The Grand Jihad-- its view of the left and radical Islam

Andrew McCarthy, in his book The Grand Jihad, has a powerful section which shows the connection between Islamist organizations and the left. For example, they both share a dislike of small government. One prominent Muslim group called the Muslim Brotherhood talks about their aims to "increase the power of government through entitlement programs, increased taxation, and restricting free markets whenever and wherever possible." No wonder the Muslim Public Affairs Council strongly urged passage of Obamacare. Islam's central imperative is a communal obligation to establish and spread sharia, Allah's law, throughout the world, to build Islamic societies, to re-create and expand the Caliphate. The individual must be made to fit the corporate aspirations of the Muslim nation.

The author says leftist revolutionaries and the Islamists have never really been the enemies they are often presumed to be. In fact, with their collectivist philosophy, transnational outlook, totalitarian demands, and revolutionary designs, Islamists are natural allies of the radical left. McCarthy gives several examples of leftists and Islamists working together over the last 50 to 60 years, all around the world.

He then looks closely at the values of both the Western world, Islam, and communism. Here in the United States, the people are the sovereigns. Our social compact is our Constitution, which expressly protects individual liberty and private property. This emphasis on private property, entrepreneurial risk, and the potential for profit or loss are the elements that make our system dynamic and spread prosperity to more people than any system in the history of man. However, Islamists believe capitalism enflames people and makes them greedy. What is their solution? A familiar answer -- the redistribution of wealth. They do not believe in protection of private property rights since all property belongs to their God Allah. We've heard a variation of this in the left wing of the Democratic Party. Islam and communism are united in achieving social justice by compulsion if necessary. Of course, their goal is social justice in which the individual is subordinated to the collective. Both Islam and communism are diametrically opposed to the core assumptions of American constitutional democracy -- individual liberty and free-market capitalism.

This is just another reason to be vigilant these days. Islamists threaten our way of life in so many areas, certainly more than just in our freedom to worship.