I am pleased to report that "progressive Zionist" Jon Segall has recently come out against radical Islam.
Radical Islam, or what I generally refer to as "political Islam," is the single most violent and genocidally-inclined political movement in the world today. In its modern form it arose under the auspices of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s, just as both Nazism and Soviet Communism were on the rise in Europe. Scholars such as Paul Berman and Jeffrey Herf argue that the motivation behind the autocratic Brotherhood is similar to that of the Nazis in that the movement seeks to create a "new man" grounded in old mythologies and typified by a toxic hatred of the Jew. Just as the Nazis sought to create a "Third Reich," based on romanticized mythologies of the Roman Empire, so the Brotherhood and the Islamists seek to create a new Caliphate based on romanticized mythologies of Islam from the 7th century.
The recent rise of the so-called "Arab Spring" was, of course, the rise of political Islam throughout the Arab-Muslim Middle East. The "Arab Spring" was not the great upwelling of democracy, as the Obama administration told us, but the great upwelling of political Islam. Country after country in that part of the world fell to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, and al-Qaeda. Morocco went Islamist. Libya went Islamist. Turkey now leans in that direction. Egypt, for a while, went Islamist. Syria, depending on the outcome of their "Arab Spring" civil war, is likely to go Islamist, with a little help from the sympathetic Obama administration.
And, needless to say, Iran leads the pack not from the "Arab Spring," but from their fascist Islamist revolution of 1979.
One of my primary criticisms of the western progressive-left, including the Jewish left, is that it has not done a good job of speaking out against the rise of a movement that subjugates women, kills Gay people outright, and that seeks the genocide of the Jews.
I am pleased to report, however, that Jon Segall, the proprietor of The Progressive Zionist and contributor to the Times of Israel and long-time "diarist" for the large progressive-left blog Daily Kos, has recently come out in opposition to the anti-Jihadi movement and I very much applaud him for doing so.
In a recent conversation between Jon and myself, here at Israel Thrives, I challenged Jon on the issue.
I wrote:
If you disagree with my perspective than you must disagree with my central conclusions. One of those conclusions is that the progressive-left, including the Jewish left, has failed to in any meaningful or sustained way speak out against the rise of political Islam.Jon claims that, depending on how one defines the "Jewish left" it is not true and I am exceedingly happy to hear it.
If my observations are false - which as a fallible human being they sometimes may be - then I know that Jon can point us toward the main writings of the Jewish left - however he might like to define it - in opposition to political Islam and tell us how it has influenced his thinking on the matter.
As the proprietor of The Progressive Zionist, which has hosted over 400 pieces of writing since 2011, I very much look forward to Jon showing me some of his more significant material speaking out against political Islam.
There are four hundred million Arabs in the Middle East and a mere six million Jews. The great Arab majority, for the most part, does not accept the Jewish presence under anything else than subjugation and dhimmitude. It is exceedingly important, therefore, that diaspora Jewish thinkers like Jon Segall speak out against the rise of politicized Islam because it represents a terrible threat to everyone in that part of the world.
Only by speaking out directly against this movement can we hope to influence the rest of the western world, which is key to keeping it down and eventually eliminating this fascistic movement entirely.
I want to thank Jon Segall for standing up when standing up is necessary.
It's important and I very much look forward to reading his contributions on the matter when he alerts me to them.
