Muslims Helping Jews: The Case of Linda Sarsour (Part II)

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Jews and Christians in Victoria, Texas have been heartfelt in their eagerness to lend their churches and synagogue for use by local Muslims, while the local mosque, destroyed by fire, is rebuilt. Jews and Christians, and not just in Victoria, have also been generous in helping to raise more than $1.1 million to rebuild the mosque. And while this was going on, Muslims in turn have been raising money — $125,000 so far — to help repair two Jewish cemeteries that have recently been vandalized, the Chesed Shel Emeth Society Cemetery outside St. Louis, and the Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Philadelphia, where tombstones have been toppled. This Muslim effort has been mentioned several times on NPR, and gotten a lot of press, to judge by what has been posted online. It may be churlish to suggest, but the Muslim fundraising effort is not quite so guileless an effort as that in Victoria, Texas, because at the center of the Muslim campaign is Linda Sarsour, who has quite a history of heartfelt hate.

Linda Sarsour, the “Brooklyn Homegirl in a Hijab,” who has been made much of by the New York Times and, unsurprisingly, by Mayor Bill de Blasio, for whom she has consulted, is a longtime activist for the “Palestinian” cause.

Still, shouldn’t we be pleased that Linda Sarsour is raising that money to put those toppled tombstones back in place? Shouldn’t we take at face value her current claim that she wants “to send a unified message from the Jewish and Muslim communities that there is no place for this type of hate, desecration, and violence in America”? Alas, no. Linda Sarsour’s sincerity might not be questioned if she hadn’t spent the last decade working toward the same ends as Hamas, that is, the undoing of Israel. If there is “no place for this type of hate” – the toppled tombstones in the Jewish cemetery – there is a type of hate for which Linda Sarsour does manage to make space, and find a place. For any examination of her record shows quite an extensive display of hate – for the American government, for the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., for the New York Police Department, for Israelis and for those who support them. On her Twitter account she proclaims that “nothing is creepier than Zionism.” I take that to be a declaration of hate. She continues to insist, long after the truth was revealed, that a certain “Underwear Bomber was the C.I.A. all along.” This particular Underwear Bomber was a Saudi double-agent, and had nothing to do with the C.I.A. but don’t confuse Linda Sarsour with facts.

She accuses the American government of almost continuous campaigns of “genocide,” from the American Indians to the present where, we are given to understand, the latest targets are American Muslims. She has claimed that “Muslim kids are being executed” in the United States. She continuously attacks law enforcement for the monitoring of Muslims, as if there were no reason why some Muslims might need to be monitored, and convinced Mayor Di Blasio to disband the NYPD’s Demographics Unit, that kept close tabs on Muslim neighborhoods.

At a meeting of the Islamic Society of North America in 2010 Sarsour warned her audience to watch out for, that is treat with suspicion, rather than cooperate with, all the law enforcement and security services: “So I think that we need to be clear that when, in any case it’s not just the FBI that, really the resources are not in the FBI.…The resources are in our local communities and the NYPDs, LAPDs and the local organizations. So those black unidentified cars are probably 99.9 percent not FBI. They’re actually probably Intel. So I want to make sure that people understand that this is not a watch out for the FBI. It’s watch out for all law enforcement, whether they’re ICE, FBI, local NYPD.”

She claims that the American government was behind the killing of Malcolm X, for she wishes to exculpate Elijah Muhammad’s Black Muslims. And, above all, she denounces the Israelis every chance she gets for their “nothing-creepier-than-Zionism” Zionism, still refuses to denounce Hamas for any of its activities. She has lamented the death of Saddam Hussein because, however mass-murdering he may have been in Iraq, especially toward the Kurds and the Shi’a, according to Sarsour he supported the Palestinians like no other Arab leader, which makes him okay in her book.

She has cousins who are in Israeli jails because of their work for Hamas. She has met with a former Hamas financier.

And though given many opportunities to do so, Linda Sarsour has never denounced Hamas for anything, including the deliberate murder of children and babies, which is exactly what she baselessly accuses the Israelis of doing. She has described Sharia law as “reasonable” and further claimed that it “makes a lot of sense.” Many of those who have had to live under Sharia law, especially women and non-Muslims, will beg to differ.

While she was one of the organizers of the recent Women’s March on Washinigton, Sarsour is, according to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a “fake feminist” whose loyalty is to Islam, that most misogynistic of faiths:

“Ms. Sarsour is hostile to me — and not because she knows me — but because she is a fake feminist,” Ali, a renowned author and activist who has appeared on the Women in the World stage, declared during an appearance on Fox News.

Ali was reacting to a recently resurfaced tweet from 2011 in which Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, equated Ali with Brigitte Gabriel, the controversial leader of Act for America, a group that lobbies lawmakers to get tougher on terrorism and that critics suggest is anti-Islam. “Brigitte Gabriel = Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She’s asking 4 an a$$ whippin’. I wish I could take their vaginas away- they don’t deserve to be women,” Sarsour wrote on Twitter in 2011, in a tweet that’s now been deleted, long before she rose to prominence.”

Linda Sarsour is the woman who with a straight face proclaims she’s a feminist while denouncing real feminists who have the temerity to criticize Islam for its treatment of women. She’s spent her entire adult life denouncing Israelis and Zionism and Jews. She’s more than tender toward Hamas. She apparently saw nothing wrong with Saddam Hussein, because he supported the “Palestinians,” and besides, why should Linda Sarsour, an Arab, care what happened to the Kurds during the genocidal Anfal campaign? She’s got a good word to say for Sharia law, which for a putative feminist takes the cake. And now she has the sinister gall to claim that her fundraising to repair Jewish cemeteries is prompted by her sense of decency: “Through this campaign, we hope to send a united message from the Jewish and Muslim communities that there is no place for this type of hate, desecration, and violence in America,” and.”We pray that this restores a sense of security and peace to the Jewish-American community who [sic] has undoubtedly been shaken by this event.” A defender of Hamas and Sharia is not someone interested in any “sense of security and peace” for the “Jewish-American community.” She’ll do the minimum she deems necessary – a little well-publicized fundraising to repair toppled tombstones apparently will do it — to convince the terminally naïve that she’s all for convivencia.

As for her quality of mind, you be the judge of someone who tweets this kind of thing: “Brigitte Gabriel = Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She’s asking 4 an a$$ whippin’. I wish I could take their vaginas away- they don’t deserve to be women.” Yes, we all know standards have fallen, but this far? Can this beyond-belief vulgarity be tolerated? She’s not fooling you, and she’s not fooling me, and she’s not fooling Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It’s too bad that she’s still fooling NPR, and Mayor Di Blasio, and the organizers of the Women’s March On Washington.

First published in Jihad Watch.