#single Islamic women

[shivology]

okay. one day i will stop talking about islam but it's not gonna be today. anyway, to overcorrect on post-9/11 islamophobia, a lot of liberal spaces infested by the types of muslims who will call you islamophobic and disrespectful of their culture when you call them out on their homophobia or transphobia and who will deny the infestations of misogyny and antiblackness and antisemitism in their (our) communities because Um Actually You Don't Get The Full Context, have started to almost . idk the word but like, deify? whitewash? sugarcoat? islam as if it's like. One Inherently Good Singular Ideology Misunderstood By White People For Racism Reasons. when yes, obviously, islam and muslims who live in the west are oppressed, but that's not all islam is. and it's such disservice to act like Islam cannot be oppressive to so many people who do live in the global south living either directly under islamist rule or just in conservative muslim-majority communities, to say that no actually we're a peaceful religion and we WORSHIP women actually! like to gaslight people who have actually been forced to wear the hijab, who have actually been victims of misogynistic honor-based violence, who have actually been pulled out of school to be married off to a 50 year old man because "the prophet did it so it's islamically ok!"

and it's tricky to talk about because you don't want to fuel islamophobia (which, like antisemitism, is obviously a legitimate tangible thing, but also can be weaponized) also it is so fucking ANNOYINGGGGG to watch discourse on islam be led by people who have never experienced oppression fueled by islam like sure you're a good ally to guys like mohamed hijab but also people like sara hegazy mahsa amini etc etc all these people are real people who were tangibly hurt in the name of islam. there is a reason why a man like andrew tate felt it was ok for a man like him to convert to islam and there is a reason why so many Muslim men welcomed him with open fucking arms. you're sure not a good ally to queer people and atheists and christians and jews who have been tangibly hurt in the name of islam.

and we can discuss the doctrine itself, we can talk about the effects of colonialism, we can talk about how no actually islam doesn't say that lets not conflate between ~ real religion and corrupt regimes but the thing issssss. religion is literally what you make of it. it is an idea. there is a book and you take what you take from it. there is no such thing as "the correct way" to practice religion, especially when all Abrahamic religions have the capacity to be peaceful AND the capacity to be violent. what is REAL representation? who are you to say what real representation is, anyway? who decides what is extremism? why do you, personally, get to pick and choose who and what represents a certain religion?

islam, like Every Religion Ever, manifests itself in different ways depending on ur social context. whether you have the means to exact oppression via religion or whether you are disenfranchised because you're an ethnic or racial or religious minority. religion has and always will be used both as a tool for good (community building, etc) or for evil (daaesh, lol) it's not about religion itself. it's about how you use it and its place in the social pecking order.

anyway. tl;dr. i hate oversimplication and i hate overcorrection. quite frankly, it's orientalist and racist, to assume that an organized religion followed by over a billion people in most countries in the world, all believe the same beliefs. even if u think these beliefs are "good." here's over a billion of us and some of us are bound to be cunts! statistically.

[menalez]

what are your thoughts on islam? i know you post lots about it but i just want to know why you think all abrahamic religions are equally bad (i hate them too) when islamic countries often force women to cover themselves when that is not a common practice in other religions?

it was common practice in other religions and continues to be in the traditional sects of those religions. i don’t see why the other religions are better simply bc they’re not followed as closely as they used to be, when that’s the case for islam in some countries and communities (and was followed more liberally at some point in history before islamists gained more power) as well yet we don’t discount it by focusing on the liberal families the way we do for other religions. abrahamic religions literally use the same stories and have very similar teachings. their homophobic verses are nearly the exact same, their misogynistic verses are very similar too, and their slavery-supporting verses as well. which makes sense because islam is meant to be a continuation of christianity with one added prophet, and christianity did the same to judaism. why on earth would i buy into the westerncentric view that one of them is especially bad when the only reason christianity is different for example is simply bc many people don’t actually follow the Bible to the T? also most muslim countries don’t legally force women to wear the hijab btw. in iran they officially do. in saudi it depends on where you are but i was told by many saudi women that the haram police/morality police is more relaxed in many areas but still extreme in others. in yemen it’s societal. same goes for the 47 other muslim countries in the world, but to a lesser degree.

[amalisam]

The Timeless Beauty of the Palestinian People. The unique beauty of the Palestinian thobe lies in its intricate, handmade craftsmanship by Palestinian women who have trained for years. Embroidering a single thobe can take two years or more. Below are photos captured through my lens, featuring me adorned in the Palestinian thobe and Islamic hijab, alongside my sisters Eman and Tala.

On April 10, 2017, there was a global competition about heritage where each participant had to send 10 photos showcasing their country's heritage. There was a cash prize, and since I had a camera and loved photography, I participated. However, after submitting the photos, I was shocked to receive an email informing me that my country was not internationally recognized.

I am not sad because it was one of the best days of my life. On that day, I went to the far north of Gaza, where Palestinian Bedouins live. As a city dweller, it was a new experience for me and possibly my first visit to this area. I was surprised to find that the people in the outskirts of Gaza still wear the Palestinian thobe and incorporate it into their daily lives. In contrast, we city residents wear it only on special occasions.

