re: your "why do westerners keep trying to defend jihad" post; as a western leftist who did read a lot of defenses of muslim jihad as separate from islamic extremism and doesn't use 'jihad' as a stand-in for 'bad', it's a frustrating double standard that the same people who encouraged removing the violent historical context from 'jihad' and 'intifada' refuse to give any fraction of that grace to 'zionism', a word which does legitimately have many meanings not just bc of jewish debate but bc it's been appropriated by multiple groups who hate us
Sure is. It’s extra weird because Zionism literally isn’t a bad thing- at all. And there is no legitimate reason for some to be afraid of Zionism so long as it isn’t accompanied by people saying shit like “Kahane was right.”
In contrast, people are legitimately afraid of- and have every reason to be afraid of- the word Jihad. So if you (in general, not you specifically) want to talk about the religious tenant of Jihad in its various manifestations in a public forum- please make sure to first clarify that you are absolutely not promoting or making excuses for the violent kind.
Instead it seems like people (mostly Islamic extremism apologists and oblivious Western leftists) want to gaslight us into believing that the violent kind of Jihad (be it terrorism in the name and of Jihad, Ottoman era genocide under the official state declaration of Jihad, or gradual displacement of non Muslims from the Middle East that is accepted as a natural consequence of the religious tenant of Jihad) “isn’t real jihad” and make us feel guilty for associating the word with its most obvious historical context.
Also pretty sure the Hindus, Assyrians, Armenians, Copts, Greeks, etc might have also noticed this phenomenon. Let me know if any of you have a different take.
