Why Islamists and feminists avoid confronting each other
From the standpoint taken by Owen Jones above, making sure the correct victim groups and oppressor groups keep their places is a vital function – and it is a function that you can see him and others repeating again and again in what they say and do, almost as if by clockwork. It is a presiding perspective. It gives protection to the favoured groups, including by protecting them against criticism, while directing criticism either to broad generalities about society or to the unfavoured identity groups – of which ‘white men’ is a favourite given that it incorporates at least two unfavoured identity markers – of white skin colour and male sex (and also implies a third, of non-Muslim).
We can see this protective stance in how liberal-left institutions like the Labour Party and the Guardian choose what to highlight and what they do not, but it also feeds out into general society through taboos of what we should all talk about and avert our eyes from. For us here, the point about Islamists* is that they benefit from this protection as the representatives of Muslims, including through representative organisations like the Muslim Council of Britain, Muslim Association of Britain and Islamic Human Rights Commission. The administration of diversity treats Muslims as a victim group (indeed with double victim status due to Muslims generally being non-white). So whenever these organisations and others speaking on behalf of Muslims claim victimhood – by crying ‘Islamophobia’ for example – they can expect the liberal-left to respond and support them, as with their opposition to the Government’s anti-extremism strategy ‘Prevent’.
These organisations and others routinely segregate women from men at events and invite speakers who preach about curtailing women’s rights in public life and against homosexuality. But they rarely if ever directly confront feminists who take the opposite standpoint. The reason is structural – for the protection and support they receive from administrators of diversity is at the very least allied to feminists if not actively feminist in character itself (as with Owen Jones). Any challenge to feminism directly would bring into question their place in the system and right to support and protection.
So it’s in the interests of Islamists to maintain that protection and access to wider public life and not remove themselves from the system which provides it. This means not offending those who preside over it or challenging the right of other favoured groups to favouritism. In consequence, rather than attacking and ridiculing feminists publicly, they stick to attacking broad generalities in their public pronouncements, like British society, the West, white racism and British foreign policy – keeping to the victimhood narrative. By doing this they do not challenge those who provide support to them, the system remains robustly intact, and politics can continue as it did before.
Corbyn thought Hebrew was 'too Zionist', says former aide
British Labour leader Jeremy Corbin asked to remove a Hebrew greeting from his Passover message because it made him sound “too Zionist”, his former policy adviser claimed over the weekend.France: On Its Way to Being a Jew-Free Nation?
The Labour leader’s office denied the claim, however, saying it was categorically untrue, according to a report Sunday in The Independent.
The allegation was made in a newspaper article on Saturday in which the former adviser, Joshua Simons, wrote, “After six months working as a policy adviser for Jeremy Corbyn, it was clear to me that the way Corbyn and those around him think about Jewish people is shaped by a frenetic anti-imperialism, focused on Israel and America.”
“Without a hint of irony, one senior aide asked that I remove the greeting 'Chag Kasher VeSameach' from Corbyn’s Passover message, for fear that Corbyn’s supporters might think the use of Hebrew 'Zionist'”, charged Simons.
During the past 15 years, it is estimated that tens of thousands of Jews have fled France.‘No future for Jews in Western Europe,’ says French prosecutor
Of these, approximately 40,000 have fled to Israel, according to Israeli figures. Many thousands of others have fled to Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. France is increasingly becoming a nation in which it is no longer safe to be openly Jewish.
To explain why so many Jews are leaving Europe, it helps to understand the increasingly toxic context developing in France for Jews.
Synagogues and Jewish schools across France are regularly guarded by police officers and soldiers. Jews in Europe see their holy sites and places of worship under threat.
In December 2015, 14 Jews were poisoned by a toxic substance which had been smeared on to the keypad to access a Paris synagogue. No one was killed by the poison, but "25 firemen rushed to the synagogue, where they treated congregants and traced their condition to the daubed lock."
Another Paris synagogue was vandalized and a window smashed. Synagogues seem to be one of the targets in a new wave of anti-Semitism rising across France and Europe.
On the way to a synagogue, a 13-year-old boy was called a "dirty Jew" and then seriously assaulted. The attackers are said to have attacked the boy because of he wore a skullcap. Only 71 years after the end of one of the darkest periods of European history, after which we pledged "never again," it seems to have become open season to hate and persecute Jews.
The terrorist attacks on Jews in France are the culmination of years of Jew-hatred tolerated with little official criticism. In 2014, supposed anti-Israel protesters attacked a Paris synagogue and trapped the congregants inside. The attackers' chants apparently included "Death to the Jews," "Murderous Israel," and "One Jew, Some Jews, All Jews are Terrorists."
As for Baccouche, the BNVCA’s volunteer lieutenant president, he doesn’t wear a yarmulka or a Magen David necklace.
“I put tefillin (phylacteries) on and go to synagogue since I was young,” he says, matter of factly.
When asked why, his simple answer is “Because. It has no connection to anti-Semitism,” he says. “I feel myself as a Jew from North Africa but I decline to say what country I’m from. For me, it’s not important.
“I’m not a prophet or a prince but there is no future for Jews in all of Western Europe. Not only because of the war in the Mediterranean basin but because anti-Semitism is part of the Koran. I don’t think there is a future for Jews in France. There will be a day when all of Israel will be gathered back in our country,” Baccouche says.
Despite his negative predictions of Europe, Bacchouche says, “We are not going to our deaths. We live. Jews are more and more living amongst ourselves. There are always interactions with non-Jews but all our social interactions are with Jews, more and more. For example, ‘Elisheva’ has to remove her Jewish symbols but it’s a shame. She doesn’t bother anyone.”