Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 109 | Intersectionality & Islam

Episode Date: May 8, 2019

The reactions to the attacks on Israel remind us of the insanity of intersectionality in the West. Plus, Trump's latest religious liberty executive order. Copyright Blaze Media All Rights Reserved.

Hello, relatable listeners. Happy Wednesday. I hope that everyone had a wonderful week. Today, we are going to talk a little bit about what happened between Israel and Hamas or the Palestinian people. And then we are going to go into something that is happening in Pennsylvania with part of the Muslim community there. We are going to transition from that into a religious liberty executive order that Trump passed a few weeks ago. And then we are also, going to talk about Pete Buttigieg and his visit to Jimmy Carter at his church. Maybe if we have time. So let's go ahead and get started into that. By this point, this happened over the weekend. And so I'm sure you already know what happened between the Palestinian militants and Israel. I'm just going to give you a little bit of a briefing. And then, of course, as we usually do, we're going to look at the media reaction to this and the reaction from public officials. And what that says about where we are as a culture and why there is this. persistent perspective about Israel around the world and what it really means. So Palestinian militants,

a terrorist group, they are largely Hamas is largely funded by Iran. They fired more than 600 rockets into southern Israel in less than 24 hours, killing at least four Israelis and leaving several more in critical condition. Israel retaliated killing over 28 of those 20 were terrorists in the Islamic Jihad, according to an according to an Islamic Jihad spokesperson in Gaza, two infants, a 12-year-old boy and two pregnant women were reportedly among the dead. We don't actually know if they were killed by Israeli defense or if they were killed by a rocket misfire. It is important to note that Hamas regularly uses their own citizens as human shields. We don't know if that's what happened in this case, but that is their

practice. So like I said, Israel retaliated killing about 20 among those killed was Hamid Ahmed Abdul Kudri. I'm just going to say that I said that correctly. He was responsible for money transfers from Iran to militant groups like Islamic jihad and Hamas inside Gaza. And so that's one of the big differences really between Hamas and Israel is that Hamas regularly targets citizens of Israel, whereas Israel goes after specific terrorists, which of course is how it should be. The latest round of violence began on Friday when an Islamic jihad sniper fired at Israeli troops, wounding two soldiers. According to the Jerusalem Post, they believe Iran had a hand in this,

trying to get Israeli forces to focus on Gaza while Iran continues to strengthen their position in Syria. This is not really out of the norm for that area. Israelis have dealt with this for a long time. regularly fires rockets at civilian areas throughout Israel. They are currently building tunnels apparently underneath the Israeli border to try to capture and murder Israeli civilian. So you can imagine just kind of the state of terror that a lot of Israelis are living in currently. According to a 2015 CIA report, the Gaza's trip could become uninhabitable by 2020, unless steps are taken to address Gaza's economic and humanitarian situation. This over the weekend

was the worst violence between the two sides since the 50-day war in 2014. So that's really not very much time. That's about five years, but this is the worst it's been since then. During the 50-day war, about 1,800 people, a little bit more than that, almost 1900 people or Palestinians died while only 67 died in Israel. Now, as for the reactions, you can probably guess where people are falling along partisan lines. You have many people on the left who, side against Israel. Now, the reasons for that are manifold. It depends on who you are. There are different forms of antisemitism. Some exist on the right. Some exist on the left. But anti-Semitism, as we've seen, as we talked about a couple weeks ago, as exemplified by the New York Times and

some elected officials that will get too soon, it's very mainstream. It's more sophisticated to be anti-Semitic on the left. Of course, they say it's anti-Zionist. They say it's just criticism of Israel. but of course that's not true. They perpetuate Jewish tropes that have been used throughout history by people who truly hate the Jews. I don't need to go into all of the examples of Representative Ilhan Omar perpetuating these kinds of tropes and Rashida Talib as well to freshman congresswoman. You already know those if you've been paying attention to the news or listening to this podcast. But many people on the left, them included, have different reasons for not liking Israel and particularly not really caring about the death of Jewish people.

