A bizarre alliance with Islam, a set of very conservative ideas, has earned them the label of “regressive left’’ instead. As I became acquainted with the activism of role models such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Yasmine Mohamed, Armin Navabi and Ali Rizvi, I began to recognise the cognitive dissonance afflicting the left, leaving them with a severe blind spot. This began to change about six months ago when I became involved with the ex-Muslim movement. My exposure to abuses of power allowed me to relate to identity politics and victimhood narratives. As a woman who’d been forced into the hijab at puberty, trapped within the Islamic guardianship system and restricted by groupthink, I loved the emphasis on individuality, choice and autonomy that I found in progressive politics.
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Until only recently, I saw it as a celebration of everything I’d been denied as a devout Muslim.
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Free from the shackles of fundamentalism, I embraced the left-wing movement with open arms. It was my second crisis of faith in three years, the first being my renunciation of Islam at the age of 21. Instead, I left feeling completely alienated from a movement that once brought me so much hope. I harboured hopes that the divisive behaviour I was seeing on social media was disproportionately represented by radicals and that the event would bring some sense to the madness. It was a discussion between Roxane Gay, a Haitian-born intersectional feminist, and Christina Hoff Sommers, a self-described “equity feminist.” I went with the intention of confronting my growing disillusionment with the morally proscriptive nature of intersectional feminism and the broader leftist movement. I attended the infamous “#Feminist” speaking event at the Sydney Town Hall.