Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Linda Sarsour

Showing posts with label Linda Sarsour. Show all posts

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Linda Sarsour and her Media Allies (Daled Amos)

I have seen young people and older people too, who are good democratic liberals, lovers of peace and gentleness, struck dumb with admiration for individuals threatening or using the most terrible violence for the slightest and tawdriest reasons. They have a sneaking suspicion that they are face to face with men of real commitment, which they themselves lack. And commitment, not truth, is believed to be what counts.
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p. 221

Bloom was writing in the 1980's, basing himself on his experiences on college campuses in the 1960's.

Today, we witness a more nuanced approach, where "activists" under the banner of "human rights" use their halo -- some times as a shield, other times as a hammer -- preaching about commitment to high ideals and human values, while appealing to people's baser instincts.

Linda Sarsour is one such "activist." The deserving cause of the Muslim rights in America apparently cannot be achieved unless Islamophobic and alt-right villians can be revealed and attacked in order to increase her audience and galvanize it into action.

Lahav Harkov and Petra Marquardt-Bigman, among others have examined Sarsours hateful statements and tweets and have written about what they reveal about her. Yet despite what Sarsour says, not matter how nasty she may get, her self-proclaimed dedication to human rights suffices for the media to raise her on a pedestal -- and protect her from criticism.

Not that this is surprising.
We have seen this before.

In April, The New York Times came out with an Op-Ed entitled,Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons, by Marwan Barghouti, described as "a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian." It was only later, in reaction to criticism, that the paper decided to describe Barghouti more fully in a correction:

This article explained the writer’s prison sentence but neglected to provide sufficient context by stating the offenses of which he was convicted. They were five counts of murder and membership in a terrorist organization. Mr. Barghouti declined to offer a defense at his trial and refused to recognize the Israeli court’s jurisdiction and legitimacy. [emphasis added]

Marwan Barghouti. Credit: BDalim, Wikipedia

Not content, The New York Times came out with an article about Marwan Barghouti's wife: Fadwa Barghouti is the unflappable voice of a jailed Palestinian freedom fighter -- this despite the admission in the piece that

Reflecting on that time, Fadwa repeats over and over that Marwan never killed with his own hands. He led, she says, but he never killed. [emphasis added]

The New York Times is similarly glowing about Sarsour, proclaiming: Linda Sarsour Is a Brooklyn Homegirl in a Hijab:

She has emerged in the last few years not only as one of the city’s, and the country’s, most vocal young Muslim-American advocates, but also as a potential — and rare Arab-American — candidate for office.

Linda Sarsour. Credit: Wikipedia

Again, The New York Times is more interested in her commitment as a "vocal young Muslim-American advocate" than it is interested in what she actually says and how she says it. The most controversial thing it quotes her saying is a gratuitous swipe at Israel:

Then, last summer, Mr. Brown was killed in Ferguson. “I was sitting here in Brooklyn,” Ms. Sarsour said, “and heard he’d gotten shot and was lying in the street for four and a half hours. I was like, ‘Wait a minute. This happened in the United States of America? You hear about that happening in Palestine.’

The New York Times does not mention her attacks on critics, such as Sarsour's tasteless tweet threating to take away the vagina of female genital mutilation survivor Hirsi Ali.

This is a real tweet from #WomensMarch organizer @lsarsour:https://t.co/VHEMJpQOPh

um. pic.twitter.com/cfIDQpSP9y
— Nurit Baytch (@NuritBaytch) January 26, 2017

Meanwhile, The Washington Post ran an article in February, March catapults Muslim American into national spotlight and social-media crosshairs describing her as "one of the highest-profile Muslim American activists in the country" who "despite a barrage of hateful messages and violent threats targeting her on social media" has "continued a punishing schedule of activism as she has sought to bring her heightened profile, and a new sense of what is possible, to a range of resistance movements that are developing in the first weeks of President Trump’s administration."

As Petra Marquardt-Bigman writes, the Washington Post article:

allows Sarsour to airily dismiss a vile tweet she posted in 2011 fantasizing about Brigitte Gabriel and Ayaan Hirsi Ali “asking 4 an a$$ whippin’” and expressing the “wish” to “take their vaginas away” because “they don’t deserve to be women.” All Sarsour has to do now is to shrug off her vicious outburst as “stupid” and to dismiss it as simply a reflection of her being “a brash New Yorker.” An open threat against Brigitte Gabriel also posted by Sarsour remained unmentioned

The Washington Post is nothing if not consistent.

Just as The Washington Post frames Sarsour's critics as reacting to her rise in the public eye, when Sarsour spoke about jihad against the White House, the headline did not address the provocative term but rather the reaction to it: Muslim activist Linda Sarsour’s reference to ‘jihad’ draws conservative wrath.

Lee Smith noted that Sansour did something sensationalist, and then played the victim -- aided by The Washington Post.

More importantly, Smith notes Sarsour's message to the American Muslim community which the media ignored:

“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.

James Kirchick writes that the whitewashing of Sarsour in the media is common. She uses the term "Islamophobia" as a catchall phrase to tar her critics, and the media plays along:

The point of the term “Islamophobia” as used by Sarsour and her sympathizers is very often a self-interested and dishonest one—namely, to delegitimize critics by lumping them in with fringe racists and bigots. “Feminist activist Linda Sarsour has become one of the far right’s favorite targets,” declares Newsweek. The Times, meanwhile, characterizes her “critics” as “a strange mix, including right-leaning Jews and Zionists, commentators like Pamela Geller, and some members of the alt-right.” All this is being done in an effort to excuse Sarsour’s own extremism.

But even when the media plays along, there appear to be limits.

This week, the Women’s March came out with a tweet celebrating the birthday of Assata Shakur, the black militant who killed a New Jersey state trooper in a 1973 shootout. She later broke out of prison and escaped to Cuba in 1984, where she remains on the FBI's “most wanted terrorists” list. Not content with the one tweet, the group then came out with a series of tweets defending what they had done.