As soon as I arrived, everyone knew I was from the city because they literally know everyone in their area! I felt like a stranger until people started approaching me. Some invited me for tea, some wanted me to listen to the flute, and some sang for me. A kind lady introduced me to her grandchildren and sheep. Another woman taught me how to make saj bread, and a man showed me his pottery workshop, teaching me how to make pottery from clay. A construction worker, who was pouring concrete with his team, was overjoyed to know I was an engineer and started asking for my opinion on every corner of the building. There were some people who owned camels, and they gave me one to tour the deserts and take photos. There was also a shy mechanic and a funny butcher who thought I would make him famous with my camera.The children in the north, some play football after school, and others tend to the sheep and help their fathers after school. My people are very simple and love life. You will be surprised, but all this happened in just one day. I was shocked by the hospitality and still cry tears of joy when I remember the beauty of that day.

Entranced by the melodies of a skilled flute player, I felt the soulful rhythm of Palestinian culture.

Warmly welcomed by a Palestinian family, I mastered crafting Palestinian bread—no easy feat, but laughter made it memorable.

A kind elderly Palestinian woman with her ambitious grandson, a shepherd.

The shy mechanic and the kind owner of the pottery workshop depict the quiet strength and warmth of Palestinian craftsmanship.

Standing tall for over three centuries, this ancient tree symbolizes the deep-rooted resilience of the Palestinian people.

The cheerful construction worker and the butcher aspiring for fame.

A simple joy like indulging in ice cream embodies the Palestinian love for life and the pursuit of happiness.

On that day, I got to know my people for the first time. I felt sad because I had never visited before. Today, I am sharing with you the photos from the competition that I did not win, but I won the most beautiful day that I will remember for the rest of my life. Despite their poverty, these people overwhelmed me with their generosity and food.

We are not poor; real poverty is experienced by those with impoverished spirits, not by those with empty wallets. I do not know if those in the photos are still alive, for we Palestinians do not live long. We either die from wars or from injustice. There is a famous saying: Do not fall in love with a Palestinian because they do not live long. Amal Abushammala

[decolonize-the-left]

"Hamas is not a terrorist group. It's is a resistance that has been fuming for 75 years of colonialism, of occupation, of murder, of rape of little children, of women.

That's what they are. They are resistance.

Everything- everything that they do is justified. Every single thing. Every single thing they have done is justified."

"Ma'am there were children murdered, there were babies headed."

"Babies beheaded? Really? Please educate yourself. Please watch the news because as a news reporter you gotta check the fucking news. Because they said that that shit was fake, kay? Multiple times. Different channels. Even Biden himself, his ministers and his idiots said himself that that news was fake. There is no 40 beheaded babies."

"There is no 1300 deaths?"

"There's no evidence- there's no evidence whatsoever. There's no photos whatsoever. Hamas is a muslim group. They would never do that because it's against Islam, that's number one. And that's something they show-"

"Do you really believe that?"

"There is evidence of Israeli women saying that 'they gave us water,' they gave us food,' 'they gave us a place to sleep comfortably,' 'they gave us clothes.' They got them to cover up out of respect.

This is actual women having interviews talking about when they were hostages. Or [She stutters] Sorry, when Hamas members were coming into their house. This is actual Israeli women saying how they were. Even at some point a Hamas fighter told one of the women "Can I have a banana to eat?"

He asked if he could eat a banana that was in her home.

Does that sound like a fucking terrorist to you?"

x

[eretzyisrael]

by POTKIN AZARMEHR

‘Pro-Palestine’ protests have become a near-weekly occurrence across Britain. Since Hamas’s 7 October massacre, regular marches have been drawing in a growing number of young people, marked by passionate advocacy and fervent slogans. Yet despite their zeal, many of these protesters lack a fundamental understanding of the conflict they are so vociferously decrying.

In the past six months, I have attended many of these marches. Having engaged with numerous protesters, I have noticed a startling disconnect between their strong opinions on the Gaza conflict and their shaky grasp of basic facts about it. Among the most perplexing are the LGBT and feminist groups (the ‘Queers for Palestine’ types) who flirt with justifying Hamas’s atrocities. This is a bewildering alliance, given that Hamas’s Islamist ideology is clearly antithetical to the rights and values these groups claim to champion. Its reactionary agenda is profoundly hostile to women’s rights and LGBT individuals.

Protesters seem eager to make excuses for Hamas, but are conspicuously uninformed about exactly what or who this terrorist group represents. On 18 May, during a protest at Piccadilly Circus in London, I spoke to demonstrators who firmly believed that Hamas represents all Palestinians. When I questioned a well-educated participant about the last Palestinian election, she was unaware that none had occurred since 2006, when Hamas gained power in Gaza.

It wasn’t just young people who were uninformed. An older woman with an American accent, seemingly a veteran protester, admitted she knew that Hamas was linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, but had no deeper knowledge of its ideology or history. Others, such as members of revolutionary socialist groups, displayed similar gaps in understanding, unaware of critical events like the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

That revolution gave birth to the Islamic Republic of Iran, a theocratic regime that brutally oppresses its own citizens. It also sponsors Islamist groups like Hamas. I left Iran for the UK not long after that regime began and have spent years resisting its religious extremism and ruthless political intolerance. Protesters were not only unaware of these facts about the Iranian regime, but also ill-informed about the struggle against it, such as the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests against the government that began in 2022.

