In today’s activist landscapes, Islamist movements and radical-left and progressive organizations increasingly join hands. This partnership is neither incidental nor harmless. Across Europe, North America, and beyond, Islamists who seek to impose Islamic law align themselves with Western leftist causes to gain legitimacy, media platforms, and influence.
Historically, Islamist groups like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood collaborated with secular anti-colonial nationalists—only to discard them once power was within reach, replacing pluralism with Islamist dominance. In the West today, they replicate this strategy by embedding themselves within social justice movements: racial equity, LGBTQ+ rights, feminism—employing leftist frameworks to mask fundamentally opposing goals.
This far-left–Islamist alliance is not abstract; it is documented and active.
This far-left–Islamist alliance is not abstract; it is documented and active. Analysts such as anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman describe the so-called “Red‑Green coalition”—Islamists united with radical-left activists—to oppose Western civilization, capitalism, liberal democracy, and Zionism, even while their ultimate aims diverge drastically. On the ground, this manifests in protests and agitation around Gaza and Israel—such as the surge in radical-left protests in Australia combining “Islamist and green‑Marxist ‘progressive’ groups” with violent or extremist rhetoric.
In France, Jean‑Luc Mélenchon’s radical-left party, La France Insoumise, has embraced a thoroughly pro‑Palestinian stance. Their selection of activist Rima Hassan as a European Parliament candidate underscores the party’s political strategy to court the Arab-Muslim electorate by evoking terms like “genocide” against Israeli actions—a rhetoric increasingly normalized within La France Insoumise circles.
In the United States, the so-called Red‑Green Alliance gained visibility around the 2024 Democratic National Convention. Coalition protests united Islamist-aligned groups (e.g., American Muslims for Palestine) with radical-left elements (e.g., Students for Justice in Palestine, Democratic Socialists of America), aligned in anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and in some cases, antisemitic agitation.
Although these two camps differ in ultimate vision—Islamists pursue religious governance, while radical leftists pursue secular utopianism—they share the goal of dismantling Western institutions and values. They are allies of convenience against a common adversary: Western civilization.
Islamists pursue religious governance, while radical leftists pursue secular utopianism, [but] they share the goal of dismantling Western institutions and values.
Islamist leaders have admitted this strategy. Though imprisoned, British Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary, who directed the banned al‑Muhajiroun group, has preached confrontation, urging young Muslims toward ideological warfare. In 2024, he received a life sentence for leading the terrorist organization and encouraging violence via online lectures to the Islamic Thinkers Society in North America. Even as Choudary is jailed, Islamist-linked groups maintain their strategy by co-opting leftist agendas. Organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations have pivoted toward progressivism, embracing causes like Black Lives Matter and prison reform to reinforce their position within liberal coalitions, while obscuring their extremist origins.
In Europe, French intelligence recently named the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations as a training ground for Islamist leaders disguised within mainstream advocacy on Islamophobia and religious freedoms. They press to constrain legitimate speech with expansive and tendentious hate-speech laws while opposing “European values” and migration control.
The emerging political terrain shows warning signs. Moves in the U.S. Congress to pass the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2025 indicate bipartisan concern that the Brotherhood represents a coherent ideological threat, rooted in anti-Western sentiment that spawns extremist groups like Hamas.
The left’s celebration of shared victimhood or anti-colonial rhetoric grants Islamists a cover they will shed if they gain enough influence.
Leftist activists—whether academic, unionist, or moral justice advocates—often become unwitting partners, drawn in by shared transitional causes but failing to see the long game. What feminist advocates, LGBTQ+ activists, or anti-racist organizations may not grasp is that their Islamist allies oppose the lifestyle and freedoms they champion. Reformist Muslim voices, such as Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation, warn that “Islamists are not interested in pluralism. They are interested in power.” The left’s celebration of shared victimhood or anti-colonial rhetoric grants Islamists a cover they will shed if they gain enough influence.
Ultimately, this alliance is unsustainable. History—from Iran’s 1979 revolution, where Islamist forces purged once-allied leftists, to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood turning on secular revolutionaries—demonstrates that once Islamists sense victory, they discard partners. Those who now occupy the leftist flank enabling Islamist narratives are likely to be left exposed or oppressed in turn.
The task is not merely to critique Islamist extremism, but to build ideological awareness within leftist circles. Activists must question whether solidarity with Islamist-aligned groups helps or ultimately harms the causes they claim to champion. Liberal societies committed to democracy, human rights, and free expression should not tolerate alliances that erode these very foundations.
