Why are some critics of radical Islamism going out of their way to make excuses for white nationalism?

If that isn’t bigotry of lower expectation, I don’t know what is. Or does intellectual honesty and cries of liberalism and modernism only apply when the issue is central to Islamic and immigrant/refugee abuse?

Remember, remember, the 8th of November… when Americans who wailed “muh Free Speech!” voted for a tyrannical man baby who threatened­ to sue The Onion and gave the finger to their First Amendment.

Trump came out victorious in an election he barked was rigged against him (when in reality it was rigged for him) by the Clintons and the media who actually could never recover from the Podesta email hack allegedly committed by Russians and presented by Wikileaks who cried “Russophobia”. White, capitalist America no longer cared for those reds under the bed and now their new President-elect is a raging misogynistic, racist bigot who was caught confessing to sexually assaulting women and going borderline rapist on a little girl running up the escalator he found attractive.

Then we have the glorious warriors against Islam like Asra Nomani who is often seen denouncing Islamic misogyny, sexism and fascism who happily gloated about voting for Trump because she is unafraid of her life under the new Trump regime, only to have Trump apologists use that article to dismiss the already occurring violence and harassment minorities face while walking in the streets of America. Suddenly all the intellectual honesty and introspect they demanded from Muslims regarding Islam and Islamists was backpedaled in defense of a megalomaniac monstrosity who epitomizes the very same establishment his supporters fiercely believe he will dismantle.

I criticized Islamists and Islam apologists and their pseudo-liberal allies repenting over their white and Western guilt. I was labeled “Islamophobic” and “racist” for merely describing my observation of moral hypocrisy committed by the people of colour in the West and East. Now that I extend the same logical consistency to my observation of white nationalists and exceeding fear mongering that has placed millions of minorities in peril with a Trumped up future where the pinch is already being resonated through the acts of vulgar racism and threats throughout America, I am being labeled a “regressive” and “anti-white”. My email is flooded with popular Trumpesque statements and threats. And it depresses me to think I once felt a sense of progressive, humanist connection to the likes of Asra Nomani and many Islam critics who seemed so honest about their concern for Islamism and Muslim extremists, only to now see them justify Trump’s acts and statements because of old, new and current conspiracy theories against the Clintons and fanning the flame of Republican bigotry far and wide to the extent of unknown territory.

Yes, the Clintons received Saudi money. So did the entire United States of America. Billions of dollars paid for arming the Sunni supremacists, who are also a longtime ally of the very country that created the Clinton rise and infamy. If Hillary Clinton’s dealings with the Saudis should be flagged, then how is it that rationalists and pseudo liberals who voted for Trump also ignore the fact Trump himself has been friendly with the Clintons for decades and made donations to the Clinton Foundation? Selective outrage and selective arguments just as the Islamists and Muslims they demanded intellectual honesty from. Reza Aslan’s legacy of being a unicorn seems a million miles away and pales in comparison to those who virtue signaled and fiercely claimed to be rationalists and secularists and now elected the most underqualified man to ever run for presidency out of fear of Muslim extremism and devaluing the lives of minorities who will ultimately pay for the act of this moral hypocrisy.

I remember when Muslims claimed “Islamophobia” was the reason behind otherwise good Muslims to become Islamists. And I remember when Islam critics demanded pseudo liberals to recognize Muslims have their own agency and not pander to the bigotry of lower expectation. Now that Trump is elected, I see the same Islam critics shrieking the “regressive left” is to blame as if the white nationalists that fueled the hate and hostility have no agency of their own. I have seen many claiming identity politics and calling white people “racists” and sexists” and “bigots” is what led to the Trump victory. It floors me to hear these self-proclaimed rationalists using arguments akin to Islam apologists by pointing the finger at other groups of people for the rise of fascism in a country they called oh so secular, liberal modern.

