Zealots

Israel is currently experiencing an ugly chasm between its strictly religious Orthodox Jews, Haredim, and its secular Jewish population.  Amongst other draconian practices, the Haredim believe in gender segregation in public spaces, including city buses.  This has led to a spate of clashes as well as dramatic demonstrations by partisans on both sides of the issue.

From a socio-political perspective, such a dispute, occurring in the national homeland of the Jewish people, involves complex issues of religion and governance and we will leave it to the citizenry and politicians in Israel to sort these out.

We will comment however, on the way Reuters Jerusalem Bureau has been covering this story.  In the last two weeks or so, correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan, whose writing interests and style strongly suggest she fancies herself a secular feminist, has written several stories on the dispute where she refers to the Haredim as "zealots".

Our desktop dictionary defines zealot as a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals.  The term obviously carries a very powerful and for most readers, strongly negative, connotation.

However one may feel about Haredim, they are certainly no more extreme in their beliefs or religious practices than, for example, orthodox Muslims or Islamists.  Indeed, unlike women living in Saudi Arabia, Haredi women in Israel are able to drive cars, frequently work to support the family, and enjoy equality in matters of civil law including inheritance.

Yet, we've never seen a Reuters story where the agency's correspondents characterize Islamists as "zealots".  Rather, the adjectives employed in stories on Islamists in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, etc. run along polite lines like "strict", "conservative", and "austere".

Note for example, this story from 2010 (reported on by Fisher-Ilan), about the Pope calling on Islamic countries in the Middle East to guarantee freedom of worship to non-Muslims:

At least 3.5 million Christians of all denominations live in the Gulf Arab region, the birthplace of Islam and home to some of the most conservative Arab Muslim societies in the world.
The freedom to practise Christianity -- or any religion other than Islam -- is not always a given in the Gulf and varies from country to country. Saudi Arabia, which applies an austere form of Sunni Islam, has by far the tightest restrictions.

There are many ways we might describe a society that employs religious police to arrest and lash a woman who drives or is seen in the company of a man other than her husband, but austere is not one of them.

This asymmetric handling by Fisher-Ilan and her colleagues at Reuters clearly reflects bias as well as either the soft bigotry of low expectations (with respect to religious Muslims) or antisemitism (with respect to religious Jews), or both.

On the other hand, perhaps Fisher-Ilan is simply an anti-Israel zealot.

Reuters compares Islamists to Republicans

Reuters stable of Middle East reporters has been out in force over the last year, each correspondent taking his respective turn at bat, sanitizing the ideology of the Islamists who have been voted into power in Tunisia and Morocco, and who are on the verge of power in Egypt and Algeria.

The various Islamist groups vying for control of these countries go by different party names and, for the purpose of distinguishing themselves in the eyes of the electorate, emphasize different aspects of the Islamist raison d'etre.  But, like multiple brands of bug killer, while the directions for use may vary, the end result remains the same.  Institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims, capital punishment for open homosexuals, and a genocidal hatred for all things Jewish are what these groups are all about.

Notwithstanding the incontrovertible barbarism inherent in this program, Reuters correspondents continue with their efforts to whitewash the Islamists for gullible western audiences.  Here's the latest irrational comparison from Reuters religion editor Tom Heneghan:

Still, in a Western country, Muslim Brothers [Brotherhood] would be among the staunch social conservatives, something like the evangelical wing of the Republican Party in the United States.

Simply mind-numbing.

Jonathan Wright explains the fundamental difference between the fundamentalists

Former Reuters Cairo Bureau Chief and long-time Arabist, Jonathan Wright, who has been busy whitewashing the Islamists in Egypt for gullible Western audiences since before the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February, parses for us the critical distinction between the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists of the Nour party:

Nasser Khodeir, a civil engineer and Brotherhood supporter in the town of Tansa, said Brotherhood members were also Salafi in their beliefs but didn't share the importance Salafis attach to physical appearance, such as clothing and the cut of the beard. Salafis favour robes or trouser cut off above the angle and long beards, usually with the moustache short or shaved off.

Well, now that we know they will be using different barbers and tailors, please note that both the Brotherhood and al-Nour seek the imposition of strict sharia law (as outlined in Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law) and, ultimately, a global caliphate.

Both groups are deeply antisemitic, treat women like chattel, advocate death for homosexuals, despise Western democracy, seek the destruction of Israel, and believe in permanent underclass status for religious minorities in countries where they have power.

Wright won't tell you any of this of course; he's far too lost in translation:

"Reporters of course, they work very fast and they don't think too deeply about what they're doing."

Yes, we've noticed that.