Twitter can often look like the political equivalent of toddlers fighting in a sandbox, but still some exchanges are worth noting. Take this innocent, rah, rah, tweet from Sally Kohn, the cable news host:
#IStandWithLinda today & always!
Her every word is being picked apart and contorted.
I know @lsarsour to be a defender of justice FOR ALL!— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) July 19, 2017
At first glance, it appears kind and supportive. One feminist supporting another feminist — isn’t that what women need to do? But a closer look at what Kohn is really saying, and about whom she’s saying it, shows why feminism as a third-wave movement is stagnant, even unappealing.
I’m not an expert in Islam or Sharia Law. But it’s clear from Sarsour’s own tweets and speeches she at least, at one time, was (if not still is) an advocate of Sharia Law. “Sharia law is reasonable and once u read into the details it makes a lot of sense. People just know the basics,” Sarsour wrote on social media a few years ago.
While Sharia Law may seem logical to many Muslims, to others it’s a platform to enslave and murder. For example, it’s strict adherence to Sharia Law that enables these ten countries to punish homosexuality by death, as one writer pointed out to Kohn.
Kohn took it a step further when she stated a veteran of the military, columnist and retired Army Col. Kurt Schlichter, would be more likely to adhere to Sharia Law’s punishment of gays than Sarsour was.
Gosh, @kurtschlicter, you’re more likely to throw me off a building than @lsarsour is. https://t.co/fqMut1xiG4
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) July 20, 2017
Schlichter is vocal and can be crass but he’s served honorably in our military and is simply making the point that the very thing Kohn is praising exists within a system which would literally kill her if she lived in specific areas of the world. Kohn’s statement to him is equal parts ignorant and ungrateful.
Sarsour may be many things, but a true feminist she is not. One simply cannot speak for women while defending laws that ultimately hurt women.
One must wonder if the fact that rabid feminists like Kohn defend women like Sarsour, who are feminist poseurs at best, is because she’s that ignorant or that defiant? Will Kohn support a woman who calls herself a feminist even as she watches her own sex abused and killed because Sarsour is suddenly en vogue?
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
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