Zarah Sultana MP. Credit: House of Commons via Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

19 August 2025

By Jonathan Galton

“Britain’s new Islamo-Leftist alliance won’t last” claimed a Telegraph headline in July, predicting a dire end for the new party launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. The author, Conservative peer Daniel Hannan, pointed in warning to the fate of communists who supported Iran’s 1979 revolution only to be arrested, tortured and even killed under the new regime. A few weeks later, in the same paper, columnist Zoe Strimpel opined that “The Islamo-Left alliance is beginning to fray with almost comic predictability”. Noting the existence of an organised Muslim faction in the Green Party, she wonders how a “party that is all guns blazing for LGBTQ+ rights” will manage to accommodate a “constituency that embraces the ultra-conservative credos of Sharia law”. So what exactly is Islamo-Leftism and is it already on its deathbed? After three years of research into the complex connections and overlaps between British Muslims and diverse political left(s) I conclude that it is a caricature that shows no signs of going away.

The Islamo-gauchiste panic

The equivalent term in France, Islamo-gauchisme, has already had a chequered career. Philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff used it in 2002 to describe convergences between socialists and Muslims in the Palestine liberation movement, but it was only in 2020–21 that Islamo-gauchisme went mainstream. Most notoriously, Higher Education Minister Frédérique Vidal declared that French society was “gangrened” by Islamo-gauchisme and insisted that the university sector was tainted by its links to “Islamism”. Her comments were met with a vigorous rebuttal. Historian Reza Zia-Ebrahimi argues that Islamo-gauchisme is a fabricated construct used to target anti-racists, Palestine activists and left-wing academics.

Islamo-Leftism in the UK?

Although Islamo-Leftism is not (yet) the stuff of British dinner table talk, the idea of a problematic link between left-wing and Muslim political activism has long had traction. As leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn was routinely branded a far-left “terrorist sympathiser”. Further back in 2003, supporters of the Iraq war in both the UK and the US derided the anti-war movement as an “unholy alliance” between radical Islamists and the left. Today, op-eds by right-wing politicians like Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick use strikingly similar language to discredit the Palestine protest movement and ‘toxify’ debates about migration.

Judging by the comments under these articles, this rhetoric clearly strikes a chord. Yet, as my own analysis has shown, and as political scientist Philippe Marlière argues in the French case, Islamo-Leftism is too vague to be of analytical value. It is never quite clear who the “Islamo” is referring to, while the “leftist”, depending on the context, can mean anyone from George Galloway to Tony Blair.

Like most caricatures, it is not conjured out of thin air. It is compelling precisely because it takes on multiple grains of truth and distorts them into a sweeping paradigm. The 2003 protests were indeed led by an alliance between the socialist Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain. Likewise, Muslim voters have traditionally leaned left, with especially high support for Corbyn’s Labour Party. Many are themselves active participants in left-wing politics.

More generally, as a marginalised and often demonised demographic, Muslims command a certain compassion from sections of the left. There is nothing sinister or laughable about this. As journalist David Shariatmadari points out, it is simply the left “doing what it’s always tried to do – extending a hand to the most beleaguered among us”.

Apparently incompatible: Islam and LGBTQ+

Strimpel is not alone in noting a possible tension between the queer-friendliness of many self-proclaimed left-wingers and the more socially conservative views associated with British Muslims. Again, this is not simply a fabrication: numerous surveys indicate that negative attitudes towards same-sex relationships are more prevalent among Muslims than among other religious groups.

But this static picture overlooks increasing levels of queer acceptance among younger Muslims, the emergence of sexually-inclusive interpretations of scripture, and a thriving LGBTQ-Muslim activist scene. It also underestimates the power of a shared opposition to capitalism and imperialism to unite disparate socialist voters. In any case, several prominent Muslim politicians (including Zarah Sultana) have been staunch advocates for trans rights, unlike many on the political right.

The future of Islamo-Leftism

Islamo-Leftism is hitting the headlines this summer as more than half a million of us have signed up to Corbyn and Sultana’s new party, attracted to its vision of wealth redistribution, public ownership of services and “an end to all arms sales to Israel”. Hannan insists that “Lefties will be squeezed out” of the alliance but concedes that, unlike in post-revolutionary Iran, they probably won’t be “thrown off buildings”. The comparison is misplaced on many levels: 1970s Iran and 2020s Britain are worlds apart demographically and neither Zarah Sultana nor any of the Independent MPs elected in 2024 have much in common with Ayatollah Khomeini. Time will tell how the party fares, but as long as politicians describe Palestine marchers as “Islamist cranks and Left-wing extremists” and call universities “madrassas of Marxism”, Islamo-Leftism will remain a fixture on the landscape.