One particularly telling conversation involved a man advocating for a ‘Global Intifada’ to replace capitalism with socialism. When asked about successful socialist models, he was unfamiliar with the Israeli kibbutzim, one of history’s few successful egalitarian experiments. His ignorance of these communal settlements in Israel, built by socialist Jewish immigrants, was all too typical.

Perhaps the most telling moment was captured by commentator Konstantin Kisin earlier this year, when he encountered a young man holding a ‘Socialist Intifada’ placard. The protester admitted he had no idea what this meant and that he had taken the sign simply because it was handed to him.

Reflecting on past movements, such as the American anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and the British Anti-Apartheid Movement of the 1980s, one can’t help but note a stark contrast. Protesters then were generally well-informed about their causes. Today’s pro-Palestine protests, however, seem to be driven more by unthinking fervour than by an understanding of the issues at hand.

Throughout all these protests, I am yet to encounter a single participant who condemns Hamas or carries a placard denouncing its terrorism. This not only undermines the protesters’ cause, but also risks aligning them with groups whose values fundamentally oppose the very rights and freedoms they claim to support. It appears that today’s young protesters are high on ideology, but woefully thin on facts.

Potkin Azarmehr is an Iranian activist and journalist who left Iran for the UK after the revolution of 1979.

[moidhaterxxx]

I wish religion wasn't such a hot topic even in radfem circles. I have personal experience with Islam and Hinduism and when I criticize them at all, its like people go absolutely mad and get extremely defensive.

As an aside I hasn't found a single mainstream religion that's good to women, so no I don't support Christianity either.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

thank you so much for that excellent chani post. i've seen some annoying takes on twitter about how not making her totally devoted and subservient to paul makes her 'unlikeable' and i'm like. buddy. i think that speaks more to how you see women. than anything about her. this chani is very dynamic and interesting to me.

i'll be honest and say i've not read the books. this is me speaking from what i've seen of summaries, but i think giving her a real cause to fight for yet also genuinely loving paul gives her an interesting struggle, and also plays into how the portrayal of the fremen (seems to me to be) more diverse and nuanced. as in, the fremen themselves seem to have more of a push-and-pull to them. the clarification of how different fremen believe differently (the south being more fundamentalist) is a very important thing to include in a movie where you can run into the danger of saying that all adherents to a foreign, islam-adjacent (in coding) religion are all fundamentalists. that can (in less nuanced hands) be a pretty irresponsible thing. so showing that there's also more secular/pragmatic/less dogmatic sectors of the culture seems a pretty good counterweight.

so yeah. this is how i processed it as a movie-goer. and having chani represent that aspect (believing in people over prophecy, action over religion) and having stilgar as the humanized face of the southern peoples (showing that yknow, regardless of being fundamenist beliefs, theyre still PEOPLE with the capacity for love, friendship, honor) makes total logical sense. you're not just "telling" us that there's different aspects to fremen culture, you're SHOWING us by showing different characters who represent those aspects, without demonizing either or turning either into a one-note stereotype.

Thank you! I'm not someone who was a long-term fan of the books before the movie came out (I tried reading Dune as a teenager when I was reading a lot of classic sci-fi but found it too boring) but I did read Dune and Dune Messiah after the first movie came out, both because I wanted to know what happened next and because I wanted to have an opinion on how the movies worked as adaptations.

(book and movie spoilers below and also I basically ended up writing a whole essay in response to this)

My single biggest frustration with the book is that after they arrive at Sietch Tabr and Jessica drinks the Water of Life and becomes Reverend Mother...the book up and skips two years of the story and when we next see Paul he's already got Fremen followers who are ready to die for him and he's in an established relationship with Chani. Oh I was SO MAD when I got to this part. I was like FRANK. FRANK!!!! Did you seriously just skip two years of the most interesting part of your own story???

The thing is, even though I know that Frank Herbert's intention was to write a critique of the idea that oppressed people need an enlightened external (white) savior to liberate them...if you don't provide an alternate explanation for what's happening then you end up falling into some Orientalist tropes anyway. And because, in the book, we don't see the process of how your average background fedaykin comes to trust Paul as a military and political leader, there is nothing in the text to counter the idea that the Fremen are a bunch of unquestioning religious fanatics easily swayed to do violence by belief in a prophecy.

My second biggest frustration with the book is that we're given no reason at all why Chani would fall in love with Paul. While she has some memorable scenes, she doesn't have a lot to do as a character in the book, and she's missing from a whole chunk of the end...because she's in the south...because she and Paul have a baby, Leto II, who's then killed off-page when the sardaukar attack the south. (I'm honestly really glad they cut this from the film, because it never seemed to be given the narrative weight it deserved in the book.)

So you can imagine how happy I was when the Villeneuve movies figured out how to address both these frustrations by tying them together. The fedaykin don't just blindly accept Paul because of some prophecy. They come to trust him because he proves himself as a fighter, and because he starts out from a place of genuine solidarity and humility--which it is possible for him to do because he has no structural power over them at that point. And Chani falls in love with him for the same reason, in that heady environment of fighting side by side for a political cause, and maybe for the first time in a while starting to believe that you can win.