Jake Tapper criticized them.

Shakur is a cop-killer fugitive in Cuba. This, ugly sentiments from @lsarsour & @dykemarchchi ...Any progressives out there condemning this? https://t.co/rXnHLgE2hR
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 18, 2017

In response, Sarsour lashed out:

.@jaketapper joins the ranks of the alt-right to target me online. Welcome to the party.
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) July 18, 2017

Alexander Nazaryan of Newsweek reported

But the criticism leveled on Tuesday against Tapper by liberal activist and Women’s March co-founder Linda Sarsour has struck many as malicious, misguided and unjustified, though others defended her ferocity...Sarsour chose to respond by branding Tapper a member of the alt-right, a loosely defined movement that includes nativists, nationalists, anti-Semites, Islamophobes and anti-establishment meme warriors. Under no definition of the term, however, would Tapper, who is Jewish and a long-standing member of the Beltway media-political nexus, belong in that category.

In the long term this is not going to have an effect on Sarsour's tactics, nor on the attitude of the liberal media.

But it was refreshing to see the media's blinders momentarily removed.

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Linda Sarsour’s jihad – with all the context her fans prefer to ignore (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

If you are a Trump supporter, Linda Sarsour is a dream come true: no matter how outrageous her views and statements are, the mainstream media will always rush to defend this leader of the “resistance” by dutifully echoing her self-serving claims that her critics are evil right-wingers motivated by Islamophobia and other vile resentments. In the process, being left-wing – let alone progressive – is redefined in ways that will be unpalatable to many reasonable left-leaning people (like me!). While few who identify as center-left might ever consider supporting Trump, the cult of Linda Sarsour will surely help many understand why a lot of Americans used their vote to express disgust with the liberal elites.

Sarsour’s latest achievement is making it somehow “progressive” to call on Muslims to engage in “jihad” against Trump and his administration. Calling for “jihad” these days is, as far as Sarsour’s apologists are concerned, an entirely harmless thing – after all, Sarsour just meant a “jihad” of political activism fueled by the perpetual outrage she so often advocates…

But we should actually all agree with Sarsour and her fans that the context matters, because tellingly, many of her defenders preferred NOT to link to the video that shows Sarsour’s relevant remarks in full. So let’s check out the truly shocking context of her call for “jihad” during her keynote address at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

Early on in her speech (at around 3.45), Sarsour emphasized her conviction that “we are on this earth to please Allah and only Allah.” She repeated this theme towards the end of her speech (after 20.00):

“Our number one and top priority is to protect and defend our community; it is not to assimilate and to please any other people and authority. […] And our top priority, even higher than all those [other] priorities, is to please Allah and only Allah.”

As Sarsour explained, she came to this insight thanks to her greatly admired “mentor, motivator, encourager” Siraj Wahhaj (who was in the audience). According to Wikipedia, Siraj Wahhaj is “an African-American imam of Al-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, New York and the leader of The Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA).” Born Jeffrey Kearse, Wahhaj converted to Islam as a young man and joined the Nation of Islam, where it was acceptable to voice his belief that “white people are devils.” He eventually became a Sunni Muslim and “has made statements in support of Islamic laws over liberal democracy.” He has endorsed sharia punishments such as stoning for adultery and mutilation for theft and has expressed the view that “Islam is better than democracy. Allah will cause his deen [Islam as a complete way of life], Islam to prevail over every kind of system, and you know what? It will happen.”

Given the admiration Sarsour professed to feel for Wahhaj and the fact that she indicated he also admires her, it’s perhaps time to wonder what exactly she means when she so often emphasizes that she is “unapologetically Muslim”.

Unfortunately, the small part of her speech that her defenders quote as the relevant context for her call to wage “jihad” against Trump and his administration is hardly reassuring given that Sarsour depicts the US as a country where minorities suffer terrible oppression under the cruel rule of “fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes.”

Sarsour was no doubt delighted when her defenders rushed to post articles claiming that “the right freaked out” about her call for “jihad” because “they don’t know what it means.” The problem with the argument that Sarsour’s evil right-wing critics don’t know what “jihad” really means is that it focuses on complex and contentious theological debates among Muslim scholars while conveniently ignoring centuries of Muslim imperialism, starting with Islam’s founder Muhammad, who has been politely described as “Islam’s first great general and the leader of a successful insurgency.” Less politely, Muhammad has been called a “warlord” – and if you don’t like what Sam Harris has to say on the topic, you can turn to the immensely influential “Global Mufti” Yusuf Qaradawi, who once explained:

“Allah wanted Muhammad’s life to be a model. For instance, if we examine the question of marriage, he who has one wife can follow the Prophet Muhammed since most of the time Muhammad lived with one woman; whoever has more than one wife can also [follow Muhammad’s example]. He who marries a virgin, he who marries a non-virgin… He who marries a young woman, he who marries an old woman [all can follow Muhammad’s example]. … Similarly, Allah has also made the prophet Muhammad into an epitome for religious warriors [Mujahideen] since he ordered Muhammed to fight for religion.”

And the very first time Muhammad fought a bloody “jihad” for the religion he founded, he justified it with exactly the kind of threats that US Muslims face according to Linda Sarsour. Sarsour’s speech was full of alarming hints about the dangers threatening Muslims in America, where “fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes [are] ruling in the White House.” She issued an impassioned call for Muslim unity in the face of threats from the “Islamophobia industry” (after 10.00) and even went so far as to assert: “Unity is about survival for the Muslim community.” She also invoked the scenario of “a potentially horrific time that could come if we as a community are not united as one ummah as we are supposed to be.” Sarsour insisted that Muslims were unprepared for “the potential chaos” that the Trump administration might inflict on them and asserted that Trump was determined to test how much US Muslims “can endure.”

