Saturday, January 28, 2017

As Sharia as Apple Pie

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of ZiyonJews Down Under and The Jewish Press.}

Women's March poster (2017)
Future historians may find the recent "Women's March" interesting for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is that it nicely illustrates the tensions between the ideals of multiculturalism and universal human rights within contemporary western-left ideology.

Whatever else the march may have accomplished, however, it definitely propelled Linda Sarsour into the political night sky.

Sarsour is a Palestinian-American, pro-Sharia, Obama advisor, feminist, activist who also participated in the Standing Rock protests.

While she has a fascinating resume, the problem is that Sharia is a Muslim Supremacist judicial system and is, therefore, fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution of the United States.

It is out of this tension within the Left that the central ideals of multiculturalism (as represented by mass Muslim immigration into the West) and universal human rights (as represented by the right of women not to be stoned to death for the crime of being raped) are locked in a largely unspoken death-struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party and the progressive-movement.

The resolution of this contradiction between Islam and western political values will loom large in determining the lives of coming generations.


The Progressive-Left and the Multicultural Dilemma

It was out of the multicultural ideal that Angela Merkel and the European Union opened the doors of Western Europe to mass Muslim immigration in what is perhaps the most audacious social experiment in world history.

Much like the unwarranted optimism by westerners concerning the "Arab Spring" before it, many Europeans looked forward to the cultural enrichment of Europe by Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa. The horror of the Syrian civil war strained the heart-muscles of many westerners who wished to help a population devastated by widespread violence and civil strife. Meanwhile western politicians promoted the idea that Europe needed an influx of young workers for economic reasons, anyway.

In the progressive-left imagination, however, this multicultural ideal slips at the thought of Muslim rape gangs in Britain and the horrendous treatment of women under Sharia Law.

It staggers upon recognition that Islam, whatever else it may be, is a theological-political philosophy that, from the time of Muhammad until today, seeks to expand its territorial boundaries with no interest whatsoever in women's rights.

It should also be noted that beyond the liberal West (with the funny exception of Antarctica) there were no women's marches anywhere. There was a considerable dearth of women marching in Riyadh and Teheran and Mogadishu.

For some reason the women of the Middle East did not care to join their western counterparts in women's solidarity.

There were no pink "pussy hats" in the streets of Karbala or Kandahar or Ramallah.

Nonetheless, one can easily imagine how the authorities in those places would have reacted had there been... or is that a racist assumption?

Meanwhile, American Jewry is going through a dark night of the soul as it awakens to the fact that not only are progressives and Democrats increasingly hostile toward Israel, with only 33 percent of Democrats supportive of the Jewish state, but that they could not care less that young Islamists are driving Jews out of Europe.


Western Jews and the Multicultural Dilemma

If the Obama administration has taught Jews anything it is that the progressive-left and the Democratic Party have considerable empathy for Islamists. The source of that empathy is what philosopher Pascal Bruckner referred to as The Tyranny of Guilt. It is the growing sense - refined and promoted at the universities and within progressive-left circles - that Europeans owe a blood-debt to the rest of the world.

Related to this notion is the idea that the ongoing Arab-Muslim war against the Jews of the Middle East is a righteous struggle against western imperialism.

The slowly-dawning realization among progressive-left Jewry that their own political movement has turned against them is causing consternation and conflict within the community.

The Women's March froze out many progressive-left Jewish women because Linda Sarsour is a pro-Sharia anti-Zionist and the poster above reflects that. The chilling message is that Sharia, as represented by the hijab, is "as American as apple pie" and only feared by hard-right, racist, sexist "deplorables" of the sort despised by Hillary Clinton and that voted for Donald Trump. The flag as a hijab is meant to emphasize the compatibility of Sharia with American sensibilities, as the bright red lipstick suggests a nod toward western sexual-aesthetic mores.

While Sarsour claimed to stand for freedom at both Standing Rock and the post-inaugural streets of Washington D.C., and is unquestionably receiving more attention now than at any time in her White House-visiting past, she also argues that Sharia Law is a good thing that "We The People" should embrace.

Interest free loans and credit cards sounds terrific.

Who, outside of bankers, wouldn't want to see interest free loans and credit cards? Of course, she fails to reference the little Koranic details, such as the practice of public head-chopping, that remains so popular throughout much of the Islamic world.

