Category: Islamophobia

“History making” hijabi model steps down from L’Oreal campaign after her Twitter comments come to light

January 23, 2018 • 10:30 am

The other day HuffPo put up one of its usual hijabi-extolling posts, noting that model Amena Khan “made history” by being in a campaign for L’Oreal hair products—while wearing a hijab. I wasn’t going to post about it, as there’s not much new here beyond the usual “hijabi-is-a-hero” palaver, but developments yesterday changed that (see below). Click on the screenshot to go to the article:

As the article notes, “A blogger, model and co-founder of Ardere Cosmetics, Khan has called the new collaboration ‘game changing.’ She is the first woman who wears a hijab to be featured in a major mainstream hair ad.”

Well, you might wonder why L’Oreal would want to use a woman who covers her hair to advertise shampoo and conditioner. Khan explains it in the HuffPo video below:

Okay, fair enough. And, as Maajid Nawaz explains in this short video, although the decision to use a woman who covers her hair to advertise hair products seems weird, it’s based on financial calculations.

If L’Oreal wants to do this, fine. But what bothers me is the usual tactic of making a hijabi into some kind of hero. In this case, though, it’s a bit hypocritical. After all, why do Muslims wear the hijab? As I’ve discussed before, and as you can see on “Rules related to covering“—an Islamic website that mandates codes of dress—by and large the hijab is worn as a religiously-mandated sign of modesty: to hide a woman’s hair. The premise is that the sight of hair will arouse uncontrollable lust in men, and then bad things will ensue. The Muslim rules, which are patriarchal, deem it the woman’s responsibility to avoid exciting men by looking attractive.

But it’s not just the hair that should be covered: women must avoid any adornment or beautification that calls attention to them:

Their face and hands must not have any kind of beautification (zinat) on them.

Well, Khan wears so much makeup—including lipstick, eye shadow, eyeliner, blush, nail polish (also forbidden) and other products that women use that I’m not aware of—that it looks as if it’s been laid on with a trowel. (See other photos of her on her Twitter account). She also shapes her eyebrows, also a forbidden enhancement.  Have a look:

At the same time that she’s adhering to Muslim custom and covering her hair out of modesty, she’s doing all she can to call attention to her beauty,—to her face and nails and body. Well, she’s a model, and that’s what they do. But isn’t it a bit hypocritical to wear a garment whose purpose is to avoid exciting lust, while doing the exact oppostie with your face, hands, and feet? (Khan often wears sandals, a display of feet that is prohibited by the same dictates that prohibit showing hair).

I’ve said all this before, and felt no need yesterday to say to call out this dichotomy again, but then it was discovered that Khan has a rather dubious history of posting anti-Israeli messages on Twitter. These are not just criticisms of Israel occupying the West Bank or the like, but contentions that Israel has no right to exist—a sentiment that, I think, borders on anti-semitism.  Because of these, Khan pulled out of the campaign (it’s not clear to me whether she was actually fired.) You can see reports on her background and withdrawal at the BBC as well as  Israelly Cool. 

What did Amena Khan say on Twitter? Well, she’s deleted her tweets, but some were captured by the Daily Wire:

Another:

 

I won’t get into who is the deliberate murderer of children or whether Israel is an “illegal state”, but let’s just agree these tweets are clearly “anti-Israel”, and pretty much state that Israel has no right to exist.

When these tweets were revealed, Khan to “withdrew” from the campaign, offering a weird apology that said she didn’t really mean what she said about Israel:

L’Oreal, whether out of a dislike for Khan’s views or simple business acumen, was not reluctant to accept her “withdrawal.” From the BBC:

A spokesperson for L’Oreal Paris told Newsbeat: “We have recently been made aware of a series of tweets posted in 2014 by Amena Kahn, who was featured in a UK advertising campaign.

“We appreciate that Amena has since apologised for the content of these tweets and the offence they have caused.

“L’Oreal Paris is committed to tolerance and respect towards all people. We agree with her decision to step down from the campaign.”

I have to admit that there’s a bit of Schadenfreude here: while HuffPo and L’Oreal (and other places) were extolling this woman as a pathbreaker, a history maker, and even a kind of hero, at the same time she had a background of espousing hatred verging on the anti-Semitic. And to extol her “Muslim-ness” for wearing the hijab, while ignoring her attempts to call as much attention as possible to her beauty, smacks of either ignorance or hypocrisy.

I put a comment on the HuffPo site last night saying they should update their report, but of course they haven’t done it despite widespread reporting about Khan’s withdrawal from the beauty campaign. (Curiously, they’ve removed her Instagram posts from the site.)  Nor has HuffPo US posted any report of her withdrawal, although HuffPo UK has. But even HuffPo UK’s report is bizarre, putting scare quotes around Khan’s “anti-Israel” tweets:

A model who became the first woman in a hijab to feature in advertising for hair brand L’Oreal has stepped down from the “game changing” campaign after a series of “anti-Israel” tweets emerged.

