There is a very real problem with the Left, both in America and other Western nations. In the quarter-century since 9/11 —the largest Islamic terrorist attack in human history — we have, in fact, forgotten that we're in a cultural and political war with Islam.
In fact, the Left has embraced Islam and its backwards, barbaric ways. Not tolerating Islam, they claim, is racist and "Islamophobic." There is no such thing as Islamophobia, of course. It's perfectly rational to object to a religion that treats women like chattel, throws gays off buildings, and denies girls the most basic things like access to education and healthcare.
The Left will gladly warn you about the dangers of "Christian nationalism" and insist without a hint of irony that President Donald Trump will turn America into Gilead, complete with the nifty red robes and white bonnets.
Yet the Left loves Islam. Or more to the point, they love the smug sense of virtue-signaling satisfaction they get from acting oh-so-tolerant to an ideology that would kill them without hesitation or remorse. They call it a religion, but it's less a religion than it is a theocracy — a repressive regime that strips all people of rights and freedoms, but none more so than women and gays.
This picture has been making the rounds on social media over the past few days, and it's haunted me.
Girl in the front was executed.
— 𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) October 28, 2025
Girl in the back fled to Sweden where she lives in exile to this day.
They both actively worked towards and celebrated their own demise.
I am begging the West to stop thinking this could never happen to you, because it can and it 100% will. https://t.co/c3jewoGzrR
I could not confirm the identity of the women or their fate, but it's completely believable that one was forced to flee Iran and the other was killed. Pre-1979, the number of Iranian-born individuals living abroad was about half a million. Today, that number is over three million.
Within months of his rise to power, Ayatollah Khomeini forced women into the hijab. The Family Protection Law, passed under the monarchy that progressive Iranians helped oust, was suspended. This meant women "lost the right to sue for divorce, the age of marriage for girls was reduced from eighteen to nine, child custody was automatically granted to the husband, and the family courts were abolished. Moreover, women were barred from serving as judges in any court in the justice system."
Workplaces were segregated by gender, depriving Iranian girls of access to math and science teachers and education in those subjects. Men and women who were together in public had to be husband and wife or related, or face punishment. The morality police were formed, and even to this day, they are arresting and beating women who do things like walk outside with their hair uncovered.
In 1988, Khomeini issued a fatwa that led to the deaths of thousands of political prisoners, many of them the progressives who helped topple the monarch and install Khomeini. In 2016, leaked audio from Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri showed he called these killings "the biggest crime in the Islamic Republic."
We also see what is happening to women and girls in Afghanistan, where they are denied access to work, education, and healthcare. They are prohibited from speaking in public, forced into hijabs, and punished for breaking the Taliban's harsh, sexist rules.
The women in that picture believed, for whatever reason, that helping Khomeini to power was a boon for their progressive ideology. It was not. Their misguided efforts led one to flee for her life and the other to lose hers.
There's a lesson and a warning here for progressives in the U.K. and America: embracing Islam spells doom for you. Women and gays will suffer harshly under Islamic rule. Zohran Mamdani's pal, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, is anti-gay and believes the LGBTQ community is a 'disease of society' (and that they should be put to death).
Unlike the lucky woman in that picture, there will be no place left for us to flee if Islam takes over the West. So be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.
