Islamo-Leftism

Islamo-Leftism (French: islamo-gauchisme), (Spanish: Islamo-izquierdismo) whose adherents are called Islamo-Leftists (French: islamo-gauchistes), is a neologism applied to political alliance between political Left and political Islam.

Essays in Libération and France 24 on the history of this term do not claim to find the definitive origin of this term, rather, both publications trace the term as far back as a 2002 use in New Judeophobia, a book by Pierre-André Taguieff, historian of ideas, who describes Islamo-fascism as a type of anti-Zionism popular among "the new third-worldist, neo-communist and neo-leftist configuration, better known as the 'anti-globalization movement.' " Interviewed in 2016 by Liberation journalists Sonya Faure and Frantz Durupt, Taguieff is not certain whether he coined it or had heard it used, but he points out that the phrases Islamo-Progressives, and, in the 1980s, palestino-progressives were used as self-descriptions by the French left.

According to Alain Badiou and Eric Hazan, Islamo-Leftists was coined by French police for reasons of simple utility.Al Jazeera claims that the term Islamo-Leftism was coined by Marine Le Pen, who uses it "to describe what she considers an unhealthy alliance between "Islamist fanatics" and the French Left."

In his 2015 novel, Submission, Michel Houellebecq has Robert Rediger, the fictional character who is a convert to Islam and university professor turned politician, describe Islamo-leftism as "a desperate attempt by moldering, putrefying, brain-dead Marxists to hoist themselves out of the dustbin of history by latching onto the coattails of Islam."

French philosopher Pascal Bruckner understands Islamo-Leftism as "the fusion between the atheist Far Left and religious radicalism." According to Bruckner, Islamo-Leftism was "chiefly" conceived by British Trotskyites of the Socialist Workers Party. Because these dedicated Leftists 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 they 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. Bruckner contends that Islamists, for their part, pretend to join the left in its opposition to racism, neocolonialism, and globalization as a tactical and temporary means to achieve their true goal of imposing the "totalitarian theocracy" of Islamist government.

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Wikipedia