The funny thing is you see some of the same people outraged to anti-Semitic tax in America, which they should be when it is at the hands of white nationalists. But when it comes to Palestinian violence against Israel, and Israel defends themselves, all of a sudden, it's Israel that is to blame for that, that just tells you about the insanity of intersectionality. Jewish people just apparently. according to a lot of people on the intersectional left don't have quite enough oppression points

in order to be cited with in this kind of conflict between Palestine and Israel. Ilhan Omar tweeted how many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends. The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza Gaza is unsustainable. Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace. This occupation of Gaza is what you are going to see a lot from people on the left. They say it and they don't really know what it means. If you remember that PBS interview done with Acosio-Cortez, with, I think it was Margaret Hoover, the one that I parodied a few months ago.

When Margaret Hoover asked her what she meant by the occupation of Palestine, she just said that, she couldn't actually defend what she said. She couldn't actually explain what she meant by occupation, but you'll see it by a lot of people on the left. What they think they mean by that is that is that, Israel is oppressing Palestine, that they're keeping Palestine from being free, that they're occupying Gaza. That's not really true.

Israel left Gaza in 2005. Gaza elected Hamas, this terrorist group, to be their leadership. And unfortunately, for the Palestinian people and for the Israeli people, Hamas, has been terribly oppressive as most terrorist regimes are. So when you hear someone like Ilhan Omar saying the occupation of Gaza, they are blaming, they are blaming the Jews for that. Now, when she says only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace, we don't really know what she means by that.

That's probably not a two-state solution that has been offered in the past, and it has been rejected largely by the Palestinian people, by Hamas. And so real justice in the eyes of the Palestinian people is the obliteration of the Jewish people. And we'll get to why that is in a little bit. So what does she mean by real justice? justice. Is that what she means by real justice? Because of course, that's troubling, but would be in line with a lot of the anti-Semitic language that she's used in the past. Rashida Talib tweeted, now, Rashida Talib is the freshman congresswoman who she in her office had a map of the Middle East and

where Israel was. There was a sticky note over it in an arrow saying Palestine. And so again, it's, are you saying that Palestine should be replacing Israel? Is that, is that what you're saying? If so, then you are citing with the side of terrorists who believe that it is their God-ordained responsibility to wipe out the Jewish people. So that's who we're talking about when we talk about Rashida Talib, the same person who said that we need to impeach the MF her when she was first elected. As she said, when will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free? Headlines like this, she's talking about a New York Times headline that I'll read.

Headlines like this and framing it in this way just feeds into the continued lack of responsibility on Israel, who unjustly oppress and target Palestinian children and families. Hashtag free Palestine. So she's saying this in response to this New York Times article, Gaza militants fire 250 rockets in Israel responds with airstrikes. Well, that's literally what happened, at least as far as we know. I mean, I wasn't on the ground. You weren't on the ground, but all of the reporting that we've been able to see was that

they are responding to airstrikes or they're responding to rockets by Palestinian militants. And so it's called chronology. It's not framing it in a certain way. I'm sorry that it doesn't frame it in the way that you would like it to be framed because you believe that Israel doesn't have a right to exist. But that's literally what happened. And as we've already talked about, Israel has a practice of targeting terrorists, whereas Palestinian militants have a practice of targeting civilians.

And so if you want to talk about a side that targets women and children, not just Israeli women and children, but also their own women and children, then you should say something about Hamas. This is what I don't understand. Even if you, which we all should, have compassion for the people of Palestine, even if you don't want them to suffer, which none of us should want them to suffer, but even say you are on the intersectional left and you are on the side of the Palestinian regime or of Palestine in general, and you really do think that Israel is oppressing Palestine. Even if that is the case, how hard is it to say that Hamas is in the wrong? Like, how hard is it to say that a terrorist group that uses its people as human shields is wrong? Like, shouldn't that be what you're talking about

if you are worried about the oppression of Palestine? I am, I don't want these women and children to suffer. I don't want the people of Palestine to suffer. I believe that they're made in the image of God, that they are equal and worth and dignity and value. I don't want them to be used as human shields and i see hamas the group that unfortunately was elected a while ago is exploiting them and is objectifying them and is terrorizing them their own people and so if you really care about the oppression of palestine why not say something about hamas and yet the finger is always pointed at israel uh who is as far as we can tell again i'm not on the ground but as far as we can tell is merely defending itself.