I think the Villeneuve movies improve a lot on what's in the book in terms of how the Fremen are portrayed...when we're with the fedaykin and/or Chani and Stilgar. There we see political debates and discussion and the fact that not all the Fremen think the same way. And we also see little humanizing moments of folks just hanging out, celebrating after a victory in battle and just shooting the shit and being friends.

I do wish the movie had extended this to more parts of Fremen society. If there's one thing I could have added, it would be seeing more of daily life in Sietch Tabr. It makes sense that when we're seeing things from Jessica's POV, she is more distant from and suspicious of the Fremen, seeing them as a force to be manipulated, but I wish we had even one or two scenes of people just being people in the sietch. It felt kind of weirdly empty and not particularly lived-in as a place, and I think they could've easily countered this, with scenes from Chani, Stilgar or Paul's POV, and that would have made it hit even harder when the sietch is attacked.

If there were two things I could have added, I wanted more exploration of the people of the south. Why are they more fundamentalist than the Fremen who live in the north? (We get one line about how "nothing can survive [in the south] without faith" but I wanted more than that.) While I think the movie did a fantastic job of humanizing and differentiating the Fremen we see around Paul, when we get to the south it does backslide a little into "undifferentiated mass of fanatics." Surely the people of the south also have some diversity of political views.

I think there are some interesting threads they could have pulled on in terms of how proximity to direct colonial violence shapes people's ideology. Sietch Tabr is one of the closest Fremen communities to Arrakeen, the seat of colonial control. They have probably had to mount some kind of armed resistance for generations just to keep from being wiped out. I can see that producing skepticism of the prophecy ("well I can't sit around waiting for a messiah but I do have this rocket launcher") as well as resentment at the idea of someone swooping in and taking credit for a struggle that you've put your life on the line for, and probably a lot of people you know have died for. There seem to be some generational differences, too, where young people of Chani's generation put less stock in the prophecy, while the true believers are mostly older. I can see faith in the prophecy coming out of despair--when you've been fighting for decades with no change, maybe you draw the conclusion that only an outside power coming to your aid will make a difference. While the people of the south are still under colonial rule, maybe being generally outside the reach of direct Harkonnen violence (the Harkonnens don't even know they're there) makes the concepts of both oppression and liberation feel more abstract and more receptive to being filled in with Bene Gesserit mysticism. It seems absurd to want more from a movie that's nearly three hours long already...but I wanted more of this.

Still, I do think they managed to improve on a lot of things that frustrated me or are simply dated about the book, while keeping the political thriller/war drama/epic tragedy elements that I think are the heart of the story, and in some cases drawing them out more clearly and effectively than the book did. The best kind of book-to-film adaptation imo is one that has a strong point of view in terms of what the story is About, on a large-scale thematic level, and is not afraid to change individual elements of canon in service of telling that story the most effective way possible in a cinematic medium. While there are always things I want more of, I feel like Denis Villeneuve really, really understood the assignment in terms of the overarching themes of the the story and he delivered so fucking well.

[thatjewishzionistscout]

Hamas is not a fucking resistance movement! It is a genocidal terror organization focused on killing Jews!

Let’s go over some of the things, that Hamas, Islamic Jhiad, and ‘innocent Palestinians’ have done in the past to prove they are not a resistance.

-Kill innocent civilians. Throughout revolutions in history, not a out of the revolutionaries killed innocent civilians, even if they were on opposing sides. Because guess what that’s wrong. But I guess Hamas as all rights to do anything, including rape women, kidnap children, destroy houses, and much more. But I mean it’s all justified right?

-Hire child soldiers. It has been proven countless times, that Hamas takes and trains children to be soldiers. I would from the age 10 to 18, to be trained to kill Jews. These kids help terrorists, and help kill. They are half of the children death count, they usually, 16, 17, 18. They are combatants. (Yes, child soldiers have been frowned upon in recent years but apparently that goes out the window when it comes to Hamas.)

-Rape. You’ll find rape in almost everything, in happens in a lot of wars, but you won’t find such a mass gang of it as you did on October 7th.

-Martyrs. Martyrs are in every revolutionary war, but you know what’s the difference between those people and the Palestinians, those people choose to be martyrs. They chose to five there life for a cause, the hamas leaders and other have chosen to give the Palestinian people for a cause, not themselves.

-Hiding. Hamas, and other terrorist constantly hide in refugee camps, civilian homes, hospitals, schools, like wimps. Israel needs to dismantle every single bit of Hamas to ensure their citizens are safe, and that means sometimes bombing and taking out places where more civilians are. If you complain about two hostages being saved because civilians died, let me ask you, why were hostages being held in a civilian apartment building, in the middle of a refugee camp?

If you truly think this is a resistance movement, you’re a sick terrorist simp. 

