While in his personal disposition, a liberal is ‘open-minded, not prejudiced’ (his heart), his ideological underpinnings are ‘favoring individual liberty, free trade and moderate political and social reform’ (his mind). On the other hand, a leftist is someone who vouches for ‘radical socialism that advocates the political and economic theory of social organization, wherein a whole community owns and controls the means of production, distribution, and exchange’.

Thus, the left-liberal tag that is loosely bandied about by assorted politicos and upstart elites in the arena of political correctness is nothing but an oxymoron brand. Be that as it may, even as these left-liberals tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves, yet they lock-up their minds in closets of bias.

Consider the liberals’ holistic hostility towards capitalism, wherein ‘goods are produced and distributed through private investments’, though it is in synchrony with their ideological moorings of ‘favoring individual liberty and free trade’. What is worse, their ‘liberal’ endorsement of the socialistic economic model that is in juxtaposition to the ‘individual liberty’ that they swear by only illustrates the state of their closed minds. This is when there is no ambiguity about the ideological delineation of these economic models, and when it comes to Islam, which advocates peace in one ayat and obligates violence in another, the left-liberal ideological confusion is understandable.

Thus, nothing exposes the left-liberals’ ideological hypocrisy than their dubbing the criticism of the incongruities in Islam that goes against the grain of their own cherished ‘individual liberty’ as Islamophobia. Leave alone espousing reforms in the misogynistic Islamic order, not to speak of its medieval social mores and inhuman punishments to the deviants, that they are averse to even debate about it underscores their closed minded callousness. But lo, they find themselves in the forefront, crying hoarse, when it comes to the aberrations in Hinduism.

Naturally, this absurd ‘liberal’ behavior begs for an answer.

It’s not that the left-liberals are intellectually vacuous so as not to understand the illiberality of Islam or the irrationality of its exploitative clerics. They are as much privy to the tenets of Islam and the ways of the Musalman as the critiquing non-Muslim majority, and are no less aware that Islam does not countenance change and castigates would-be reformers as apostates with telling consequences. And that explains the paucity of left-liberals in the Muslim majority countries.

All this should have obliged them to lend their ‘liberal’ voice to help the Muslims living in non-Islamic countries to usher in reforms, but yet the left-liberals side with the Mullahs to help them retain their fundamentalist grip over the hapless umma. Why so? Maybe, realizing that Muslims are beyond redemption, the left-liberals could have subconsciously developed an intellectual contempt for the community at large. What’s worse, in the Muslim intransigence the left-liberals seem to have sensed an opportunity for overkill on political correctness by branding even the well-meaning criticism of Islam as Islamophobia that is besides taking the cudgels on behalf of the radical Muslims. Never mind the human rights of the Musalmans, who too are human after all. It’s time the genuine liberals come out of the left-lib’s hypocritical shadows to initiate a constructive debate to bring about a course correction.