It's really crazy how willing, how willing to Leib and Omar are to really insist upon misinformation to defend known terrorist regimes in Palestine to falsely malign Israel. It's really amazing how closely they have to stick to that narrative. Like I've said before, you can have criticisms of Israel.

We can disqualify. agree on foreign policy and we can still be in the realm of logic and reason and patriotism. I think that's perfectly fine. I don't think there's anything in the Constitution or anything in just any kind of moral compass that says that you are moral handbook is what I was trying to say that says that we have to agree when it comes to Israel. But when it comes to misinformation, when it comes to defending either complicitly or overtly terrorist regime like Hamas, then you've gone outside of the realm of reason. Then you've gone outside of any kind of handbook of morality whatsoever.

And then we can't even really have a basic conversation because you insist on misinformation and we're living in two different realities. Like I said, Israel targets terrorists, Palestine targets civilians. They use their own civilians as human shields. There are Muslims who live in Israel. There are no Jews, as far as I know, who live in Gaza. Extremists in Palestine believe that it is their God-ordained purpose to kill the Jews. Hamas is a terrorist group that boasts in its organizational charter that calls for the murder of every Jew.

Israel doesn't have a religious basis for a belief like that. They believe that they should defend themselves, but there is no biblical order for the Jews to obliterate those of other religions that Jews have to follow. So there is a different motivation here. There is a different theology here that is underlying all this conflict. And so purposely misconstruing what's going on between Israel and Palestine in favor of terrorists in Gaza is, yes, it's anti-Semitic. There's really no other way to say that.

Like I said, we can disagree. But when it comes to defending terrorists, there's really nothing to degree on. you're either disagree on. You're either anti-Semitic or you're not. You will hear all kinds of terminology about the evils of Israel and the occupation of Gaza. And I would just encourage you to double-check the facts and to go outside the narrative and to see what is actually true. Certainly don't take my word for it. It's very confusing over here in the U.S. that people could be so ideologically or religiously motivated that they would, that an entire country, would launch an attack like this. I think it's very hard for us to really understand. It's hard for

me to understand. There are many, many details of this conflict that I do not know. There's history there that I'm not completely privy to. There are a lot of people who are experts and scholars in this and have been studying this for a long time. I barely scratched the surface and my understanding of it. All I know is what I have told you so far and what I can glean from doing my own work and my my own research. As Christians, our response should be that our hearts break for both Israel and Palestine. As I've already said, both sides, people on both sides are made in the image of God. They have equal value. They have equal worth. We should feel compassion for both. We should be sad that this conflict is happening. We should ask that the gospel be spread somehow through this,

that God would be glorified through this. This really isn't about picking partisan sides. It's about what is true and what is not. But no matter what is true and what is not, we should still be broken for the exploitation of all people for the loss of life and for the human suffering that's going on there. This is not about Israel always being right and Palestine always being wrong, not at all. This is about what actually happened. This is about the truth, which right now is that Israel is being targeted by Palestinian terrorist groups and are being blamed for the conflict. by people in the West who are deeply anti-Semitic. That is the truth in this case.

And as Christians, we should always be on the side of truth. It truly is amazing to see how persistent hatred of the Jews has been throughout history and how the Jewish people have outlasted it. It's really, really incredible to watch. And we as Christians should be praying for them always. And we should be praying for this conflict that, like I said, God would be glorified in the gospel would be sure. shared. Right now, there's a tentative ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza

that has appeared to have, it was taken hold on Monday morning. This is after the 600 projectiles were fired upon Israel on Saturday and Sunday. According to Arab news reports, the understanding was brokered by Egypt in the United Nations. It includes measures to ease acute economic crisis in the impoverished Gaza Strip. That's really not going to help anything, but okay home to two million people it came with the start of the muslim holy month of ramadan um so the u.s fear that this was spurred by iran and so it released this press release on sunday in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings the united states is deploying the u s abraham lincoln carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the u.s central command region to send a clear and unmistakable

message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force. The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or regular Iranian forces. So we take this seriously. Israel has been a faithful ally for a long time, and we should stand up to the defense of our allies. Now, speaking of the Muslim community, there was a really interesting story that I first saw in the Daily Caller.