Amena Khan, who announced her recruitment to the initiative just six days ago, said she decided to step down “because the current conversations surrounding it detract from the positive and inclusive sentiment that it set out to deliver”.

She wrote on Instagram of her regret over tweets dating from 2014, which had prompted accusations she held “anti-Israel” views.

Why the scare quotes around “anti-Israel”? Does that mean it’s questionable whether the tweets shown above really were against Israel? That’s the only reason I can imagine for the quotes, and it’s shameful. There’s no question about what those tweets say!

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Meanwhile, over at LBC Radio (“Leading Britain’s Conversation”), broadcaster James O’Brien, who appears to be an anti-Brexit liberal, makes clear to a Muslim mother why she shouldn’t force her eight-year-old daughter to wear the hijab. Click on the screenshot to get to the article and the 4.5-minute video.  Remember that while women in Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia have no choice about wearing the hijab (and, in Iran, demonstrated in the streets when the theocracy forced veiling in 1979), the issue of “choice” in Western countries, where girls are veiled very young, is often problematic.

My final remarks simply echo the sentiments of Alishba Zarmeen, a feminist activist from Pakistan:

One possible counterargument for people like Khan is that some women veil not out of modesty, but simply as a symbol of their religious faith. Fair enough, but, given the above, that’s like saying that some people waving the Confederate flag are only doing so as a symbol of their “Southern heritage.” Remember the “fucking history and traditional use of that symbol”!

h/t: Heather, Orli

A false report of hijab-cutting

January 16, 2018 • 9:00 am

I remember seeing this report four days ago on HuffPo (click screenshot to see the report).

The gist of it was that a young Canadian hijabi reported being attacked by a man wielding scissors:

An assailant, in two attempts within 10 minutes, cut the girl’s hijab using scissors while she was walking to school with her brother, a Toronto police spokeswoman said.

The hijab is a head covering worn by some Muslim women and girls. It covers the hair but not the face.

“I felt confused, scared, terrified,” Khawlah Noman, who is in Grade 6, told reporters at her school on Friday.

“I screamed. The man just ran away. We followed this crowd of people to be safe. He came again. He continued cutting my hijab again.”

Noman held a press conference at her school to report how terrified she was.

When I read this, I thought it was weird, as why would a man be carrying scissors around and b) attack the girl twice, the second time in a crowd? Wouldn’t someone intervene? While there are Muslim hate crimes in the U.S. and Canada, there have also been false reports of hijab-snatching (one, involving a Louisiana university student, is here; another, involving an 18 year old in New York, is here). I never automatically believe accusations unless there’s independent confirmation, but I didn’t write about the Canadian one because it was premature (police were investigating), and I didn’t want to doubt this publicly for obvious reasons.

Now, however, the story has proven to be false: the girl fabricated the story and police found that out (they won’t say how). This was reported by Global News Canada at 9 a.m. Chicago time yesterday and later by CBC News, which said this:

“After a detailed investigation, police have determined that the events described in the original news release did not happen,” police said.

. . . . “These allegations were extremely serious and not surprisingly, they received national and international attention,” police spokesperson Mark Pugash said in an interview.

“Investigators worked extremely hard since the allegations on Friday. They gathered evidence from a variety of sources,” before concluding the story was untrue, Pugash said, adding that the girl who reported the incident will not face any legal consequences.

Yet so far, 24 hours after the retraction, HuffPo US still hasn’t corrected its story (I’ve archived the story here). (HuffPo Canada, however, did report that the crime didn’t happen, as did Reuters, the source of HuffPo’s US story.) I can either wait to see how long it takes HuffPo US to correct its story—if it does!—or I can put a comment in the thread that they need to correct it. What should I do?

_________________

UPDATE: I see now that yesterday afternoon HuffPo US published a separate article saying the girl’s claim was false, but they haven’t yet corrected the original story. I’ll go leave a note that they should fix it.

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At any rate, the main story here is twofold. First, don’t automatically believe such claims, especially if there’s no corroboration. The “believe the victim” trope is especially tempting if the reported victimization plays into your political narrative, as it does for Authoritarian Leftists who automatically defend anything connected with Islam.

Now I’m not going to come down on the girl. She’s only 11, and probably wanted to attract attention, perhaps because she feels marginalized or ignored. She’s young, though the other two cases are less excusable and, in fact, at least one falsely reporting hijabi has been charged with a crime. Those who seem more at fault are the girl’s parents, if they encouraged her to file a report and go public, or, more likely, the political climate in which cutting a hijab appears to be a “hate crime”—far more serious than cutting someone else’s headgear. (I’ve long thought that we should abolish the notion of “hate crimes”.)

