Sometimes there are reasons
Two US House Republicans are pushing the federal justice department to investigate the path to citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate favored to win the 4 November election for New York City mayor.
Congressman Randy Fine of Florida and Andy Ogles of Tennessee – both staunch proponents of Donald Trump’s presidential administration – have been leading the push, which has been condemned by Democratic officials and Muslim civil rights groups as “racist and anti-Muslim”.
Again, as with trans ideology, the discourse carefully obscures the fact that Islam has content, and the content is not necessarily entirely benign. Yes it can be merely, or partially, racism or fear of the Other or just plain old-style My Religion is Better Than Yours that inspires hostility to Islam, but the fact remains that the content is what it is. It is, shall we say, not benevolent towards women, or Jews, or infidels, or apostates.
People, especially people of The Media and political types, frame religions as cuddly and merely personal, like red hair or a fondness for tikka masala. That makes everything easier, but it has its downsides. Ignoring Islam’s propensity to temper tantrums is a major downside.
“I think Islamophobia is something that is endemic to politics across this country,” Mamdani added in the interview with MSNBC. “And we have seen it normalized. We have seen it accepted.”
Racists and Trumpies do love to hate on Muslims and Islam, it’s true, but more than one thing can be true, and another thing that’s true here is that Islam is not 100% benign. Neither are Xianity and Judaism, but Islam does stand out for things like throwing gay men off roofs and stoning women to death.
Ophelia, I’m genuinely alarmed at this post. Two Trump supporters have launched a xenophobic and authoritarian attack on a left-wing Asian-American politician.
And your post doesn’t discuss this attack, but instead goes on a Samuel P. Huntington-ish rant about how Islam is a uniquely authoritarian religion whose followers all think exactly alike, are all innately violent (” propensity to temper tantrums”) and will never fit into Western societies.
I heard enough of that stuff from Radovan Karadžić cheerleaders in the 1990s and Bush-Blair Iraq war shills in the 2000s, thank you very much.
“Not benevolent towards women?”
Here is a profile of Zohran Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji’s . She is a successful artist who wears Western-style clothing. Doesn’t seem like the submissive spouse of a Taliban-supporting misogynist.
https://apnews.com/article/zohran-mamdani-mayor-rama-duwaji-ff8c7c448a95505c2a15d8c5ef154a7b
“Not benevolent towards Jews?”
Here’s Zohran Mamdani’s response to an interview question about Jewish voters in NYC:
If I can speak with a Jewish New Yorker who’s concerned about the issue of antisemitism, and I can share the fact that this is a real crisis that we have to tackle, and one that I’m committed to doing so through increased funding for actually preventing hate crimes across the city, and make it clear time and again that my commitment is to protect Jewish New Yorkers and that I will live up to that commitment through my actions.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/01/nx-s1-5449040/zohran-mamdani-nyc-mayoral-candidate
I gather people may have issues with Zohran Mamdani’s politics, and that is fair enough. But the idea that he may be a threat to women, Jews, “infidels” and “apostates” simply because of his religion is absurd.
I think Islam is really not entirely the relevant thing here. I think the relevant thing here is the Republicans are trying to strip the citizenship of a political opponent.
Bruce Gorton,
You are correct. The Republicans are using dirty tricks against a left-wing Asian-American politician. That should be the main issue, regards of whether said politician is a Shia Muslim, an Episcopalian, a Wiccan, or whatever.
Also, Americans who oppose Trump: if you want to stop the Orange Man, then you’ll need a “Big Tent” movement with different groups to be successful. Moderate American Muslims like Mamdani and his wife will form an important part of any such movement.
“a Samuel P. Huntington-ish rant about how Islam is a uniquely authoritarian religion whose followers all think exactly alike, are all innately violent (” propensity to temper tantrums”) and will never fit into Western societies.”
Really? That’s what you saw?
Yes. You keep saying “Islam has content” – violent, authoritarian, misogynist content. You thus make it sound like Islam is the *only* religion with such content.
And it does seem to have become a focus for you recently. You used to strongly criticize all religions, but now you only ever seem to single out Islam for censure.
I find this concerning.
For instance, Hindu nationalists in India often attack and kill Indian Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and “Dalits”. They also vehemently oppose feminism. They also defend a centuries-old caste system that is extraordinarily cruel.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-g20-christian-church-attack-rcna103571
But I don’t recall you making any similar comments about the Hindu religion, or bringing up the religion of Hindu politicians living in the West (i. e. Rishi Sunak) in the same way you did about Zohran Mamdani being a Muslim.
Alll religions do have content, and all have misogynistic content. Christianity inspired Margaret Atwood to write A Handmaiden’s Tale.
Only Islam, however, is putting such misogyny into practice on a state level, with death as a penalty for noncompliance.
If you find something disquieting about evangelistic Christian cults, you should be downright horrified by the spread of Islam.
No, I don’t. I also keep saying Trump is an evil idiot. That does not make it sound as if Trump is the only evil idiot.
I’ve talked plenty about Hindutva in the past, but not lately, that’s true. If you think that translates to a Samuel P. Huntington-ish rant about how Islam is a uniquely authoritarian religion whose followers all think exactly alike, are all innately violent (” propensity to temper tantrums”) and will never fit into Western societies then I don’t know what to tell you.
