[4][5] Interviewed in 2016 by Liberation journalists Sonya Faure and Frantz Durupt, Taguieff was uncertain whether he coined it or had heard it used, and points out that the phrases "Islamo-progressives" and, in the 1980s, "Palestino-progressives" were used as self-descriptions by the French left.
Understanding the term as the fusion between the atheist Far Left and religious radicalism,[8] Bruckner posited that because those Trotskyites perceive Islam's potential for fomenting societal unrest, they promote tactical, temporary alliances with reactionary Muslim parties.
"[17] Within the French cabinet, opinions were divided, with government spokesperson Gabriel Attal saying that if the phenomenon exists, it's "extremely marginal," and with coalition partner François Bayrou saying that "in the universities that I know, that's not what's happening.
[19] Five days after making the announcement, Vidal said that "of course, the term doesn't have a scientific definition, but it corresponds to what a lot of our fellow citizens are feeling and to a certain number of facts," and defended the inquiry, saying that there is a need to take stock of the situation in the country.
[20] Shireen Hunter credits Islamo-leftist Mahmoud Taleghani's reinterpretation of Islam in the light of Marxist theory in the 1970s with inspiring the group Organization of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.
[23] Bernard-Henri Lévy has described Islamo-leftism as this grand new alliance between the reds, greens and the new browns, of the axis which runs from Le Monde diplomatique to the death squads[24] and as a sort of anti-American religion.
[27] According to Robert S. Wistrich, "[a] poisonous anti-Jewish legacy can be found in Marx, Fourier, and Proudhon, extending through the orthodox Communists and non-conformist Trotskyists to the Islamo-Leftist hybrids of today who systematically vilify the so-called racist essence of the Jewish State".
"[32] Anthropologist Didier Fassin has said that use of the term "revealed an improbable convergence between Macron's En Marche and Le Pen's Rassemblement National, on the one hand, and a reactionary segment of France's intellectual world on the other" and that "a remarkable feature of this movement is its disregard for the international literature nourishing these new ideas.
"[34] Reza Zia-Ebrahimi of King's College London has said that understanding the origins of the concept "is crucial in highlighting the deep resonance of Islamophobia denial with the New Philosophers' decades-old offensive against the left" and "that the New Philosophers have thrown their weight behind Islamophobia denial is significant in light of the jaw-dropping extent of their air time on radio and television, the sheer number of publications they author, their enormous influence on the French political and media elite and (not to be underestimated) their international standing.