The following is my view on the subject and should be taken with a certain amount of salt.
A lot of American political alliances are fairly weird when looked at objectively (which is part of the reason why I regard labels such as left wing or right wing as effectively meaningless), and the aliance between Islam and certain groups in the American left is a particularily strong example. It's a fairly standard enemy of my enemy aliance, with the the odd proviso that the left wing groups regard political cynicism and deal making as part of what they're against, so have convinced themselves that the aliance is a matter of principle.
My view on all religions is that you get out what you put in. If you're a decent person, your religion will influence what forms your decency will take and if you're a bastard it'll influence the form of your bastardy. Disentangling Islam from Middle Eastern culture is insanely difficult and to determine to what extent either is compatible with what varoius people consider to be post enlightenment western liberalism is somewhat tricky. I'd say that Islam has had fewer of it's rough edges knocked off than Christianity, on average, but your guess is as good as mine as to what that's worth.
A lot of American political alliances are fairly weird when looked at objectively (which is part of the reason why I regard labels such as left wing or right wing as effectively meaningless), and the aliance between Islam and certain groups in the American left is a particularily strong example. It's a fairly standard enemy of my enemy aliance, with the the odd proviso that the left wing groups regard political cynicism and deal making as part of what they're against, so have convinced themselves that the aliance is a matter of principle.
My view on all religions is that you get out what you put in. If you're a decent person, your religion will influence what forms your decency will take and if you're a bastard it'll influence the form of your bastardy. Disentangling Islam from Middle Eastern culture is insanely difficult and to determine to what extent either is compatible with what varoius people consider to be post enlightenment western liberalism is somewhat tricky. I'd say that Islam has had fewer of it's rough edges knocked off than Christianity, on average, but your guess is as good as mine as to what that's worth.