The second lesson of this story involves the reaction of people when this occurred. Rather than what I’d consider a “proper” response—which would be something like “false reporting is reprehensible because it unnecessarily uses up valuable police time, and also may make future and true reports seem less credible”—various organizations didn’t say a word against the false reporting, but simply used it to advance their narrative. For example, from the CBC (my emphasis):

Amira Elghawaby, a human rights advocate based in Ottawa, said she was saddened to learn that the girl’s story was not true, adding it will likely only serve to embolden “those who do hold discriminatory views of Muslims.”

Saddened? Isn’t she supposed to be glad that an Islamophobic crime didn’t occur? No, Elghawby is saddened because what really happened undermines her own narrative. I’d think that people would be glad that this crime, or any crime, didn’t happen, even if there was a false report. No, Elghawby and others rush to exculpate the girl and just strengthen their narrative. More from the CBC article:

[Elghawaby] also stressed that, as an 11-year-old, “she probably doesn’t really understand the full implications of what she’s done” and deserves compassion from adults.

“Hindsight is 20/20 and I’m sure the police, and the school and everyone will be reviewing how this was addressed. And we, as community members, all we want to do is think about this young girl — give her support — we don’t want her to be vilified,” said Elghawaby.

Support? Well, if she’s vilified or harassed, yes, she should be supported. But the girl should be told in no uncertain terms that was she did was bad and harmful to others.

Here’s another from Global News, again lacking a condemnation of the report but expressing the fear that it would make future reports less credible. (Guess what—it does! Investigate such reports by all means, but don’t accept them as true on their face, which HuffPo US apparently did). Several people even use this incident to rehash other instances of crimes against Muslims. (I add that any such crimes are reprehensible, as is bigotry that motivates them):

Pugash [a Toronto police spokesman] said it’s “very unusual” for someone to make false allegations of this type and said he hopes it will not discourage others from coming forward.

A Canadian Muslim organization expressed similar concerns, saying they feared others who experience hate crimes may be reluctant to report them out of worry that they will not be believed.

Safwan Choudhry, spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Canada, said it would also be naive to ignore the risk of potential backlash against the girl and her family as well as other Muslims in light of Monday’s news.

“While this incident has proven not to be true, we did all witness that just a couple years ago a Muslim mother was brutally beaten up in Toronto while she was dropping her kids off at school,” he said. In that alleged incident in 2015, police had said the woman was kicked and beaten and had her cellphone stolen by two males before she fled to a nearby school.

And of course Justin Trudeau, whom I’m starting to dislike, weighs in, but without condemning the false report by the girl:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who strongly denounced the alleged hijab-cutting incident on Friday, told The Canadian Press on Monday he would not comment on the findings of the police investigation. But he said there is nonetheless a pattern of hate crimes against religious minorities, particularly women, that needs to be addressed.

“This is something that we need to take very, very, very seriously and the pattern or trend lines that we’re seeing is … one of those warning signs about intolerance,” he said.

“And reminding people that we are a country that defends freedom of religion, defends freedom of expression, defends people’s rights to goto school and not be fearful or harassed is fundamental to who we are.”

What a mealy-mouthed git! The story was false, and he should condemn false reporting, for that even supports his narrative of fighting bigotry! If you want to fight bigotry, after all, you should condemn false reports of it, which make genuine reports seem less credible.

This story reminds me of those people who go on the internet and manufacture stories about having cancer, or other woes, as an excuse to ask for money. When such false stories are exposed, there’s nothing but dislike and shaming of the perpetrators. (You don’t even hear the claim that “false reports make it less likely that real people with cancer will be ignored.”) There’s no attempt to exculpate these people or remind everyone that other people do get cancer for real. The difference, of course, is that the hijab story plays into the Leftist narrative of Islamophobia while the cancer story does not.

Oh, and there’s another lesson. Perhaps journalists, rather than jumping on a story that’s congenial to their ideology, and implying it’s true, might wait a bit until a police investigation is conducted or the story is corroborated. After all, this investigation took only three days.

h/t: Cindy

Jeff Tayler profiles Inna Shevchenko

January 2, 2018 • 10:30 am

Several times I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Inna Shevchenko, Ukrainian head of the feminist organization FEMEN. Morally and philosophically, she’s years ahead of her age (only 27)—as well as of Authoritarian Leftists and feminists twice her age. She’s also been jailed, physically assaulted, and had her life threatened at gunpoint for protesting against patriarchal religion and sexism in Ukraine and Belarus.

