Enemies, frenemies and religious hegemonies

Why an anti-woke alliance between conservative Christians and Islamists is bad for civilization

Children step on Pride flags during a protest against Pride in Ottawa, Friday, June 9, 2023. (Sean Kilpatrick/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

By Anonymed (an anonymous Canadian Doctor)

In America Alone, author Mark Steyn once pilloried the immorality and shortsightedness of the West’s realpolitik grandees by quoting the late President Ronald Reagan. “Status quo, you know, is Latin for the mess we’re in.” Steyn took umbrage at the typical talking points of this foreign policy perspective, particularly the often quoted rationalization for propping up unsavory strongmen abroad: “[he] may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” He believed that, in reality, “the obverse is closer to the truth” - as in, “[he] may be our son of a bitch, but he’s still a son of a bitch.” 

I recently thought about this and other deals with devils as I read author Sam Westrop’s comprehensive analysis of what he calls, “A Conservative-Islamist Alliance.” It’s difficult to give the piece its due in a short space, but his thesis boils down to this: Conservatives in the West are increasingly making common cause with Islamists because they ostensibly share the values of faith, family, honour, social restraint, and traditional gender roles that the woke movement is systematically destroying. After years of suspicion about creeping sharia and other Islamist party-favours, many of our (typically Christian) conservatives seem convinced that the way forward is for two of the world’s great religions (Judaism gets short shrift for reasons that ought to be apparent by now) to unite in opposition to the godless, hedonistic, nihilistic standard-bearers of the postmodern era. What they don’t understand, according to Westrop, is that they are still inviting the wolf to dinner, even if the first course tasted like blue-haired sanctimony and nose-rings. This is the most worrisome part for me. It isn’t just the alliance itself (though it certainly wouldn’t be my first choice). It’s that Western conservatives don’t seem to be treating it as a regrettable means to an end so much as the natural union of two holy (and kindred) spirits against a common foe.

The rationale for what Westrop views as a dangerous miscalculation on the part of the Western right seems to be that any faith is better than no faith at all. This should not be surprising. While historical relations between the followers of the Abrahamic religions have been less than jovial (the Jews might put it slightly stronger), there is a tendency among believers to see secularism and its resultant nihilism as a greater threat (say what you will about the heresy of Jesus or the false propheting of Muhammad, at least their respective followers aren’t indulging the allure of Satan, and so on). 

There are two divergent perspectives on this issue. The first is embodied by Canada’s own Jordan Peterson. It is well-known that included in his vast knowledge-base is a deep understanding of the Christian faith and the philosophical and theological underpinnings of Western civilization. Love him or hate him, this is not an ignorant man. Many an atheist will balk at his sometimes tangential treatises about what God means (and I count myself among those who lack either the sophistication or patience (or both) to appreciate his enthusiasm for exegesis), but overall, I think his approach to religion and myth and archetype is highly interesting, if a little over my head. 

Regarding the topic at hand, however, Peterson has made plain that he agrees with the oft-cited proverb from the poet Emile Cammaerts (often mistakenly attributed to GK Chesterton) that “[when] men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. They then become capable of believing in anything.” Which is to say, he views faith as a bulwark against the nihilism wrought by our postmodern infatuation with identity politics and the woke movement it has midwifed. 

While I am at times sympathetic to this argument, pitting faith in general against the secular void is a perilous business. For it isn’t just the gratingly pleasant followers of Christ who will find the proposition attractive.

By his own admission, Peterson is less familiar with Islam than with Christianity, and perhaps it is for this reason that he has given the benefit of the doubt to a cast of characters who deserve not an ounce of charity. For instance, in December 2021 and then again in October of 2022, Peterson hosted a man named Mohammad Hijab on his popular podcast. For those unfamiliar with Islam-related social media, Hijab is a notorious Islamist apologist who uses his Youtube channel as a bully pulpit to remind moderate and secular (not to mention ex-) Muslims that their call for reform is, as Virginia Imam Shaker Elsayed once famously declared, “an alien call.” 

