u/Chinoyboii

Despite my political trajectory going all over the place, from Socialist to Democratic Socialist, to Social Democrat/Pragmatic Progressive and eventually to Covenantal Leftism, I grew up with a Filipino father and my late uncle, both of whom held strongly leftist beliefs reminiscent of the writings and political traditions associated with Luis Jalandoni, Luis Taruc, and Pedro Abad Santos.

The Filipino leftist tradition is largely shaped by several overlapping influences. These include the precolonial beliefs and communal/tribal practices of the various ethnolinguistic groups, Christianity, anti-colonial nationalism, peasant movements, labor organizing, and different forms of Marxist thought. As a result, Filipino leftism does not always fit neatly into the social and cultural categories commonly used by the contemporary Western left.

My father and uncle were strongly left-wing when it came to economic inequality, labor rights, land reform, colonialism, foreign intervention, and the exploitation of farmers and workers. At the same time, they also held socially conservative views on family, religion, gender roles, sexuality, personal responsibility, and communal obligations. My father is nonreligious, but he still considers himself culturally Catholic.

Their politics were not based on the idea that social liberation required rejecting every inherited cultural or religious tradition. Instead, they viewed leftism as a struggle against Western imperialism, political corruption, the exploitation of the poor, and the domination of farmers and workers by wealthy landowners, corporations, and political elites. They believed that a person could oppose capitalism and imperialism while still valuing family obligations, religious traditions, cultural continuity, and a strong sense of responsibility toward one’s community. Overall, I would describe them as belonging to an older, more socially conservative leftist tradition. They considered themselves firmly left-wing, but I imagine that many younger Western leftists would regard some of their social beliefs as reactionary. At the same time, my father and uncle would probably view parts of the contemporary Western left as overly individualistic and disconnected from the cultural, religious, and communal lives of ordinary working-class people.

This has made me curious about whether anyone here has encountered Western leftists interacting with people from the Old Left, particularly socially conservative leftists from immigrant, working-class, religious, or non-Western backgrounds.

Sidenote:

As a sidenote, my father is still alive. The reason I am speaking about his politics in the past tense is that he is now largely nonpolitical and inactive as a leftist. He essentially gave up on political organizing after becoming disillusioned with the corruption, factionalism, and ideological infighting he encountered within left-wing movements back home in the Philippines. Although he still retains many of his older political beliefs, he no longer sees active political participation as something capable of producing meaningful change.

From my own social circle, I have heard both Jewish and Palestinian peers use arguments that attempt to portray the other population as foreign to the land. For example, some of my Palestinian peers have claimed that Ashkenazi Jews are primarily descended from the Khazars. They have also claimed that Israel restricts DNA testing because the government supposedly knows that Ashkenazi Jews are not actually descended from the ancient Israelites, even though commercial DNA tests can be purchased internationally.

Likewise, a few of my Jewish peers have claimed that most Palestinians are relatively recent immigrants from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, or North Africa. Others have argued that Palestinians primarily descend from the Arab conquerors who arrived during the Islamic conquests rather than from the local Levantine populations (i.e., Jews, Samaritans, Levantine Pagans, Levantine Christians) that already inhabited the region.

Out of all my Palestinian peers, only 2 out of the 14 have accepted that they're related to the Jews. The first one essentially believes that because Jews and Palestinians are related, a 1SS composed of only people with Canaanite ancestry should live in the land (Essentially blood quantum arguments). The second admits that Palestinians are related to the Jewish people. However, he believes that Jews should abandon their cultures and religion and convert to Islam because he views the Jewish religion and culture as promoting narcissistic behavior. As a disclaimer, he also believes that the entire world should eventually become Muslim, and he is one of the very few Muslims I personally know who holds views this extreme.

Out of my Jewish peers, some of them believe they share ancestry with the Palestinians; however, a few of them believe that their Arab culture has corrupted them to be barbarians and wish for them to become more rooted in their pre-Arab roots, including Palestinian Christians. However, if they want to maintain their Arab culture, they need to leave Gaza and the West Bank because they believe Arab culture is inherently antisemitic and thus only elongates this conflict. In contrast, I have Jewish peers who believe that their shared ancestry makes this conflict inherently sad, as they believe the Israeli government is killing their own kin. In addition, they wish they could live together in the Land of their forefathers someday, while ensuring that neither people abandons their cultures or religions.

As for the rest of my Palestinian and Jewish peers who reject the idea that the two populations share ancestry, they essentially repeat the same arguments I mentioned earlier, despite modern secular scholarship saying otherwise. I suspect that some of them may, deep down, recognize that the two populations are historically related. However, accepting that relationship can become emotionally difficult when it conflicts with the political narratives they have inherited from their families, communities, or religious leaders. It is also much easier to repeat a conspiracy theory that portrays the other group as completely foreign than to accept that the people you view as your enemy may also be closely related to you.

What are your thoughts?

