Although I’m an ex-Leftie who has come to see Leftist ideas as a road to failure and am now opposed to much Leftist thinking, I still feel that I should give some on the Left credit for being on the right side of history on certain issues.

In the United Kingdom it is the right that is asking hard questions about Islam and jihadism, the British Left is notably and worryingly Islamophillic. The British Left is Islamophillic to the extent that there are a number of voices on the British Left who make excuses for Islamic extremism. Too much of the British Left even refuses to recognise that whilst the vast majority of Muslims are decent individuals, decent in spite rather because of Islam in my view, some Muslims are bad and they are that way because of Islamic ideology. The British Left has even gone so far as to try to silence those who point out particular Islam related problems that Britain suffers from such as the phenomena of Islamic Rape Gangs.

However, according to a brilliant article from Unherd, the situation is reversed in France. It is the French Left that is standing up for the rights of French women to be treated properly and not as either whores or submissives, which is what the growing number of Islamic extremists do. It is also the French Left that is standing up for freedom of speech and also standing against the Salafists. Of course, not every French Left wing group thinks in this way and is a critic of Islam and Islamic extremism, France has its Islamophiles on the Left just as Britain does. But, the French Left seems more willing to stand up for Western values and for freedom from religion, than the British Left. Maybe the British Left, or rather the more sensible parts of it, could learn something from their French brethren?

The French Left against Islamism