Regressive left

[9] In September 2015, Nawaz and Sam Harris participated in a public forum hosted by Harvard University's Institute of Politics,[10] which was later published in a short book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance (2015).

In a review of the book in the magazine National Review Online, the political writer Brian Stewart said that according to both Nawaz and Harris, regressive leftists in the West are "willfully blind" to the fact that jihadists and Islamists make up a significant portion (20% in Harris's estimate) of the global Muslim community and the minority Muslim communities within the West, even though these factions are opposed to liberal values, such as individual autonomy, freedom of expression, democracy, women's rights, and gay rights.

[11] In October 2015, The Washington Times reported that the American comedian and show host Bill Maher and British biologist and New Atheist author Richard Dawkins had "lamented regressive leftists who fail to understand they are anything but liberal when it comes to Islam".

[18] In November 2015, in an appearance on the talk radio show The Humanist Hour, the philosopher Peter Boghossian defined the term as a pejorative used to describe those on the left that have made the "strangest bedfellows" with Islamists.

He suggested that even though the term could be sourced back to self-identified liberal commentators like Nawaz, Maher, and Dawkins, it was frequently being used by the alt-right and other anti-social justice warrior groups on Internet forums and social media as part of their rhetorical warfare.