Queers for Palestine: The woke left's unholy alliance with Islamism



In our essay last month, we proposed that presumed incoming Alabama governor Tommy Tuberville (R) pursue an aggressive and innovative political strategy to stem the growth of Islam in his state. His challenge, however, is no longer confined to the spread of the so-called religion of peace.

Since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, what had largely been an implicit alliance between Islamist activists and two predominant elements of American progressivism — gender anarchists and racial idolators — has increasingly declared itself in public.

Muslim scriptural and legal traditions often escape the scrutiny applied to Christian texts in progressive circles.

Consider the coalition behind Columbia University's Gaza encampment in April 2024. Columbia University Apartheid Divest brought together 116 student organizations, including the Muslim Students Association, Columbia Queer Alliance, Genderev, the Black Student Organization, and White Coats 4 Black Lives. Its members made common cause under the banner of fighting interconnected systems of oppression. That January, the American Muslim Task Force for Palestine, representing organizations including CAIR and the Muslim American Society, partnered with the left-wing ANSWER Coalition to organize a massive demonstration in Washington.

Strained bedfellows

The alliance is mystifying, to say the least. These two progressive wings treat sex as a social construct and race as the master category of politics. Their Islamist allies adhere to religious traditions that condemn the progressives' core sexual beliefs. What holds them together is a common enemy: the Western political and cultural order, whose foundations are deeply indebted to the Bible.

Classical liberalism and the freedoms associated with it did not emerge from a vacuum or from secular reason alone. The Declaration of Independence's assertion of unalienable rights endowed by a Creator tracks the Bible's claim that human beings bear the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26–27). Equality before the law, the restraint of arbitrary power, and the distinction between divine and human authority draw on the Mosaic law's limits on kings (Deut. 17:14–20) and the New Testament's insistence that Caesar's domain is not total (Matt. 22:21; Rom. 13:1–7).

Conscience, proportional justice, the dignity of the individual, and the possibility of ordered liberty under law are human applications, however imperfect, of Old and New Testament teaching. The progressive and Islamist camps challenge this inheritance from very different directions. Progressives increasingly reject biblical moral authority; Islamists seek a political order governed by their interpretation of divine law. Neither has much use for the classical liberal settlement that emerged in the Christian West.

No 'queering' the Quran

Gender idolatry begins by denying the created order stated in Genesis. Male and female are not optional social performances; they are the binary given in the text (Gen. 1:27; 2:18–24). The framework that elevates subjective identity over biological sex treats the Bible's account as an oppressive artifact worthy of dismantling.

Here, traditional Islam and Christianity have considerably more in common with each other than either does with contemporary gender ideology. Both uphold a divinely established sexual order. Both condemn homosexual acts. Their theological foundations differ, but their moral prohibitions frequently overlap.

Traditional Islamic jurisprudence, however, has gone considerably further in the punishments it prescribes. The Quran condemns the conduct of the people of Lot (7:80–81; 26:165–166; 27:54–55; 29:28–29), while one hadith states: "If you find anyone doing as Lot's people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done." Iranian law still prescribes the death penalty for certain acts of sodomy. Hamas' record of repression in Gaza offers little comfort to those whose sexual freedom is celebrated in Western progressive salons.

Yet the alliance endures. At New York City's 2024 Pride parade, pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the route beneath a banner proclaiming, "No queer liberation without Palestinian liberation." For these activists, solidarity against a common political adversary evidently outweighs profound differences over sexual morality.

'Race' to conquest

Racial idolatry performs parallel work. The New Testament's declaration that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free (Gal. 3:28) supplies an important theological root of the classical liberal rejection of inherited status as the basis of rights. Rights attach to the individual, not to the bloodline, race, or social strata a person is born into.

Intersectionality, as developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her 1989 essay "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex," examines overlapping systems of discrimination associated with race, sex, and other categories. In contemporary progressive politics, this framework is frequently enlisted to sort political conflicts into hierarchies of oppressor and oppressed. Muslims, once treated as outsiders to the Western political order, now occupy a prominent place in the progressive hierarchy of victimhood.

Muslim scriptural and legal traditions often escape the scrutiny applied to Christian texts in progressive circles. Historical Islamic expansionism and the dhimmi (second-class citizen) system are viewed through the lens of Western imperialism rather than subjected to the same criticism directed at Christianity's historical entanglements with political power. This produces a selective hierarchy of harms and victims: Islamic religious claims may receive deference even as the Bible's moral authority is rejected.