The core of Sharia, beyond its generous money-lending practices and public brutality, is second and third-class non-citizenship for dhimmis within an Islamic theocracy. Of course, "protected" or dhimmi status is offered only to "people of the book" which includes Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.

Everyone else caught within traditional Sharia-dominated societies received the choice of enslavement or death.

The highly-respected and recently deceased Professor Martin Gilbert reminds us that for Jews and Christians under Sharia in the Middle East:
There could be no building of new synagogues or churches.  Dhimmis could not ride horses, but only donkeys; they could not use saddles, but only ride sidesaddle.  Further, they could not employ a Muslim. Jews and Christians alike had to wear special hats, cloaks and shoes to mark them out from Muslims.  They were even obliged to carry signs on their clothing or to wear types and colors of clothing that would indicate they were not Muslims, while at the same time avoid clothing that had any association with Mohammed and Islam. Most notably, green clothing was forbidden...

Other aspects of dhimmi existence were that Jews - and also Christians - were not to be given Muslim names, were not to prevent anyone from converting to Islam, and were not to be allowed tombs that were higher than those of Muslims.  Men could enter public bathhouses only when they wore a special sign around their neck distinguishing them from Muslims, while women could not bathe with Muslim women and had to use separate bathhouses instead.  Sexual relations with a Muslim woman were forbidden, as was cursing the Prophet in public - an offense punishable by death.

Under dhimmi rules as they evolved, neither Jews nor Christians could carry guns, build new places of worship or repair old ones without permission,or build any place of worship that was higher than a mosque.  A non-Muslim could not inherit anything from a Muslim.  A non-Muslim man could not marry a Muslim woman, although a Muslim man could marry a Christian or a Jewish woman.

Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010) 32 - 33.

Ideological Square Pegs

The western-left, including the Democratic party, desperately wants to see a harmonious integration of Muslims from the Middle East and Africa into North America, Europe, and Australia.

They do so out of a moral imperative grounded in multiculturalism and universal human rights.

Thus pro-Israel Jewish progressives throughout the western world look at one another with their palms in the air saying, "What the hell do we do now?"

And this, it must be understood, points directly to a central problem not only between the Jewish and the western-left, but between the western-left and its own ideals.

You cannot stand for social justice if you give a pass to slavery throughout much of the Muslim world. You do not stand for social justice if you allow, without complaint, the hundreds of millions of Arab and Muslim women treated as chattel according to Sharia Law or to the genocidal Jew hatred that infuses between 75 and 95 percent of the Arab-Muslim Middle East.

Yet, at the same time progressives look upon the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors as something akin to Nazis if we don't do backflips at the thought of a mass Arab-Muslim influx into the United States.

Left, right, or center, the western Jewish community does not care about the skin color of immigrants.

We do not care about what particular patch of Earth that they happen to come from.

What we do care about is the transmission of Koranically-based hatred for the infidel onto the lands of our families because we've been down this road before.

If this makes us racist then it is equivalent to Jewish "racism" toward Nazis during World War II.

The problem is not Arabs or Africans or any other ethnic group. The problem is not even most Muslims who want nothing more than to raise their families and earn a living in peace.

The problem is Islam in its political aspect and that is precisely what the Left cannot bring itself to face.

49 comments:

  1. There are two factions that want the West destroyed:

    -Jihadists and very devout Muslims
    -the far left and some of the rest of the left

    It's no wonder they have formed an alliance of sorts; common goals.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There are 50 Muslim countries. Trump has temporarily banned entry from 7 of them. And the media and well-intentioned but moronic humanitarians are calling this a MUSLIM BAN!!!!! Geeze, can't anyone do math anymore? C'mon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The media have their narrative, and they're going to try and sell it no matter what. Facts don't sell anymore. Ironic, the people standing at JFK today with signs saying "we're all Muslims now." They don't know how true that statement really is, when a large segment of the population prefers a "narrative" which fits its biases to objective facts. I hope Trump crushes them.
      The more I learn, the more I've come to realize what an unmitigated disaster Obama was - even worse than my deepest suspicions. And the way he screwed Israel only AFTER the election just shows that he was the biggest "chicken shit" of all. Would any of us ever want a friend like that in our lives?
      In the meantime Susan Sarandon tweeted her 'solidarity' (and I really hate the cheap and easy way that term is often used) with Linda Sarsour. Yes, Ms. Sarandon, you are an actor, and therefore an expert on just about everything. They're going to be "feminists" together.
      I'd gag, but when I left the "left" my gag reflex somehow disappeared.