Inna is ignored or criticized by some Leftists because she strongly attacks the anti-woman bigotry of Islam, and so she’s simply written off as an “Islamophobe.” But her protests (usually involving nudity) aren’t just against Islam, but against all religions and states that turn women into second-class citizens. The nudity thing I have mixed feelings about, for while it brings attention to FEMEN’s causes, it does so by attracting attention to women’s bare breasts.  On the other hand, I can understand this tactic, and of course Inna and the women who do this regularly get beaten up and jailed for it.

Inna now lives as a refugee in Paris (pursuing a master’s degree in political science), and is always in fear of her life, for that’s the upshot when you repeatedly criticize Islam and once helped edit an issue of Charlie Hebdo. Having met Inna and heard her speak, I’m a big admirer.

So is Jeff Tayler, Atlantic correspondent and author who’s put a new article up on Quillette, “Femen’s Inna Shevchenko: Fear of causing offense has cost too many innocent lives.” It’s a profile of Inna as well as an interview, and here you hear a young woman speaking with a wisdom that has yet to trickle down to the Authoritarian Left or those feminists who refuse to discuss or even mention the crippling sexism of Islam (see here and here).

Here are a few excerpts from Tayler’s piece. Jeff also links to two videos about Inna (one a full-length movie in French), and be aware that there are topless women, so don’t watch the clips at work.

When it comes to Islam’s relation to terrorism and women’s rights, the betrayal by many so-called liberals has really stung [Shevchenko]. “So many on the left – in English they’re called regressive leftists, but here we call them Islamogauchistes — have ceded to manipulations by Islamists. For these leftists, “communautairisme” – ethnic identity politics, roughly, a negation of the French ideal of égalité – “has become like a new faith.” She takes a deep breath. “When you see so many who should be supporting you give in to manipulation by your enemy, you just despair. There’s this argument out there that to criticize Islam is considered racist. This is toxic for public debate. I don’t have any problem with being called an Islamophobe. I am indeed a religio-phobe. It’s not a crime to be afraid of religion. To be afraid of religion as a woman is normal.”

She categorizes the regressive left’s stance on Islam as “insulting toward the Muslim community. It suggests that all believers are a homogenous group of people. Because of the regressive left’s outcry and hysteria, moderate Muslims like Maajid Nawaz and ex-Muslims like Sarah Haider and Ayaan Hirsi Ali have to struggle to be heard.”

How does she feel when regressive leftists tell her that her stance on Islam is “offensive?”

“It’s a sign that someone is trying to deprive me of my right to free speech and impose censorship on me. It’s a sign that they’ve given up their own right to freedom of expression because of a wish for comfort and a fear of being called racist. They’ve given up the common fight and gone over to the side of the Islamists. But the right to free speech is the most precious right, the foundation for all other freedoms.”

. . . She reserves intense scorn for those liberals who urge against criticizing Islam because this would, in their view, amount to helping the “narrative” about Muslims advanced by Trump, France’s Marine Le Pen, and other right-wing leaders. Such “liberals,” she says, are really proposing “to give up on the defense of women’s rights, to give up on the security and well-being of little girls, to give up our fundamental right of freedom of speech, to give up even our right to our own lifestyles and to dress the way we want and to laugh loud in the street, and all this just so as not to be associated with opinions of the far right! For me, this is no solution – this is cowardice and really dangerous. It will leave xenophobes as the only critics of Islam and give the stage to the far right. But this isn’t a question for the far right. It’s a question for society as a whole. When I hear liberals talking this way, I understand that they and the Islamists want the same thing: the silencing of progressive voices. If you try to silence these voices, you become an ally of Islamism.”

. . . I ask Shevchenko how she evaluates the struggle with Islamist terrorism in Europe and the United States. Her response is scathing:

“It took [the authorities] two years to even name the enemy, to even use the term ‘Islamic terrorism.’ They were afraid to associate terrorism with Islam, and oh God, that they might offend anyone! They needed so many deaths of innocent people in bars or café terraces here in Paris, before they would even name the enemy. This was a huge failure, an unjustifiable failure that cost so many lives. And it took so many horrible terrorist attacks in Europe for countries to even begin sharing intelligence. But we have to fight not particular people with guns, but the ideas that lead them to take up their guns; we have to go to the root of the problem and challenge these ideas better. We can’t be afraid of naming these ideas or laughing at them. Charlie Hebdo does this, and look at what happened to them. They’re still being threatened. We see how Europe and the United States are failing in fighting fundamentalist ideas, in challenging Islam as a set of dogmas. After all, again, it’s not a question of guys with guns, but of guys with dogmas in their heads, dogmas that lead them to pick up their guns.”