Also, if you are wondering why I tend to socialize with Zionists, anti-Zionists, religious conservatives, secular leftists, and people with other conflicting political views, it is because I do not believe that surrounding myself only with people who agree with me would help me understand the conflict any better, as I believe remaining in echo chambers only stagnates your political development because you are rarely forced to examine your own assumptions or explain why you believe what you believe.

This question is largely intended for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. I am aware that the Jews and Samaritans both descend from the ancient Israelites, although their communities developed separately and have significant religious differences. I am also aware that most Samaritans today live either in Holon or on Mount Gerizim near Nablus. One major difference between Jews and Samaritans is that most Jewish communities lived in the diaspora for much of the past 2,000–2,500 years. In contrast, the Samaritans largely remained in the Holy Land, where they continued to live alongside the local Levantine populations that would eventually become modern Palestinians.

I am familiar with the Samaritan YouTuber Abood Cohen, who has explained that many members of his community try to remain politically neutral in the conflict because they are a small ethnoreligious minority. However, there have also been Samaritans who served in the IDF, while Nader Sadaqa notably joined the PFLP during the Second Intifada. In addition, Cohen has expressed in some of his YouTube videos that he views his people as a bridge between Jews and Palestinians because Samaritans share an ancient Israelite heritage with the Jews while also sharing language, geography, and centuries of coexistence with the Palestinians.

I do not personally know any Israelis or Palestinian nationals, but I have asked Jewish and Palestinian peers in my social circle about their views on the Samaritans. From what I have gathered, my Jewish peers generally see Samaritans as belonging to the same broader Israelite family and cultural tradition. However, a small minority of my more religiously observant Jewish peers refer to them as Kutim and view them as a mixed population descended partly from Israelites and partly from peoples resettled in the region by the Assyrian Empire after the fall of the northern Kingdom of Israel.

Amongst my Palestinian peers, their views are more varied; some of them see them as fellow Palestinians, especially the ones who continue to live in Nablus. In addition, they don't exclusively see them by their Samaritan background but as fellow Arabs who so happen to have a different religion from the Palestinian Christians and Muslims. In contrast, a few of my peers view them with some skepticism because they see the Samaritans’ cultural and historical proximity to the Jewish people, along with the service of some Samaritans in the IDF, as a potential sign of political alignment with Israel.

I understand that the opinions of my own social circle are anecdotal and may not reflect the views of Israelis or Palestinians more broadly. Therefore, I am curious about how Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs on this sub generally view the Samaritan community. Have you personally interacted with Samaritans, and if so, what have those interactions been like?

I understand that the biblical writers likely sincerely believed that worshipping other gods violated Israel’s covenant with YHWH and could result in divine punishment. However, I am wondering whether their opposition to these practices may also have reflected concerns about social/political fragmentation. If different regions, clans, households, and local priesthoods maintained their own cults, sanctuaries, and divine traditions, could this have made it more difficult to construct a unified Israelite identity?

From a secular perspective, it would make sense for the promotion of exclusive YHWH worship to have helped bring these different groups under one shared religious and cultural framework. A common deity, a shared ancestral history, a common body of law, and eventually a central sanctuary in Jerusalem could have strengthened the idea that Israel was one people rather than a loose collection of regional Levantine communities. In addition, having different priesthoods scattered across various temples and local sanctuaries may have created competing centers of religious authority, thus challenging a unified political project. These priesthoods may have had their own local traditions, economic interests, and relationships with surrounding communities, which could have made it more difficult for the monarchy or Jerusalem-based elites to establish a common religious and political order.

I am not suggesting that the biblical writers were political strategists who did not believe their own theology. However, I am wondering whether they may have understood loyalty to YHWH and political unity as closely connected. Could the biblical opposition to polytheism and local cults therefore have served both a theological purpose and a broader nation-building or ethnogenesis function? Is there current scholarship that discusses exclusive YHWH worship, monolatry, monotheism, or cult centralization in these terms?

Thank You

So, I am pretty sure you guys are aware that there has been an increase in gentile influencers talking about the Talmud, the Rambam, and other Jewish religious texts, usually by highlighting passages they claim insult Jesus, describe gentiles as inferior, or permit Jews to mistreat non-Jews. I have some familiarity with the Talmud (Both the Babylonian Talmud & the Jerusalem Talmud), and from what I understand, it is a vast collection of legal arguments/ disagreements among rabbis over the last 2000 years concerning Jewish law. In regard to the Rambam, I know that his magnum opus, the Mishnah Torah, was intended to systematically organize and codify Jewish law. However, I also understand that the Rambam was a medieval thinker whose views were shaped by the religious and political environment in which he lived, and that not every position he expressed was universally accepted by later Jewish authorities.

I know that there are some questionable or even offensive passages within the literature concerning Jesus, Christians, idolaters, and Gentiles. However, I understand that many of these texts are usually chosen selectively depending on the Hasidic dynasty or rabbi, and that some of these texts were formulated when Jews were experiencing persecution by the gentile world. At the same time, I have noticed that many of these influencers tend to present these passages as though they represent the beliefs of all Jews, regardless of denomination, level of religious observance, or historical period. They often treat the Talmud as though it were a single book with one consistent message, rather than a collection containing competing opinions, minority positions, hypothetical arguments, and debates that did not always become normative Jewish law.

