This piece examines why many progressive women loudly criticize Christianity while often shielding or excusing Islam, argues that misplaced empathy and cultural narratives drive that stance, and suggests those instincts of care are being redirected away from family toward abstract causes.
There is a challenging question making the rounds in conservative circles that forces people to squirm, and that discomfort is worth paying attention to. The question resurfaced on X in November and stuck because it points to a real pattern in public discourse. Many modern liberal women express open hostility toward Christianity while offering sympathy or silence for Islam as an ideology, especially its more repressive expressions. That discrepancy demands an honest look at incentives and narratives rather than reflexive outrage.
As observers note, this is not about private, peaceful Muslims living quietly in America. The concern is with ideological expressions that sanction violence, restrict girls from education, and treat women’s rights as secondary. Anyone who follows reporting from Iran, Afghanistan, and other places sees documented practices like girls barred from school, forced marriages, and legal systems that devalue women’s testimony. Those realities clash with the loudest voices on patriarchy who then often refuse to apply the same moral scrutiny when the subject turns to Islam.
That refusal is what some call toxic empathy: a form of sympathy untethered from truth and consequence. Empathy itself is a virtue; it has deep roots in Western, Christian moral thought and in common decency. The trouble comes when empathy becomes the overriding principle, operating independent of facts, and when it is weaponized to shield entire ideas from criticism because doing so feels morally fashionable. When feeling becomes the highest authority, questions of truth take a back seat.
Christianity makes moral claims that are at odds with an individualistic culture obsessed with self-definition. Biblical teaching speaks of sin, self-denial, and orders of authority that do not bend to personal preference, and that rubs a society devoted to autonomy the wrong way. Progressive narratives tend to sort the world into victims and oppressors, and because Christianity is tied to Western identity it is often cast as the oppressor by default. Islam, associated with non-Western cultures, becomes the object of protective instincts instead of sober critique.
There is another layer to this puzzle that many prefer not to name. Cultural shifts have led many progressive women to delay or reject traditional family formation, with fewer children and later or no marriages becoming more common. Those are demographic realities, not insults, and they reshape outlets for natural nurturing impulses. When family is not the primary channel for devotion, those instincts find other outlets—movements, ideologies, and political causes that mimic the structure of belonging and purpose.
Gen Z women who voted for Harris ranked having children as the second-least important thing in their personal definition of success.
Redirected nurturing becomes intense loyalty to causes, and that intensity can look like moral certainty rather than reasoned judgment. You see the emotional ferocity defending abortion as a moral good, the readiness to treat dissent as heresy, and the tendency to prioritize identity and narrative over empirical reality. Those patterns are not neutral; they reshape institutions and norms in ways conservatives view as destabilizing to the social fabric.
Christianity, from this perspective, defends a hierarchy of ordered loves: God first, family second, community third, and self last. That framework buttresses institutions that conserve stability and incentivize sacrifice rather than constant self-fulfillment. A culture that prioritizes personal sovereignty and self-expression finds that hierarchy threatening, and so Christianity becomes a target for redefinition and marginalization.
At the same time, moral clarity demands scrutiny of systems that plainly harm women. Avoiding moral judgment about societies where women are legally and culturally subordinated does not protect women; it abandons them to narratives that feel good in the moment but do not improve outcomes. True compassion requires honesty, and that honesty sometimes means criticizing practices wrapped in religion or culture when they violate human dignity.
Toxic empathy does real damage by training people to nurture ideas instead of people and feelings instead of facts. When compassion is divorced from truth, it becomes a badge rather than a bridge to real help. Christianity is not an enemy of women; historically it has been central to arguments for human dignity and social welfare, and honest discussion should recognize that while still holding all cultures and ideologies accountable for how they treat the vulnerable.
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