The politically correct Quran

The penetration of the feminist and gay movements by pro-Palestine propaganda has borne the poisonous fruit of trees planted by shameless rewriting of history and even the Quran.

by Phyllis Chesler 

One of the genuine feminist pioneers, an old friend, visited me while she was in New York for the recent LGBT events. She wore an armband with a Jewish star as did others. No one objected. (I did—too reminiscent of the Nazi insignia—but that’s another story). However, when she found herself right ahead of a row chanting the inevitable “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free,” she found it necessary to move away.

In 2004, Natan Sharansky asked me whether I thought that the feminist, left, and gay communities could be re-educated on Israel and anti-Semitism. I said that I did not think so—but that I’d try. Perhaps I did not try hard enough. As we all know, Jews, Jewish stars on rainbow flags, and the Israeli flag have been hotly challenged and exiled from a number of Gay Pride marches and conferences in the United States.

The gay magazine, Out celebrates the Stonewall riots fifty years later in it’s June-July issue. It claims a readership of more than 200,000 people. The latest and current issue features the magazine’s hopes about the next fifty years. This includes what ti considers accomplishments, among them “A Queer Smithsonian Museum.” 

The magazine hopes that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will become “House Speaker and will immortalize the first queer dollar bill dedicated to the brave souls who lost their lives at Stonewall.” (I don’t think anyone did; could I be wrong?) Out’s future accomplishments include Abolishing ICE (but not restricting unfettered immigration), Abolishing the Military, Abolishing Prisons (but not crime), Legalizing Universal HealthCare, Legalizing prostitution as work, etc. 

And then—out of nowhere, the magazine also hopes that “Judaism Will Decolonize Itself.” This entry was written by a Black Jew, Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, whose black maternal ancestors were “enslaved in Barbados,” and whose father was a Russian Jew. On Twitter, she identifies as “queer and black” but not as Jewish. Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical physicist, writes: “Jews need to engage in deep conversations about the very idea that we’re entitled to a homeland. The Israeli government denies Palestinian people the right to live or be there and has made very clear that Jewish people are to be treated as first-class, which of course means there are second-class citizens. That does not make a democracy. ….But also, let’s remove the borders around gender…If we decolonize ourselves from what we have been taught, adapted, miscarried under imperial and colonial rule—we can be free.”

No mention of the Torah, the Talmud, rabbinic learning, Jewish intellectuals, Israel’s—and Israeli’s—great accomplishments, Israel’s historical, religious and legal rights, Israel’s granting of asylum to Palestinians in flight from persecution in Gaza or on the ‘West Bank’ because they are homosexuals—and, of course, no mention of the ceaseless pogroms or the Shoah that made a return to our homeland a matter of existential survival.

Even more outrageous, this anti-Israel “decolonizing” propaganda is paired with the following: “Islam Will Return to its True Nature by Centering Justice.” It is written by the Organizers of Masjid Al-Rabia Muslim Community Center in Chicago, a gay and transgender friendly mosque founded by Mahdia Lynn, a “white bisexual transgender Muslim activist” who is shown wearing hijab. S/he states that “the role of imperialism in Islam” meant that “Christian Crusaders invaded Muslim lands and castigated the “permissive attitudes towards gender expression and homosexuality” that characterized Islam.

The Mosque Organizers now blame Crusader imperialism for the Islamic criminalization of “queerness.”

Has this author ever read the Qur’an? Or the history of Islam from the 7th century until the Crusades began in 1095, three or four centuries later—after Muslims had killed an untold number of Christians and taken over or destroyed their churches.

Finally, the Chicago mosque organizers state: “Islam is a framework by which one can lead a better life.”

And Judaism is not?

The penetration of the gay movements by pro-Palestine propaganda has borne poisonous fruit. And please be advised: These marches are not feminist. The issues chanted, the banners held aloft, do not focus on abortion under siege, the equal rights amendment, or violence against biologically born women. It is pro-surrogacy and pro-prostitution which is not the view of abolitionist feminists who are themselves under siege and who are often viewed as “transphobic” for criticizing the physical violence against them by transgender activists who want no feminist analysis to limit them in any way.

Maybe, in a sense, all these Pride Marches are Odes to the Eternal Feminine, whereas many feminists are those who have demanded the right to make choices.

First published in Israel National News.