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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   18515 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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One would at least think this debunks the idea that she’s a radical Islamist; a radical Islamist would of course put nothing over Islam.

This just sounds like excuse making for a respectable 'grey' position. In any other case we'd be able to recognize that there are plenty of people with strong beliefs that fail in living up to their beliefs every single day of their lives. Be that not going to church, drinking alcohol or any other example you prefer. And we could all recognize that this failure does not need to, in any way, deter these people from pushing their beliefs on society. Be that legislatively or otherwise. But because the red tribe correctly sees the likes of Omar as obvious 'enemies', we, the respectables, have to distance ourselves from that in some way.

I only say this because the excuses in use here are so poor I can't see what else it could be. As an illustrative example, a nationalist in Poland could say 'I'm Polish first, Christian second' and we could all recognize that the ethnic and the religious, whilst often closely related, are not the same and no one would feel the need to question his anti-abortion pro-Christian social policies in Poland just because he said this. Yet somehow, in the case of Omar, we act not just as if her saying this is meaningful, we drag red tribe terminology like 'radical Islam' into our writing and purposefully distance ourselves from it.

If there is a reason for the ‘red tribe’ to dislike Omar’s politics it’s because she’s a progressive who proudly represents a largely unassimilated migrant community, not because she’s an Islamist. She’s not ‘worse’ than AOC because she’s Somali instead of Puerto Rican. It’s likely that as with Tlaib her communal origin affects eg her views on Israel, but there are plenty of white progressives with the same views on that subject too.

She’s married to the white guy she cheated on her husband with (and who, afaik, did not convert to Islam) and barely even covers her hair, the suggestion she was a radical Islamist is pretty ridiculous.

I always suspected she covers her hair mostly out if vanity (she suffers some form of alopecia based on old photos).

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