I have also noticed that many of these influencers are Christians or Muslims who rarely apply the same standards to their own religious texts. They may criticize harsh passages concerning gentiles in Jewish literature while ignoring passages in Christian or Islamic texts concerning Jews, heretics, idolaters, apostates, or unbelievers. This makes me question whether they are genuinely interested in criticizing religious texts consistently or whether they are selectively using Jewish texts to promote hostility toward Jews. That being said, I do not think every criticism of the Talmud or the Rambam should automatically be dismissed as antisemitic. There should be room to discuss offensive or exclusionary passages honestly, including how they have been interpreted historically and whether any Jewish communities still consider them relevant today.

What are your thoughts on the growing popularity of this type of media/content, and do you think these influencers are mostly engaging in legitimate criticism, or do you think they are repackaging older antisemitic arguments for modern audiences? How should people distinguish between sincere criticism of Jewish religious texts and the selective use of those texts to portray Jews as inherently hostile toward Gentiles?

I know many of you are familiar with the phrase “the left eats itself,” and that many Jewish leftists have felt increasingly politically isolated from parts of the mainstream left since October 7. This has been especially apparent when Jewish identity is challenged or flattened, whether through the denial of Jewish peoplehood, the dismissal of Jewish cultural and historical ties to the land, or the minimization of contemporary antisemitism. Many of you remain deeply committed to Palestinian freedom and dignity while also asking your non-Jewish comrades to recognize that solidarity with Palestinians should not require you to erase your own ethnoreligious identity, suppress your historical memory, or remain silent when antisemitism appears within left-wing spaces. As a result of standing up for yourself, some of you have been met with suspicion or accused of being self-centered, overly sensitive, insufficiently committed to Palestinian liberation, or covertly sympathetic to conservatism and Western imperialism.

I have received similar feedback from some of my fellow leftists due to my critiques of China. I can acknowledge the country’s substantial achievements in economic development, infrastructure, poverty reduction, and state capacity while also criticizing the Chinese government’s authoritarianism, treatment of ethnic minorities, suppression of political dissent, and claims over Taiwan. However, some leftists appear to interpret any serious criticism of an anti-Western state as an endorsement of Western imperialism, even when the criticism is grounded in the same opposition to domination that informs my critique of the United States. Some of you may already view this post as politically suspect, perhaps because discussing internal failures on the left can be interpreted as creating a false equivalence, redirecting attention away from the greater source of harm, or repeating narratives used by conservatives. I understand that concern, particularly in a political climate where antisemitism, authoritarianism, and human rights are often invoked selectively or in bad faith to undermine left-wing causes, excuse anti-Palestinian violence, or justify Western power. At the same time, I worry that this understandable defensiveness can make it difficult to distinguish bad-faith attacks from legitimate internal criticism. When every uncomfortable question is evaluated primarily according to whether it might benefit our political opponents, factual accuracy and moral consistency can become subordinate to movement loyalty.

I find this type of behavior reminiscent of the Left's opposition to Stalin, in which any internal audit of the current zeitgeist is seen as reactionary, counterrevolutionary, or objectively helpful to capitalism and Western imperialism. Rather than evaluating whether criticisms of censorship, political repression, forced collectivization, or party authoritarianism were factually and morally justified, some defenders of the USSR focused primarily on whether those criticisms weakened the socialist camp. I am not suggesting that contemporary left-wing disagreements are equivalent to Stalinism. Rather, I see a recurring pattern in which criticism of one’s own political community is interpreted as evidence of disloyalty. The person raising the concern may share most of the movement’s goals; however, because they refuse to accept its dominant interpretation without qualification, they are treated as though they have crossed over to the opposing side.

My personal answer to why this is an interplay of understandable political pragmatism, the human preference for simplified moral narratives, the failures of liberal institutions, and the tendency to treat political identity as a form of communal belonging. As someone who works with humans during their most vulnerable moments, my professional experience has taught me that human beings often rely on simplified narratives to create a sense of coherence, predictability, and psychological safety in a very fucked up world that continues to challenge and strip us of our humanity due to gender identification, disability status, race, ethnicity, religion, class, sexuality, or immigration status.

Ultimately, I do not think the solution lies in the left abandoning accountability, internal criticism, or principled boundaries. Rather, I think we need to become better at distinguishing between people who genuinely undermine the dignity and safety of others and people who remain committed to left-wing goals but arrive at different conclusions, raise uncomfortable questions, or refuse to reduce complicated histories to simple moral binaries. A movement that cannot tolerate internal scrutiny may preserve ideological unity in the short term, but it also risks reproducing the very forms of hierarchy, exclusion, and dehumanization that it claims to oppose.