It is also noteworthy that in the wake of the controversy that erupted after her call for “jihad” against the Trump administration, Sarsour tried to claim that “the majority of Muslims” and “experts” would not misunderstand what she meant when she encouraged “jihad”.

Unfortunately, this is a very shaky claim given that throughout Islamic history, the kind of threats that US Muslims face according to Sarsour have been used to justify “jihad” as understood by most of Sarsour’s critics. It is no coincidence that “the 199 references to jihad in the most standard collection of hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, all assume that jihad means warfare.”

There seem to be very little reliable data on how “the majority of Muslims” nowadays understand jihad. Gallup once asked the question in a survey conducted in 2002 and admitted rather reluctantly that “a significant minority” of the responses “did include some reference to ‘sacrificing one’s life for the sake of Islam/God/a just cause,’ or ‘fighting against the opponents of Islam’” and that in some of the countries surveyed, responses like these even constituted “the single most identifiable pattern.”

But there are a lot of reliable surveys showing that hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world supported Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and believe that “suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies.”

It is hardly encouraging that support for this kind of jihadi terrorism dropped most dramatically in countries where Muslims learned the hard way that they themselves could become targets when some of their fellow Muslims feel they are not sufficiently pious.

Moreover, given that Sarsour often emphasizes her Palestinian identity, it’s rather dismal to contemplate what kind of “jihad” was popular among the majority of Palestinian Muslims in the first years after 9/11.

Last but not least, it seems doubtful that there is much reason to cheer when it turns out that “only” eight percent of American Muslims think that suicide bombings targeting civilians in defense of Islam are often or at least sometimes justified, while another five percent feel they are “rarely” justified. To be sure, 81 percent of US Muslims told pollsters such acts of terrorism can never be justified, but if Sarsour is right and there are about five million Muslim Americans, the results from the cited 2013 survey would mean that 50.000 US Muslims think suicide bombings of civilians in defense of Islam are often justified; another 350.000 feel such acts of terrorism are sometimes justified, while an additional 250.000 see them as rarely justified.

Furthermore, given Linda Sarsour’s frequent efforts to mobilize young Muslims, the alarming results of a Pew poll published ten years ago are particularly noteworthy:

“the survey finds that younger Muslim Americans – those under age 30 – are both much more religiously observant and more accepting of Islamic extremism than are older Muslim Americans. Younger Muslim Americans report attending services at a mosque more frequently than do older Muslims. And a greater percentage of younger Muslims in the U.S. think of themselves first as Muslims, rather than primarily as Americans (60% vs. 41% among Muslim Americans ages 30 and older). Moreover, more than twice as many Muslim Americans under age 30 as older Muslims believe that suicide bombings can be often or sometimes justified in the defense of Islam (15% vs. 6%).”

Sarsour has worked as a Muslim community organizer for some 15 years, and as her rhetoric shows, she is encouraging the trend to more religiosity and less assimilation while studiously avoiding any criticism of the extremism that has been espoused by a not inconsiderable number of young US Muslims. Instead, she advocates enthusiastically for a convicted murderous terrorist like Rasmea Odeh and preaches perpetual outrage while calling for “jihad” without acknowledging what jihadist have wrought just in the 21st century.

Lee Smith put it best in a Tablet post:

“The reality is that the debate over Islamic semantics has already been resolved—not in American newsrooms or the partisan halls of US politics, but on the killing fields of the Middle East. The people who are cutting each other’s heads off on both sides of the sectarian divide across Syria and Iraq, crucifying civilians, making sex slaves of women and children, and indulging in other inhuman depredations, have justified the murder of their co-religionists and others according to the logic of jihad. By all means, feel free to challenge that particular interpretation of the word, but at least have the decency to acknowledge your intervention comes in the context of nearly half a million dead.”

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Jihad, crusades and Linda Sarsour

Linda Sarsour recently stirred up a great deal of attention when she gave a speech where she called for "jihad" against Donald Trump but made it clear that she was not referring to anything violent. As reported in the Washington Post:

In her speech, Sarsour told a story from Islamic scripture about a man who once asked Muhammad, the founder of Islam, “What is the best form of jihad, or struggle?
“And our beloved prophet … said to him, ‘A word of truth in front of a tyrant ruler or leader, that is the best form of jihad,'” Sarsour said.
“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.”

As Lee Smith noted, Sarsour knew exactly what she was saying by using the word "jihad" here, to paint those who are offended at the term as bigots.

I am a bit more interested in her story about Mohammed's use of the term.

The source for that story is a fairly obscure hadith, Musnad Aḥmad 18449. Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal merits only a small mention in Wikipedia; although the author was an early influential Muslim theologian, the veracity of his hadiths are sometimes suspect by other Muslims.

More interestingly, there is a much more famous story about Mohammed and the definition of jihad (from the English translation of the Book of Jihad):

A man asked the Prophet: What is Jihad? He (s.a.w)
replied: “To fight against the disbelievers when you
meet them (on the battlefield).” The man asked: “What
kind of Jihad is the highest?” He (s.a.w) replied: “The
person who is killed whilst spilling the last of his blood”

Yet another quote from Mohammed on jihad is this one:

The Messenger of Allah was asked about the best jihad. He said: "The best jihad is the one in which your horse is slain and your blood is spilled."

Wikipedia's article on Jihad notes that while the use of the word to refer to non-violent actions was used in some very early sources, its use was often unambiguously violent:

Of the 199 references to jihad in perhaps the most standard collection of hadith—Bukhari—all assume that jihad means warfare.[31]

Sarsour's cynical use of "jihad" is being amplified by her Muslim admirers such as the equally deceptive Dalia Mogahed who tweeted "What's #YourJihad? Maybe it's working for an America for All. Maybe it's just loving your kids. #IStandWithLinda."

This is a deliberate effort to water down the meaning of the word "jihad" to make it appear to be a liberal value. In no way is that true; even the expansive definition of "greater Jihad" refers to striving or struggle to be a better person, "loving your kids" should not be a struggle for most people.

