Once again, the “Left” and Islam are exposing their extreme similarities — including the similar ways they defend their similar weak points.

The examples are coming in fast and plenty — from Islam, from Western Europe, and from right here in the good ol’ United States.

Islam Cancels the Truth

First, from the Islamic world: a Muslim convert to Christianity, who has been imprisoned for more than two years in Egypt, has, according to an August 20 report, been on a hunger strike. USCIRF summarizes his great “crime”:

On December 15, 2021, authorities arrested [Abdulbaqi Saeed] Abdo, a Yemeni refugee, from his Cairo home. Abdo’s arrest followed his appearance on a Christian TV channel talking about his conversion to Christianity and alleged persecution Christians in Yemen face. Abdo had also been involved in Facebook groups for Christian converts. He was charged with joining a terrorist group (Art. 86 ECC), contempt of Islam (Art. 98(w) ECC), and discrimination against Islam (Art. 161 ECC).

Abdo’s experiences are just the tip of the iceberg; at least some in the West have heard of his plight. Just recently, for example, I translated an Arabic news report about Yusuf Sa‘d Hanin, a Christian conscript in Egypt who was recently physically beaten and then sentenced by a military court to three years’ imprisonment, after he was accused of making “statements offensive to Islam” while trading insults with a Muslim man during an argument via text. Or one can turn to Pakistan, where Islam’s blasphemy codes are enforced with especial vigor. Last month, a young Christian man was sentenced to death for supposedly sharing “blasphemous content” on social media. 

When they hear of these stories, most Westerners think blasphemy laws in the Islamic world exist because Muslim passion and zeal for their prophet and religion run so high. Not really; they exist because, whenever scrutiny is allowed, Islam and its prophet instantly collapse, taking the Muslim social order down with them. Their fraud is too obvious, too full of holes, and must therefore always be guarded against any criticism.

Built atop an easily collapsed pack of cards — namely, the very self-serving and opportunistic words and deeds of its founder — silencing any criticism against Muhammad has long been essential to Islam’s survival. Left unsuppressed and unpunished, this “verbal war” will have a massive snowball effect: other Muslims, exposed to such critical thinking, will also start thinking critically, ultimately rebelling against and overthrowing the Islamic order.

All of This Applies Equally to the American ‘Left’

Already we have seen that whoever spoke the truth or dared question any number of leftist mantras — from the source of the COVID-19 virus to the efficacy/harmlessness of the vaccines that would allegedly protect us against it to the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the 2020 presidential election results — has been demonized and even prosecuted legally for being a crazy “election denier” or “science denier,” or a hapless idiot who had been suckered in by “Russian disinformation.” Till this moment, someone who “misgenders” or “deadnames” someone who identifies as transgender  is the one deemed to be out of touch with reality and punished accordingly (canceled, fired, etc.), by the science-denying leftists currently running our federal government and many of our states.

To better understand where America is headed under Leftist leadership, one need only look to Western Europe, where recent circumstances have forced the worst of those strategies into the open. 

Examples from the East

According to an August 21 report, “German YouTuber “Shlomo Finkelstein” has been imprisoned for ‘hate speech’ and ‘blasphemy’ … Shlomo faces one year in prison in Germany’s Stasi state for criticizing Islam and mass migration.” Shlomo has also had over 30 YouTube channels dedicated to scrutinizing Islam and the ills of Muslim migration suspended. 

The same thing has been happening in the UK. Following the murder of three little girls by an African son of migrants, lots of Brits rioted, while others responded with words and supposed “free speech” — only to be arrested and in some cases given prison sentences.   

Thus, according to an August 17 report, Phil Hoban, a “British man has been jailed for ‘stirring up hatred’ at a non-violent anti-migration protest in Leeds, during which he allegedly mocked Muslims and made ‘slurs’ against Allah.”

Make no mistake of it. The German and British governments are not arresting and imprisoning people for hurting Muslim feelings; they are doing so because, in criticizing Islam and Muslims — and most importantly, mass migration — people are ultimately criticizing and going against the German and British governments’ mantras that all citizens are expected to drone: namely, that “Islam is peace” and “diversity is our strength.”

Because those messages, when scrutinized, also immediately collapse like a house of cards, Western governments are taking a page from the Islamic playbook, forgetting what made their civilization special in the first place — free speech and expression, the ultimate panacea against enforced lies — and rather enforcing lies and draconian forms of censorship to protect them.

Further proof that these Western governments are less concerned about protecting Muslims from offense and more concerned about guarding themselves from criticism also keeps coming in. The title of an August 18 report is, “Extreme misogyny to be classed as terrorism under UK government’s new plans.” Because so much of the Left’s modus operandi has long depended on subverting the traditional family by exploiting women, anyone exposing or criticizing this — yet another easily collapsed house of cards — will be treated as a “terrorist.”

As if any more proof that these Western regimes are more interested in silencing criticism against the many falsehoods they’ve foisted, on August 13 the BBC reported that Wayne O’Rourke, another Brit who was sentenced to three years for stirring up “racial hatred” following the aforementioned murder of three British girls at the hands of an African, was convicted because his social media posts “were alleged to contain anti-Muslim and anti-establishment rhetoric.”

Not only does this imply that what goes against Islam is a bedfellow with what goes against the establishment, it openly confirms that speaking against the government is enough to get one thrown in jail.

Here’s what it comes down to: Islam and the Left are ideologies — “cults,” if you prefer — that center around very obvious lies and fictions. To stay in power, they must ruthlessly suppress anyone who questions, scrutinizes, or criticizes — and therefore easily discredits — their claims. In short, that is anyone who blasphemes their mantras, which must be accepted as articles of faith.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.