‘Believe All Women Unless That Offends Islamists’ Just Doesn’t Have The Same Ring To It

by Linda Sarsour

New York, April 16 – We women’s rights activists, like most progressives, think in idealistic terms, and our rhetoric reaches for that same idealism – even if it ends up clashing with the messy reality of politics and culture. The slogans therefore capture the spirit, if not the nuances, of the movement, even if the complete picture gets elided by a pithy “Believe All Women” when we really mean “Believe All Women Unless That Offends Islamists.”

Politics has always required compromise. If we aim to convey our goals, the limits of human attention and language necessitate compromise, necessitate brevity, just as Jews who wish to join progressive causes must compromise by denouncing Zionism. If we express the complete statement in its full-disclosure form, people will tune out before the end and we lose our audience. That is no way to build public support for social change.

Social change requires accommodating Islamism. That is a simple fact of progressive politics.

I don’t make the rules. Yes, this is the first rule I would make if I were the one in charge of making the rules, but, again, I do not make the rules. And the rules have always established that Jewish concerns take a back seat to everyone else’s concerns. Palestinian honor, expansively construed, bust always take precedence over Jewish safety – and by the way, I love the implication in the term that Jews even deserve safety. After what they’ve done? Save your protesting against collective guilt for where it really matters: when Muslims stand accused of doing bad things.

Believe all women. I do mean that. What many people fail to grasp, though, is that “all women” is an imprecise term. People assume it includes all who identify as women, or who do not protest being classified as such. Not so! It includes only women whose protection and rights do not conflict with the Islamist agenda. Palestinian women? Sure! Unless their oppression comes from other Muslims – then we must blame Israel. Iranian women? Stories of their oppression are just lies. Israeli women? Don’t make me laugh.

If we start believing Jewish women, that might lead to believing Jews in general, and believing Jews in general means treating the Holocaust as fact, and treating the Holocaust as fact acknowledges the reality of Jewish safety concerns, which stand in direct opposition to Islamist ambitions, and you understand we simply cannot accept that.

Believe me.

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