Sarsour, taking advantage of the controversy, tweeted that "My work is CRYSTAL CLEAR as an activist rooted in Kingian non-violence." It would be most illuminating to ask her is she is therefore against jihad as holy war altogether, which everyone agrees is one of its meanings. As an avowed believing Muslim, Sarsour cannot possibly say that. It would also be interesting to ask Sarsour if she condemns the use of the word "jihad" by Palestinian terror groups like Islamic Jihad, let alone if she unequivocally condemns their use of violence, since she she claims to be so "Kingian."

There is literally no way Sarsour could condemn Palestinian jihad or the concept of violent jihad altogether. Those are bound up in her identity as a Muslim and as a descendant of Palestinians who define Israel as a place that must be destroyed by any means possible.

In this sense, the word "jihad" can be loosely compared to the word "crusade." The analogy is far from exact, because the current use of "crusade" in English vernacular is wholly outside of any Christian religious connotation except by scholars, while "jihad" is clearly used by millions of ordinary Muslims today to refer primarily to holy war. Yet when the word "crusade" is used today, Muslims take offense - how dare the speaker invoke a word that has such negative connotations to Muslims? But the word "jihad" is, by any yardstick, much more offensive, and Sarsour is deliberately using it to demonize her opponents.

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CUNY role model Linda Sarsour in her own words (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

On June 1, the City University of New York (CUNY) will honor Linda Sarsour by hosting her as a speaker at the commencement ceremony of the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. While Sarsour has been described as “an arsonist in our midst,” criticism of the decision to invite the controversial activist was firmly rejected by CUNY chancellor James B. Milliken, who wrote that Sarsour was chosen “because of her involvement in public health issues in New York City and her position as a leader on women’s issues, including her role as co-chair of the recent Women’s March in Washington.” The chancellor also highlighted that “Ms. Sarsour has been recognized by President Obama at the White House as a ‘Champion of Change’ and was recently named one of Time magazine’s 100 leaders and Fortune magazine’s 50 global leaders.”

In short, as far as CUNY is concerned, it is fully justified to ignore all criticism of Sarsour and to present her as a role model for the university’s graduates.

As Michael D. Cohen of the Simon Wiesenthal Center acknowledged when he recently denounced Sarsour as “an arsonist in our midst,” she is “a brilliant tactician who manipulates the media to gain attention and sympathy for her cause.” One might add that the media love to be manipulated by her, without asking tough questions about what exactly Sarsour’s “cause” is and how she pursues it.

During one of the recent controversies, Sarsour declared that she wants to be judged by her own words, but it is abundantly clear that she also wants people to ignore plenty of her own words that actually tell us a lot about Sarsour’s “cause” and her activism.

So let’s look at a small sample of those of Sarsour’s own words that are arguably very revealing, even though she will lash out at anybody who quotes them to her.

Indeed, Sarsour was recently recorded berating a student who asked her about her notorious tweet from 2011, when she declared that prominent women’s right activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and strident Islam critic Brigitte Gabriel “don’t deserve to be women;” therefore, Sarsour wished she “could take their vaginas away.” If we take Sarsour’s response to the student who asked about this tweet seriously, White men (capital W, please!) have no business being disturbed by her vile outburst – an answer that reflects the divisive identity politics Sarsour often employs when it suits her, while calling for unity and solidarity when this seems more opportune.

But as the Dartmouth students who enthusiastically applauded Sarsour’s put-down of their impertinent White male fellow student illustrated, many people are all too willing to ignore an obscene six-year-old tweet posted when Sarsour was almost 31 – not, as she falsely claimed, in her twenties. Moreover, in spring 2011, Sarsour reportedly already served as director of the Arab American Association of New York; she was also about to be named “a fellow at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service Women of Color Policy Network” and boasted about her excellent access to the Obama administration.

And soon enough, Sarsour would also boast about being victorious over Hirsi Ali. In fall 2012, Sarsour was still jealously wondering “What does Ayaan Hirsi Ali got that I ain’t got? Front page covers and shit. #MuslimRage;” but by the spring of 2014, Sarsour was able to celebrate a blow against her nemesis, and she jubilantly announced on Twitter: “Online activism WINS again. @BrandeisU does the right thing and rescinds honorary degree 2 hatemonger Ayaan Hirsi Ali;” she also added: “Hats off 2 @BrandeisU 4 rescinding honorary degree 2 Ayaan Hirsi Ali. U have restored integrity of your institution;” and she thanked the university’s president: “Thank you @PresidentFred for making the right choice today and rescinding honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. We are all very grateful.”

Isn’t it deeply ironic that CUNY would so strongly defend its decision to honor Sarsour who celebrated so enthusiastically when she and other activists succeeded in denying a similar honor to Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

Sarsour’s “#MuslimRage” was apparently not diminished by the fact that Hirsi Ali established a foundation that has been working since 2007 “to end honor violence [including Female Genital Mutilation] that shames, hurts or kills thousands of women and girls in the US each year, and puts millions more at risk;” the foundation also promotes “the belief that there is no culture, tradition or religion that justifies violence against women and girls.”

But very different from Hirsi Ali, Sarsour is eager to defend the conservative traditions of Muslim societies, even when they are clearly harmful to women. Sarsour has asserted that “shariah law is reasonable,” ignoring the widespread and well-documented human rights abuses committed in Muslim majority states in the name of sharia. Sarsour has even gone so far as to praise Saudi Arabia – where women are completely dependent on the whims of their male guardians: “10 weeks of PAID maternity leave in Saudi Arabia. Yes PAID. And ur worrying about women driving. Puts us to shame.”

