Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Sullivan does a nasty job of implying that Islamism — political Islam — is not only anti-semitic, but eliminationist.  And while many Muslim countries seem to contain large anti-Semitic populations, the record of political Islam relations with Jews, compared to secular regimes tells a different story.  Where there were mass expulsions of Jews in Muslim countries — Iraq, Iran and Egypt are a few examples that spring to mind — they were done by secular governments, with the exception of Iran.   Sure, the quote Andrew is referring to is from Osama, no fan of the Jews, but the larger point is that certain Westerners on-face rejection of anything but secular Muslims coming to power in the Middle East is naive.

As I’ve written before, at the moment, secular Muslims are too small and lack influence to leverage any sort of electoral success in most countries. So maybe we shouldn’t be tarring “Islamism”, which is distinct from Wahabbism, Qutbism, fundamentalism, terrorism or any other sort of violent, noxious Muslim ism, with the broad brush of eliminationist anti-Semitism, or just the general sense that Islamist parties are irreconcilable with the Western world or impossible to work with.  Especially considering that Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party, who currently govern Turkey, have done nothing to indicate that Islamism and anti-Semitism are necessarily linked, especially anymore than secular authoritarian regimes have been linked with particularly repressive anti-Jewish policies,