Linda Sarsour: Israel “Built On the Idea That Jews Are Supreme”

by Hugh Fitzgerald

The latest from Linda Sarsour:

American political activist and former Women’s March, Inc. leader Linda Sarsour said during an American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) conference on Nov. 28 that Israel “is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else.”

Israel is a tiny country, built not the idea that Jews are “supreme to everyone else,” but that Jews, like all other peoples, deserve to have a state of their own. It is equality, not supremacy, that the Jews sought in resurrecting their ancient homeland. And within Israel, there is no manifestation of Jewish “supremacy.” Arabs are equal citizens to Jews; they serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, hold high diplomatic posts, and serve – if they wish – in the army, where some Arabs have risen high in the officer corps. Israeli Arabs live, study, and work beside Jews; there is no second-class citizenship or apartheid.

If Linda Sarsour were to look at the twenty-two Arab states, she would find they are all “built on the idea that Muslim Arabs are supreme to everyone else.” The Arabs are superior both to non-Arab Muslims, and as Muslims, to all non-Muslims. Let’s first consider the non-Arab Muslims. Whether it is the Berbers in North Africa, the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, or the black Africans in the Sudan, they have been mistreated by the Arabs who dominate them. In Algeria, the Berbers have had to struggle to finally win the right even to use their own Berber language, Tamazight; Berber culture is scanted in the schools, Berber history largely ignored. The Kurds have been suppressed by Arab governments both in Syria and Iraq; their dreams of autonomy continuously crushed. Saddam Hussein’s Arab army murdered 182,000 Kurds in Operation Anfal and moved Arabs into Kurdish lands; not a single Arab government protested that mass murder and forced Arabization. Black Africans in the Sudan have been persecuted by northern Arabs for decades, hundreds of thousands have been killed or enslaved; especially murderous have been the Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, who raped, pillaged, and murdered black Africans in Darfur. In a small part of the Sudan, the creation of a new state, South Sudan, has provided security for the black Africans – Christian and animist – living there, but the mistreatment of the black Africans by Arabs in the Sudan itself continues. The oppression in Sudan is based both on ethnicity – the Arabs deem themselves superior to blacks – and on religion, since the blacks are Christian or animist, and thus inferior to Muslims, for whom they are fit objects of Jihad. We might also note that Muslim Arabs still keep nearly a million black Africans – their “inferiors” —  as slaves in Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.

In her speech at the conference, Sarsour said that when she speaks on college campuses, she tells students to ask progressive Zionists: “How can you be against white supremacy in America and the idea of being in a state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is based on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else?

Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda Rabbi Abraham Cooper said in a statement to the Journal that “Linda has a problem—her hate is based on denying that the Jewish people’s love affair for their land is 3,500 years old. Palestinians are the supremacists; they insist no Jews can live as neighbors.”

Democratic Majority for Israel tweeted on Dec. 2 that Sarsour’s statement was “a vicious, antisemitic lie. Israel’s built on [sic] idea that every people is entitled to self-determination.”

They added in a subsequent tweet: “That’s why Israel favored [the] UN partition plan creating Jewish & Palestinian states. Arab leaders rejected it, launching a war of destruction against Israel. We [and] many Israelis still favor Palestinian state, but after decades of war [and] terrorism Israel’s security must be protected.”

Sarsour’s chutzpah amazes. She assumes that her wider audience will not know that Arab and Jewish citizens are treated equally in Israel, where they live, study, and work together, and where those Arab MKs, Supreme Court justices, diplomats, IDF officers testify to the opportunities open to Arabs. She further believes that non-Muslims will not realize that Islam itself is a supremacist ideology that has claimed tens of millions of non-Muslim victims. The Qur’an teaches Muslims that they are the “best of peoples” (3:110) and non-Muslims are “the most vile of created beings” (98:6). What could be more supremacist than this? It is too bad that none of those who have responded critically to Sarsour’s remarks have brought up these Qur’anic verses, and asked Linda Sarsour to explain what effect such verses have had on Muslims over the past 1,400 years. She might also be asked what we are to make of the verse that tells Muslims not to take Christians or Jews as friends, “for they are friends only with each other.” Sarsour should be asked whether, in the past 1,400 years, Muslims have anywhere demonstrated a willingness in the lands they have conquered not to dominate non-Muslims, but to treat them as equals. Sarsour should be asked what she makes of the treatment of non-Muslims after they had been conquered by Muslims, when they were faced with the choice of death, conversion to Islam, or acquiescence in the permanent status of dhimmi, which imposed many onerous conditions on them, including the payment of the burdensome Jizyah, a capitation tax paid by dhimmis to the Muslim state in order to protect them from attacks by Muslims themselves. What are we to conclude from the more than 100 Quranic verses that instruct Muslims to wage violent Jihad against non-Muslims, to fight, to kill, to smite the necks of, to strike terror in the hearts of, those non-Muslims? If this conquest of all others is both the right and the duty of Muslims, does that not bespeak a murderous supremacy? We could make things easier for Linda Sarsour by limiting discussion to a handful of Qur’anic verses whose meaning we would like her to explain. Here are a dozen such verses: 2:191-193, 3:151, 4:89, 8:12, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29, 98:6, 47:4.

Islam is a supremacist faith; there is no Muslim land where non-Muslims are treated as fully equal to Muslims. The Qur’an uncompromisingly divides humanity between Muslims and non-Muslims; the former are superior in every way to the latter. And within the Umma, the worldwide community of Believers, Arabs are naturally regarded as the best of Muslims. It could not be otherwise. For Allah delivered his message in Arabic, and to a seventh-century Arab. That Arab, Muhammad, is regarded by Muslims as the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil) and the Model of Conduct (uswa hasana). The Qur’an itself should ideally be read in Arabic. Many non-Arab Muslims, including converts, have adopted Arabic names and, less frequently, Arab dress. Some have even given themselves false Arab lineages. Not a few Muslims, especially in Pakistan, call themselves Sayid, to indicate their supposed descent from the Quraysh, the tribe of the Prophet. The scholar of Islam Anwar Shaikh famously described Islam as the vehicle for Arab supremacism. Would Linda Sarsour care to discuss that description?

Meanwhile, whatever else those responding to Linda Sarsour may say, they should be sure to quote the two Quranic verses given in this post’s seventh paragraph above. To repeat: Muslims are “the best of peoples” (3:110) and non-Muslims are “the worst of created beings.” (98:6). What could be more supremacist than that? Please explain, Linda — we’re all ears.

First published in Jihad Watch.