Oh, one more thing. The French hijab ban controversy came long before I heard of Ahmadinejad, whose existence I didn't know till shortly before his election.
In Columbus, Ohio, about 100 Muslim women organized a protest against the French hijab ban, when a French ambassador came to speak to local businessmen at a downtown athletic club in January 2004. My partner and I were the only non-Muslims at the protest. Since my partner is religious himself -- a Presbyterian who is active in his church -- I was the only irreligious person there.
For some secular leftists, it's probably sentiments and opinions like what you expressed that led to their absence. But the main reason for others' absence is that most secular leftists are out of the loop of Muslim community cultural affairs and political mobilizations altogether, so they didn't hear about the protest in time to attend it even just to check out what's going on.
In the same way, I was one of the few non-Latino participants -- aside from my partner, an SEIU organizer who is a friend of ours, some spouses of Latino immigrants, and reporters -- in the Columbus immigrant rights demonstration held on the west side of Columbus as part of the May Day boycott and demonstration. In other cities, non-Latino leftists did better, but there was no huge presence of native-born Black and white workers in immigrant rights protests. Again, I see lack of connections, between non-immigrant leftists and immigrant communities, between immigrant communities and native-born working-class communities, etc.
An inability to relate to Muslims is part of the general inability to relate to other immigrants, workers, etc. Secular leftists, many of whom are well educated if not well off, tend to feel most comfortable with those who have the same educational backgrounds, same cultural points of reference, etc. As long as the foreign-born are like me, share those backgrounds and points of reference, and can speak and write English, they are very welcome among secular leftists, no, more welcome than standard-issue white leftists (after all, we make things look "diverse" :-0). I doubt, though, that such an exclusive attitude, akin to the attitude that informs desire for selective immigration welcoming only skilled immigrants who are already pretty much like the native born in all relevant respects, will help the Left.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>