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A common enemy

The gender and racial wings, therefore, share an enemy with Islamism that is more precise than "conservatism." Their respective doctrines may be incompatible, but both challenge the Western liberal order, which places limits on the claims of political and religious authority over the individual. Consider Judith Butler's description of the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians as "armed resistance" rather than terrorism. Butler acknowledged that the attacks were terrible but insisted that they be understood as resistance to oppression. The language makes it possible to place Hamas within a progressive account of political struggle despite the movement's deeply illiberal religious commitments.

Anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman has documented the longer "red-green" pattern: leftist and Islamist actors finding common cause against Western institutions and Israel while maintaining incompatible doctrines on sex, apostasy, and religious authority. Historical precedents are hardly encouraging. Secular allies were pushed aside after the Iranian Revolution, demonstrating how quickly a revolutionary coalition can dissolve once the question of who will govern has been settled. History may not repeat, but it does rhyme, and there is no reason to assume the next stanza will end differently.

American progressives appear confident that the alliance can be sustained indefinitely through the shared vocabulary of equity, anti-imperialism, and opposition to patriarchal power. Islamists, meanwhile, have learned to employ that vocabulary in Western academic and media institutions without abandoning their own religious commitments concerning women, homosexuals, or nonbelievers.

The net result is that the classical liberal inheritance, rooted in the Bible's promises about the dignity of the individual and the limits of coercive state or ethnic power, remains their common obstacle. Our proposal that Alabama initiate a constitutional debate, insisting that the state's history and tradition are not interchangeable with Islamic teaching, is one political means of defending that inheritance.

Progressives will always default to acting as though the obstacle is invisible as long as there are constituents who can claim status as victims. Thus, they hope that a shared basket of purported miseries will be sufficient to sustain what is otherwise a shallow alliance of convenience.

The progressives will discover, too late, that the doctrines they dismantled in the name of anarchy and equity were all that stood between them and the caliphate's scimitar. They will also learn that a fungible hierarchy of victimization offers no sanctuary once the victors decide to rewrite the list.

Iran’s regime killed my brother. I refuse to hate Muslims.



My younger brother, Hamraz, was arrested in Iran at 16. Two years later, the Islamic regime executed him. His death filled me with anger and a desire for revenge. But as I studied the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenged me to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me.

God transformed my hatred into love. Rather than seek revenge against Muslims, I devoted my life to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with them.

Love your Muslim neighbors. Befriend them, serve them, pray for them, and share with them the good news of Jesus Christ.

I love Muslims. And I love America. That is precisely why I am sounding the alarm.

I came to this country from Iran and discovered freedoms that religious tyranny denies. I know what it means to lose those freedoms. Americans who have never lived under such a regime should not assume their liberties will always be secure.

My purpose is to warn, not to stir hatred or violence. I want Americans to recognize the danger of political movements that seek to replace constitutional government with religious rule — and to confront that danger with truth, courage, and love.

Many Americans think of Islam exclusively as a religion. Historically, it has also supplied models for political authority and law. Muhammad was a religious prophet, a political leader, and a military commander. His followers in Mecca initially had little political power. In Medina, beginning in the 7th century, he governed a community and led military campaigns. His successors extended Islamic rule across vast territories.

For 1,400 years, movements seeking Islamic government have drawn upon that history: organize believers, build influence, gain power, and govern according to their interpretation of Islamic law.

Not all Muslims take the Quran’s commands and Muhammad’s example equally seriously. Many nominal Muslims love freedom and reject extremism. But I believe those who follow those teachings most closely see the extension of Islamic political rule as a religious duty. That is the ambition I mean when I warn of world domination.

The danger is not confined to terrorism. A movement can pursue religious authoritarianism through political institutions as well as violence. Its leaders may use freedoms of speech, worship, and political participation while seeking power to deny those freedoms to others.

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I watched a version of that tragedy unfold in Iran. Before the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini promised liberty and justice. Many Iranians believed him. After the revolution, his regime imposed religious law, crushed dissent, persecuted minorities, and executed political opponents. My brother was among the dead.

Judge a political movement by more than its promises before it gains power. Examine its history, its stated aims, and what it intends to do after winning.

Europe offers warnings of its own. Across Europe, Islamist movements have sought greater political and cultural influence. In some communities, disputes over religious arbitration, women's rights, freedom of expression, and the application of Islamic law have raised serious concerns.

America must learn from these experiences.

