of Islam. Muslims call Muhammed "The Seal of the Prophets" a title originally claimed by Mani. They also pray publicly facing Mecca, while the Manicheans prayed publicly facing the South. The both followed special ritual purifications before worship. Manicheanism was dualistic, believing in a stark division between light and dark and we see that in many ways in Islam. That was true of Mithraism as well, which was fairly strong in the region. Mithraism had been popular with Roman soldiers because it preached the concept of religious war, which we see in Islam as Jihad. The core principle of Islam is justice, and it must be implemented by the Muslim. (As if God needs people to punish evildoers.) Islam has a huge streak of dualism about it. I would add that at least Mithraism and Arianism were both active in the West, particularly in Germany which was one of the sources for the Liberal movement and the eventual creation of socialism.

I would add the appeal of both Islam and Arianism is simplicity. Both reject the Trinity. Both reject any complex theology. Both give clear demands.

Islam took root in the Middle East and North Africa, where the Byzantine Empire had been in power. Orthodox Christianity had suffered by being too closely tied to the imperial rulers and the model of religious submission to the authorities was clear. There was a very sophisticated intellectual tradition that lay outside of the experience of the general population, and remained so. Islam wiped that away. In Germany, where Arianism took root, there was little in the way of imperial power BUT there was also little in the way of theological intellectualism and the German tribes who adopted Arian Christianity did so with little in the way of education. In the Islamic world there was too much intellectual argument and too many heresies afoot, while in Germany there was too little. In both cases a simple, easily understood belief took hold. (One must question a belief so simple; the Creator of everything must by definition be hard to understand.)

The end result was the two regions developed similar ways of thinking. Germany had Marx and Schopenhauer and Nietzche. The Middle East had Muhammed and Ali and others.

So it's clear liberalism is cut from the same intellectual roots as Islam. Their main difference is liberalism is a-religious while Islam is hyper-religious.
David C. Moyer says:

Too many conservatives broad brush all of Islam with hatred they have for the radicals and don't realize that there are many, many Muslims in this country and the world that are modern thinking and not much different than Jews. In response there is "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Liberals tend to look favorably on immigration of modern Muslims and those Muslims accept their friendship in comparison to the unwarranted hatred and bigotry expressed by too many of my conservative friends. BTW, I know of some very strong Republican Muslims in this country. But I suspect that most are Democrats. I know Muslims that love their dogs, that drink alcohol, that smoke weed, that dress fairly provocatively, etc. They don't partake of pork, however. Some attend Christian or loosely Christian churches.

Bob Clasen retorts:

The Koran is not very moderate. That is why Islam always foments violence and intolerance.

Mr. Moyer replies:

The Bible, especially the OT, is not moderate either, but most folks have found a way to interpret it to not include stoning of adulteresses and disobedient children. Same with moderate Muslims.

I reply:

David there is a huge difference. The Bible CAN be reinterpreted. The Koran cannot be. The Bible is the inspired Word of God. But the Koran? Muslims helieve Allah gave it to Muhammed word for word and that it cannot be reinterpreted. There is a massive number of passages that are quite vicious and admonish the believer to violence. There is no way to interpret them otherwise, so Jihad with all the attending things - beheadings, rapes, etc. are actually incumbent upon the believer. The Bible has some things in it similar in some ways, but almost always they were situational and primarily aimed at a bronze-age culture without the means to take action any other way. One may despise such things as stoning homosexuals, but the Bible implemented that on a very specific basis and for a very specific people and one can see how this may have been necessary for the Israelites at that time to uphold cultural cohesion. We may not like it at all but we can see what they were going after. But Islam makes these things absolutely permanent as you cannot dispute the transliterated Word of Allah. It is a religion that is impossible to reform. What we have to hope for is that Muslims do not obey their own beliefs. We want Christians to follow theirs; when they stop following theirs is when we have trouble. I would add that I know a lot of Muslims, particularly Bosnians, and almost all of them are Democrats.

Eric Hansen adds:

"French philosopher Pascal Bruckner has said that Islamo-leftism was "chiefly" conceived by British Trotskyites of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Understanding the term as "the fusion between the atheist Far Left and religious radicalism,"[7] Bruckner posited that because those Trotskyites perceive Islam's potential for fomenting societal unrest, they promote tactical, temporary alliances with reactionary Muslim parties. According to Bruckner, leftist adherents of Third-Worldism hope to use Islamism as a "battering-ram" to bring about the downfall of free-market capitalism and see the sacrifice of individual rights, in particular of women's rights, as an acceptable trade-off in service of the greater goal of destroying capitalism. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamo-leftism

Kevin Killough adds:

Dr. Jordan Peterson has an interesting theory on this topic. He argues the left's branding of anything masculine as "toxic" has deprived its ranks of that male energy. Just look at male feminists. They're neuters. Peterson argues that the left's attraction to Islam is a subconscious desire for that masculinity, and its power, which they've tried to purge entirely from society. Feminism is inherently envious of men. As much as they rail against anything masculine, on a deeper level they are attracted to that strength. Defending Islam is a way for them to express those repressed desires. It's an interesting theory.

Tim adds:

That's a great point Kevin! I once read a theory that German youths followed the Nazis for the same reason; they had lost all their fathers in WWI and sought male role models. The Nazi leadership were all the age that their fathers would have been. So the desire for masculinity led a whole generation astray. If this holds then it makes sense for the pajama boy liberals to love those butch Muslims.

Kevin Killough replies:

Timothy Birdnow That's interesting. Camille Paglia said the hatred of all of society that we see in the left is similar to trends seen in the Wiemar Republic. It's frightening to think how these desires for masculine power would manifest itself if this country were to face a real serious crisis, such as the national debt imploding the economy or if we were invaded. A strong, charismatic leader could easily take these frightened, starving weaklings and drive them towards their doom, just like Hitler did.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:47 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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