After noting the oddities of Roger L. Simon’s latest piece on why the “War against Islamofascism” leads him to support gay marriage, Glenn Greenwald raises an important point that I think often goes overlooked.

Every now and then, it is worth noting that substantial portions of the right-wing political movement in the United States — the Pajamas Media/right-wing-blogosphere/Fox News/Michelle Malkin/Rush-Limbaugh-listener strain — actually believe that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us. And then we will have to be Muslims and “our women” will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs. This is an actual fear that they have — not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview.

And their key political beliefs — from Iraq to Iran to executive power and surveillance theories at home — are animated by the belief that all of this is going to happen. The Republican presidential primary is, for much of the “base,” a search for who will be the toughest and strongest in protecting us from the Islamic invasion — a term that is not figurative or symbolic, but literal: the formidable effort by Islamic radicals to invade the U.S. and take over our institutions and dismantle our government and force us to submit to Islamic rule or else be killed.

Glenn couldn’t be more correct about this. I read quite a few conservative blogs every day for one of my other gigs, and I’ve found that this belief is pervasive in shaping the far-right worldview. The fear of a global Islamic takeover buttresses their opinions about almost everything. When reading far-right sites, it’s something to keep in mind.