So, how much do you agree with the argument that “the left eats itself”? And when does internal accountability strengthen the left, and when does it become ideological purging that leaves people politically homeless?

I know that the concept of model minority peoples has been a point of contention between liberals/leftists and conservatives. Traditionally and til now, many conservatives have invoked the perceived economic or educational success of Asians and Jews to negatively compare them with other minority groups. The implication is often that if Asians and Jews were supposedly able to succeed through education, family structure, cultural values, or hard work, then structural racism cannot adequately explain the disadvantages experienced by Black, Latino, Indigenous, or other marginalized communities.

I agree with liberal and left-wing critiques of that argument, as it ignores major differences in immigration patterns, class background, historical circumstances, state policy, and the internal diversity of both Jewish and Asian communities. It can also be used to blame other minorities for conditions produced by structural inequality. However, I sometimes wonder whether a different version of the model-minority stereotype appears within liberal and left-wing discourse itself. Jews and Asians may be treated as groups that have become sufficiently successful, assimilated, educated, or institutionally represented that their experiences with racism are viewed as less serious or less politically urgent.

I actually raised this topic, specifically regarding Asians, on the askaliberal sub some moons ago. Most of the responses leaned toward the position that conservatives were primarily responsible for this behavior, and the commenters generally affirmed that they regarded Asians as people of color. However, a few users expressed something more complicated: as they intellectually recognized Asians as ethnic minorities, they did not instinctively perceive us in the same way that they perceived other people of color, with no further elaboration.

From my lived experiences both in academia and my professional life, it has sometimes felt as though some liberals recognize my racial identity most clearly when it is politically useful in an argument against conservatives. For example, Asians may be invoked to criticize anti-immigrant rhetoric, white nationalism, COVID-era racism, etc. Yet when Asian experiences complicate preferred political narratives, or when Asians express views that do not fit expectations, we can suddenly be treated as privileged, white-adjacent, or insufficiently marginalized. In that sense, liberal recognition can feel conditional at times. Asians are included within the category of POC when our experiences support a broader progressive argument, but our distinct concerns may receive less attention when they involve issues such as anti-Asian violence, educational stereotyping, class differences within Asian communities, tensions with other ethnic groups, or disagreement with particular left-wing positions.

I am aware that both in the Western cultural sphere and throughout the international community, the Jews are often perceived as a powerful ethnic minority because of their visibility in certain professional, cultural, academic, political, and economic institutions. However, just as with Asians, it seems that people groups outside our respective communities often interpret the success or prominence of some individuals as evidence that the group as a whole possesses unusual levels of privilege, wealth, or influence.

In reality, there are Han Chinese working in factories, Hmong immigrants employed in convenience stores and warehouses, Ashkenazi Jews working overnight shifts stocking inventory at Amazon, Filipinos working as security guards or caregivers, and Mizrahi, Ethiopian, and former Soviet Jews struggling with poverty or limited economic opportunities. There are also Asian refugees, elderly Jewish immigrants, undocumented workers, and families confronting language barriers, housing insecurity, disability, or inadequate access to healthcare.

I do not mention these examples to romanticize working-class hardship or suggest that every subgroup experiences disadvantage in the same way. My point is that broad statistics and highly visible success stories can conceal enormous differences within both Jewish and Asian communities. Outsiders often take the most affluent, educated, or professionally prominent members of a group and treat them as representative of everyone else. This can produce a misleading impression of collective power. The fact that some Jews or Asians hold influential positions does not mean that an ordinary Jewish or Asian person possesses meaningful control over universities, corporations, governments, media institutions, or financial systems. Nor does representation at the top necessarily protect people from discrimination, social exclusion, hate crimes, or economic precarity.

That is why I wonder whether the model-minority stereotype is present within liberal and left-wing spaces. Conservatives may use perceived Jewish and Asian success to deny structural racism or disparage other minorities. Some liberals and leftists may reject that argument while nevertheless assuming that Jews and Asians have become sufficiently successful or assimilated that their experiences of prejudice are less important.

What are your thoughts?

To be clear, I understand that many Sephardim/Mizrahim were deeply shaped by Arabic-speaking, Ottoman, Persian, North African, and Middle Eastern cultures. Some Jews from these communities may identify with terms like Arab Jew, Iraqi Jew, Moroccan Jew, Yemenite Jew, Persian Jew, etc., and I do not want to deny how you would label yourselves. However, what I am asking about is something slightly different: whether you have ever experienced people insisting that Sephardim/Mizrahim are “really Arabs,” or treating Jewish identity as merely religious rather than also ethnic, historical, and communal? I sometimes notice a tendency where cultural proximity, such as speaking Arabic, eating similar foods, or living in Arab-majority societies, gets treated as proof that Jewish peoplehood is somehow secondary to their Arab identity.