Since Sarsour often emphasizes her Palestinian Muslim identity, it is also interesting to note how Palestinians view sharia. As documented in a Pew survey from 2013, 89% of Palestinians want sharia law; 66% endorse the death penalty for Muslims who convert to another religion; 76% support mutilation as a punishment for theft, and a shocking 84% want adulterers stoned to death. The survey also shows that less than half (about 45%) of Palestinian Muslims reject so-called “honor killings” as never justified, and 87% insist that a wife must always obey her husband.

Given that CUNY has explicitly stated that they want to honor Sarsour as a “leader on women’s issues,” it is also noteworthy that she has repeatedly defended arranged marriages like her own, in which her parents married her off at the age of 17. In late 2007, Sarsour told Al Arabiya News: “Every year, we see more than a hundred arranged marriages in our community alone […] In our community […] you not only have to find a spouse who is Arab and Muslim; that person also needs to be Palestinian and from the same village as you.” According to the reporter, “Women like Linda accept being set-up because they don’t really believe in ‘love story weddings’.” And as Sarsour reportedly added to explain the benefits of arranged marriages: “If I fight with my husband, I can always run to my father because he is the one who chose him for me.”

But Sarsour has also defended the practice recently: in an interview with the Mecca Post on March 8, 2017, which begins with a related question, Sarsour answered by asserting: “I feel I have become mature much earlier in life than may be other sisters who are still in high school or in college.”

Well, maybe CUNY should start a “Sarsour Program for Arranged Marriages” to benefit female students in their last year of high school?

The Mecca Post interview with Sarsour includes also plenty of other interesting material. She dismisses her critics as “right wing supremacists” who “engaged in alternative facts and false accusations” and asserts that “there really is nothing that they said that really is true.” She also confidently claims Jesus was “a Palestinian Jewish refugee” who is “very co-essential to us Muslims” but misunderstood by many “who call themselves Christians.” She then proceeds to press Islam’s founder into the service of her agenda, breathlessly describing Muhammad as her “inspiration”:

“he was an activist he was a human rights activist, he stood up for the poor, he wanted to stand up against tyrants and oppressors, he loved animals he loved earth and taking care of the earth, he talked about environmental justice […] He talked about racial justice, and uplifting people regardless of what colour their skin was. […] I also think about Islamophobia now, the man who experienced the most Islamophobia they did not call it Islamophobia 1400 years ago was our beloved Prophet (SAW).”

One really is left to wonder if Sarsour is too naïve to realize that if she transforms Islam’s founder into a 21st century social justice warrior, she ultimately legitimizes those who employ the norms of our time to denounce him for his marriage to an underage girl (which was then common and unfortunately remains accepted in some countries); similarly, by the standards of our time, the supremely successful warlord, who founded not just a faith, but also an empire, committed numerous atrocities.

But when it comes to anything that has to do with Islam, Sarsour is an ardent advocate of double standards. She will denounce Hirsi Ali as a “hatemonger” while uncritically embracing a group like the Nation of Islam (NOI), which, according to the the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “has maintained a consistent record of anti-Semitism and racism since its founding in the 1930s.” The ADL considers veteran NOI leader Louis Farrakhan as “the leading anti-Semite in America;” the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) provided a similarly unequivocal condemnation, denouncing “the deeply racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay rhetoric” of Farrakhan and other NOI leaders, whose conduct “earned the NOI a prominent position in the ranks of organized hate.”

Yet, in 2012, Sarsour embraced the NOI as “an integral part” of “the history of Islam in America,” emphasizing that “Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Nation of Islam - we are #Muslim, we are all part of one ummah, one family. #Islam.” Two years later, Sarsour insisted that it was not possible to “learn or teach about the history of Islam in America without talking about the Nation of Islam (NOI).”

As I have recently documented, Sarsour joined two other leading activists at a major rally organized by Farrakhan and his associates in 2015, where she delivered a strident speech that echoed Farrakhan’s antisemitic efforts to blame Jews for problems and hardships experienced by African-Americans. Sarsour also seems to share some of Farrakhan’s bigoted views on the malignant Jewish influence in America, even though she often claims that she firmly opposes antisemitism. In this context it is important to realize that Sarsour apparently does not accept common definitions of antisemitism and has instead endorsed (#73) the truly Orwellian re-definition that veteran anti-Israel activist Ali Abunimah published in fall 2012, reflecting his preposterous view that Zionism is “one of the worst forms of anti-Semitism in existence today” and that support for Zionism “is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.”

Perhaps CUNY doesn’t care much about Sarsour’s pronounced hostility to the world’s only Jewish state, but one would think they should care about this scene which happened in New York and was witnessed by Michael D. Cohen of the Simon Wiesenthal Center:

“Last September, I stood along with many of my colleagues at a New York City Council Public Hearing on that body’s resolution to officially condemn the BDS movement — a hearing at which all those in favor, including myself, were shouted down as “Jewish pigs” and “Zionist filth” from provocateurs strategically placed in the audience. It was Linda Sarsour who was at the forefront — manipulating the camera shots and sound bites. It was Linda Sarsour who sat for hours listening with great satisfaction to the libelous rants and screamed obscenities alleging that Israelis murder Palestinian babies. It was Sarsour who nodded approvingly and congratulated individuals who were kicked out of the hearing room for being out of order, for walking in front of individuals providing testimony in support of the resolution, and for shouting down our supporters with anti-Semitic slurs — all in the name of protecting free speech.”

So much more material could be cited to show how little Sarsour deserves to be held up as a role model for graduates of a respected American university, but let me just conclude with this: when Sarsour addresses her audience at the commencement ceremony of the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and says she is honored to do so, remember that she also recently said she was “honored” to share a stage with convicted terrorist murderer and confessed US immigration fraudster Rasmea Odeh.

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A Twitter deconstruction of Linda Sarsour (@AviMayer)

Avi Mayer, on Twitter, writes about Linda Sarsour's claim that one cannot be a Zionist and a feminist.

It is too good not to put in a short essay form.

