Why does the Left love Islam so much?

Ever get the impression that the American Left was suspiciously friendly to the goals of militant Islam?

If so, it wasn't your imagination: The Left and Islam are united in their opposition to individual freedom, and the goal of forcing the submission of every citizen to the iron will of a central authority.

For Islam, this is clearly evidenced in the book Social Justice in Islam, by Sayyid Qutb, the main theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qutb writes that Islam is about the collective, and that those who resist Islam must be forced to obey its teachings. According to Qutb, “integrating” humanity under sharia is so important that it "justifies the use of force against those who deviate from it."

To Qutb the only way an individual can be truly happy is by submitting to the Islamic state, and “whoever has lost sight of this principle must be brought back to it by any means.” Thus, he says, sharia makes “unbelief” a crime equal in severity to murder. Apostasy and fomenting discord among Muslims are capital offenses.

Islam, like the Left, virulently opposes capitalism. In fact, Islam even forbids charging interest on loans. Since all wealth belongs to Allah, property “owners” are merely custodians--and thus any property may be confiscated by Allah’s agent on earth (the Islamic state) for the collective good of the Muslim nation.

Qutb sees Islamic authority as unitary and indivisible, with no distinction between the sacred and the secular. Rather, Islam is a comprehensive political, economic and social code that governs every aspect of life. There can be no compartmentalizing or narrowing. To narrow the breadth of sharia — as Qutb put it, “to check its complete dominance over every human secular activity” — would reduce it to something other than divine law. It would no longer be Islam.

You'd think the Left--a group that has long pushed the idea of "if it feels good, do it"--would be firmly opposed to any group that pushed for a prudish, all-powerful, punishment-oriented religious government, but apparently Leftists would rather join Muslims in destroying capitalism and the Western way of life.

(h/t Andrew McCarthy)