The reason I am asking this is that I see some parallels between Pan-Arabism and the Pan-Asianism my grandparents experienced during the Japanese colonial period in the Philippines. During my grandparents' lifetime, the Japanese Empire attempted to consolidate the hundreds of different East/Southeast Asian ethnic groups under the rhetoric of Asian unity and liberation from Western imperialism. However, in practice, that unity often meant Japanese imperial domination and the flattening of other Asian peoples’ distinct histories, languages, and identities. Personally, I also find the term “Asian,” even in the American context, to be somewhat flattening of my own background. I am broadly Asian, yes, but that label does not really capture my father’s Itawit background or my mother’s Hoklo/Hokkien Chinese background. Those are not just aesthetic details under a continental umbrella. They are specific histories, languages, kinship structures, colonial experiences, and cultural memories. So while broad labels can be politically useful, they can also erase the smaller identities contained within them.

The only time I have affiliated strongly with my broadly Asian identity was during the various injustices that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which many East Asian enclaves and even my maternal side of the family were recipients of Sinophobic rhetoric and behavior from their non-Asian bigoted counterparts. But outside of those moments in time, I usually feel more attached to the more specific identities and histories that shaped my family.

I am aware that there has been a theme coming from some Arab or anti-Zionist circles in which they highlight the injustices Sephardim/Mizrahim experienced within the context of the creation of the modern State of Israel and its early decades, such as the Yemenite Children Affair, discrimination in ma’abarot/transit camps, pressure to abandon Arabic or other diaspora languages, socioeconomic marginalization, and Ashkenazi-dominated state institutions and to be clear with you, I think those histories are real and deserve to be taken more seriously by both Israeli government and the Ashkenazim.

However, I sometimes wonder whether these injustices are selectively invoked in ways that do not actually center Sephardi/Mizrahi self-understanding. In some cases, it feels less like, “We care about Mizrahi Jews and their dignity,” and more like, “Mizrahi Jews prove that Zionism is only an Ashkenazi colonial project, and therefore their Jewish peoplehood or connection to Israel is somehow less authentic.” This feels troubling to me because it can turn Sephardim/Mizrahim into evidence for someone else’s argument rather than treating them as people capable of explaining their own memories, politics, loyalties, grievances, and identities.

So I am curious how Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews here think about this. Do you find terms like “Arab Jew” useful, imposed, both, or dependent on context? Have you encountered people who acknowledge the Arab/MENA cultural context of Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews while still respecting Jewish peoplehood as more than just a religion? And where do you personally draw the line between acknowledging cultural influence and being absorbed into someone else’s national identity?

What are your thoughts?

I have been thinking about this a lot, especially in relation to Israel/Palestine, but also in relation to how some political spaces talk about history more broadly. Sometimes it feels like certain leftist spaces reward narrative loyalty more than historical precision. By that I mean that once a simplified moral framework becomes dominant, people are expected to repeat it without adding too much nuance. If they complicate the narrative, they are treated as suspicious, reactionary, or secretly aligned with the “wrong” side.

For example, in discussions about Israel/Palestine, I fully support Palestinian rights and oppose occupation, ethnic supremacy, settlement expansion, and the dehumanization of Palestinians. However, I also struggle with the way some people flatten Jewish history into “European settler colonialism” and act as if Jewish connection to the land is only theological or fabricated/invented.

As a person who loves history, I once got into a debate with a Palestinian peer of mine who argued that Jesus would have identified as a Palestinian Arab. In response, I said that Jesus would not have called himself a Palestinian Arab, because that is an anachronistic modern identity category. Historically, Jesus was a Galilean Jew living under Roman rule. He likely spoke Aramaic, knew liturgical Hebrew for scripture and religious life, and may have had some exposure to Greek depending on context. He was not an Arab, and he would not have understood himself through a modern Palestinian national identity.

Unfortunately, my peer interpreted this as me being soft on Zionism, even though I strongly oppose the nationalist and state-centered forms of Zionism that justify its current crimes against humanity under the pretext of Jewish safety and self-determination. At the same time, I do not think opposing Zionism requires denying Jewish historical continuity, Jewish connection to the land, or the Jewishness of figures like Jesus. I understand that the politicization of Jesus by both the left and the right has often been used to justify modern political narratives. Many on the right use Jesus Jewish heritage to erase Palestinian history and suffering, while some on the left seem to use Palestinian identity to erase Jesus’ Jewishness, but I think both of these trends/behaviors are historically inaccurate.

I see a similar issue in other political conversations as well, such as the way people talk about how the West introduced Western ideas of gender roles into the colonized world. For context, I am of Sino-Filipino descent. I was born and BRAISED in the Philippines and moved to the United States during my teenage years (Have family in Taiwan and the Philippines). I remember being in university and having a Western comrade try to explain my own heritage to me by saying that Christianity “brainwashed” Filipinos, and that this is why Filipinos today follow Western ideas of gender roles. I understood that I was most likely one of the very few yellow dudes she had spoken with about this topic, but at the same time, I pushed back because the precolonial Philippines was not a simple gender-egalitarian utopia. Prior to the introduction of Christianity and Islam, many of my pagan ancestors did have more flexible and comparatively balanced gender arrangements in some areas. Women could hold spiritual authority as babaylan (Shamans), participate in economic life, own property in some contexts, and play significant roles in family and community life. However, that does not mean precolonial societies had no hierarchy, no patriarchy, no gendered expectations, or no forms of domination.