Let's take a minute and pick apart Linda Sarsour's bizarre and twisted claim that one cannot be both a Zionist and a feminis t, shall we?

Per Sarsour, since feminism is about "the rights of all women," a feminist cannot support Israel, which "oppresses" Palestinian women.

There are several glaring problems with Sarsour's simplistic argument.

First, Sarsour herself goes on to say—in the same interview—that "there is no country... that is immune to violating human rights." Surely if all countries violate human rights, @lsarsour should condemn them all. But she aims her bile at supporters of only one: Israel.

Second, Sarsour discusses the plight of Palestinian women at length, but curiously ignores any hardship that cannot be blamed on Israel. Yet Palestinian women "face discrimination in law and in practice, and [are] inadequately protected against sexual and other violence." according to Amnesty.

"Honor killings"—murders of Palestinian women by male relatives seeking to protect "family honor"—have skyrocketed. wapo.st/2mG7Yza

Abortions are illegal under Palestinian law, forcing women to either endanger their lives – or seek help in Israel. atfp.co/1XJhdhA

How "Zionism" is to blame for these rampant violations of Palestinian women's rights within Palestinian society is for Linda Sarsour to answer.

Moreover, while Linda Sarsour professes deep concern for the rights of "all women," she has nothing to say about the rights of Israeli women. At no point does it occur to Sarsour to even pay lip service to Israeli women and their rights. They're entirely absent from her equation.

The mothers of the two Israeli students murdered by Rasmea Odeh, whom Sarsour has defended, do not appear to have rights worth protecting.

Most fundamentally, in rejecting and deriding Zionism, Linda Sarsour denies the basic right of Jewish women—and all Jews—to self-determination.

Sarsour also ignores Israel's admirable (if imperfect) record on women's rights, including having had women head every branch of government.

Finally, in declaring Zionism and feminism incompatible, @lsarsour seeks to erase the many, many women—and men—who identify with both.

Here are just a few of the women @lsarsour would no longer consider feminists due to their support of Jewish rights.

It seems that in Linda Sarsour's version of feminism, all women are equal, but some are more equal than others. Israeli women need not apply.

PS:

Oh, PS, @lsarsour: Israeli women receive 26 weeks of maternity leave, of which 14 are paid. Are you a Zionist now? https://t.co/cx9GBnRq74
— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) March 16, 2017

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Is it even possible to be a pro-Palestinian feminist?

This article in The Nation is being reported all over:

Her arguments are really nutty, but Sarsour knows how to get publicity.

So let's use her own methodology to ask whether it is possible for Linda Sarsour, or anyone else, to be a feminist while supporting Palestinian Arabs.

According to the UN, there are no specific laws or provisions in the Palestinian Authority or under Hamas rule that protect women against domestic violence and sexual violence.

If women are not able to provide/show evidence of “force”, “threats” and/or “deception” to support rape claims, they risk being criminalized for “adultery.”

The Palestinian Authority has adopted the Jordanian 1960 "rape marriage" law that says that a rapist will not be prosecuted if he marries his victim. These laws often result in rape victims being coerced by family or courts to marry their rapists.

While rape is illegal, the woman is often the one who must defend herself since the rape laws only apply “provided that such a woman is not a prostitute and is not known for her immoral character.”

Murderers who claim to have murdered women in order to ‘maintain family honor’ can be exempted from judicial sanction.

Marital rape is not against the law.

This study showed that Palestinian women only went public about being abused sexually only where the abuse was extremely traumatic, publicly apparent, and the victim absolved of blame. 10% of the women who went public were murdered. Usually the family would respond with measures like hymen reconstruction, marriage to the rapist, and abortion to “nullify” sexual abuse.

Women are not allowed to marry without permission from their guardian, Men may marry up to four wives.

A Palestinian Arab man can divorce his wife for any reason, but Palestinian women can request divorce only under certain circumstances. When a divorce is initiated by the woman it means that she must give up any financial rights and must return her dowry.

Sexual abuse of women and children are rampant but swept under the rug. 37% of married Palestinian women were exposed to some form of violence by their husbands in the previous year alone, nearly 12% exposed to sexual violence in the previous year. 65% of those who were exposed to violence stayed quiet about it because of cultural mores.

20% of Palestinian women are married before they are 18, almost always to older men, which is a human rights violation. Because of child marriages, 10% of all Palestinian women between 15-19 give birth in any year.

The highest rates of violence against women are found where the families tend to be more religious, in Gaza and Hebron.

The Palestinian Basic Law, by saying that ‘the principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation’, can be interpreted in a manner which undermines the rights of women according to a UN study.

I'm not even going into Shari'a law here, which is far worse than Palestinian law for women. (Linda Sarsour has publicly defended Shari'a law, which calls into question her own qualifications to be called a feminist.)

Liberal "Pro-Palestinian" activists rarely if ever mention any of the issues listed here. The media is also complicit in its silence on these topics. Yet Palestinians know all about them, and it is likely that Sarsour is quite aware of them and chooses to remain silent, because that would blunt her anti-Israel message.

Her hate for Israel is more important to her than the rights of Palestinian women.

Sarsour says "You either stand up for the rights of all women, including Palestinians, or none. There’s just no way around it." Which means that Sarsour is not a feminist by her own definition because she does not stand up for the rights of Palestinian women who are suffering so badly under a patriarchal, Islamic-based system of laws and customs. In fact, her anti-Israel stance is her way to divert attention from the very real discrimination and abuse that Palestinian women suffer.

Sarsour, with her silence, is actually enabling the daily abuse of Palestinian women from the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the misogynist Palestinian society that she idealizes for the cameras.

Linda Sarsour, and all so-called "feminists" who use their platform as a means to bash Israel, are in fact anti-feminist and tacitly support discrimination against and abuse of Palestinian women that happen every day.