[a-very-tired-jew]

Fandomization, Fervor, and Fuck Off

A consistent and appalling behavior since October has been the fandomization of the I/P Conflict by anti-Zionists and co. Many of us on this site have documented and talked about such behavior. From my own personal experience it reminded me of certain anime fandoms back in the day when they first emerged. If you weren't talking about it and it wasn't all consuming then you were a problem. I remember conventions being hell as these new fandoms crashed photo shoots and panels that weren't about them. The way in which anti-Zionists crash into other issues to make it about their particular one is reminiscent of these behaviors. As I've stated before, my toes are dipped into a variety of scientific topics as an ecologist. One of them is climate change and for the past few months the conversation within CC spheres has been forcibly turned to I/P and the "wanton destruction of the Palestinian landscape by the evil Jews Zionists. Thereby proving they're not indigenous because no indigenous culture would destroy their landscape." Never mind that the conversation prior to that moment was about pollinator loss due to climate change and habitat loss. This is Fandomization and Fervor. The want to drive your fandom into every single topic and make it everything. But now? We're in the Fuck Off stage, and I don't mean this as us telling anti-Zionists to fuck off, I mean the Fandom is telling people within it to Fuck Off or, at least, shut up. Since the beginning of this conflict there have been moderate voices within the anti-Zionist activist movement. We talk about the outright antisemitic and hate fueled ones here, but don't talk about these persons enough. The Moderates are the ones within these spheres that get pointed to when we bring up antisemitism because they bring nuance to the movement and try to curb the worst of the vitriol. They are the ones that screen capped and held up besides the token "Good Jews". While they didn't necessarily have as much of an impact in the beginning of the conflict due to the lack of numbers and the overwhelming fervor, zealouness, and righteousness of anti-Zionists, they are being noticed now. Many of the spaces I am in that posted incessantly every day and had multitudes of conversations about I/P throughout them have now become relatively silent. There might be a brief conversation over the course of 30 minutes here or there, an article gets posted every few days, and the AJ update is the only daily posting. Now, when larger conversations kick off there is more attention paid to the Moderates and the nuance they bring because it's not rapid fire anymore. People don't have to scroll back through hundreds of messages to find the nuance, it's right there and it's loud and clear. So they're being told to Fuck Off In every space I am in I have seen some variation of "Shut up, every time you talk the conversation ends" told to the Moderates. Why? Because each time they are addressing something that would have radicalized people earlier in the conflict. They are addressing outright hate and/or contradictory messaging. The culmination of which has been talking about the Islamic Republic's recent attack on Israel. I have seen them blatantly call out their activist community for celebrating an attack by a country that stands antithetical to everything its members say they stand for (LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, political rights, etc...) and jails, tortures, and kills people like them. As such, the Fervor and radicalization of new fandom members can't happen, and I see it angering the people whose entire identity has revolved around the Fandom and the hatred associated with it. The cognitive dissonance that the Moderates invoke in the radicals has resulted in some outright hatred in these communities that I thought was reserved only for us Jews. But now? Now it's clear that the most ardent members of the Fandom are just full of hate. That's it. They don't actually care of Palestinians, they just want to justify their hate and wallow in it.

[girlactionfigure]

Look.

At every single face.

134 innocent people brutally stolen from their families after 1200 Israelis were massacred in a single day, in an unprovoked barbaric attack by Hamas. This Islamic fundamentalist terror organization has the support of many Palestinians. Still. And worse, much of the civilized world.

Amongst the surviving hostages, there are different nationalities and religions, babies and elderly people. There are mothers and fathers, children, uncles and aunts, grandparents, brothers and sisters.

We have no idea how they are.

They've been held for 6 months now. 6 months.

It's unthinkable.

Their freedom not being an absolute priority for the Western world is outrageous. The world speaks of Gaza as though this never happened by the people who made it happen: Jihadi terrorists and their supporters.

The world continues to adopt THEIR narrative.

It's shocking to see affluent, educated individuals, advocates for various rights - from climate change, trans and women's rights - siding with Hamas sympathizers after their October 7th atrocities. As Sam Harris said, it just reveals how confused and decadent and morally vulnerable our civilization has become.

Israel's October 7th was like America's 9/11s. But worse. The equivalent is 40,000 victims—13 times more than the number of Al Qaeda victims on 9/11.

But not just in numbers.

In intensity. Everyone here knows someone who was lost.

In brutality. They were individually eliminated in the worst way imaginable.

In continuity. The attacks went on for months with daily rockets rendering people across the country, like me, running to bomb shelters with my kids. Months. And armed terrorists attacking us - who still do.

And yes, the hostages. They are still there. And in political debate, by armchair pundits, they are often not even mentioned.

I never imagined how many people I considered friends and trusted colleagues who have decided to remain quiet - not a peep. Somehow they think that speaking up for those massacred and the hostages means they aren't FOR the many innocent Palestinians killed in this conflict.

You can be for both, for ALL innocents, as I am.

War is ugly but unfortunately right now, necessary. To those who are too afraid to say it for fear of being canceled - there, I said it. Cancel my a**.

We will NOT be quiet about it.

Not on Facebook.

Not on any social media platform.

Not with our friends.

Not with our co-workers.

Not with our clients.

Not on the news.

Not on the streets.

These people are family to us.

They ARE our family.

Look at their faces.

May they come home alive, soon.

Words by Eitan Chitayat

[matan4il]

https://www.tumblr.com/drtanner/746570503303610368/zionists-should-never-feel-safe-go-fuck?source=share

This hypocrisy is so sad to see in real time.

"Don't use dogwhistles so Jews and PoC feel safe around you"

*gets called out for antisemitism on blog*

"90% of Jews should feel unsafe!"

I'd laugh if it wasn't horrifying.

I'd clap back at them but I was blocked :(

Hi Nonnie!