Unfortunately, she viewed my answer as evidence of how Western colonialism had distorted my own understanding of my heritage. But from my perspective, I was not defending colonialism. I was rejecting a romanticized version of precolonial history. I did not deny that the Spanish Empire and the American Occupation Period did reshape Filipino society, including religion, law, and social hierarchy. Christianity became deeply embedded in Filipino culture, often in ways that reinforced patriarchal norms. However, colonialism did not invent every oppressive structure from nothing. It often intensified, codified, Christianized, racialized, bureaucratized, or redirected existing social hierarchies.

This is where I sometimes feel alienated in leftist spaces. If I say colonialism was devastating, but precolonial societies were also complex and nuanced, some people hear that as apologetics for colonialism. If I say Jesus was Jewish, some people hear that as apologetics for Zionism. If I say Jewish connection to the land is real, some people assume I am denying Palestinian suffering. BUT that is not what I am saying.

What are your thoughts?

I am very well aware that the modern state of Israel has been one of the major causes of why anti-Jewish hatred has risen in various regions of the MENA. For many of these nations, seeing their Palestinian brethren being slaughtered by the Israeli State for nearly a century has played a role in why many of them tend to gravitate towards antisemitic conspiracy theories and overall hatred for the Jews. That being said, I know that not every anti-Zionist harbors hatred for the Jews in their hearts; however, we know that some constituents of their philosophy tend to supplement their anti-Zionist beliefs with conspiracy theories ranging from the Khazar Theory, Jews controlling the world banking system, etc, in order to solidify their argument and to separate Jewish connection to the land.

As many of you know, I have come across many Zionists and anti-Zionists in my life, and unfortunately, some of the former harbor Arab hatred in their hearts, especially my peers whose families hailed from MENA, as according to them, despite living in better conditions compared to their Ashkenazi counterparts in Europe, the Islamic world still treated as Dhimmis due to Islam being the primary moving philosophy when it came to managning their state apparatus and thus Jews and Christians had to abide to the theological framework of their Muslim rulers. In other words, while Jewish life in many parts of the Islamic world was not identical to Jewish life in Christian Europe, it was still structured by hierarchy. Jews could often survive, participate in commerce, preserve communal autonomy, and even flourish in certain periods, but they were still marked as a tolerated minority rather than an equal people. At the same time, I do not think that history should be weaponized to justify anti-Arab racism or to erase Palestinian suffering. The fact that Jews experienced subordination in Muslim-majority societies does not mean Palestinians deserve occupation, siege, displacement, or collective punishment.

Based on what I understand about Islam, I personally think that, due to Islam being a supersessionist religion and having often portrayed the Jewish people as a community that received revelation but failed, rejected, or distorted it, there were already theological frameworks that could be used negatively against Jews. In addition, Muhammad's complicated relationship with the Jewish people ranged from periods of coexistence and shared monotheistic reference points to periods of political conflict, polemics, and violence. Because of that, I think Islamic texts and traditions contain multiple possible inheritances: some that allow for coexistence and respect toward Jews as People of the Book, and others that can be mobilized and manifest into violence.

Amongst some of my former peers, some of them were taught to hate the Jews alongside their Anti-Zionist beliefs, as they believed that the Jews have always attempted to challenge, undermine, or corrupt the societies around them. In their minds, Israel was not simply a modern state committing violence against Palestinians; it became proof of an older belief that Jews are inherently treacherous, manipulative, or hostile to the non-Jewish world. I don't know what your experiences have been when it comes to interacting with anti-Zionists from the Arab or broader MENA world, but in my own experience, as many of you know, I have seen a spectrum. Some people are very careful to separate Jews from Israel and Zionism, and they genuinely want a politics rooted in Palestinian liberation rather than hatred of Jews. Others, however, seem to have inherited a worldview where anti-Zionism and antisemitism are almost fused together. For them, Israel is not just a state that commits crimes; it is treated as evidence that Jews as a people are uniquely evil, conspiratorial, disloyal, or foreign to the land.

What are your thoughts?

Even though I was born and raised in a Catholic family and attended Catholic schools, I see myself as an agnostic-atheist and as a leftist. I don't harbor hatred for Christianity or Christians themselves, despite my religious upbringing and our disagreements about metaphysics, gender roles, the meaning of life, and, finally, how it's historically and presently been co-opted by men of power as a tool to bring "civilization" to foreign lands.

The reason why I don't hate Christianity is that my own experience of it was not uniformly traumatic. I know many people here have experienced Christianity as abusive, coercive, shaming, authoritarian, or psychologically damaging, and I fully respect that. However, for me, Catholicism was more complicated because it was part of my childhood, my cultural environment, and my early moral vocabulary. I eventually stopped believing in it, but I did not leave with the feeling that every Christian in my life was evil or that the entire tradition was nothing but cruelty.