Political influence is not always pursued through violence. It can also develop gradually through organized, long-term efforts to influence schools, local governments, public institutions, and, ultimately, national policy.

Some Islamist movements seek to use the freedoms of democracy — free speech, religious liberty, and political participation — to gain influence while advocating systems that would deny those same freedoms to others.

Participating in civic life is every American's constitutional right, including the right of Muslim Americans. But when any movement seeks political power for the purpose of imposing religious law on others, Americans must recognize the threat.

We must never confuse religious freedom with permission to undermine the freedoms of others.

America’s openness, tolerance, and goodwill are tremendous strengths. But without knowledge and vigilance, these virtues can be exploited by movements that do not share our commitment to liberty.

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I often say that I worry more about America’s future than Iran’s. Millions of Iranians know firsthand what religious authoritarianism can do. Too many Americans know it only as a distant subject in a history book.

That concern led me and other Iranian-Americans to produce "The Great American Conflict," a documentary examining political Islam and what its ambitions could mean for this country.

My appeal is simple: Wake up. Study the history. Look closely at organizations seeking power in your community. Attend meetings, participate in elections, serve on school boards and city councils, and hold elected officials to the Constitution. Defend religious liberty, free speech, and equal rights for everyone.

Above all, act from conviction and love, never hatred or fear.

Love your Muslim neighbors. Befriend them, serve them, pray for them, and share with them the good news of Jesus Christ. I sometimes call myself Islamophilic rather than Islamophobic. I do not embrace Islamic teachings. I love Muslim people.

My brother's execution taught me the terrible cost of religious tyranny. Jesus taught me that hatred cannot answer hatred. We can love Muslims wholeheartedly and defend America's constitutional freedoms courageously.

The time to do both is now, while we still have the freedom to do so.

Is ‘Islamophobia’ irrational?



“Phobos” is Greek for “fear.” In modern times, “phobia” has come to mean an irrational fear. Presumably a rational fear is based on a reasonable risk.

Is arachnophobia (fear of spiders) irrational? There are nearly 54,000 species of spider, but only 1% are dangerous to us. So a general phobia of spiders is irrational, but a fear of black widows isn’t. And there is a reason my Australian friends tap their shoes upside down before putting them on — funnel-web spiders like shoes, and they are deadly.

The risk of being a victim of terrorism is small. But if it happens in the West, it’s likely to be by a Muslim with Islamist motives.

The United States and Europe have seen plenty of terrorist attacks and murders by non-Muslims, but for motives that were political, not religious. For Muslim fundamentalists, or “Islamists,” there is no separation between politics and religion.

In this list of suicide bombings from the University of Chicago, the culprits appear to be nearly all Muslims, with motives that are likely jihadist. Muslims, with either premeditated Islamist motives or mental illness or a mix of both, have committed bombings, shootings, stabbings, and vehicle assaults in Europe and the United States.

Here are a few.

Europe

  • 2004, Madrid: Terrorists set off bombs in four trains, killing 191 people.
  • 2005, London: Four suicide bombers killed 52 people on three Underground trains and one bus.
  • 2015, Paris: Coordinated suicide attacks killed 130 people, notably at the Bataclan theater.
  • 2016, Brussels: Suicide bombers killed 34 people at the Zaventem Airport and a metro station.
  • 2016, Nice (France): A man drove a truck through a seaside promenade, killing 86 people.
  • 2017, England: Suicide bombers killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.
  • 2024, Germany: A man stabbed and killed three people and wounded more.

The United States

  • 2009, Fort Hood: A U.S. Army major shot and killed 13 people and wounded 30.
  • 2013, Boston: Tsarnaev brothers killed three people and wounded hundreds with bombs.
  • 2015, Chattanooga: A man killed five people at a military recruiting center.
  • 2015, San Bernardino: A couple shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22.
  • 2016, Orlando: A man shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 at the Pulse Nightclub.

The risk of being a victim of terrorism is small. But if it happens in the West, it’s likely to be by a Muslim with Islamist motives. Our educators, media, and politicians would pretend otherwise.

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The Daily Telegraph reports that in Britain, many of those too young to remember it are “barely aware of the context and the details of the [9/11 terrorist] plot.” Schoolteachers don’t teach the plain truth to avoid offending parents, allowing absurd conspiracy theories to take root — such as that the United States or Israel blew the Twin Towers up as a pretext to launch a war in the Middle East.