I don't clap back at anti-Zionists, because they don't deserve the attention, nor the added notes on their posts, but I think you did something meaningful in your ask, and I wanna highlight that, because you deserve the attention and applause.

So, someone who's anti-women, but doesn't wanna come across that way, will claim to just be speaking against feminists, and that there's no connection between women and feminists, because not all women are feminists! "Here," they'd say, "a tokenized anti-feminist woman!" But there is an intrinsic connection between the two, which is why it's no surprise that most women are, in fact, feminists.

The same goes for Zionism. Just like feminists wanted the right to vote to be equally applied to women, Zionists want the right to self-determination to be equally applied to Jews. Just as feminism is the liberation movement of women, Zionism is the liberation movement for Jews. Zionism is inherent to Jewish identity, and it's no coincidence that the overwhelming majority of Jews are Zionists.

One indicator that anti-feminism works to hurt women, is to take an anti-feminist statement, and replace "feminist" with "most women." Here's an example:

"Feminists are incapable of crafting a coherent argument using their words." -> Most women are incapable of crafting a coherent argument using their own words. Does that sound anti-women?

So a quick way to see that anti-Zionist statements are antisemitic, is to replace "Zionists" with "the majority of Jews," exactly as you have done, and see if it sounds antisemitic (every single one of the following examples is real, posted on Tumblr):

"Zionists should never feel safe" -> The majority of Jews should never feel safe.

"I don't want Zionists among us" -> I don't want the majority of Jews among us.

"Zionists always lie" -> The majority of Jews always lie.

"Arm yourself with knowledge to defeat Zionists" -> Arm yourself with knowledge to defeat the majority of Jews.

"Fuck Zionists" -> Fuck the majority of Jews.

Regarding the OP's post (not the antisemite's reblog), I wanna mention that OP's introduction of "dogwhistles" is kinda lacking. I mean, everything they said is true, but there are additional dogwhistles that they didn't address, ones which are more encoded than their examples.

For example, one dogwhistle neo-Nazis use is the numbers 18 (like in German neo-Nazi group "Combat 18") and 88. A is the 1st letter in the Latin alphabet, H is the 8th, so 18 is AH (stands for Adolf Hitler) and 88 is HH (stands for Heil Hitler, the Nazi greeting). On the surface, these are just innocent numbers, but for Jews who are familiar with neo-Nazi dogwhistles...

Another example of a dogwhistle is one that I've had an anti-Zionist type of antisemite use with me once. She's a Muslim young woman, I won't say from which country, but one that's very hostile to Israel, and where there's no free press. One antisemitic thing she said was that none of the prophets of Islam were Jews. Just a quick reminder, the prophets of Islam include mostly Jews, like Abraham (mispronounced as Ibrahim in Arabic), the patriarch of the entire Jewish nation, Moses, who delivered the Jews from Egypt (Moussa), King David (Daoud) and Jesus (Issa). Denying their Judaism is an antisemitic act easily called out by most people. But this woman also said to me, "Go plant gharqad trees." This one most people will miss. There is a Muslim hadith (a saying attributed to Muhammad, but reported by someone else), which states: "The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: oh Muslim, oh the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews." This hadith is quoted in the founding charter of Hamas. So in this context, "Go plant gharqad trees," is telling a Jewish person to prepare themself for the extermination of Jews. It's a genocidal dogwhistle. Ironically, this dogwhistle is so common, it has actually become its own anti-Israel propaganda piece, circulated in anti-Israel circles, where they claim that Israeli Jews are ordered to plant gharqad trees.

And one more example of a dig whistle! The infamous "From the river to the sea" qualifies. On the surface, it sounds like a peaceful chant for the liberation of a people. In reality, it is the English translation of a racist and genocidal slogan, stating that ALL of the land between the river and the sea (meaning, the territories currently under Palestinian rule AND Israel) will be Arab. To a Jewish person, this is at the very least a call for an ethnic cleansing via expulsion of the Jews, but we all know that this won't happen through just expelling the Jewish population, so an Arab country covering all of Israel will only exist through the shedding of a lot of Jewish blood. It IS genocidal.

Lastly, the incrdible @tzomet-spy-pigeon made a really important addition, pointing out that OP has actually posted antisemitic dogwhistles themselves, of the anti-Zionist variety of antisemitism. So I just wanna make it clear: people who come out against one type of antisemitism (such as the white supremacist kind) are NOT exempt from being guilty of perpetuating others (like the anti-Zionist kind).

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[haggishlyhagging]

“The Adam and Eve myth, possibly the single most effective piece of enemy propaganda in the long history of the sex war, had other crucial implications. It performed the essential task of putting man first in the scheme of things; for in all the father god religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, God creates man first: woman is born after man, framed of an insignificant and expendable lump of his bony gristle, and taken out of him like a child from its mother. Essentially this is just one of the countless attempts of womb-envious men to usurp women's power of birth: with a swift piece of patriarchal prestidigitation, God reverses biology and stands nature on its head with the birth of his man-child, in defiance of evolution, where men and women evolved together, and of life itself, where woman gives birth to man. God now assumed the power of all new life—all the monotheisms taught that God alone created and breathed life into each fetus, using the woman in whom he lodged it simply as an "envelope," in the Islamic phrase.”

-Rosalind Miles, Who Cooked the Last Supper?

