How did we end up here…

Why does the liberal West seem to have this compact with Islam? On the face of it, the two philosophies cannot be more diametrically opposite. One is about tolerance and respecting other people’s beliefs, whereas Islam keeps trending towards rigidity, intolerance, and total submission.

Conversely, Hinduism, by nature an open, tolerant umbrella religion subject to constant revision and modernization, has ended up finding common cause with the conservative and traditionalist movements in the West.

The Liberal–Islamic compact…

Firstly, it was not unforeseen. Hitchens very famously warned against this, bitterly and at length. His last book* was God Is Not Great, in direct opposition to Allahu Akbar.
By its very nature, the liberal movement constantly morphs into sympathizing with the most antagonized part of society, that which is targeted by law enforcement the most.
In the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s it was the working classes, until the brutality of the communist regimes of Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin destroyed any hope of socialism becoming established in the West.
Liberalism then shifted to civil rights in the ’60s and ’70s. Here, there is meaningful change, and universal rights and anti-discrimination laws become widespread and enforced. Gay rights come next. Fast forward to the ’00s and ’10s and the crackdown against Islam unleashed by 9-11 etc: suddenly Muslims are oppressed by law enforcement, and the liberals find an erosion of the civil rights fought for so vigorously in the past decades. The Muslims resenting government surveillance and profiling suddenly find allies in the liberal movements. Helpful terms like “Islamophobia” are coined.

Many liberal thinkers (Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris) recognize the danger, the incompatibility of Islam with liberalism, and warn against it. But things go from bad to worse.
The U.S. invades Iraq and Afghanistan and follows it up with interventions in Libya and Syria, creating this perfect storm of liberal guilt combined with a refugee crisis. Suddenly, the West is flooded with traditional Muslim men being welcomed by extremely naïve, well-meaning feminist liberals.
I remember reading about this German lady who was so against the wars that she immediately signed up to volunteer to help the new immigrants. A couple of weeks into the job, she was so appalled at the behaviour of the men coming in that she started speaking out against it (there are now multiple studies on this—feel free to go down that rabbit hole).
Perversely, the most liberal sections of society—the press, social workers, academia—start positive discrimination towards hiring Muslims and themselves become intolerant to any form of criticism of Islam.

There is about a decade-plus between 2002–2014 where this liberal–Islamist compact is established firmly (Patriot Act gives the FBI/NSA powers to overreach, wars, etc.) and goes unchallenged and unchecked. The police in the UK are so wary of being accused of Islamophobia that they deliberately ignore or downplay the child grooming scandal. Guantanamo is a rallying point against American state-enabled torture against Muslims. French secular laws prohibiting the burqa and hijab in public spaces are challenged as anti personal choice.

Meanwhile in India…

Modi rises to power in this very time frame. He also is the perfect foil to the liberal press.

Faced with the Godhra horror, Modi has a different approach. The rumour at the time was that the state would go slow for 72 hours; personally I believe this to be true. Given the mob nature of the Godhra burning, identifying the culprits and bringing them to justice was completely beyond the state’s powers at the time—mob atrocity faced mob justice. It is beyond the scope of this write-up to unpack the morality/dharma of these actions, so let’s stick with the effects.
The press has a field day. Modi is given various epithets (“butcher,” “fascist”), which he can never live down; he becomes the embodiment of Islamophobia. Helpfully, the rise of the internet in India enables him to bypass the press and concentrate on a carefully curated development-plus-nationalist Hindu image.
With a populace frustrated with the (scandal-ridden) Congress policy of Islamic appeasement (Shah Bano case, Taj Attack, etc.) and an antagonistic press disregarding poor governance to combat a greater ‘evil’ i.e Modi, his rise is inevitable.
The Western media—with rising proportions of Muslims in their ranks and the liberal compact firmly in place—now ratchet up the editorials railing against Modi, the BJP, RSS, Hindutva; every event in India gets a saffron filter. Obama, facing the heat of his indiscriminate drone bombings in Afghanistan and the open sore of Guantanamo, burnishes his liberal credentials by publicly piling onto this liberal tirade against Modi.

Western backlash, death of media credibility, and rise of the right, MAGA…

Eight years of Obama and onwards, the liberal movement moves on to new frontiers—fighting new battles over conquered ground: cancel culture, LGBTQ rights, pronouns, critical race theory.
Running out of underdogs, they turn on their own. Al Franken is forced to resign; left-wing white male professors are forced out in droves; Aziz Ansari takes a hit. Editorials cheer them on, with occasional ignored protests by the intellectuals abhorring this turn. In some areas, children identifying as trans reach double-digit proportions, as teenagers craving attention are instantly celebrated and noticed for “coming out.”
Riding down that golden escalator is the man who taps into the conservative angst and frustration to lead the backlash. He is hated by the press but bypasses it—not with careful curation like Modi, but with active hostility, tapping into the anti-woke fervour and denying their credibility. Petty, mercurial, but also brash and brazen, with his American optimism and New York upbringing, he demolishes the Republican primaries and takes the presidency. COVID and poor governance in a crisis cost him one election, but the revulsion to the liberal advance brings him back with a greater majority.
Meanwhile in Europe the massive influx of semi orthodox, non liberally educated muslims spawns a multitude of right wing nationalist movements.

The Hindu diaspora…

Unlike the Muslim diaspora, Hindus don’t have countries at war with the West. The religion is more cultural, and the sense of community is centred around shared languages, media, and food, faith is very optional.
The liberal Hindus tend to direct their energy into education and materialistic pursuits and exclude themselves from the underdog position in society. Conservative, more religious Hindus have a nostalgia for a romanticized India of their memory. This dovetails perfectly with Modi’s carefully curated image of the priest-king, throw in Ayodhya, the dream of Ram Rajya and the adulation is inevitable.
With Modi then throwing his weight behind Trump against the common foe of the liberal press + dems, the Hindu right joins the MAGA right.

Zohran Mamdani…

OK, I’m going to speculate a bit here. I don’t think Zohran is really a religious Muslim. I think both his parents were extremely liberal people—Mira Nair is very evidently so, and Mahmoud seems to be too, albeit a Muslim one.
He grows up in this atmosphere of Muslim victimhood and the liberal compact and spends his teen–early adult years railing against Babri Masjid, Godhra, Modi, etc.
He then leans in heavily towards his Islamic roots and socialist ideals two years into an Israeli genocide abetted by the U.S. state and a cost of living crisis. He is rewarded for it and will probably lean in more as a result. The net effect of this is that he’s American and Muslim and does not display any affinity towards Hindu/Indian culture beyond the language, media, and food.

What next…

The American liberals along with their favoured democratic party are in disarray. Zohran’s win will be hard to repeat as the democrats cannot shed their pro-Israel donor base nationally and a far left liberal will be exclusionary. That said, Trumps overreach on immigration and economic chaos presents a clear opportunity for an anti-woke leader to curb liberal excesses and unite under socialist themes.

European liberals are banding coalitions together in a desperate attempt to keep the far right out of power, currently energized by opposition to Trump their fortunes are capricious and perverse.

Meanwhile in India, there is a rise of the educated Hindu intellectual within the nationalist space. Where once the Hindu movements were lead by godmen, charismatic charlatans and political rabble rousers there is now an opening for people like J Sai Deepak and Anand Ranganathan. Where there was only Shashi Tharoor now there are legion. The avowedly secular intellectual old guard are relegated to their academic sinecures and traditional hand wringing opinion pieces. The Congress cannot discard the dynasty and the liberals desperately cling to the dried withered husk of it.

* (disregarding Hitch-22, which was more of a memoir)