A related piece by Jeff on Islamophobia appeared in Quillette about a year ago, and bears reading again: “Free speech and terrorism—Whatever you do, don’t mention Islam!”

Here’s a TEDx video of Inna:

NYT: Quebec’s new ban on the face veil is Islamophobic

November 9, 2017 • 10:15 am

The New York Times continues its move toward the Regressive Left (really, Lindy West as a columnist?) with the op-ed below (click to go to the piece). The author, Martin Patriquin, is a journalist from Montreal who writes for iPolitics.

The story is that in mid-October Quebec passed a law banning face coverings (not hijabs or niqabs, but any covering of the face itself, which would also include face-obscuring scarves, sunglasses, or anti-disease masks) for those receiving public services or working in government jobs. Face coverings are not banned in most other circumstances, but of course nearly all those affected by the law will be face-veiling Muslim women, which the article at the top estimates to be about 100 women in a province of about eight million Quebecers. The link in the first sentence of this paragraph leads you to this:

The Quebec provincial legislature on Wednesday barred people who are wearing face coverings from receiving public services or working in government jobs, a move that opponents criticized as unfairly singling out Muslims.

The law will prohibit public workers like doctors and teachers from covering their faces at work, and will effectively bar Muslim women who wear face veils from using public transportation or obtaining public health care services, although it will be possible to apply for exemptions.

Proponents said the legislation would ensure state religious neutrality, and Quebec’s minister of justice, Stéphanie Vallée, who sponsored the bill, said it would foster social cohesion.

But Canadian Muslim groups have long complained that the legislation, which languished for years before it was passed, 66 to 51, on Wednesday, would penalize Muslims, particularly in a province where few women wear face coverings.

But this bit is weird (from top article):

Quebec’s justice minister, Stéphanie Vallée, recently confirmed that the ban would include not only Muslim veils but accessories like sunglasses as well. This is ripe for satire similar to that inflicted on Quebec’s infamous language police, which must ensure that English on signs is less prominent than the French. It will be up to bus drivers to not only ferry passengers, but to measure the size and tint of their spectacles.

Now I don’t approve of the no-sunglasses on public transportation law, which doesn’t comport with any good reason I can see for the other bans, but in general the law seems reasonable, especially given Quebec’s long history, documented in the article, of laïcité: the kind of public secularism practiced in France. (France banned all public wearing of face veils in 2010.) But truly, if they really don’t allow women to cover their faces with sunglasses in government jobs, then they also must prohibit women from wearing sunglasses on public transportation!).

Patriquin, however, sees Islamophobia in this practice.

Canada is perhaps best known for its cheery multiculturalism and its equally cheery prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Yet Quebec, the province where Mr. Trudeau spent much of his life, last month put a ban on the face coverings worn by a handful of Muslim women, prompting a fractious debate over the place of non-Christian religions in Canada’s only French-speaking province.

The law says that anyone giving or receiving a public service must do so without a covered face for “security or identification reasons.” It doesn’t ban head scarves. It doesn’t include the words “niqab” or “burqa,” Muslim headdresses that cover all or part of the face. And public officials have gone to great lengths to argue that the vague and poorly written law is not anti-Muslim.

Still, it’s hard to escape the law’s anti-Muslim intent: Few people other than some Muslim women cover their faces. It will marginalize Muslims, especially women, who will feel scrutinized, if not persecuted, even if they wear only a head scarf.

The law does have roots in Quebec’s history and culture. Quebecers have chronic discomfort with public displays of religion. Many people in the province have bleak memories of the era before the secular strides of the Quiet Revolution in 1960 when the Roman Catholic Church dominated public life.

Perhaps some people who voted for this law did indeed have “anti-Muslim intent,” but in fact there are good secular reason—reasons having nothing to do with Islam—to show your face in the situations covered under the law. Imagine being taught by somebody whose face you couldn’t see, or be treated by a doctor or meeting a government official whose face is obscured! Yes, there may be few Muslim women who cover their faces, but surely there will be more, and at any rate what matters here is the principle of seeing your fellow citizens face to face in important situations, not the number of people affected. And no, I don’t want to be taught by someone wearing sunglasses that cover their face, so any face-covering in this kind of non-public situation seems odious.

I have to say that I don’t object to this law. Rather, I favor it, and for the same reason Christopher Hitchens favored the anti-veiling law of France passed seven years ago. Writing in Slate in 2010, Hitchens emphasized that the secular value of seeing someone’s face in certain situations overrides whatever religious arguments there are for veiling:

Ah, but the particular and special demand to consider the veil and the burqa as an exemption applies only to women. And it also applies only to religious practice (and, unless we foolishly pretend otherwise, only to one religious practice). This at once tells you all you need to know: Society is being asked to abandon an immemorial tradition of equality and openness in order to gratify one faith, one faith that has a very questionable record in respect of females.