Hijab’s channel has more than 800,000 subscribers and he is a frequent talking head on all matters Muslim. Engaging someone so clearly deceitful and chauvinistic has its merits, and I don’t think Peterson failed to see through some of the smarm, but I worry that he genuinely believes that, while Islam has its issues (again, the Jews might put it stronger), bringing the likes of Hijab into the fold is preferable to sitting down with the top-surgery-touting ghouls in the DEI department. Indeed his “Message to Muslims” suggests that, for him, an alliance of faith may be our only salvation.

The Peterson position is increasingly common among conservatives, and presupposes that people of faith in general, and People of the Book in particular, have more in common with each other than with the blue-haired baristas trying their Millennial darndest to raze the whole of civilization to the ground. I understand his concern, but this is wrongheaded at best and, as Westrop points out, potentially its own kind of civilizational suicide: 

“Should remaining liberty-minded conservatives also continue to choose the wrong partners – funding and empowering American Islam’s Islamist leaders – then the Right risks affording Islamists political power and powerful credibility, allowing them to reaffirm radical control over Muslim communities; and (now armed with friends among both the Left and Right) advance their radical ideas further into Western polities more deeply than ever.

In general, the changing approach on the Right indicates a deeply worrying uninterest among conservatives on the question of Islamism, and a dismissal of the danger it continues to pose. These days, Islamism rarely gets a mention in British and American conservative political manifestos or media, in spite of the persistent jihadist threats, and continued extremist hold over so many Muslim communities.”

The counterargument goes beyond the potential negative utility of the partnership. A Conservative-Islamist alliance is also wrong in principle. For all their insanity, wokeness and identity politics are not an “other” to be allied against, but a severe internal threat produced by the West itself. 

This perspective is embodied by Youtube commentator, Ridvan Aydemir. Known by his online alias “Apostate Prophet”, Aydemir is a Turkish-American ex-Muslim with a deep understanding of both Islam and the Islamist apologists doing the Dawah (proselytizing) to the online masses. Like mine, his reaction to Peterson’s olive branch to the worst elements of the Muslim faithful was one of shock and horror. Reaching across a political (or even moral) divide in order to unite around shared principles is one thing. But as Aydemir points out, the chances are slim that Islamists are embracing this union in good faith. Since the War on Terror brought political Islam under heightened scrutiny, Islamists have been partnering with the political Left and parroting progressive perspectives in exchange for ideological cover vis-a-vis the canard of “Islamophobia.” At no time in this partnership did Islamists really believe in the promotion of gay rights or “women’s lib.” It was a means to an end and so shall this new alliance be.

Those like Aydemir also contend that even if the Conservative-Muslim alliance were not a cynical one, it would still constitute a misunderstanding of what the West is, historically and philosophically. Cultural cross-pollination in the West is the norm not the exception. We are half - and quarter and eighth - breeds in the best possible sense (that kind of diversity might actually be a strength). But there is also something distinct about being of the West. One may not always be able to define it, but, as author Douglas Murray is fond of saying, “you know when you’re not in it.” I therefore think it is true to say that even Western conservative Christians have more in common with the grifters and authoritarians of the woke left than they do with Islamists (or even conservative muslims). Similarly, I think even the trans-iest, most antiracist, most antinatalist woke scold has more culturally in common with the Moral Majority right than they do with those Muslims willing to repeat platitudes about gay marriage in order to secure blasphemy taboos.

That this is lost on our progressive activists is not surprising. As the same Douglas Murray has said, the West (and Canada and the United States in particular) have the most provincial internationalists one could imagine. When people don’t know what they don’t know, they are easy to manipulate. And so it is unsurprising that we see so many people making alliances with those who, in another time and place, would wish them real harm. Where Islamism is concerned, progressive activists have been placating the rope that would (literally) hang them.

As for Peterson’s apparent credulity, you’ll have to ask him. Precisely because he is nobody’s fool, I suspect his blindspot lies in the very theology-oriented belief system that has made him a moral hero to many. For my part, I am open to the possibility that he is on to something when he suggests that religious texts and their allegories are key to unlocking what it means to live a good and noble life. I am also open to the possibility that atheism, such that it constitutes a political movement, has much to answer for about its role in ushering in the woke mind virus. But it is bedfellows like these that make me question whether faith is truly the bulwark it’s cracked up to be.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, He-man womun hater’s snub: Medicine, sexism, and the amorality of history

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