The French far left’s common cause with Islamism

The French have an expression to describe far-left citizens who identity more with Islam than the Republic: ‘Islamo-Gauchiste’, a term coined by the French philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff, who explained in 2017 that many on the far-left regard jihadism as:

“…a legitimate social revolt…they look at jihadists through a distorting lens of victimhood. This compassionate approach sees Islamic terrorists only as lost children, abandoned or rejected by unwelcoming and hostile countries, victims of ‘institutional’ or ‘systematic’ racism”.

The symbiosis between the Western far-left and Islamism has been ongoing for decades, and stems from the left’s realisation of their failure to win the hearts and minds of the white working-class. In his book ‘Radicalisation’, the French-Iranian professor, Farhad Khosrokhavar, described how one of the major influences of the 1979 Iranian Revolution was Ali Shariati, who:

“…called for a revolutionary Shia movement, which would realise the dream of Marx and al-Mahdi (the twelfth hidden imam, the Shia Messiah) by mobilising the masses.