This question (which I first asked in 2019, and which may also be asked about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani) is still vital, given that Islam, which is irreformable, remains a perennial mortal threat to Western Civilization. The smug musings of Wajahat Ali, the New York Times pundit, inside the progressive echo chamber, are devoid of a single thought-provoking insight. He’s but a stand-in for any number of virtue-signaling “thought leaders” whom I pick on merely because they’re foils for my smug musings. I’ll leave it to you to note what has changed since New Year’s Day 2019 and what hasn’t.—A.G.F.
Every year around Christmas, illiberal “liberals” (a.k.a. “progressives”) lecture Christians, mostly those of the white conservative persuasion, about the “true meaning” of Jesus and how they obscure it. This year is no different.
Retiring Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) recently shouted at Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. “Shame on everybody that separates children and allows them to stay at the other side of the border fearing death, fearing hunger, fearing sickness,” he fulminated. “Shame on us for wearing our badge of Christianity during Christmas and allow the secretary to come here and lie!”
He bolted from the hearing room before she could respond to his slander.
Gutierrez’s rhetoric was on par with his manners: the Roman Empire had impressive walls, but none prevented migration from Judea to Egypt, i.e., from one Roman province to another.
A few days after Gutierrez’s theatrics, the day after Christmas, Gustavo Perez Arriaga—gang-banger, DUI violator, and illegal immigrant—murdered Newman California Police Corporal Ronil Singh, thereby separating his child and wife from him. Permanently.
Arriaga had snuck into the U.S. through Arizona. How many others like him are in the caravan passing through (if you can believe it) Arriaga, Mexico? Is it un-Christian to ask how likely any of them are to make orphans out of American children?
Or are we morally allowed to fixate solely on the tragedy of children whose migrant parents expose them to harm, sometimes fatally?
Wajahat Ali is a Muslim, perhaps the way Gutierrez is a Christian. He’s a Progressive who focuses on combating “hate,” especially “Islamophobia.” Cafeteria-style, he picks out what he likes about Islam and ignores the embarrassing remainder as if they were accidental features of Islam.
That is, Ali provides what William Kirkpatrick calls the “smiley-faced version of Islam which emphasizes the commonalities with Catholicism and leaves out the scary parts.” (“Pope Francis, Indifferentism, and Islamization,” Crisis Magazine, December 31, 2018)
Continue reading “What kind of Muslim is Wajahat Ali? (with a new preface)”