And this is something that happened not in the Middle East. It happened here in the United States, specifically in Pennsylvania. There was a video that started going around of Muslim children in an elementary school, and they were singing this song. And I won't even play the video because they're speaking in a different language.

You have to be watching it to see the captions. So a girl gets in front of the microphone and she states, this is some kind of recital. I'm guessing the students put on for their parents. We will defend the land of divine guidance with our bodies and we will sacrifice our souls without hesitation. We will chop off their heads and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Axka Mosque.

I don't know. Mosque. We will lead the army of Allah fulfilling his promise. and we will subject them to eternal torture. The Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia posted the video to its Facebook for the celebration of Amma Day, where young children wearing Palestinian scarves sing and read poetry about killing for Allah and the mosque in Jerusalem.

Now, there is another organization, a Middle Eastern watchdog group, who said these are not isolated incidents. They are happening in major centers of the country, including Pennsylvania. the video is translated, but at one part in the video, the children saying the land of the Prophet Muhammad's night journey is calling us, our Palestine must return to us. And so this is something that is actually happening in the United States. It's not just happening in the Middle East. And so when people say, well, that's just, you know, that's just over there that's always been an extremist region. No, this is actually fundamental to the Muslim faith. Now, that is not

saying that every single Muslim believes all of this. That's not saying that every single Muslim is an extremist. I'm not saying that. But we should be very troubled that this kind of deadly ideology is being spoken of and celebrated and glorified by young children and the mainstream media is saying nothing. Do you remember when hashtag exposed Christian schools was a thing and it was going around and there was this writer, I think, maybe for the New York Times trying to get people to send their harrowing tales of their time at Christian schools. And they were. were freaking people, everyone was freaking out because Karen Pence was going to work for this Christian school who, um, who believed in, I don't even know, was it traditional gender roles or biblical

marriage and everyone was freaking out saying, oh my gosh, Christian schools are so bigoted. People were coming out with all of these stories about how their Christian school believed the marriage was between a man and a woman and how evil Christian schools are. They shouldn't be allowed to teach this stuff. The second lady shouldn't be, uh, working at a story. school that perpetuates these kinds of hateful ideologies and the mainstream media was all over it. Remember that? Remember how big of a deal that was that someone was going to work at a Christian school, that Christians actually have Christian beliefs, that Christian schools actually believe in the Bible, that practicing Christians actually believe in the Bible's definition of marriage

and the Bible's definition of gender and sex? Oh my gosh, what a scandal. So where are all those people complaining about literally chopping off people's heads and obliterating, obliterating Israel in favor of Palestine. We're not going to talk about that. Why? Because of social justice fueled by intersectionality. Because in the social justice left's mind, Muslims have been more oppressed than Christians. They are more intersectional than Christians.

And because of that, they are guarded from any accurate. of bigotry. They are guarded from any accusations of having a wrong or fundamentalist religion. No, it is only Christians who are bad because Christians to the intersectional laughter associated with privilege. They're associated with Western values. They're associated with America. Because of that, they associate Christianity with whiteness. And so they assume that Christians are so privileged that they need to be called out for their hateful and bigoted views. When none of that is actually true. You want to know the number one religion that is most persecuted, the religion that is most persecuted throughout the world, it is Christians by far. Muslims come second, Jews come third,