. . . Not that it would matter in the least if the Quran said otherwise. Religion is the worst possible excuse for any exception to the common law. Mormons may not have polygamous marriage, female circumcision is a federal crime in this country, and in some states Christian Scientists face prosecution if they neglect their children by denying them medical care. Do we dare lecture the French for declaring simply that all citizens and residents, whatever their confessional allegiance, must be able to recognize one another in the clearest sense of that universal term?

So it’s really quite simple. My right to see your face is the beginning of it, as is your right to see mine. Next but not least comes the right of women to show their faces, which easily trumps the right of their male relatives or their male imams to decide otherwise. The law must be decisively on the side of transparency. The French are striking a blow not just for liberty and equality and fraternity, but for sorority too.

I dislike talk of “rights”, and of “right X trumps right Y”, as assertions of “rights” are not arguments. But what I believe Hitchens is talking about here are societal values: the utilitarian value in society of mandating seeing someone’s face in certain situation versus that of allowing religious people to dress in the way their religion dictates.

How I miss that man! At any rate, Patriquin apparently sees no public, secular value in seeing one’s face in these situations, and simply calls the bill anti-Muslim—a violation of the freedom of religion. Would he mind if his kids were taught by a teacher whose head was completely covered? Or that people with covered faces could walk into banks? Or if someone with a sack over their head testified in court? He argues this:

Religious face coverings are divisive, even among Muslims. Yet the freedom to practice one’s religion is enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The National Council of Canadian Muslims, along with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and a Quebec Muslim who wears a veil, recently filed a legal challenge of the law, calling it a collection of “blatant and unjustified violations of freedom of religion.”

Quebec’s government has not only opened itself up to legal challenges, it has also put the province in the dubious company of countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, where the governments also dictate what a woman can or cannot wear.

Sorry, but there is no comparison here. Muslims are allowed to cover their faces under the new law, except in situations where it violates the “equality and openness” principle underscored by Hitchens. (I still object to the public transportation thing.) In Iran and Saudi Arabia, all women have to veil, and for religious rather than secular reasons. Further, the law in Quebec applies to both sexes, not just to women, and so is not nearly as gender-oppressive as what Saudi Arabia and Iran do. As Hitchens points out in his piece, the issue of whether Muslim “choose” to wear the veil is up for grabs, and my own view is that this kind of “choice” very often reflects familial and social pressure that begins at an early age.

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ homophobia

July 19, 2017 • 8:45 am

The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “homo”, came with this note:

Today’s strip is inspired by something that happened at last week’s London Pride march.

What happened is that ex-Muslims at the march were accused of “Islamophobia” by the East London Mosque because they were carrying signs that indicted Islamic countries and mosques for demonizing homosexuality, which of course many of them do. Calling that out is not “Islamophobia”; but of course Islam comes with an “I’m offended!” card that allows you unlimited license to conflate anti-Muslim bigotry with criticism of Islamic oppression and doctrine.

Here’s a photo of the demonstration and some reportage by The Free Thinker:

About 20 CEMB [Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain] activists marched on Saturday with placards bearing a range of messages from “We’re here, we’re kaffir, get used to it” to “Allah is gay”. Several wore body paint across their chests depicting eyes crying rainbow-coloured tears.

Maryam Namazie, spokeswoman for CEMB and a Freethinker columnist, said the group was protesting the treatment of LGBT people in states under hardline Islamic leadership, such as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran – where homosexuality is a capital offence.

Namazie told the Standard it was “apt” to name the East London Mosque on the placards.

At Pride, we were highlighting the 13 states under Islamic rule that kill gay men – 14 if we include Daesh-held territories.

Namazie said that the signs did not say “Fuck Islam” but “Fuck Islamic homophobia”, adding:

In my view Islam, like all religions, is homophobic. Why is it not possible to say this without fear of reprisal or accusations of Islamophobia?

She said:

Pride is full of ‘God is gay’ and ‘Jesus had two fathers’ placards as well as those mocking the church and priests and pope, yet hold a sign saying ‘Allah is gay’ – as we did – and the police converge to attempt to remove them for causing offence.

