In his column today, Williams announces that the reason the left is “making common cause with radical Islam” is (quoting right-winger Mark Steyn) that both “recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space.”

So the example of progressives allying with radical Islam for this purpose is … what? Oh, he didn’t offer any.

I can find a lot more common ground between the Religious Right’s pronounciations that women belong in the home and must submit to men and the claims of militant Islam that women should do exactly the same thing. Or for that matter, the Islamists’ grumbles about how women must cover up to stop arousing male lust and Williams’ column some years back on how women wouldn’t get raped so much if they’d dress like ladies.

And during negotiations on the Convention of the Rights of Women a few years ago, it was conservative groups supported by the Bush administration that sided with Islamic groups on arguing against a ban on genital mutilation, honor killing and domestic abuse that said these things can’t be excused by culture or tradition (the right-wing rationalization: “They’re saying tradition is a bad thing.”).

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