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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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Can someone give me an analysis on who Abdul El-Sayed actually is as a person? He gave a weird interview where he said trans is a made up issue because your daughter has an I-Phone in her pocket so she will see dicks all the time anyway.

The first impression is he’s some sort of Muslim Brotherhood type. My second impression is pegging him as similar to brown friends I know whose parents do something science (medicine/engineering), are fairly wealthy, follow zero Muslim codes, hate white girls but probably slept with a few dozen in their twenties. All of these types are/can be fully assimilated into America. Half seem like they really do assimilate. The other half to me seem like they have a chip remaining on their shoulder that their people couldn’t build America.

My guess is he’s that type that still has a big chip on his shoulder to fully white people. So thinking things like sexualizing normies is perfectly fine for him in the same way a westerner might go to Thailand for a holiday and not view Thai’s as his people.

I'm sympathetic to Jonah Goldberg's argument in this podcast, that is, that El-Sayed wants the Democrats to be a straightforward anti-Israel party.

I don't think El-Sayed supports the full Muslim Brotherhood agenda. The social democrat positions that he holds are honest. He is not, I think, secretly an MB supporter in the sense of everything they stand for. But he is, I think, basically a middle-class western Muslim who attributes a disproportionate level of importance of Israel, and it has become organising for his thoughts in a way that it is not for other people.

His father in law is cair. His (albeit estranged) mother was MB. His father is on an organization that has questionable ties. He himself wrote a letter supporting MB.

There is a massive amount of smoke surrounding him. Don’t know why it’s crazy to think he just might be the real McCoy.

Are devout Muslims allowed to lie to non-Muslims to advance Islamic interests? A devout Christian could not for example sell a non-Christian on the benefits of trans in schools. It’s a sin to lead others to sin.

A reminder that when an Evangelical bombs a Muslim country they have to wrap the bombs in “for Democracy” and “women’s school”. Bush had to bomb Muslims for human rights and not because they were Muslims.

I mean there’s a difference between “not supposed to lie, but do it anyway” and “lying is fine actually.” There is no Christian doctrine that says I can lie to advance Christianity. It doesn’t exist. If you lie as a Christian, it’s a sin, no matter what causes its advancing. If a Muslim lies for the sake of Islam, my understanding is that it’s not a sin.

Christian views on lying are complicated. As far as I am aware, only Quakers categorically forbid both making false statements and selectively making true statements with intent to induce false beliefs. The Biblical passages normally cited as unequivocal condemnations of lying appear in contexts where it is clear that they refer to defamation (thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour) or commercial fraud.

It is an edge case of "Christian", but Mormons explicitly encourage deception-by-selective-truth-telling as a seeker-sensitive way of introducing LDS doctrine to potential converts. The traditional term is "milk before meat".