but it is Christians by far who face the most discrimination and who face the most persecution. So it doesn't even make any sense whatsoever to say that Christians are any more privileged than any other group, but like I said, they make these associations that have been perpetuated by postmodern professors in academia that say, oh, well, Christianity is a Western white supremacist patriarchal system in which women and minorities are oppressed and people have used it to justify slavery, blah, blah, blah. All of this a historical, a theological, illogical jargon is used to justify the hatred and the persecution of Christian people in favor of, in favor of ideologies like the one that,

we just read at a Muslim school where kids are talking about chopping off someone's head, all because of crazy social justice intersectionality, which is not based on truth whatsoever, which is why I always say Christians don't need to be a part of it. You care about justice. You should care about biblical justice. You should care about truth that is based on reality, not this crazy scale of privilege that was made up by some rando academic like 15 years ago. why aren't we talking about this? Why aren't we talking about the fact that this stuff, the killing of people, is actually being taught and fed to these kids at a young age?

These kids don't know what they're saying, but they're starting to believe it. And we're okay with that. We're fine with that. No, thank you. I mean, we're actually talking about killing. Like, we're not just talking about, do you disagree on the definition of marriage? Or, like, do you disagree that you should save sex until marriage? Do you disagree on gender roles, whatever?

or the kind of cultural conversations that Christians have with the rest of the world. We're talking about obliterating people, taking people's physical lives because they are not Muslim. And you won't hear a peep out of the mainstream media because of that or on that because of all the stuff that we were just talking about. It is crazy. And honestly, it's pretty scary. It's pretty frightening to think that this is happening in the United States and no one's

saying anything. The beautiful thing about the United States is that you can believe whatever you want to believe. there is freedom of religion. There is freedom from religion in the United States. We do have this thing called the First Amendment. And so you can be a part of any religion that you want to be a part of until your religion starts to actually threaten the lives of other people.

Now, I'm not saying that these kids are actually threatening people's lives. Right now they're just singing songs. And we also have freedom of speech. They're not as, you know, maybe the line is hairy, but they're not actually inciting violence. And so, of course, their freedoms are protected in the United States. They should be. But that doesn't mean that that's not something that we should watch out for. Does it mean that's not something that we should pay attention to?

I mean, that's pretty frightening if we're perfectly honest. And like I said, I'm very thankful to live in a country where people can believe what they want to believe and say the things that they want to say. But we, especially as Christians, need to be paying attention to that kind of stuff. Now, on the school's website, it says that its mission is to move people to strive for God consciousness, liberty and justice, and to convey Islam with the utmost clarity. Now that obviously is not being communicated in that particular video, which is pretty scary. I can't even imagine what would happen if you saw a young boy reading out of the Bible something

about marriage or something about even just Jesus being the only way, the only truth, the only life. I mean, if that went viral, you would have people just freaking out, tearing their hair out. It would be crazy. I mean, we saw that with Covington Catholic, for example, when those kids smirked allegedly at a Native American man who came marching and beating their drum within their presence, they were terrible white supremacist, bigots. Why?

Because they were Catholics, because they were white, because they were at a pro-life rally, because they were wearing a Make America Great Again hat. And that was everywhere. But in that particular situation, when we saw the longer video, we saw Black Hebrew Nationalists lashing out and throwing racial slurs at both groups being completely hateful. And you didn't hear anything about that in the mainstream media. Why? Again, because of this crazy, crazy intersectionality thing.

Okay, we only have a little bit of time, but I do want to get into this story because we're talking about religion and freedom of religion. The White House unveiled a rule to protect health workers, religious, and moral. beliefs. A new executive order was handed down through the Trump administration. I think I said this happened a few weeks ago. It actually happened at the end of last week. A new executive order was handed down through the Trump administration to help protect the religious liberties of modern day health professionals. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration will require hospitals and health organizations to do more to shield medical workers with religious or

moral objections to medical procedures such as abortion, assisted suicide, and sterilization. Now, you've got people like the New York Times saying, well, this is going too far. So just because you have some kind of moral or religious objection to it, you can't give someone the health care they need. Well, let's think about the opposite of that. Do you honestly think that a nurse or a doctor should be forced, should be forced to carry out an abortion if they don't want to? Like you think that's better?