I also think there is a difference between criticizing Christianity as an institution and hating Christians as individuals. Again, I know that Christianity has been used to justify colonialism, antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny, racism, forced conversion, and abuse. However, I also know Christians who are kind, thoughtful, self-critical, and genuinely committed to compassion, justice, and human dignity. Some of them interpret their faith in ways I still disagree with, but I do not see them as enemies.

I say this as someone who was born in the Global South (The Philippines), a nation that was introduced to Christianity through the Spanish Empire. I do find Western leftists who attempt to convince individuals who come from the same region as I do that Christianity was forcefully brought onto my people. Therefore, we should view it only as a colonial imposition that must be discarded. While I understand where that critique comes from, and while I do not deny the violence of Spanish colonialism, I also think this framing can become overly simplistic.

For many of my people, Christianity is no longer merely the religion of the colonizer, as it has syncretized with the various precolonial/ancestral beliefs of our region, thus making it uniquely ours, both Eastern and Western. Some Western comrades of mine find my non-abrasive views towards Christianity (Not the current shit storm that we have in America or the West in general) to be siding with opressor; however, I find that analysis to be racist in itself because it assumes that people from formerly colonized societies are incapable of having a complicated relationship with the religion we inherited.

A similar analysis would be like telling Jordanians to abandon Islam because it was brought to them through the military conquests of the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates. While Islam did spread into the Levant through conquest and empire, it would still be incredibly reductive to tell modern Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese Muslims, or other Islamized/Arabized peoples that their religion is nothing more than foreign Arab imperialism and therefore has to be discarded in order for them to be truly decolonized.

What are your thoughts?

So, I am a former Christian (Catholic), and when I left my former religion many years ago, I did not receive much abrasiveness from my family, peers, and loved ones. The only thing closest to that was my mother, who was more sad than angry, as she believed my decision would ultimately lead to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit on my deathbed. Most of the Ex-Christians in my life had more or less had the same experiences as I did.

In contrast, many of my ex-Muslim peers unfortunately did not experience the same kind of acceptance when they left Islam. Some were disowned by their families, pressured to hide their disbelief, treated as if they had betrayed their community, or accused of becoming Westernized, immoral, self-hating, or hostile to their own people.

I know this can happen in any religion, especially in more conservative, fundamentalist, or insular communities. However, unlike in Judaism, where someone can abandon religious belief but still be understood as ethnically or culturally Jewish, apostasy is often treated differently. Even if religious disaffiliation is clearly not encouraged, it may be framed more as “he, she, or they are confused, and maybe they will return one day,” rather than as a complete rupture from the community.

I think this can also apply to some forms of Christianity, including the Catholic context I came from. Even when my family was saddened by my lack of belief, I was not treated as if I had stopped being part of the family or had betrayed my entire people, as my disbelief was viewed more as a spiritual problem rather than a total rejection of my relatives, culture, or moral character.

I will admit that I am not the most knowledgeable about Islam, but I have two theories for why this is. The first one is that Islam, like Christianity, believes that the Quran has a very strong universal truth-claim; however, Christians believe that the bible was divinely inspired, while the Quran itself is seen not as divinely inspired, but the direct word of God revealed to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. Therefore, rejecting Islam is seen as a rejection of God’s direct revelation, not merely a rejection of a religious institution, tradition, or interpretation. Of course, Christianity also has strong ideas about rejecting salvation, denying Christ, or turning away from God. However, in many contemporary Christian contexts, especially in secular or liberal societies, apostasy is often treated more as spiritual confusion, rebellion, or personal loss rather than as a total rupture from one’s family, culture, or community.

The second one ties in with the first, but is oriented towards the negative implications of leaving Islam within the context of the current Islamophobic rhetoric in the Western world, and thus leaving Islam may not always be interpreted by one’s family or community as a neutral act of personal disbelief. It may be interpreted as joining the side of the people who already hate, stereotype, or dehumanize Muslims.

I will admit that if I were to compare the Abrahamic religions by their missionary or proselytizing tendencies, Judaism seems much less focused on converting the world (due to it being an ethnoreligion/ethno-tribal identity), while Christianity and Islam have historically had much stronger missionary impulses, as some members of Christianity and Islam have often used the Sword to convert mass populations either by occupying or colonizing other lands under the pretext of saving souls, or bringing people into submission to what they believed was God’s will.

I admit that there have also been many peaceful conversions to Christianity and Islam through trade, preaching, intermarriage, mysticism, social mobility, and genuine spiritual attraction. So I am not trying to reduce either religion’s spread entirely to violence. However, I do think missionary religions can create a stronger pressure around belief because they make universal claims about what all human beings ought to accept.

