I encounter people all the time who scratch their heads wondering how a bunch of leftwing nuts who believe you can pick your gender are attacking Americans who criticize Islam. These left-wing types who pound their chests over a “war on women” in the United States are perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to Islamic harassment of women, even in the United States.

They target Christian bakers and florists for wedding cakes and ignore Muslim bakers. When Steven Crowder gets a Muslim baker on film refusing to bake a cake, they ignore it as no big deal. “Such a small population here,” they say.

When Pamela Gellers’ group gets attacked by Islamists, the leftists say things like “I’m not sure the founding fathers contemplated someone like Pamela Geller when they wrote the First Amendment.” Notice they do not say, “I’m not sure the founding fathers contemplated Islam when they wrote the First Amendment.”

How is this all possible? I think the only answer is theological.

Islam and secularism are both things of this world. The things of this world, though they may be deeply incompatible with and hostile to each other, are all hostile to the things of God, which our Judeo-Christian faith traditions are.

In Lord of the Rings there are recurring scenes of the forces of Mordor absolutely gutting each other — the just slaughter each other at will. But they unite and march on the forces of goodness routinely and in harmony. Only when left to their own devices in Mordor or in retreat from the battle field do they turn on each other. Tolkein was reflecting the secular world in that.

Joss Whedon, the leftwing director of The Avengers, is another good example of this. He is a left-wing apologist who’d love to have transgendered and lesbian superheroes and, I have no doubt, if given the chance would make Jesus and the Apostles the bad guys who need to be crushed. But his fellow travelers on the left have driven him from the twitter-verse because they think he sexualized Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character. Feminists and gender warriors who Whedon is normally allied with are fighting mad in their comfortable shoes that Black Widow is not the premiere character and that she’s actually pretty hot. How dare she be attractive!

The forces of Mordor devour each other when not devouring goodness. The things of the world will devour each other, but ally to attack the things of God. That’s what is actually going on here.