Linda Sarsour's Muslim Identity Politics Epitomize Feminism's Hypocrisy - The Federalist

A Frankenstein’s monster of identity politics, the Women’s March on Washington heaved through the streets of DC one day after the inauguration in a fit of depraved hypocrisy.

That hypocrisy shadows activist and National Co-Chair of the Women’s March Linda Sarsour. In the past Sarsour has railed against women spotlighting misogyny in the Muslim world. She openly advocates for including sharia law in the United States. Yet sharia law would dwarf her march’s half a million turnout to 250,000, because under sharia a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s.

Sharia law would also punish the female protestors for vulgarity in publicly displaying “pussy caps” and other brazen symbols of womanhood. It would also allow men to beat their wives and daughters for participating in the protest. Although she thinks a President Trump will turn back the clock by 300 years, Sarsour forgets that Islam never left the Middle Ages in its primeval view of women.

Venerated by leftists, Sarsour now rides the great beast of modern feminism much like the “god-King” Xerxes in “300.” This weekend she and other heads of the Soros-connected movement protested against a democratically elected president. This is a Palestinian woman protesting about the democratic process in the freest country in the world.

Sarsour is also handsomely funded by New York taxpayers and supported by other elevated women in a nation that gives equal space to women’s voices. These rights do not exist in Islamic theocracies, where we find the real war against women—something Sarsour seems to deny—and where the democratic process is a fantasy.

Yet Sarsour, much like many in the Women’s March, continues to see a legitimate presidential election through the filter of the third world. A day after the election, she tweeted: “We can disagree & still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of humanity and right to exist.”

.@lsarsour is one of my heroes and deserves admiration, not trolling. Step off haters. You're outta your league. #IMarchWithLinda

— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) January 23, 2017

Meanwhile the Women’s March shamelessly oppressed pro-life groups by banning them from participating in the march, stating the march’s platform is expressly pro-choice and caters to only “a specific type of diversity.” The “basic equality for all people” Sarsour speaks of stops at the threshold of conservative values. It doesn’t apply to women who believe in the indiscriminate right to dignity of all people.

Feminism Literally Isn’t for Everyone

It is pro-life women who champion the greatest humanitarian issue: the right for all human life to exist. The Women’s March rages against building a wall along the border and expunging Muslims through an imaginary registry. Yet these women do not recognize the dignity of human life behind the wall of a uterus and radically defend their right to expunge that life when it’s convenient for them.

The Women’s March mission statement advocates standing in solidarity to protect families, but it’s the right to life that is the first step in safeguarding the family. Protecting our children doesn’t begin when they’re on the street; it begins when they’re in the womb.

The right to life is also sacred in Islam, which has very strict conditions for abortion. Yet Sarsour, who has carved a platform out of her Muslim identity, has debased that identity by openly defending the pro-choice movement, saying, “If you want to come to the march you are coming with the understanding that you respect a woman’s right to choose.” So which is it: is she pro-choice and not Muslim, or is she pro-life and no longer a leftist activist?

In a Vice HBO segment, Sarsour talked about the march’s target demographic: “I’m not focusing on the people who threw my community under the bus, and threw undocumented people under the bus, and threw women under the bus, and threw our planet under the bus. Those are not the people I’m trying to convince.” The problem is that it’s feminism that’s actually getting thrown under the bus by activists like Sarsour and movements like the Women’s March.

Modern Feminism Is an Abomination

Feminism isn’t the arrogant and militant assertion of dominance that the modern women’s movement has become. For men, the movement made little sense. There was no central message and no actual policy it objected to. For feminists like myself, who have witnessed and lived through oppressive tribal culture and theological interpretations, the movement was nothing more than a large-scale hands-on-the-hip moment in demonstrations that embraced the vulgarity that seems to offend them.