The background assumption here seems to be that all religions are exactly the same amount of bad (or good if you swing that way). Why would that necessarily be the case?
News flash: some are worse than others.
As a little atheist boy in the rural south, I was bothered, berated, and sometimes battered by avid Christians. I would take them any day of the week over islamists. The first religion tells its followers to “save my soul;” the second tells its followers to kill me.
There is a tendency among left-leaning people in the US to brand any criticism of Islam as “islamophobia”, just as any disagreement with gender ideology is deemed “transphobia”, and, to a different extent, any criticism of Israel is (in some quarters) branded “antisemitism”. It is at the point that I think all of those words are thought-terminating clichés, and I have to check whether the specifics of the alleged offense warrant the label. Often they do not, so I cringe every time I see any of those words.
I meant to add: the rough equivalent regarding Christianity is to deem miscreants “not real Christians” or “twisting the bible”. I cringe every time I see those kinds of phrasings, as well.
Actually, this is part of the problem. The Dems have a big tent, which has a number of opposite, and diametrically, opposed positions represented. Trans is an obvious one, since feminists have few options other than starting their own party (yeah, that would work). Also, there are a lot of gun owners/fanciers in the Democratic party, existing alongside people who want fewer gun owners/fanciers. Pro-choice and pro-life exist side by side. Rural poor and urban poor have very different issues, and may be opposed to helping the other groups. Science and the arts try to co-exist (probably one of the easiest to resolve, since they really can work together). Jews and anti-Semitism are both prominent in the party (though the anti-Semites say they’re only anti-Zionist, many of them are anti-Jew). A potpourri of religious belief and non-belief, coupled with the idea that all religions are good and those who use them for bad are simply misunderstanding their own religion, and where many of the moderate believers are okay with there being atheists, if they’d just keep their mouths shut about it.
What the Dems need is not a big tent; they already have that. What they need is somehow to allow all the parties to co-exist in the big tent without destroying each other.
Perhaps some religions are worse than others, in terms of their effects on women, civil liberties, etc,.
Perhaps the Russian Orthodox Church is worse than Zen Buddhism, for example.
It does not mean that Zohran Mamdani or Zarah Sultana agree with the most reactionary aspects of their religion, or that they would implement those reactionary aspects if they were in a political position of power.
Nor does it mean that odious reactionary leaders like Nigel Farage, Viktor Orbán, or Narendra Modi should be supported.
“Well, they aren’t perfect, old boy, but they are all against Islam, and that is the most important thing.”
I remember the run-up to the Iraq War, and how a monomaniacal fixation with Islam as a uniquely violent and oppressive religion drew former leftists like Christopher Hitchens, Johann Hari and David Remnick into supporting the Blair-Bush bloodbath.
Gee, you don’t say.
You’re talking to me as if I had the brains of a turnip. It’s not persuasive.
Indeed. When the goons at Freethought Blogs turned on me then out came the accusations of “Islamophobia” they’d been sitting on all those years.
Ophelia: It certainly wasn’t my intention to sound patronizing to you.
I respect you and your opinions greatly, even when I disagree with them.
Ophelia: I also didn’t realize that you were attacked with bad-faith accusations of “Islamophobia” in the past. I’m sorry that that happened to you.
It’s always been an issue. It was very much an issue when Does God Hate Women? was published. We expected the accusations of “Islamophobia” and sure enough, there were plenty. The left tends to be very squeamish about criticizing Islam, but there are also plenty of people on the left who grasp the blindingly obvious fact that Islam is not a left-wing or progressive or egalitarian religion. Islam treats women like shit.
This is one thing that really makes me question some Democrats’ understanding or commitment to the ideals of feminism, in using iconography for “inclusiveness,” we invariably see Muslim women depicted with headcovering. It was especially apparent during the Women’s March in 2017. In addition to featuring male “women,” Linda Sarsour was depicted in posters. I questioned this and was attacked by fellow Democrats for being non-inclusive. To my mind, feminism should rebel against the head-covering rule just as surely as they should rebel against hijabi since it is a rule that only applies to women.
The issue came about when I questioned why burkinis were being featured in the Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated, and to me it seemed like a compounded case of sexism. Women who were not Muslim were wearing threads that barely covered their bodies, while women who were Muslim wore waterproof track suits with headcoverings. A quixotic candidate in the primaries in Arizona, born into a conservative Christian family who then married an Irani Muslim and then decided to adopt full body covering, joined in and defended her choice and said I was not being inclusive of Muslim women in my critique. I found it ridiculous, and as usual Facebook veered away from the original point.
I am, obvious to anyone, a liberal. As a liberal I can see many faults in the viewpoint, and one is that inclusiveness for its own sake is preferred over analysis. It applies to the trans issue – one must be inclusive without the analysis that gender is creating a mess and putting women in danger, as well as adolescents confused out their own gender roles. It also applies to how to think about Muslims. One must be inclusive, even if it means not questioning how their gender rules harm women’s access to self-actualization.
We need to be able to recognize that Islam means submission, and doubly so for women. So, we can argue against that without violating the civil rights of Muslims. That is my idea of how a secular society is supposed to work.
I hated that hijabi poster. It was everywhere.