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Why do leftists and Islamic jihadis love each other so much? Two terrorists have recently shown us anew.
As Mohamed Sabry Soliman started throwing Molotov cocktails at the elderly Jews who were peacefully demonstrating in Boulder, Colorado to call upon Hamas to release its Israeli hostages, he repeatedly screamed “Free Palestine.” This cry has already echoed off the hallowed halls of our nation’s great universities, courtesy of far-left agitators who have done their best to make campus life miserable for Jewish and pro-Israel students ever since Oct. 7, 2023.
Now, thanks to Elias Rodriguez, who murdered two Israeli officials outside the Jewish Museum in Washington two weeks ago, and Soliman, the call to “Free Palestine” is as much linked to terrorist violence outside Israel as it is within it. Rodriguez and Soliman also show why the left and Islamic jihad are so closely intertwined.
The short answer of why the leftist/Islamic alliance has proven to be so strong and enduring is that both are based on terror. Maximilien Robespierre made his French Revolution’s dependence upon terror explicit in a Feb. 1794 speech, in which he said: “If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.”
In other words, people had to be terrorized into doing the bidding of the French Revolutionary government. They had to be too frightened not to obey. This, as George Orwell so vividly illustrated in 1984, is the hallmark of leftist totalitarian governments. As Lenin put it: “We stand for organized terror – this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet Government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence. When confronted with evidence criminals in almost every case confess; and what argument can have greater weight than a criminal’s own confession.”
Islam is likewise built on terror, contrary to the fashionable Western wishful thinking about how Islamic terrorists have hijacked and/or misunderstood the religion of peace. The Qur’an tells Muslims to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (8:60), but that is only the beginning. The Muslim book’s entire appeal to the human race is on the basis of terror: you must believe, or you will suffer the painful tortures of hell. The New Testament, the angel of the Lord came to the shepherds who were keeping watch over their flocks by night and said: “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” (Like 2:10-11) In the Qur’an, the tidings are of an altogether different kind: “No, but those who disbelieve will deny, and Allah knows best what they are hiding. So give them tidings of a painful doom.” (84:22-24).
A Muslim believes and obeys Allah because “those who disbelieve, theirs will be an awful doom.” (35:7) Non-Muslims submit to the hegemony of the Muslims and Islamic law because if they do not “pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29), their “contract of protection” can be revoked and they can be killed. Women submit to men because the Qur’an tells men to “beat” women from whom they “fear disobedience” (4:34). In every relationship, every interaction, there is terror, and that terror is the element that compels obedience, just as in leftist regimes.
On Sunday in Boulder, Colorado, Mohamed Sabry Soliman brought that terror to his targets, on behalf both of the leftists who see the “liberation” of “Palestine” as a great Marxist struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor, and of the Muslims who see the destruction of Israel as a grand jihad and fulfillment of Allah’s command to “drive them out from where they drove you out.” (Qur’an 2:191) Islamic jihadists and leftists love each other so much because they both favor the same weapons, and have the same goal: a docile population to thoroughly terrorized to dare to disobey.