What do you think is more dictatorial? What do you think is more tyrannical saying, okay, you have a religious or a moral objection to abortion or to a sex change surgery? You don't have to do it. That person is free to go to someone else. guarantee you there's another doctor that will perform your abortion. There's another doctor that will perform your sex change surgery. Why do you have to force a doctor to do something to which they're morally opposed? It's the same kind of principle that went with Jack Phillips, the cake baker,

who didn't want to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. Go find another baker. Don't force or don't ask the government to force someone to bake a cake for you. You can go somewhere else. It's the same thing with this. Of course, people should be free. Doctors should be free. Medical professionals should be free to not perform an abortion or to perform any kind of procedure to which they are opposed. And it's crazy that people are arguing otherwise. There was this whole opinion piece in the New York Times saying that we're going too far with religious liberty. We're going too far with it because people shouldn't be discriminated against or people shouldn't have a service turned down for them if that particular service violates someone's religious conscience. Why? That

person is free, like I said, to go other places. But you're going to force someone, you're going to force a Christian pro-life doctor to perform an abortion. But you're saying, I think they would probably say, oh, well, they just shouldn't be an OBGYN. They should be another doctor. Well, what if it's too late? What if they've been practicing for 15 years? They don't want to perform. Should they quit? You're saying they should quit because they don't want to perform abortions. That's the kind of government that you think is good. You think that's a healthy society? It's crazy to me. of course this was the right thing to do executive orders. The weird thing about them is that, of course, it can be reversed.

There have been a lot of executive orders, particularly in relation to abortion over the years that have gone back and forth between Republican and Democrat presidents. And the same thing will probably happen here. The rule establishes guidelines for punishing health care institutions with the loss of federal funds if they fail to respect the rights of such workers. I mean, it's sad that we even have to do this, that we have to do this, that we have to say that someone's religious liberty needs to be respected by their employer in this way. But apparently this is what it's going to take because I guarantee you the left would love

to force you to perform an abortion. They would love it. And so, of course, I'm on the side of liberty in this. And I think it was a good move. Do I wish it was not an executive order? Do I wish it was a little more permanent? Of course, but it's probably maybe it's the last resort right now. now I wanted to get into Pete Buttigieg visiting Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter still teaches Sunday school at a church. Of course, you know, Jimmy Carter was president. He's a Democrat. He was really one of the first, I don't want to say one of the first, but it was maybe one

of the first progressive evangelical Christians that a lot of people do, especially from the South, that a lot of people who maybe weren't progressives still liked. A lot of evangelicals still liked. because he was an evangelical. He kind of popularized a lot of, or he brought to the forefront, a lot of progressive Christianity. And so it's kind of fitting that Pete Buttigieg visited him. And the only reason I bring this up is simply because it's something for us Christians

who care about the Bible and what God's word says to pay attention to. Pete Buttigieg is going to be spearheading progressive Christianity. And he is going to be the voice of the Christian left, whether we like it or not. And so we need to make sure that we know our theology, that we know our Bibles and we know the arguments against progressive Christianity, which we've talked about in the past. I think that's all we're going to talk about today. Yes. So right now, I am in the midst.

I just wanted to let you all know. My cat actually just jumped up here and is saying hello to me. But I just wanted to let you all know that I am right now in the midst of recording content for you guys for the summer. after I have my baby. She's due at the end of June, but you are going to have all the content in your life that you need. And I'm actually really excited about the series that I'm doing. It's going to be really informative and I think really productive for you guys. And so you have a lot to look forward to a lot of the questions that you guys ask me about like women in the

church. What are Christians' roles in politics? What about predestination? What is Calvinism? Theological and political things you've asked me about Medicare for all. You've asked me about a lot of the subjects that you hear of the Democratic candidates talking about. I'm going to answer all of those questions this summer. It's going to be awesome. So you're going to learn so much, even when you're out of school and even when you're at the pool. I didn't even mean to rhyme, but I did just for you. Okay, I hope that you have a great rest of your day and I'll see you here on Friday.