[foreveralbon]

ive spent a couple days wondering if i should say this or not. i wanted to but i was worried that i wouldn’t articulate it properly or i would miss something out or get something wrong, but i reckon having that happen is better than saying nothing at all.

i love this sport and i love these drivers more than anything. but the kinds of things people - drivers, in specific - say and do are actually disgusting.

there was nothing i loved more than to hear charlotte tilbury was partnering with f1 academy. a makeup brand sponsoring women in motorsports is something every girl loves seeing. and the fact that it was charlotte tilbury, a pro-palestinian brand, is a part that i, personally focused on and loved.

but then the driver with their livery was revealed to be islamophobic. if you haven’t seen the screenshots, she liked (and was quick to delete) a comment that read:

right, show those hairs to these brainwashed muslims 👏🏻

say what you will, but that is a blatant act of islamophobia right there.

funniest part is, in the post right below it, she’s seen at the grand mosque, wearing a hijab. yes, it’s mandatory for women to to visit the masjid wearing modest clothing and a head covering, and maybe i’m reading too much into it, but it’s so wild to agree with islamophobic notions just to go to an islamic place of worship for the aesthetic.

i want so badly to like f1 academy, but between what bianca’s said and now lola lovinfosse, it’s so hard to do.

im honestly so appalled because when bianca said something ableist, the whole community was on her back in minutes, holding her accountable for what she said.

everyone turns a blind eye when it comes to this.

people are so quick to dig up comments wives and girlfriends have made back in 2015 and onwards but when it’s something like this from a year ago, they just brush it under the rug.

i have not seen a single person talk about this. all the exposure is on christian horner’s allegations and the occasional reblog about boycotting and palestine. (if you don’t know what’s happening with christian, i suggest looking at @piastrification’s blog, as they have made so many insightful posts on that topic)

the least i can do, and will do, is talk about this.

[wathanism]

it's so insane to me that a lot of western feminists can understand the nuances of "yes wearing makeup is a personal choice that women make but that choice doesn't exist in a vacuum and it's critical to examine the external pressures that push women into making that choice, and critiquing those external pressures is not shaming any women for any choices they make but rather is directed towards dismantling the system that enforces that pressure," but somehow they're incapable of talking about hijabs with any level of nuance. either hijabs are the greatest example of women's suffering and thus the liberated whites must criminalize it and ban it from all public spaces to ensure those sad pathetic little arab women are free from the big bad evil arab men OR hijabs are a completely 100% personal choice that has only ever empowered every single woman who has ever worn one and they've never been used to hurt any woman ever in the history of all of islam.

PS: terfs don't breathe in my direction or better yet don't breathe at all

[humansofnewyork]

(12/54) “She was brave in many ways. But there were three things that Mitra feared most: darkness, silence, and being alone. In Germany we’d take long walks through the countryside. Mitra couldn’t stand the quiet. She’d recite entire poems back-to-back-to-back. At the time she’d gotten into modern poetry. Her favorite poet was a young woman named Forough Farrokzhad. Mitra had many of her poems memorized. Farrokzhad was a modern poet. She wrote in free verse. She wrote from a feminine perspective. And she wrote about everything, including sex. By the time we finished Shahnameh I think I’d destroyed Mitra’s interest in the book. The book’s longest section is the historical section. Here the heroic nature of the prose fades. There are no more dragons. No more Rostam and Gordafarid. Here Ferdowsi writes about real people. He must stick to what is known. You can’t turn a real person into a mythic hero. That summer I took a road trip home to Iran. The Shah had just announced his White Revolution. It was a sweeping campaign of reform. Women were given the right to vote. Factory workers gained a share in profits. Agricultural estates were seized and redistributed to the sharecroppers who worked the fields. With a single stroke of his pen, the Shah gave more freedom to millions of Iranians. But not everyone supported it. When I arrived in Tehran the city was in chaos. Several buildings on my street were in flames. A cleric named Khomeini had come out against The White Revolution, and he’d ordered his followers to riot. Khomeini practiced a different kind of Islam. This was not the Islam of our fathers. This was not the Islam of the Persian Mystics. This was an Islam of cutting off hands, death for nonbelievers, and oppression of women. We thought these things were demons from our history. Monsters buried far in our past. But there’s a parable in 𝘔𝘢𝘴𝘯𝘢𝘷𝘪, where Rumi writes about a dragon frozen in a block of ice. The dragon seems to be dead. So the people place him on a cart and wheel him into the center of the city. They’ll soon discover that he’s still alive. He was only sleeping, waiting for things to heat up.”