In conclusion, this might be why apostasy is viewed so harshly in certain communities. If these religions are understood as the final or universal truth for humanity, then leaving it may not be seen as a simple personal decision. It may be interpreted as rebellion against truth itself. In Islam specifically, when this is combined with the belief that the Quran is God’s direct revelation, the importance of the ummah, family honor, communal loyalty, fear of assimilation, and the reality of Islamophobia, apostasy can become socially loaded in a way that goes beyond mere disbelief.

That being said, what are your thoughts on this?

Given the historical context of Muhammad, he lived during a time in which the various pagan tribes, Jews, Christians, and Sabians (Potentially, Mandeans). Judaism and Christianity already possessed older scriptural traditions, prophetic lineages, legal frameworks, and transregional religious authority.

From a secular historical perspective, I am wondering whether Muhammad’s prophetic claim can be understood partly as an attempt to place Arabs directly within the Abrahamic legacy, not by converting them to Judaism or Christianity, but by presenting them as heirs to Abraham through Ishmael, the Kaaba, and an Arabic revelation. Muhammad, within the context of his relationship with the Jews, seemed to be displeased with the notion that Jews rejected his prophetic career; this rejection was not just a theological disagreement, but also a challenge to the legitimacy of his movement, since Jewish communities already possessed an older scriptural tradition, a developed ethnoreligious legal culture, and a long prophetic lineage.

It seems like the Quran has taken many elements from Jewish and Christian scriptures, such as its focus on making the religious movement not tied to one’s ethnicity, somewhat like Christianity and unlike Judaism, while still retaining a strong Abrahamic genealogy through Ishmael. Given that, it seems like Islam attempts to universalize access to God while also giving Arabs a central role within the Abrahamic tradition.

As a result, I am wondering if early Islam should be understood as both a universalist monotheistic movement and an Arab-centered Abrahamic restoration movement. On one hand, the Quran rejects the idea that salvation or righteousness depends purely on lineage, tribe, or inherited communal identity. On the other hand, it also places major importance on the Arab revelation, Muhammad as an Arab prophet, and the Kaaba as an Abrahamic sanctuary associated with Ishmael.

Would it be fair to say that Islam did not simply imitate Judaism or Christianity, but reworked elements from both traditions into a new religious framework? Christianity had already universalized the Abrahamic God beyond the Jewish ethnoreligious/ethno-tribal context, but it did so through Jesus, the Church, and often Greek, Syriac, Latin, or imperial Christian institutions. Islam, by contrast, seems to universalize Abrahamic monotheism through an Arab revelation and an Arab prophet, while rejecting both rabbinic Jewish law as binding on Arabs and Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and incarnation.

So I guess my broader question is whether Muhammad’s movement can be seen as a response to the religious world he was living in. Jews and Christians already had ancient scriptures, prophets, legal traditions, and broader religious prestige, while Arabian polytheists did not really have that same kind of recognized scriptural authority.

I know that Islam is a proselytizing religion not tied to any specific ethnicity or race, as many of my peers and people in my life are Muslim; however, I am asking more about its original historical formation. Even if Islam eventually became a universal religion, did it initially emerge in a way that gave Arabs a direct scriptural and Abrahamic identity of their own?

Within the Jewish tradition, the concept of the Messiah differs from the Christian view of it, as their concept of the Messiah is a person who is fully human, from the paternal bloodline of King David, who would rebuild the Temple, bring the Jewish people from the diaspora back to the Holy Land, and help usher in an age of peace, justice, and knowledge of god. In the Christian tradition, the concept of the Messiah is understood very differently, as Christians believe Jesus is the Messiah because he fulfills the promises of Israel in a deeper spiritual and cosmic sense, in contrast to the more national, political, and earthly expectations often associated with the Jewish understanding of the Messiah. In other words, from a Christian perspective, Jesus represents a metaphysical temple, the restoration of Israel is expanded to include the salvation of the nations, and the messianic age is understood through his life, death, resurrection, and eventual return.

Despite the two differing definitions of what it means to be the Messiah, Judaism and Christianity have in common that the Messiah is the final, climactic figure, after which there will be no more prophets or new revelations that would supersede his role in God’s plan. In Judaism, the Messiah is expected to complete the restoration of the land of Israel and usher in the messianic age. In Christianity, Jesus is understood as the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes and the decisive figure through whom God redeems humanity.

I find the Islamic use of the title al-masih interesting, as Islam calls Jesus the Messiah, but it does not seem to define the term in either the Jewish or Christian sense. Muslims do not believe Jesus is divine, the Son of God, or the redeemer of humanity through crucifixion and resurrection. At the same time, Islam does not treat Jesus as the final prophet, since Muhammad is considered the Seal of the Prophets.

What I am trying to ask is what exactly al-Masih means in Islam, and whether it is mainly a title of honor for Jesus, a reference to his being specially chosen by God, his miracles, his mission to the Children of Israel, or his role in the end times? Since Jesus is uniquely called al-Masih, why does that title not imply that prophecy reaches its climax or conclusion with him, as the title “Messiah” seems to convey in Judaism and Christianity?