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What’s missing in the Washington Post’s puff piece on Linda Sarsour (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

The pro-Israel community has long struggled against media coverage that distorts or misrepresents facts. While these efforts are often dismissed as partisan “hasbara” designed to make Israel look better than it deserves, fact-checking has become rather fashionable during the divisive US election campaign that ended – to the surprise and shock of the unsuspecting mainstream media – with Donald Trump’s victory. Yet, in these times of Trump, fact-checking is usually employed to discredit the new US administration and its supporters. I don’t really have a problem with this, but at the same time, I can’t help noticing that what is now widely called “the resistance” to the Trump administration is hardly ever thought worthy of fact-checking, no matter how bizarre the claims and “narratives” are that emanate from associated groups or individuals.

A recent Washington Post article on Linda Sarsour is a good case in point: it’s an amazing puff piece that presents Sarsour as “one of the highest-profile Muslim American activists in the country” who is bravely enduring “an onslaught of personal attacks through social media and conservative news outlets.” According to the paper’s “reporter” Michael Alison Chandler, the ambitious Sarsour – who once wanted to become “the first hijabi mayor of New York City” and who now plans to write a book and is even contemplating “a possible bid for Congress” – is being smeared by “critics [who] have attempted to tie her to terrorist groups, called her anti-Semitic and accused her of infiltrating the liberal movement.”

Needless to say, the people who vilify poor Linda Sarsour so unfairly in turn richly deserve to be vilified by Sarsour and her supporters. Thus, Chandler allows Sarsour to airily dismiss a vile tweet she posted in 2011 fantasizing about Brigitte Gabriel and Ayaan Hirsi Ali “asking 4 an a$$ whippin’” and expressing the “wish” to “take their vaginas away” because “they don’t deserve to be women.” All Sarsour has to do now is to shrug off her vicious outburst as “stupid” and to dismiss it as simply a reflection of her being “a brash New Yorker.” An open threat against Brigitte Gabriel also posted by Sarsour remained unmentioned; likewise, her declaration that “White women” were regrettably slow to understand “that we do not need to be saved by them” was politely ignored now that Sarsour so obviously enjoys the fawning praise heaped on her by a whole lot of “White women.” And it is surely safer to admire Sarsour, given that she recently asked her fans to pray in support of her and then re-tweeted one of the heartfelt prayers: “#IPrayForLinda May God fortify her and strike down her enemies where they stand.”

While Washington Post readers weren’t told anything about fervent prayers to “strike down” Linda Sarsour’s “enemies,” they did learn that Sarsour regards Gabriel and Hirsi Ali as “notorious Islamophobes who are working for the right wing” and that the Southern Poverty Law Center largely agrees with Sarsour’s views, considering her a victim of bigoted efforts to vilify American Muslims.

Since obviously only truly terrible people would criticize Sarsour, the Washington Post’s Chandler apparently saw no reason to explain that “many” of Sarsour’s “accusers” suspect her of advocating Sharia because she posted several tweets extolling the supposed virtues of Islamic Sharia law. And even though a Snopes article published almost two weeks before Chandler’s piece shows that Sarsour avoided a direct answer to the question if she would ever “vote for Sharia Law in the United States,” Sarsour is simply allowed to claim that “she does not think sharia law should supplant American laws.” Washington Post readers are assured that just “like many other U.S. Muslims,” Sarsour supposedly regards Sharia only “as a guide” for her “private religious practice:” “I don’t eat pork […] “I don’t drink alcohol. I pray five times a day.” Later on Sarsour acknowledges that “[t]here are Muslims and regimes that oppress women,” but she immediately adds: “I believe that my religion is an empowering religion […] I wear hijab by choice.”

Of course, Sarsour can wear her hijab by choice only because she is living in a country that is not governed by Sharia law. In countries where Sharia law is enforced, not even feminist Swedish politicians dare to choose not to wear a hijab. And in countries where Sharia law is enforced, even non-Muslims don’t have necessarily the choice to eat pork, while Muslims who might fancy a drink risk heavy lashing or even a death sentence.

Sarsour may regard Sharia law only “as a guide” for her “private religious practice,” but she knows full well that in countries where it is enforced, it results in horrendous oppression and human rights violations. So why not hold Sarsour to her own standards: since she believes that “silence makes you complicit,” she should be expected to speak out about the enforced social conformity and the cruelty that result when Sharia is actually the law of the land.

Yet, Sarsour has even claimed that “shariah law is reasonable and once u read into the details it makes a lot of sense.”

Since Sarsour often emphasizes her Palestinian identity, it is noteworthy that the Palestinians are also very positive about Sharia. The graphic below, based on surveys by Pew, illustrates what Sharia means for Palestinians – maybe the next “reporter” tempted to write a puff piece on Sarsour can ask her if she considers this “reasonable”?

I could also think of several questions that reporters who are eager to show a skeptical public that the media can be trusted to report impartially could ask Linda Sarsour.

Sarsour has suggested that America is a nation built on “Genocide & slavery,” a comment she later claimed was “in response to a bigot who told me Islam is evil.” So what does Sarsour think about the countless horrors perpetrated in the wars of conquest that spread Islam far beyond its birthplace on the Arabian Peninsula? And what about the fact that Sharia law justifies slavery, in particular the enslavement of prisoners taken in jihad?

Sarsour has also opined that “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.” In other words, as far as Sarsour is concerned, nothing is creepier than the Jewish people’s right to self-determination. Given Sarsours’s frequent emphasis on her Palestinians identity and the fact that she has relatives and family friends who were (or still are) serving lengthy prison sentences in Israel – likely for involvement in terrorist activity –, and given that her brother-in-law was reportedly serving a 12-year sentence because he was “accused of being an activist in the Hamas,” it would be interesting to know how Sarsour feels about Hamas: is the Islamist terror group, with its notorious genocidal fascist charter, a lot less “creepy” than Zionism?