      Delete
  3. Well if sanctuary cities want to stand on their own principles then send 100% of all Muslm 'refugees' to the sanctuary city of their choice, for life or the duration of their residency in the US At the same time dial back all federal funding to these sanctuary cities. In fact the sanctuary cities should rent their own ships and planes and shuttle as many 'refugees' as they can possibly locate into their sanctuary cities as they can. If a few is a virtue then a quarter million is better. If a quarter million is better then 10 million is divine.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a beautiful poster. Reminds of another poster popular with progressives, that of a religious Jewish woman in traditional headgear with American Colors. I saw it at JFK airport during 2014 Gaza war, when they were chanting "we are all Jews now".

    ReplyDelete
  5. You're just wrong http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/gingrich-nice-sharia/491471/

    ReplyDelete
  6. "Israel’s sharia courts, which are supervised by the Ministry of Justice, allow the more than 15 percent of Israel’s population that is Muslim to seek religious recourse for their personal dilemmas".
    So? The main grievance Muslims have with Israel is precisely that Sharia is not enforced on dhimmis.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Joseph,
    Israel is not ruled by Sharia. Stop trying to loophole the conversation. You do understand what the conversation is around here, don't you? When we speak of Sharia, you know what we mean, don't you?
    Yet you come here and come up with, and this is so typical of you, obscurantist comments like, "You know what country has Sharia law? Israel." You purposefully do not elaborate or contextualize.
    When you do these things is it to show some sort of moral superiority? What are you really trying to do?

    ReplyDelete
  8. I saw someone on TV at the airport holding the exact poster which graces the top of today's post from Mike. So, the propaganda campaign is working on everyone who still, over a month in, still has not accepted the election results. These are our airports which have beefed up security measures which were unknown to Americans and most westerners until radical Islamic terrorism hit our shores.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Again though. We should not care what people do in their home, mosque, bedroom, etc. I mean that quite objectively. Sharia in the home should be fine, if only because it's a personal thing. How is going to Walmart with a Hijab any better worse or different than my Orthodox women who wear wigs and shawls and won't shake a man's hand. It's not. And how is a family sending their child to an Islamic school materially different from Hillel in so far as they meet more or less the same standards. And - we make all sorts of exceptions now, to groups like the Satmars who take the boys out of 'secular' education very early so they study Torah. This renders them functionally illiterate for the outside world. Some groups of Amish and Mennonites are similar in that approach. So let's not fly off the handle and demand the end of religious schooling, religious communities, and insular mores quite yet. We in the US don't do a good job of homogenizing our disparate cultures and communities to start with.

    Are there women and men who are oppressed by the Haredi life and who choose to leave? Yes. Are there people who are abused by family members in it and those abusers are protected? Yes. Do we toss it all out in the faint hope we're going eradicate stupidity? No, and why should we? The Amish have Rumspringa and the Satmars et al have cell phones. They CAN leave. And if a Muslim man or woman wants to leave, at least in this country, they can. Assuming they don't get honor murdered by family fanatics, which is still a crime.

    So much for the personal. Now the community. If infidel neighbors of Muslims want to live cheek and jowl to sharia or even embedded in it, that's a decision they're free to make, even if it harms them. To extend my Satmar analogy, if live on the periphery of them and you drive on Shabbat they will vandalize your car. That's given. If you don't like it don't live there. End of story. If gays want to live in the heart of an Islamic fundamentalist neighborhood and after the first 5 or 6 times they get assaulted and they still insist that not only is nothing wrong but they are the moral beacon of all our virtues for subjecting themselves to hate crimes, that's on them. We don't need to care. If women defend their own rapists in some mutated version of SJW activism, we can't worry about that either. I suppose if you wanted to make a case they should be locked up on a 5150, you can, but fat chance. That's what liberty means. Not just being allowed to do what makes sense to you but allowing others to do things that you despise.

    ReplyDelete
  10. OMG this is FUNNY!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExHd1ZGYCm8

    ReplyDelete
  11. Really, Joseph? Israel is a Sharia-ruled country? Is that what you're trying to sell here? Or is it your way of virtue signaling; of showing all us small-minded, racist bumpkins what an open-minded sophisticate you are?