 میترا در بسیاری کارها بی‌باک بود ولی از سه چیز می‌ترسید: تاریکی، سکوت و تنهایی. در آلمان به پیاده‌روی‌های طولانی پیرامون شهر می‌رفتیم. میترا تحمل خاموشی را نداشت. پی در پی شعرهایی را به طور کامل می‌خواند. در آن هنگام شاعر دلخواه او فروغ فرخزاد بود. فرخزاد شاعری نوگرا بود. او شاعر سبک نو بود. شعرهای او دیدگاه‌های زنانه داشتند. در هر زمینه‌ای می‌نوشت، حتا سکس. قشر مذهبی جامعه، او را زنی هرزه می‌خواند. میترا بسیاری از شعرهای او را به یاد سپرده بود. یک سال طول کشید تا شاهنامه را با هم خواندیم. هنگامی که خواندن را به پایان رساندیم، فکر می‌کنم از دلبستگی‌اش به شاهنامه کاسته بودم. بلندترین بخش کتاب بخش تاریخی آن است. در اینجا، سرشت حماسی سخن کم‌رنگ می‌شود. دیگر خبری از افسون و جادو نیست. از اژدها. از رستم و گردآفرید. در این بخش، فردوسی درباره‌ی انسان‌های واقعی می‌نویسد. هنگام نوشتن تاریخ باید به واقعیت‌ها پایبند بود. نمی‌توان شخصی عادی را به پهلوانی اسطوره‌ای تبدیل کرد. درآن تابستان، سفری زمینی به ایران داشتم. شاه به تازگی انقلاب سفید را اعلام کرده بود. یک کارزار فراگیر اصلاحات بود. زمین‌های کشاورزی زمین‌داران بزرگ به بهایی اندک به کشاورزانی که روی آن کار می‌کردند داده می‌شد. زنان از حق رأی برخوردار می‌شدند. سهمی از سود کارخانه‌ها به کارگران می‌رسید. در یک رفراندم به میلیون‌ها ایرانی آزادی بیشتری رسید. اما همه از آن پشتیبانی نمی‌کردند. هنگامی که به تهران رسیدم، چندین ساختمان را آتش زده بودند. یک روحانی به نام خمینی علیه انقلاب سفید قیام کرده و به پیروانش دستور شورش داده بود. خمینی به گونه‌ی دیگری از اسلام باور داشت. این اسلام پدران ما نبود. این اسلام عارفان ایرانی نبود. این اسلام بریدن دست‌ها و کشتن آزادی‌خواهان و ستمگری علیه زنان بود. اینها را اهریمنانی برخاسته از تاریخ‌مان می‌پنداشتیم. دیوهایی که در سال‌های دور به خاک سپرده بودیم. مولانا حکایتی در مثنوی دارد که در آن اژدهایی در تکه یخی منجمد شده است. گویی که مُرده است. از این‌ رو، مردم آن را بر ارابه‌ای نهاده و به مرکز شهر می‌برند. ولی بزودی در می‌یابند که اژدها هنوز زنده است. تنها در خواب بوده است و در آرزوی گرما. مرده بود و زنده گشت او از شگفت / اژدها بر خویش جنبیدن گرفت

[unbidden-yidden]

Jewish Song of the Day #12: Bellida

Comments:

Okay so at one point I went spelunking for more female Jewish singers singing in classical styles, and I stumbled upon this song, which is sung in Haketia, a Moroccan dialect of Ladino that also incorporates some Arabic.

It's a secular(ish) song, but very much culturally Jewish.

I'm not going to explain it well, so instead I'll simply quote from this article about it:

On October 25, 2019, Bloch and Zaaluk released their newest hit single Bellida. The song is sung in the traditional Haketia, an endangered Jewish Romance language also known as Djudeo Spañol, Ladino Occidental, or Western Judaeo-Spanish. Tamar is part of a new generation of young artists from Arab and Islamic countries who sing in their mother tongues. Her mother was born in Morocco. “I’m not involved in a preservation project and the social narrative isn’t what’s important to me. In my music I have found, after much searching, a real place for intimate expression – a language that’s a home, ” said the singer in her interview with Haaretz Magazine. Bellida is “definitely a pop album. It’s not world music from a distant and inaccessible culture, which is being preserved. I bring the songs in modern arrangements in the understanding of how relevant this music is.” The song was arranged with the help of Roee Fadida. It is a humoristic women’s song that represents the tradition of women singing in everyday life. “It tells the story about a Jewish-Moroccan girl (Bellida) who falls in love and marries Pepe, a Christian man. The ladies in her village make jokes about it but comfort her with local food.” Although Bloch and primarily sings with the goal of inspiring audiences to sing and dance, she understands her creation bears social obligation. Specifically, it is the female responsibility aspect of Bellida that Bloch warmly embraces. “It is something that I really yearn for,” she says. “Jews assimilation is a very serious prohibition, yet Bellida is not ostracized. She is cared for by means of tradition and food.” Bellida is Bloch’s interpretation of secular feminine folklore. “I imagine these women dancing together. Music brings people together. In Morocco, you see everyone sitting and singing, and being familiar with the words,” she says. “In Israel music reflects the various cultural homes from which we came. The real challenge is to try to create a new sound from within every such home.” In sharing her story of how the heritage songs came into her life, Bloch explained that in 2014, Roee Fadida, a role model, invited her to join a band that plays contemporary Moroccan music. She described having a physical reaction to that music. It felt like I was “smelling a roll outside a bakery and I had to take a bite.” Bellida is performed alongside Bloch’s band Zaaluk, a trans-Mediterranean and North African ensemble that revive lost Haketiya women’s songs. Their age-old melodies are performed to inspire people to sing and dance together and embrace the heritage of the ancient Jewish community of Spanish Morocco. Their sounds are inspired by Andalusian, North African, and Balkan musical traditions. Their music is a combination of electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, percussion, and powerful vocals, performed in Israel and abroad. The name of the band refers to a local Moroccan salad and captures the group’s multi-cultural essence.