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- The problem is it simply doesn't follow that opposing Islamists makes one a supporter of imperialism or, as is frequently claimed, racist or "Islamophobe". British-based anti-Islamism campaigner Maryam Namazie, for instance, is a member of the central committee of the Worker Communist Party of Iran, making her unlikely candidate for leader of the Rudyard Kipling fan club.
Prisoners of history, the left is desperately trying to recreate a radical Arab politics in the Middle East from a thin gruel of insurrectionary Islamism. For many leftists today, the radicalism of the likes of Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas become a stand-in for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). But just as you can't make a car out of cheese, you can't make democratic, secular and humanist movement, left or right, out of religious fundamentalism. These are not your father's radicals.
There's more to this than 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', though.