    ReplyDelete
  12. 5 dead at mosque shooting in Quebec. My social media friends and many Canadians are of course blaming Trump. First they couldn't do math and now they can't do causality. sigh

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. "One witness, who wanted to remain anonymous, told Radio Canada, a Canadian Broadcasting Company French-speaking outlet, that the two gunmen were masked.

      'It seemed to me that they had a Quebecois accent. They started to fire, and as they shot they yelled, 'Allahu akbar!'"

      http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/01/30/at-least-five-killed-in-shooting-at-quebec-city-mosque.html

      We shall see.

      Delete
    2. I blame Trudeau who recently said Canada would welcome refugees banned by Trump. See, that's closer in time than Trumps actions so it has to be the catalyst.
      /snark

      More serious...there are quite a few white supremacists in Quebec so my guess is it's them.

      Delete
    3. Yup. Could very well be, my dear Doodad.

      One thing is certain, tho. Just as many on the Left hope that it was a white nationalist attack, so many on the Right hope that it was jihadi activity... and both do so for reasons of political convenience.

      Delete
    4. The masked men were Vladimir Putin and James Comey. Both were tutored in affecting French Canadian accents on instructions from Trump to his racist supporters. The giveaway was that even though both men were masked, one wasn't wearing his shirt and the other was really tall.

      Delete
    5. BTW Doodad,
      Ask your social media friends if they blame Obama for Fort Hood and the Orlando night club shootings.

      Delete
    6. Jeff, they are hopeless cases but unfortunately most are friends and loved ones so I let them rant on in their fantasy world. You know...you can lead a horse to water and all that. Then I come here for some reality. ;)

      Delete
    7. Oh, and mostly I post stuff about cats. LOL

      Delete
  13. I think the longer the government does not identify the mosque shooters the higher the probability they are themselves other Muslims.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think you are on to something. Just who were those masked men?

      Delete
    2. Trump supporters... clearly.

      Delete
  14. The police arrested a white guy who friends say

    "Has Right-Wing, Pro-Israel, Pro-Trump & Anti-Immigration Beliefs, a Former Classmate Says"

    They let the Arab sounding guy go

    http://heavy.com/news/2017/01/alexandre-bissonnette-quebec-city-canada-mosque-shooting-attack-suspect-gunman-shooter-photos-pictures-video-motive/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That guy looks like a real dweeb. I didn't know that support for Israel was an extreme right wing position. I thought it's just not a "progressive," pseudo-liberal (HT/ Isi Liebler) left wing position, or fetal position.

      Delete
    2. Well, it does seem counter-intuitive Jeff but consider the source; someone who argued with him; obvious;y a leftist who probably hates Israel and adores Palestinians so its anybody's guess what really is true. Lotta strange stuff going on with this story; first two then one gunman; an Arab suspect becomes a witness instead, both were Laval Univ students; one of the dead is a Laval Prof, etc.

      Delete
  15. Joseph, go to Daily Kos or something!!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Today I got an email from ADL expressing solidarity with the Muslims being detained or turned away at security checkpoints.

    ADL is now in my spam filter.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Given the idiocy contained in all this rage going around which manifests as supposedly smart people unable to do the math and see that, no, it's not a Muslim ban, and no it's not morally comparable to the plight of Jews in the 30's/40's, one wonders exactly what is going on.

    Grief? Obama gone and Hillary in tatters leaves NO leader for the faction so chaos reigns?

    Getting in one's shots while the fire is hot? Set the baseline? Opportunism for an ideology that can count on numerous confused, bewildered fellow travelers to boost the ranks?

    What?????

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have never seen such a degree of mass hysteria and toxic group-think in my entire life... and, in truth, it has very little to do with Donald Trump.

      Delete
    2. There is an article in today's Tablet by James Kirchuk worth a read:

      http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/223329/holocaust-exploitation-kirchick?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=39a549fcf6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-39a549fcf6-207583601

      Delete
    3. Terrific article, Jeff.

      This is a key point:

      "The problem with crying wolf about a supposed “Muslim ban” is that, should an actual prohibition on Muslims entering the United States ever be proposed, people will be less inclined to heed the protests against it."

      Delete
  18. Yeah Mike, agreed. I'm thinking it's more along the lines of PTSD now that God (Obama and all that entails) is "dead."

    ReplyDelete
  19. Trump needs to hire this lady. Sharp as a tack.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQVP3FBOCfg

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She talked about the alliance between the Islamic Right and the Western Left. Good for her!

