This is a guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman.

The Quilliam Foundation in London prides itself for being “the world’s first counter-extremism think tank.” The organization’s expertise in this field is clearly unique given that it was founded by “former leading ideologues of UK-based extremist Islamist organizations.” When it comes to Zionism, however, Quilliam’s former Islamists find it hard to really leave behind the ideology they now oppose.

Two of Quilliam’s most prominent members have chosen to tackle this subject, and both have argued that Zionism is just as objectionable as Islamism.

Two years ago, Ed Husain published an article suggesting that Zionism and Islamism had much in common. Husain came up with a long list of supposedly comparable traits and characteristics that illustrate first and foremost that he has little understanding of the history and tenets of mainstream Zionism. Among the comparisons he offered is the claim that:

“Zionism and Islamism are both political perversions of ancient Abrahamic faiths … They were both born out of protest and anger: Zionism in response to tsarist pogroms and Islamism as a retort to colonialism. The heavy political content of both ideologies came from men who had no theological training in the centuries-old traditional understanding of the Torah or the Koran. Theodore Herzl, an Austrian journalist, mapped out Zionism in an age of ubiquitous nationalism. Syed Qutb, an Egyptian literary critic, was the chief ideologue for Islamism.”

Suffice it to say that for good reason, Qutb has been described as “The Philosopher of Islamic Terror”; by contrast, Herzl campaigned for the orderly and peaceful establishment of a modern, secular state that would offer a refuge for Jews who, as he so correctly foresaw, would continue to face vicious antisemitism no matter how hard they tried to be loyal and productive citizens of the countries they lived in.

A similarly misguided comparison was offered by Maajid Nawaz, another prominent Quilliam member, who objected in a recent article to the idea that Israel could legitimately define itself as a Jewish state. Nawaz falsely claimed that Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu insisted in his foreign policy address on June 14 “that Israel must be recognised as a Jewish state.” On the basis of this misrepresentation, Nawaz then argued that “just as Islamists should not call for a state exclusively for Muslims, run by the Islamist ideology and defined as a ‘Muslim country’, likewise, Jews should not label Israel as a Jewish state, run exclusively by and for Jews.”

The fact of the matter is that Netanyahu had avoided the term “Jewish state”; instead, he repeatedly referred to Israel as “the nation state of the Jewish people” and insisted that Israel should be explicitly recognized in these terms. In the context of Netanyahu’s speech, religion was definitely not the issue; indeed, a major motivation for the speech was the demand for clarification of Netanyahu’s position on the two-state solution. The essence of this solution was originally defined in UN Resolution 181, the so-called partition plan, which explicitly envisaged the creation of a Jewish and an Arab state. Netanyahu argued in his speech that “the simple truth is that the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland … Therefore, a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.”

Interestingly enough, Nawaz himself linked in his article to Israel’s Declaration of Independence to highlight the fact that Israeli citizens are promised “equality of social and political rights, irrespective of religion, race or sex”; rather arrogantly, he then suggested that “Netanyahu would be well advised to remember this.” But just as Nawaz commented on Netanyahu’s speech without paying too much attention to what Netanyahu actually said, he conveniently ignored that Israel’s Declaration of Independence specifically documents “the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.” Apparently, back then and in the intervening sixty years, the notion that citizens of the Jewish state of Israel should enjoy equal rights irrespective of religion, race or sex was not seen as a contradiction in terms, and it is unclear why Nawaz would now feel the need to protest and demand that “Israel must remain a secular, democratic state for all citizens, not a Jewish state.” Indeed, Nawaz even went so far as to suggest:

“Defining Israel as a ‘Jewish state’ can either mean that it is a state defined along the medieval lines of religion - pretty much the flipside of what Islamists call for - or along the ‘Old Europe’ lines of ethnicity, an idea that led to so much racially inspired bloodshed in Europe, especially in Germany.”

It seems that the idea Nawaz intended to convey here is that Israel as a Jewish state should be condemned either as comparable to a repressive Islamist theocracy, or as comparable to Nazi Germany.

Given that Quilliam claims to have the “aspiration … to inspire new thought-trends for existing [Muslim] grassroots bodies”, it is rather dismaying to see that two of the organization’s most prominent members are content to peddle the very same misconceptions about Zionism and Jewish aspirations for self-determination that are so popular among Islamists who are obsessed with de-legitimizing Israel. That Husain and Nawaz add a twist by arguing that Zionism or Jewish aspirations for self-determination are just as contemptible and objectionable as Islamism hardly qualifies as a “new thought-trend” - though many Western apologists for Islamism will likely applaud this false equivalence.

Last but not least, it should be noted in this context that, while there is a flood of writings that criticize Zionism and Israel in the very same terms as Husain and Nawaz, hardly anybody seems to think it worthwhile to even ask how the Palestinians intend to define their prospective state. It’s not particularly difficult to find out, since some of the fundamental ideas are outlined in the Palestinian Declaration of Independence of November 15th, 1988:

“The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be. The state is for them to enjoy in it their collective national and cultural identity, theirs to pursue in it a complete equality of rights … The rights of minorities will duly be respected by the majority, as minorities must abide by decisions of the majority. … The State of Palestine is an Arab state, an integral and indivisible part of the Arab nation, at one with that nation in heritage and civilization.”

Particularly those who, like Husain and Nawaz, tend to worry about Israel’s secular character should note that the Palestinian declaration of independence starts with an invocation of god, and closes with a verse from the Qur’an.

A second relevant document in this context is the Palestinian constitution. Article 2 states: “Palestine is part of the Arab nation … The Palestinian people are part of the Arab and Islamic nations.” Article 5 declares that “Arabic and Islam are the official Palestinian language and religion;” and Article 7 stipulates that “[the] principles of Islamic Shari’a are a major source for legislation.”

In view of these provisions, the obvious question is why the Palestinians, who define their own national identity in no uncertain terms, should find it so objectionable to be asked to acknowledge Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Similarly, would anybody who objects to the demand presented by Netanyahu also object to the demand to recognize the Palestinian state as defined by the Palestinians, namely as “an Arab state, an integral and indivisible part of the Arab nation”? And how acceptable is it that the Palestinian constitution stipulates that Arabic is the official language and Islam the official religion if Israel is continuously criticized for its insistence on expressing the identity of the Jewish people?

Perhaps Quilliam would readily denounce a Palestinian state that is defined in these terms as equally reprehensible as the Jewish state. But ultimately, anybody who claims to support the two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is disingenuous if he actually objects to the essence of this solution: two states for two people, and both people must obviously have the right to define their state in terms that reflect their respective national identity. The argument that in the 21st century, “national identity” is an obsolete concept may have much merit in the wonderful world of wishful thinking, but it turns out that in the real world, even progressive Europeans worry a lot about their identity and most are quite sure that admitting Turkey as a member of the European Union would be very problematic.