I started to read Adbusters in my last year of highschool. At the time I was in the midst of a period of political angst and my sheer ignorance on political events clouded my vision. On top of this, my father's newfound conservative religiosity further clouded my vision. I had a fair bit of trouble reconciling my Judaism Light (the low calorie alternative to Synagogue) upbringing with my father's insistence upon the unbreakable connection between Judaism and Israel--that is, any criticism of Israel is an abomination of one's Jewish faith. With my newfound interest in leftist ideals, I came upon a copy of Naomi Klein's No Logo, a book often referred to in leftist circles at the time as "the bible." Initially I found Klein's personal politics to be a bit of a conundrum: a young Jewish woman who is staunchly anti-Israel. It then took me years to make this startling realization: the entire left is anti-Israel. Only recently have I begun to understand why this is.
The recent comments by French President Nicholas Sarkozy regarding the burka, the sack-like head-to-toe covering worn by many Muslim women, may shape a new ideological war between the West and the Arab world. Sarkozy claims that the burka "is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement." Sarkozy's comments, although bordering on what many would consider discriminatory, actually are right on the money. Nowhere in the Koran does it explicitly state that women should cover any part of their bodies. Instead, the covering of women's heads and faces has been enshrined in the laws of Muslim countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia--countries where women are essentially second-class citizens. Both of these nations have laws that are completely based upon Islam, so many inside and outside the Arab world make the connection between the burka/hijab and actual Islamic law as written in the Koran.
So where does the Adbusters clan come about in this scenario? Following the comments by Sarkozy, I have come to realize that the far-left has morphed into apologists for all things Muslim. Rather than defending the individual rights of Muslims who wish to freely practice their religion, even if doing so may be a practice of male subservience, I find that more often than not the left allows its anti-American agenda to overpower any rational debate on the matter.
When I first began taking an interest in Adbusters, I remember seeing a photo series on the magazine's website of a suicide bomber being thwarted by the Israeli Defense Forces--which ultimately involved three IDF soldiers taking the would-be suicide bomber aside and killing him. What irked me about this series was that it was presented in a manner by which the expected reaction of viewers would be outrage. I was indeed outraged, but more-so at the caption that referred to the bomber as a "liberator."
Rather than criticizing the West for its anti-Arab practices and standing up to defend all things Muslim, including suicide bombers, the left should align itself with Muslims in a different way. The left should unite with liberal Muslims (who account for the majority of those living in Europe and North America) to defend the rights of those who wish to practice their religion. Moreover, the left should act to remove the negative stigma attached to all things Muslim in the West. By essentially acting as apologists for all things Muslim, whether it be a woman in a hijab, the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, or a suicide bomber in the Gaza strip, the left has made it easier for the West to classify everything Arab under the same category. A suicide bomber is not a liberator and a headscarf is not a threat to the liberty of the French Republic. Rather than counterbalancing vehement anti-Americanism with steadfast Arab support, the left should re-evaluate its ideals on a more situation-specific basis. Otherwise, they are just adding ammunition to the War on Terror's unfortunate offspring, the War on Islam.
