This foreign policy mistake of assuming other peoples think and believe as we do has been continually made by the West for decades. During the Cold War, for example, this error lay in assuming that the Muslim Middle East would be our natural allies against the Soviets, given the Soviets’ atheist ideology and Russia’s long history of aggression against Muslims, writes Bruce Thornton of Hoover Institute. Yet as others have also pointed out, modern Islamism shares many assumptions with Marxism, such as the demonization of imperialism and capitalism. In the sermons of the Ayatollah Khomeini, godfather of the 1979 Iranian Islamic revolution, these Marxist tropes were linked to the West’s debauchery, materialism and corruption of Muslim society. This alliance of necessity is still evident today, particularly in Europe, where leftists frequently are apologists for radical Islam.