There also has been some speculation about Sarsour’s potential family connections to the known Hamas supporters Salah and Jamil Sarsour – perhaps an enterprising reporter could clear up if there is anything to these speculations?

Moreover, since Linda Sarsour has skillfully used her family to shape her public image, it is certainly legitimate to ask some related questions. So we know that her brother-in-law was sentenced to prison in Israel as a Hamas member or supporter; we also know that in 2004, “her Palestinian husband, after seven years in America, faced deportation proceedings.” Was her husband also suspected of being a Hamas supporter or member, and was he actually deported from the US?

If Sarsour’s husband had spent seven years in America by 2004, he arrived there in 1997. Sarsour, who was born in 1980, was then 17 years old, and we know from an Al Jazeera profile of her that, “At 17, still in high school, she had an arranged marriage and began wearing hijab.” This means that she “had” – or perhaps was forced into – an arranged marriage with a Palestinian who had just arrived in the US. We also know from a 2005 article (archived here) that Sarsour “met her future husband when he paid her family a visit with his extended family in tow and a $10,000 dowry.” The article identifies Sarsour’s husband as Maher Judh from the West Bank town of El-bireh and says that he works in a grocery store in Brooklyn, indicating that he was apparently not deported in 2004.

In the 2005 article, Sarsour describes her family as a “traditional Muslim family whose conservative ways were less a result of religion, but more about maintaining a good standing in the community.” She also seems to see nothing wrong with her arranged marriage at 17, telling the reporter back then: “I am 25 years old, married with three kids, and I was married in an arranged marriage, and that happened right here in Brooklyn […] People always say, ‘What! Most people don’t get married until they are 30,’ and I say ‘not my people.’”

So apparently, Sarsour felt at the time that it re-affirmed her Palestinian identity to get married so young in an arranged marriage. She also seems to have no misgivings about the fact – which she relates in the Al Jazeera profile – that her parents sent her to a terrible high school and deprived her of the chance to attend a program for gifted students because she “was the first [child of seven] in the family” and for her parents, “it wasn’t about better. It was about proximity to the house.” However, as noted in a glowing New York Times profile from 2015, Sarsour “grew up helping her mother babysit and shop.”

A girl growing up in America at the end of the 20th century being denied educational advancement by her parents, who instead use her as a babysitter for her six siblings and then marry her off at the earliest possible time would presumably be regarded by most of Sarsour’s feminist admirers as a very tragic case. As much as I disagree with Sarsour’s politics, I think one can only admire her for the tenaciousness with which she avoided her apparent destiny of a life restricted to being an obedient wife who would bear her husband children and perhaps eventually find some sort of low-level job. At the same time, I think Sarsour has good reason to “sometimes … feel duplicitous” because of what she reportedly called “her internal quest to prove she can be both progressive and traditional.”

The Washington Post identifies the author of the puff piece on Sarsour as a “reporter” who “writes about families, gender and religion.” Sarsour is certainly a fascinating person to write about for someone focusing on these issues – pity that Michael Alison Chandler took the easy way out and chose to simply add to the growing list of tributes that are ultimately only slightly more sophisticated versions of the “prayer” Sarsour liked so much: “#IPrayForLinda May God fortify her and strike down her enemies where they stand.”

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Linda Sarsour’s fake progressivism exposed at women’s march (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

It was perhaps inevitable that during this weekend’s women’s marches, some “progressives” would feel the need to show off their complete cluelessness about the utter lack of support for women’s rights in Palestinian society – where, e.g., 87% believe a wife “must always obey her husband”. Compared with the prevalent Palestinian views on women’s rights, Trump should have no problem to pass as a feminist.

But since facts don’t matter, “legendary activist” Angela Davis could ignore the ultra-conservative Muslim preferences of Palestinian society and firmly declare: “Women’s rights are human rights all over the planet, and that is why we say freedom and justice for Palestine.” Others proudly displayed their cluelessness (and perhaps their flippancy) on signs demanding “Free birth control and Palestine,” while still others felt oh-so “emotional” when march participants used American flag-style scarves to cover women in accordance with the 1400 years-old female “modesty” requirements of Islam’s founder.

All of this was probably very much to the liking of Linda Sarsour, the “award-winning, Brooklyn-born Palestinian-American-Muslim racial justice and civil rights activist, community organizer, [and] social media maverick,” who was one of the four national co-chairs organizing the women’s marches. But while the ambitious Sarsour certainly enjoyed the limelight at this occasion, her prominent role in the organization of the protest marches also resulted in some not so flattering revelations. I wrote about Sarsour’s fake progressivism a few months ago, but it turns out that Sarsour is much more of a hypocrite than I realized. As the Chilean Palestinian commentator Lalo Dagach showed, Sarsour has repeatedly defended Saudi Arabia against criticism, arguing that there are women in parliament and that it is ridiculous to focus on the fact that Saudi women are not allowed to drive because they get 10 weeks of paid maternity leave – which they of course only get if their male guardian allows them to work and if there is a male driver to take them to work... Astonishingly, Sarsour has also promoted Sharia Law, claiming that it would mean that “all your loans & credit cards become interest free.”

I then discovered that seven years ago, Daniel Pipes began to compile Sarsour’s greatest hits, after she falsely claimed that he had written about her (at a time when he had actually never heard of her) and that his criticism (which at that point didn’t exist) had greatly increased her popularity. Pipes’ compilation includes much revealing material concerning Sarsour’s views, and there are also some truly bizarre posts – for example, Sarsour proudly presenting herself as a Muslim mermaid; or an unintentionally funny post where Sarsour is swooning about her own good looks and taste while appearing in the colors of the Israeli flag…

But the most revealing statement is perhaps her declaration in a video for World Hijab Day 2014:

“Without my hijab, I don’t really have an identity on the outside.”

Pretty sad if your identity consists of a piece of cloth wrapped around your head – and pretty sad if this passes as “progressive”.

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