In a 2016 poll of 3,000 British Muslims, 31% thought the United States was behind 9/11. Seven percent said it was “the Jews,” and only 4% blamed al-Qaeda or Muslim terrorists. In America, no one 30 or older can ever forget what happened. But some of these students interviewed by Young Americas Foundation are unaware of who carried out the attacks and why.

True, most American youth are ignorant of all history due to abysmal K-12 education standards. Sometimes popular culture fills the gap. There are hundreds of movies, from “Apocalypse Now” to “Platoon,” about Vietnam. There are thousands about World War II.

But for 9/11, very few. An ABC miniseries, “The Path to 9/11,” was shown once in 2006 and never again. It’s not available to stream, though I found a DVD on Amazon and a blurry YouTube bootleg.

In the U.S., any criticism of Islamism is quickly labeled “Islamophobia” by groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations. But there is no official, government-endorsed definition of that term. Americans’ free speech is protected by the First Amendment to our Constitution, but Britain and many other countries have only limited protection.

In Britain, the Labour government downplays Islamic extremism for fear of offending the Muslim votes it depends on.

The British government created a Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hatred to define “Islamophobia,” but they deleted all the comments and contributions by outside groups to the effort. Why? Critics allege that they would show Islamists were influencing the new definition, which could one day result in prosecutions. One Conservative member of Parliament warned the government that “there is a serious risk that this definition could lead to limitations on freedom of speech, criminalize language and prevent the discussion of religious ideas — creating a de facto blasphemy law.”

But of course, there already is a de facto blasphemy law all over Europe — with the possible penalty being death.

Written Islamic religious tradition prohibits depicting the Muslims' prophet. In 2005, the Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten published cartoons that did so. Ambassadors from 11 Muslim-majority countries, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Arab League all protested to the Danish government. Street protests took place in Denmark, Australia, Canada, the U.K., the United States, and elsewhere.

Danish Muslim groups (unsuccessfully) tried to get the magazine prosecuted for blasphemy.

That year, the clear political cost of crossing Islamist red lines was made clear all over the West. Soon enough, so was the physical cost.

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In 2006, the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo put a cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad on its cover and reprinted the Danish cartoons along with new ones. In 2015, Islamist terrorists killed eight journalists and staff and two police officers at the magazine's offices in Paris.

In 2020, French teacher Samuel Paty was killed and beheaded by an Islamist fanatic because he had used a cartoon from Charlie Hebdo in teaching a class on free speech.

In 2021, a teacher in England used one of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons to illustrate a lesson on free speech and blasphemy. Doxxed and threatened with death, he went into hiding and is still under police protection. The school suspended the teacher and apologized.

Salman Rushdie wrote “The Satanic Verses” in 1988. A year later, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini put out a fatwa (religious decree) ordering all Muslims to kill him and anyone involved with the book’s publication. Italian and Japanese translators of the book, and its Norwegian publisher, were stabbed by assailants in the following years.

Rushdie was protected by the British government at great expense. But in August 2022, while giving a talk in upstate New York, he was stabbed and nearly killed by Hadi Matar, a Muslim attempting to carry out the 35-year-old fatwa.

To have a fear of all Muslims may not be rational, but to have a fear of Islamism surely is. Trying to define Islamophobia so broadly as to limit free speech — and then ban it under threat of fines or prison — doesn’t make that reality go away.

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Mamdani screamed 'Islamophobia.' Then the truth came out.



New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other Democrats were quick to condemn an attack at a mosque as Islamophobia — but BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales notes that the attack wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

“If there was one message that he wanted you to know, it is that he loves soccer ... but if there’s one more thing that he always wants you to know, it’s that Muslims are always the victims. Isn’t it crazy how that turns out?” Gonzales asks, before reading Mamdani’s post about the “attack.”

“Yesterday, during Friday prayers at the Muslim Center of New York in Queens, a man reached for his pocket and congregants saw what looked like a firearm, creating a terrifying situation for Muslim New Yorkers who had gathered to worship,” Mamdani wrote in a post on X.

“I’m immensely grateful and relieved that an MTA employee, a cab driver and an NYPD officer acted quickly to help ensure no one was hurt. Every New Yorker should be able to observe their religion without fear or intimidation,” he added.


“I would guess that you wouldn’t see that same energy if it was a synagogue,” Gonzales comments.

New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also took the opportunity to highlight the situation, with Schumer writing on X that “Islamophobia is unacceptable and we must continue to reject hatred and bigotry in every form.”

James posted that “we must stand united against Islamophobia.”