Many non-participating feminists feel frustrated with the rising number “feminazis” in a culture of safe spaces, trigger warnings, and absurd multiculturalism. Real feminism honors women as creative and nourishing force, including respecting women who choose to fully embrace womanhood through motherhood. It recognizes the feminine as part of a greater duality that makes equal space for the masculine, and in that it honors men.

The sacred feminine—the earliest and most authentic feminism that is ancient and deeply spiritual—also knows how to channel anger for transformation, something modern feminists are completely out of touch with. In its rawest form, feminism is a defiant, unapologetic self-possession of our womanhood. Being self-possessed women also means we move out of the crippling checkboxes of identity politics, which is the disability that deserves being mocked.

The Women’s March had a high number of disabled participants, but a disability can also be characterized by how you think. An entire group of women, particularly women of color, have adopted the disability of self-victimization, even going so far as to ask “white-women” participating in the march to observe and make space for women of color. In other words, move to the back of the bus. The longer this march had room to grow and organize, the more divisive and overbearing it became.

As a result, modern feminism as represented in the Women’s March on Washington surges with hatred and subjugation of anything or anyone that deviates from its groupthink. Modern feminism has become a cult that punishes women, that dehumanizes and parcels the gift of creative power under clinical terms like “reproductive health.” It’s a pseudo-religion that raises pitchforks against the faintest hints of sexism while ignoring real human issues like Yazidi sex slaves, Saudi Arabia’s guardianship system, and the epidemic of migrant rapes in Europe.

From the same cloth of a modern women’s movement, you have women who champion themselves as advocates of women’s rights but are comfortable with calls for rape of female public figures including the first lady, who has been subjected to slut-shaming by leftists who believe that anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their political ideology is fair game.

Yet what’s “whorish” isn’t how you express the gift of innate feminine sexuality. A whore is someone who cannot protect the sanctity of her mind. She’s someone who takes on any idea because it’s fashionable or gives the illusion of power — like a baseless Women’s March.

The spotlight continues to shine brightest on the people who craft a calculated career out of activism. In a liberal landscape, it’s fashionable to be a leftist activist winning the title of “Champion of Change” under Obama’s White House, while as an Islamist Sarsour empowers herself through openly peddling the same dehumanizing hate against Jews she accuses Trump of against herself. This is not feminism. This is opportunism and the stealthy hand of Islamism through proxy alliances like a Women’s March.

The Future of Feminism Is More Controversy

The truth is, society failed feminism long before President Trump arrived on the scene. The problem isn’t Trump’s words, and the solution isn’t to tar and feather the man who has broken a seal into one of the most agonizing conversations women still need to have. The solution starts with understanding that we don’t tackle something the first time around.

America is exceptional because it harnesses a powerful formula of ideas and innovation that keeps shaping the problem until we get it right.

The Civil War didn’t end slavery. The suffragette movement didn’t secure women’s rights. These movements come in waves, and require the intelligence to act as futurists—to be forward-thinking, push beyond the platforms of previous eras, and say no to the mental “comfort food” of identity politics.

That is what makes America great. America isn’t exceptional because of one pinnacle moment in history; it’s exceptional because it harnesses a powerful formula of ideas and innovation that keeps shaping the problem until we get it right. What makes America great is our ability to push forward when faced with the toughest conversations; but to have those conversations we need the right dose of chaos.

That’s where President Trump comes in. He inspires controversy. As a Muslim reformer, I value controversy as a purging fire that forces a civilization to evolve. President Trump has opened up a Pandora’s Box on deep cultural rifts undermining America’s place in the future. From immigration, to racial grievances, to American values, to radical Islam as a philosophical problem, to media as the fourth political branch, to dense political corruption, and now, finally, to feminism, through controversy Trump has unearthed seven seals that have kept America from reaching its full power and potential on a global stage. It doesn’t matter if this has been intentional. What matters is that it’s happening.

Shireen Qudosi, a Sufi Muslim of Afghan and South Asian ancestry, is a writer on Islam.