I fear that the truth is Islam has become an untouchable shibboleth for some on the left. What they lacerate in other religions, they refuse to mention in Islam. Sexism, homophobia, the death penalty for apostasy … all of this is to be rationalized if the alternative is Islamophobia. Why, one wonders? Is it because Muslims are a small minority? But the same could be said for Jews. My best guess is simply that, for the far left, anything that is predominantly “of color” is preferable to anything, like Judaism and Christianity, that can usually be described as “white.” That’s how “intersectionality” can be used to defend what would otherwise be indefensible. The preoccupation with race on the far left is now so deep, in other words, it’s becoming simply an inversion of that on the far right.
To be more specific, the proximate preoccupation is with race, but the ultimate preoccupation is with moral authority, as Shelby Steele has helpfully described over the course of several books. As many have noted, the loudest voices denouncing all things “white” typically issue forth from…white people. These White Wokies have no problem with dropping their ostensible racial sensitivity the moment a member of an officially oppressed group dares to disagree with their progressive axioms. It’s about politics and power, just as it’s always been. Race is just an effective tactic for the time being. The only people “of color” who matter are the ones who are content to let the Wokies stay in charge. Cosmetic diversity flowers while ideology marches in lockstep.
In the aggregate logic of progressivism, Team White/Male/Etc. has been running up the score on Team Everybody Else for several hundred years, so the duty of the Enlightened Elect is to encourage and amplify millions of tiny, everyday incidents which can be vaguely construed as The Subaltern scoring one against White/Male/Etc. Supremacy, helping to cancel out the unjust privileges inherited from history. The cumulative effect will be to even the sociopolitical score sometime in the distant future, at which point…the games can re-commence on a level playing field? Just kidding, of course. At that point, behavior will have to be even more tightly supervised and controlled for fear of all our hard work getting undone. Don’t worry, our Wokie overlords will tell us when we reach the promised land and Year Zero begins. Now keep marching.