The Curious Affinity Of The Left For Islamism

Explained;

… Modern Christianity, however, is a far different creature from modern Islam. Every religion is, to a greater or lesser extent, a balance between reason and faith in its teachings and day to day practices. The great fault of modern Islam is not its having missed the sexual or industrial revolutions, but having missed the epistemological revolution of the thirteenth century. The Islamic world seems medieval in its attitudes and outlook because it is medieval, or more accurately early medieval, in its thinking.
[…]
What separates the citizen of a liberal democracy and his medieval ancestor, and the Cario slum dweller, is how they go about solving the bigger problems of life. How do I decide something is true in ethics, politics or science? The dictum of the Thomists was “Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu.” (Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses). Evidence and rational thought are the ideal of modern life, even of post modern life. It is an ideal we fall short of but the alternative is the life of the modern medievalists. The Islamists and so many of the actual “moderate” Muslims – moderate in the sense they occupy the intellectual middle ground between liberal democracy and theocracy – act upon faith. What that means in practice is not living according to the teachings of an ancient holy book, but the interpretations of the holy book.
If one’s interpretations are based on reason, on an attempt to rationally analyze the text and compare and contrast with the evidence of one’s senses, one admits that religious teachings are a matter of debate and even disagreement. If one’s interpretations are based solely on faith, not merely faith in accepting a certain set of assumptions as true, but faith in applying those principles as well, how does one debate with others? I say this is the truth. Why? Because it is. What are your reasons? There are not reasons, only faith. The only way to resolve the conflict is to follow or fight. For a modern Christian faith extends as far as accepting certain assumptions as true without evidence, their application and mitigation with empirical evidence is done – or at least striven to be done – by reason.

It’s sympatico.
It’s not by accident that so much of what is offered as debate by the modern left on the critical issues facing our times sounds less like reasoned argument than it does “Silence infidel!“
(I have more to say about this here)