However, they left one “major detail” out about the attacker.

“It’s just that he was a Muslim. He’s a Muslim himself. So I don’t know how you guys are going on your diatribe,” Gonzales says.

“And according to the criminal complaint, he was seen entering the mosque where he removed his baseball cap and put on a head covering and a mask. He proceeded to count his money and said, ‘If anybody touches my money, it’s going to be trouble,’” she continues.

“And then someone saw what appeared to be a gun in his waistband. They tackled him to the ground. It turns out it was a bb gun,” she adds.

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Liz Wheeler: Britain’s rape gang scandal could not have happened without help



The horrifying details from Britain’s grooming gang scandal have been revealed through the "Rape Gang Inquiry Report" — and BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler finds it all almost impossible to comprehend.

“My mind has been spinning for hours because I can’t read the account of this sexual torture of young children,” Wheeler begins.

“What was done to these girls in Britain, these young white girls, 250,000 of them, is actually beyond the scope of human imagination,” she says.

“How did this happen?”

And Wheeler believes there's only one answer to that question.

“The scope of the crimes that were committed is so widespread and so extreme that the only explanation is that it was allowed to happen,” she says.


The girls were as young as 11 years old and were “systemically raped and trafficked by Muslim men in Britain.”

“We know this because of the ones who have been charged, 87% of these perpetrators who have been convicted were Muslim,” she explains.

“This is not a generalization. This is not a negative stereotype. This is not bigotry or Islamophobia or whatever the left is going to accuse us of engaging in for simply acknowledging what is happening here,” she continues.

According to the report, these men worked through “organized networks of perpetrators” who “built coordinated operations that transported victims between locations, supplied them with drugs and alcohol, recorded abuse for distribution and blackmail, and passed girls between multiple adult men.”

The report also explains that “police forces ignored repeated reports, criminalized victims instead of perpetrators, destroyed evidence, and allowed known rapists to walk free on bail.”

Social care services even placed children “in trafficking hubs,” “closed cases despite clear indicators of exploitation, and retaliated against whistleblowers.”

Meanwhile, the National Health Service recorded genital injuries, STIs in children as young as 13, pregnancies from rape, suicide attempts — but still discharged these children back to their abusers.

And when politicians were asked about the abuse, they did nothing but reverse the blame.

“The mayor, Sadiq Khan, London mayor ... when he was asked publicly about these allegations, said that it was fake, that they were false allegations. And he turned it around, and he blamed the victims and ... falsely accused them of being politically motivated,” Wheeler explains.

However, a Daily Express report revealed that Khan had access to documents from the police detailing the crimes.

“It’s almost beyond comprehension to understand how someone could see this happening and not turn their life upside down to try to stop it,” Wheeler says.

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Muslim principal lasts only one week before Texas school district finds posts on Sharia law and BLM



A Muslim woman has been reassigned after only one week as a high school principal after troubling posts on social media were brought to the attention of the Texas school district.

The Fort Worth Independent School District said Tuesday that Shayma Alzubi was removed as the principal of Western Hills High School pending an investigation into the posts.

The post about Sharia law apparently compared the Islamic regulations to other faith-based rules such as those in Christianity.

Alzubi, who has a decade of experience in education, allegedly posted messages on Facebook defending Sharia law as well as the Black Lives Matter movement.

She also reportedly posted a message reading, "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine," and one that showed support for COVID mask mandates in the district.

The district said in a statement to KDFW-TV that the posts violated its rules about personal politics.

"Our district leaders, educators, and staff will not inject personal political perspectives into classrooms," reads a statement from the district to Fox News Digital. "Fort Worth ISD serves a wide array of families and students that are civically engaged and maintain a variety of perspectives. As a taxpayer-funded entity, we will remain focused on our mission of providing a high-quality education for all students."

The post about Sharia law apparently compared Islamic regulations to other faith-based rules such as those in Christianity.

Alzubi did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Alzubi's supporters have planned a news conference at the Islamic Unity Center and are expected to demand the district immediately reinstate Alzubi as principal.

They blame "multiple right-wing bloggers" who complained that a "visibly Muslim woman was appointed as principal," according to a press release.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations also blamed an "anti-Muslim witch hunt" in its release, which said Alzubi was targeted because she wore a traditional Islamic head scarf, or hijab.

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Among those who posted about Alzubi on Tuesday was the popular Libs of TikTok account.

Alzubi was working as the assistant principal at Southwest High School before she was elevated to the principal position.

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