For Regressive Leftists, of course, “Islamophobia” is a far worse offense than homophobia. And that prioritization is itself offensive to real progressives. But on to Jesus and Mo, in which Mo expresses the hypocrisy of the excuse-Muslims “soft racism”:

Linda Sarsour plays the victim in the Washington Post, normalizing the bad bits of Islamic theology

July 10, 2017 • 10:00 am

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.”      —George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language’

Linda Sarsour is, as I wrote yesterday, a canny and self-promoting woman—a hijabi who believes in sharia law, demonizes Israel, accepts BDS and a “one state solution” that would wipe out Israel, is notably silent about outrages committed against women by Middle Eastern Muslim lands (including Palestine, the country of her ancestors), and admires some really dubious Muslims who favor parts of sharia law like corporal punishment. I am appalled that she’s seen as a feminist hero instead of people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Sarah Haider—women who left Islam largely because of its oppression of women. Indeed, Sarsour sports the very symbol of that oppression on her head.

Sarsour is a feminist hero because she’s female, hates Donald Trump (I agree!), and manages to convey a message of Islamism that is whitewashed to make it acceptable to Westerners. Plus she’s seen as a double minority: a woman of color. One of those bits of whitewashing is her use of the word “jihad”, which she employed in her recent speech to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). She explained that the “jihad” against Trump she’s promoting—as well as against the “fascism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia” in the White House—is simply a peaceful political struggle. Here are her words from the ISNA speech:

I hope that … when we stand up to those who oppress our communities, that Allah accepts from us that as a form of jihad, that we are struggling against tyrants and rulers not only abroad in the Middle East or on the other side of the world, but here in these United States of America, where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House.

And she explained that pretty clearly afterwards as a nonviolent struggle. But I still think it’s disingenuous for her to use a word that hasn’t historically been associated with a mere struggle in politics, but with physical battle against the enemies of Islam. Here’s how Wikipedia begins its article in the word:

Jihad (English: /dʒɪˈhɑːd/; Arabic: جهاد‎‎ jihād [dʒɪˈhaːd]) is an Arabic word which literally means striving or struggling, especially with a praiseworthy aim. It can have many shades of meaning in an Islamic context, such as struggle against one’s evil inclinations, an exertion to convert unbelievers, or efforts toward the moral betterment of society, though it is most frequently associated with war. In classical Islamic law, the term refers to armed struggle against unbelievers,  while modernist Islamic scholars generally equate military jihad with defensive warfare. In Sufi and pious circles, spiritual and moral jihad has been traditionally emphasized under the name of greater jihad. The term has gained additional attention in recent decades through its use by terrorist groups.

Now right-wing outlets picked up Sarsour’s use of the word “jihad” and went nuts, saying that a left-wing icon was calling for physical jihad, which, as I said, has historically meant killing enemies of Islam.  Yesterday I cut Sarsour some slack since she clarified what she meant by the word. But now I think she was being more than a bit disingenuous, using a word in an unconventional way to de-fang and “normalize it”, something that Orwell wrote about in his essay “Politics and the English Language“. Although Sarsour could have used the word “struggle” instead, she chose not to, and I think it’s because she’s trying to foster acceptance of Islam and some of its pernicious doctrines that revulse Americans—by making them all seem innocuous and even progressive.  She does the same thing with sharia law (see below). As my friend Malgorzata wrote me:

Aren’t there enough English words to convey the meaning she wanted to convey to the English-speaking public without trying to remove the blood from this one? How would you react if somebody called for a “crusade” against Islamists (not Islam!)? I wouldn’t be happy, taking into account the historical connotations of the word. [Sarsour] was devious and did this absolutely on purpose and it was deplorable. . . .In today’s world, calling to jihad against anybody is horrid, no matter how you try convince people that you mean something else. If she really did mean a peaceful protest, she should’ve said so without using a word which is dripping with fresh blood.

As the Tablet (a Jewish site) noted:

Indeed, Sarsour was no more calling for Trump’s death than Kathy Griffin was when she posed for a picture with a mask of the president’s decapitated head. And just like the comedienne, Sarsour wanted to have it both ways—get lots of attention for having done something sensational, and then play the role of victim when some of the attention invariably turned critical. What Sarsour did was raise the ante and the stakes—by putting it in the context of Arab political discourse.

. . . And that’s the issue, less the word itself but the context, which is the source of the rhetoric used to justify the mass murder of other Arabs, as well as Americans and Israelis and, across Europe and Asia and elsewhere, Jews and Christians and Hindus, etc. Is it possible that Linda Sarsour really didn’t understand the particular resonances of the word employed in the context of American politics? Of course she knew. She could’ve delivered a standard Trump-hating speech about immigration and Islamophobia. But comparing an American president to the Middle Eastern tyrants and oppressors like Bashar al-Assad who murder children from the sky is what distinguished her.

She used the word “jihad” deliberately, in order to split her audience. Anyone who criticized her use of extremist language would be painted as a bigot alongside those who really are bigots. Those who defended her right to use extremist language would be dragged along with those who really are extremists.

