Guess who?
By Robert Spencer, FrontPage Magazine
On Friday, professional whiner and leftist grievance monger Wajahat Ali blamed the Muslim community’s rejection of the LGBTQ agenda not on Islam’s clear and unanimous theological opposition to homosexuality and the death penalty for it, but on none other than the Republican Party. Really, it’s so absurd and outlandish, why didn’t anyone think of it before?
Wajahat Ali is not only a regular columnist for the Daily Beast, but he also churns out reams of tired propaganda about how awful, racist, and “Islamophobic” America is for a host of other key organs of the leftist establishment, including the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the New York Review of Books. He has written a whiny grievance book of his own, entitled “Go Back To Where You Came From: And, Other Helpful Recommendations on Becoming American,” and so, not surprisingly, he has been rewarded for his racism-mongering, hate, and divisiveness by getting plum speaking engagements at venues ranging from Princeton University to the UN.
Ali tweeted, or X’ed, or whatever it is people do at Elon Musk’s place these days: “Finished my Friday prayer at my local mosque where the imam prayed we would be saved from ‘the LGBTQ in our homes.’ Democrats are underestimating how pervasive GOP CRT & trans fear messaging/ propaganda has taken hold in religious communities & suburbs. You can’t ignore it.” Well, sure you can, but Wajahat Ali hopes you are gullible enough to stop looking at Islam’s death penalty for homosexuality and consider his own scenario.
He added, “Republicans in Virginia, from extremist groups like Moms 4 Liberty & politicians like Youngkin, are actively reaching out to Muslims. Similar messaging being done in Latino Catholic communities and Black and Asian Christian communities. When you cede this space, GOP steps in. Speaking to religous [sic] communities and engaging them with a message that explains how they’re being used by hateful groups, but also addresses their faith without ridiculing them, will go a long way.…And a good reminder a majority of Muslims are pro abortion rights and marriage equality in America. But disinformation and fear mongering go a long way when cloaked under terms of ‘religous [sic] freedom’ and ‘parental choice.’” Why can’t religious columnist Wajahat Ali spell “religious”?
After getting justifiable pushback for this ridiculous take, Ali added a petulant dig at what he believes to be the moral inferiority of his critics: “Nice to see this thread brought out the trolls who are into pluralism and open minded discourse as evidenced by their support for a racist vulgarian and bigoted policies. Again majority of Muslims in America support abortion rights and marriage equality — and CRT fear is working.”
As crazy as it is, as they say, it just might work, at least among Ali’s peers. The far-left is disposed to blame the hated Trump and his supposedly racist, redneck “insurrectionist” followers for anything and everything under the sun, so why not blame them for Islam’s opposition to homosexuality?
Among the more clear-minded and realistic, however, the pushback was often riotous. Drew Holden of the Washington Free Beacon responded to Ali by appearing to agree: “It’s incredibly pervasive. Republican propaganda on trans and other lgbt issues have motivated communities all over the world to adopt some really radical policies.”
Holden attached a 2016 Washington Post article about the ten countries where homosexuality is punishable by death; nine and a half were Muslim countries (the half comes from Nigeria, where about half the population is Christian). Another Twitter/X user added: “The Republicans were so effective because they started their work early, in the 7th century.”
Indeed. According to Islamic tradition, homosexuality carries the death penalty because of words attributed to Muhammad himself. A hadith depicts the prophet of Islam specifying the punishment for homosexual activity: “Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Lot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4462). That’s why the leftist/Islamic alliance is breaking down over homosexual and trans issues; it has nothing to do with Republican inroads in Muslim communities at all.
Wajahat Ali, however, wants to sound the alarm about those inroads to keep the damage to the leftist/Islamic alliance to a minimum. He has been a fanatical ideologue for both camps for many years; as far back as 2011, he was one of the five authors of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress’s attack piece “Fear, Inc.,” a supposed takedown of “Islamophobes” including Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, and me. Ali helped create the myth of well-heeled, dishonest propagandists raking in dough to defame the poor, saintly Muslim community, which wouldn’t have known anything about terrorism if it had flown a jetliner into a high-rise building.
Nor did this hate-filled, dishonest muckraker mellow over the years: in Jan. 2022, when a Muslim took hostages in a Texas synagogue to demand the release of a convicted jihad terrorist, Ali’s reaction was to tweet not about the well-being of the hostages but to whine about “Islamophobia”: “You’re about to hear some ugly & vicious Islamophobia & anti-Muslim bigotry this weekend from elected officials, commentators and even mainstream media. Hope I’m wrong. People will use it to divide Jewish and Muslim communities for their political agenda. Don’t fall for it.” And now he has given us all yet another reason not to fall for what he himself is peddling.