“Social Justice Warriors (SJWs)” are to blame, they cried. It’s their identity politics and political correctness that created Trump, they wailed. And with that, they concluded white nationalism is a result of white people being denigrated by political correctness and feminist pronouns – so the otherwise nice white people discarded their liberal, secular, modern values because they were called racists/sexists/bigots. While the black and brown people who are routinely murdered or unfairly targeted by racist police and persecuted by white American judicial and workplace systems are “SJWs” and “special snowflakes”. I was proudly told that all it took for whites to be triggered into white nationalism was being called names but the racial minorities who lose their lives and persecuted in every front of existence should really shut up and stop trying to be so “politically correct”. It was the most flabbergasting and dishonest argument from pseudo rationalists and pseudo liberals who opted to use themselves as examples of what white privilege and pandering to white privilege actually looks like.

This whole time, people argued blaming Western foreign policy which literally kills Muslims in the Gulf cannot be blamed for Islamism. Yet name-calling compelled white nationalism in the West? If that isn’t bigotry of lower expectation, I don’t know what is. Or does intellectual honesty and cries of liberalism and modernism only apply when the issue is central to Islamic and immigrant/refugee abuse? Where was Asra Nomani’s solidarity for victims of misogyny and sexual violence when she voted for a man who literally confessed to sexually assaulting women and denigrating them? Next time she mentions Islamic misogyny, just remember she is another moral hypocrite who doesn’t care for white men raping Western women and her entire outrage is central and tribal to Islamist abuse of women and society.

Trump has a litany of hostile and abusive behaviours, acts, statements and unconstitutional promises that threaten the rights of minorities and women and girls in America. Trump has promised to effectively deny or complicate the right to abortion in America by appointing pro-fetus judges. Yes. Pro-fetus. Because once these unwanted fetuses evolve into actual babies and are born, the same judges and society will call them leeches and their mother welfare queens. And Asra Nomani proudly voted for a man who vowed to make every female’s life a living hell. But as a single mother herself with financial difficulties as she professed in her article, she had no qualms about leaving the lives of countless impoverished female lives and their children in peril. Why? Because her personal hate for conservative Islam and fears of Islamism transcends the humanist values she preached in face of Muslim extremism. When you compromise logical consistency, you confirm your double standards and tribalism – which is precisely what’s often singled out in the conservative Islamic communities in both East and West. But at least Asra and those like her remain unafraid and proud at the cost of people like these minority school children who were obstructed from entering the school or harassed and heckled by white schoolmates who chanted “build the wall”. And all American school children can now look forward to a lot more religious indoctrination considering how Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education is rumored to be Ben Carson, a religious zealot.

Trump empowered America’s majority and some minorities to discard humanist values with his bravado of egomaniacal promises, threats to jail political opponents and even encouraged supporters to assassinate Hillary Clinton, intimidate his women victims with his social, political and financial influence, vowed to defund climate change related funding by billions (which terrifies even scientists and environmentalists) – all in the name of being anti-PC (politically correct) – and people just ate it all up and licked the plate clean. The logic doesn’t compute. It never will. Because there is something seriously broken. An unrectifiable disconnection from reality.

When moral hypocrisy masquerades as progress and liberalism, there is no convincing logic to argue such a position because these individuals are in fact intellectually dishonest and a tribal group of people who just can’t practice what they preach to everyone else. Backpedaling your rationality to justify electing a tyrannical megalomaniac only destroys your own credibility. And that is sad! Even that word “sad” satirically echoes in my head with Trump’s voice. The failure of the left will not absolve your own failures to recognize your own bias and bigotry that pandered to the far right in the most irresponsible and dangerous form.

We are quietly living a nightmare where modernism means maintaining a Frankenstein-politics where self-proclaimed “classical liberals”, “feminists”, “atheists”, “humanists” and “secularists” eagerly attach themselves to the furthest reach of right wing bigotry in the name of being “anti-PC” and “rational”. We can also tragically accept the fact that there are very little progressives in the world willing to maintain humanism and integrity under a smog of uncertainty. I know. That too is very, very sad!

Aki Muthali is a freelance writer, who's a feminist. Born and raised in Sri Lanka, she currently lives in Canada. She’s also an illustrator and a painter. Follow her on Twitter 

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