It’s instructive that neither Sarsour’s critics nor defenders have noted what is perhaps the most toxic part of her speech. “You can count on me,” she told an audience of American Muslims, “to use my voice to stand up, not only to people outside our community who are repressing our communities, but those inside our communities who aid and abet the oppressors outside our community.”

Right, it’s a threat. If you don’t see things like she does, even if you’re Muslim, then you’re in for it— Linda Sarsour is watching. Linda Sarsour has your name.

As you’ll see below, she has the name of Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz, and slanders him, just as she slandered Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

And that is why Sarsour is dangerous, and a terrible icon for progressivism. She’s trying to make the words “sharia” and “jihad” into progressive terms. Then, when they’re used in their more oppressive or bellicose sense, people will get confused and assume by default that they’re “words of peace.”

Along with that, Sarsour is pulling a classic Regressive Leftist tactic—playing the victim—in a new column in the Washington Post, “Islamophobes are attacking me because I’m their worst nightmare.” The article is pretty much of a hack job: she reiterates that she used jihad properly, in the sense of a struggle, and before it was “hijacked by Muslim extremists and right-wing extremists alike [JAC: ??], leaving ordinary Muslims to defend our faith and in some some cases silenced [sic].” It’s also a disgusting piece of self promotion.

In her piece, Sarsour reiterates how she used the word “jihad” nonviolently, and asserts that she is “an effective leader for progress” and “a familiar presence and name in American living rooms when it comes to nonviolent resistance and activism.” This reflects, I think, her longstanding narcissism, ambition, and desire to dominate the headlines, as reflected in this odious trio of tweets (the second, at least, has been deleted) showing her desire for renown:


In her piece Sarsour also parades the threats that she and her family have gotten (has she reported them to the police?), which if genuine are truly reprehensible. But to flaunt them in this way also allows her to play the victim, distracting attention from her activities and gaining her sympathy from that part of the Left who sees Muslims as people of color and therefore oppressed. (Richard Dawkins makes light of his threats, reading them for comedic effect, but of course he’s a cisgender old white male, so the threats wouldn’t get him sympathy anyway.) I deplore threats, but I also don’t like them used as a way to gain sympathy. What’s important is the message, not the messenger.

Here’s how Sarsour has tried to normalize sharia law, which all over the world is used to oppress women, gays, non-Muslims, and apostates:

I’m wondering what aspects of sharia law Sarsour really likes.

Finally, she claimed 11 months ago that Maajid Nawaz was “on the payroll” of white supremacists and right wing Zionists (see below). Nawaz warned us today, as I’m doing now, that we shouldn’t adopt Sarsour as our “new hope.” She is not progressivist; she is devious and anti-progressive. Yes, she deplores Trump, but so do lots of people whom I wouldn’t look to as beacons of true progressivism. Believe me, we wouldn’t want a country in which Sarsour was in charge.

The hijab as a Confederate flag

June 4, 2017 • 11:22 am

Ali Rizvi gave an excellent talk yesterday at the Imagine No Religion meeting, a talk about how radical Islam has cowed Leftists by using the ambiguous but nasty term “Islamophobe”, which terrifies Leftists almost as much as the word “racist”.  That’s why criticism of Islam by the Left is much more muted than criticism of other faiths. And that is exactly what those Muslims (and organizations like CAIR) want: they want not only bigotry against Muslims stopped—and I fully agree—but they also want criticism of their faith stopped.

But I don’t agree that religious dictates should be immune from criticism: as Ali said, “Ideas do not deserve respect, it is people who deserve respect.” He added that those Leftists who either refuse to criticize Islam or—like the Islam-osculators at HuffPo—even hold it up as a force for good and a “religion of peace,” are thus victims of terrorism just as much as those who are afraid of being physically attacked. Such apologists are exactly what Islamist terrorists hope to produce—as they make their religion the only one immune from criticism.

I asked Ali what he thought of the hijab fetish we see in the West: the adulation of women wearing hijabs (even “voluntarily”), and the claim, made by women like Linda Sarsour, that veiling is somehow a sign of feminism and women’s empowerment. Ali’s reply was a good one, and went something like this:

“My wife has a good take on this. She sees the hijab in the same way she sees the Confederate flag. You’re free to wear it, just as you’re free to wave the Confederate flag, but be aware of what it stands for historically.”

Ali called for all of us to speak up against the pernicious and oppressive dictates of Islam (he’s an apostate, raised as a Muslim in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia). It is through our speaking up, he said, that we will eventually dispel the opprobrium attached to the term “Islamophobe.” In truth, “Islamophobia” means “fear of Islam,” not “fear of or bigotry against individual Muslims.” In the former sense, and as a critic of Islam and one fearful of its ideological consequences, I’m an Islamophobe.