[Michael] Walzer argues persuasively that the left has failed to adjust its thinking to the rise of "Islamist zealotry" because of a set of increasingly typical moral and intellectual errors.
One of the nation's outstanding political theorists for almost half a century and a politically engaged man of the left for just as long, Walzer criticizes fellow leftists from within the tent. He faults them in his essay,
"Islamism and the Left," for misunderstanding the moral and political imperatives that flow from the leftist quest to advance freedom, equality, toleration, and pluralism.
Walzer emphasizes his "generalized fear of every form of religious militancy" and notes that every religion is capable of inspiring fanaticism. But since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, he argues, Islamist zealotry is the form of religious militancy that has posed the principal transnational threat to liberty and democracy. Yet, he laments, many on the left ignore it or apologize for it.