      Delete
    2. They go together like Molotov and von Ribbentrop.

      Delete
  20. "Of course I hate Trump, he is Genghis Hitler...."

    Now of course if you have to broadcast your bona fides you're sounding like Rev Lovejoy of The Simpsons who's every answer to Ned is always "there's a no answer with an if and a slightly longer yes answer with a but".

    Is it a moral outrage? Is it really? Was this list of 7 countries an outrage when it was compiled by Obama years ago? In a country where Israel and the US and Jews IN the US are on wildly divergent paths is it relevant for diaspora Jews to suddenly pipe up about the Shoah? A thousand dead Jews in Israel in Arab violence since about 2002 and nary a peep from liberal Jews in the US (and about 10% of those dead Jews were US citizens). Are we really outraged that out of the 375,000 people from outside the US came to the US in the first 2 days of the 'ban' 107 were temporarily detained and of them, 6 or 7 were additionally detained or turned away?

    I've been detained, I've been delayed IN the US. And I hold a US passport. Should I strap a bomb to my chest and go on CNN and scream war crime? Should all the handwringing Liberal Jews who have in the last 8 years traveled to or through Israel attempt to fly into those predominately Muslim countries? Because they won't be allowed in.

    No I'm afraid that the left got wind of this and planned to be outraged in advance of an admittedly rocky implementation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And for a lot of folk it's just cool to be involved. Now there's talk of a general strike on Presidents Day.

      Delete
    2. They're overplaying their hand. Everything gets the same over the top reaction. They can no longer distinguish differences in anything. It will be an exhausting 4 or 8 years for them since everything from the sound of crickets to tanks in the streets will demand they take to twitter, the airwaves and possibly even the streets. The only thing that accomplishes is THEM not accomplishing anything. For instance, the Academy Awards has said BOTH, that they should devote the entire show to screaming about Trump AND that they should cancel and boycott their own show.

      Delete
    3. Some Dems are taking huge flack for co-operating with Trump appointees. The mantra is that they are traitors for "normalizing," Trump and will face opposition to their staying in office. Time for the Dems to purge these undemocratic morons.

      Delete
  21. "Tom Quiggin, a member of the Terrorism and Security Experts of Canada Network (TSEC) and author of an explosive “The Counter Jihad Report”, told CIJnews that “Real Syrian passports and other official documents have been fraudulently obtainable since at least the early 1990s. The documents are usually real, but the information in them is whatever the purchaser requests. Part of this system was set up to allow Syrian citizens, like Muslim Brotherhood members, who had poor relations with the government to get such documents.”

    He emphasized: “As such, any document from the Syrian government or a document such as a university certificate needs to be independently verified.”

    http://en.cijnews.com/?p=39492

    I don't recall any recent discussion of this in the mainstream media. Why is that?

    ReplyDelete
  22. "U.S. president Donald Trump said in an interview Sunday that a “very big decision” is coming soon on moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

    “I’m looking at it…We are studying it very, very long and hard. You know it’s a very big decision, because every president for the last number of presidents … they’ve come in and they were going to do it and then all of a sudden they decide they don’t want to get involved. It’s a big, big decision, but we’re studying the issue right now,” Trump told CBN’s David Brody in a 25-minute interview posted on the station’s website on Sunday.

    “I’ve always liked the concept of doing it, I will tell you that,” Trump continued. “I will have a decision in the not-too-distant future. … We are doing very detailed studies on that, and we’ll come out very soon. I hate to do that because that’s not usually me — studies — usually I do what’s right. But this has two sides to it; it’s not easy, and I will make a decision over the not-too-distant future.”

    http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2017/01/31/trump-says-big-decision-moving-us-embassy-jerusalem-coming-soon/

    Hmmmmmmm.....you know what that sounds like to me. A big truck in reverse gear. sigh

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Trust is earned. Let's see if Trump earns ours.

      Delete
    2. What's the point of having physical embassies in the first place?
      Isn't it a relic of a bygone age when you had to have local proxy due to communication and travel being slow and dangerous?
      All the embassies could be located in DC with the staff communicating with their respective counterparts remotely. Only consulates with visa issuing services might require local presence, and not for long. We already can be identified biometrically at the border with no papers need.
      What's left? Spying? Foreign travel perks for State Department employees?

      Delete