In his well-researched, thoughtful and candid book on the dangers of fundamentalist Islam, The Ideological Path to Submission -- and what we can do about it, Howard Rotberg rhetorically asks this very pertinent question:

“How can Western liberal feminist women, often with advanced university degrees, make common cause with Islamists who persecute women, gays and minorities?"

Rotberg’s book centres on his assertion that the Western world practices excessive tolerance for imported cultures that often do not agree with Canadian values.

He labels as “tolerism” this new, heightened form of political correctness subscribed to by political leaders like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as well as on university campuses, in liberal intellectual circles and among the left in general.

Rotberg exposes the naivete of this narrative that he argues has produced all the following unsavoury outcomes. They are:

Laws that condemn Islamophobia alone, rather than hate and prejudice generally.

“No-go” zones subject to sharia law and congregational Islamic prayers in public schools, with great disruption to other students.

Then there’s Saudi funding of American university programs, Islamist-funded lawsuits aimed at chilling free speech; and “public statements that the West is evil, stupid, corrupt or in serious decline”.

I would add that symbols of Islamism like the burka and niqab have also gained acceptance through the liberal left’s warped notions of feminism.

Do these “tolerists”, as Rotberg describes them, never wonder about what sort of society they are encouraging through their support of such ideas?

The concerns and outcomes Rotberg exposes are real and they are starting to have palpable and disturbing effects.

They promote the very type of covert Islamism that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood wish to advance in the West.

Rotberg draws attention to the Muslim Brotherhood document, The Project, “that outlines strategies by which this stealth jihad can be accomplished.”

Some of its salient features include “Taqiyaa”, or the withholding of information from non-believers for strategic purposes, along with effective networking with other Islamist organizations.

Rotberg argues the infiltration and influence of these organizations is so great that many prominent politicians, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Trudeau, have been duped by the march of radical, fundamentalist and obscurantist Islam, under the cover of cultural acceptance.

Rotberg sees this in the influx into Canada of improperly vetted refugees from potentially dangerous countries, despite the government’s claims to the contrary.

U.S. President Donald Trump, for all his faults, at least knows a threat when he sees one. (Most refugees recently admitted to Trump's United States are Christian, the biggest number from the Democratic Republic of Congo.)

Rotberg highlights the many fatal fallacies in the thinking of the liberal left.

For example, their inconsistencies and naivete which prevent them from acknowledging their support for fundamentalist Islam will in fact produce the very opposite of the genuine tolerance and social justice they seek.

Rotberg proposes supporting the more progressive and liberal forces within Islam, who are calling for the reform of Islam itself.

Rotberg suggests “western elites, in the name of tolerance, should not be standing in the way of this reformation by supporting tacitly or otherwise, the Islamists.”

He makes practical suggestions to check the march of radical Islam.

The book is a sequel to Rotberg’s earlier work, Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed.

They should be read in conjunction in order to grasp their connected themes.

Howard Rotberg’s The Ideological Path to Submission is available from Mantua Books, Brantford, Ontario, mantuabooks.com.