When “Pro-Zionist” Becomes a Fig Leaf for Failed Argument
By Ibn e Guffaw, New Age Islam
27 October 2025
Ashrof’s Self-Goal
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In this postscript, I examine the rhetorical sleights in V. A. Mohamad Ashrof’s “Kochi Hijab Incident: Pro-Zionist Global Depiction Under Fire.”
Behind the noise of piety and protest, he finds the familiar theatre of selective self-critique — where “intellectual honesty” means sparing friends, flattering foes, and always keeping one’s own reflection out of the frame.
When V. A. Mohamad Ashrof titled his earlier piece “Kochi Hijab Incident: Pro-Zionist Global Depiction Under Fire,” one almost felt tempted to read further — until the first three words began arguing among themselves. “Pro-Zionist”? “Global”? “Depiction”? Together, they make as much sense as calling Robert Spencer a Buddhist feminist.
Spencer is no Zionist ideologue; he is an old-fashioned Christian nationalist whose life’s vocation is to convince the West that Muslims wake up every morning plotting Sharia invasions. He needs no Tel Aviv to do his thinking for him — his theological delusions are home-grown in Alabama.
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Why Robert Spencer's Ideology Demands Critical and Ethical Confrontation
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So Why Drag “Zionism” Into A Local Scuffle Over A Hijab In Kochi?
Because Ashrof needed a rhetorical smoke bomb. Having earlier accused Wahhabis — and, when cornered, even the Caliphate itself — of antisemitism, he found himself stranded between credibility and community. Clobbered for equating Islam’s early politics with bigotry, he needed to reclaim his pro-Muslim credentials. The headline “Pro-Zionist Global Depiction” was a hasty patch-job — a way of saying, “Look, I’m anti-Zionist too!” without actually challenging anyone powerful. Virtue-signalling, dressed up as defiance.
But the ploy backfired. The phrase “Pro-Zionist” was irrelevant to the event and so inflated it undermined his argument. Zionism has nothing to do with Kerala’s school uniforms, and Spencer’s Islamophobia predates Israel’s founding by several centuries of Crusader anxiety. The only “global depiction” here was the one Ashrof himself helped amplify: Muslims portrayed once more as a people forever in reaction, forever performing grievance.
Worse still, the headline achieves the very opposite of what it pretends.
To the Muslim reader, it appears courageously anti-Zionist; to the non-Muslim reader, it reeks of conspiracy theory. Ashrof thus manages to fool one side and reassure the other. His article becomes a perfect diplomatic performance — easily dismissed by the West as prejudice, easily swallowed by gullible Muslims as defiance. It is not writing; it is choreography.
The irony only deepens when one reads his latest essay, “Why Robert Spencer's Ideology Demands Critical and Ethical Confrontation.”
The same author who earlier dismissed Spencer as a “Pro-Zionist propagandist” now treats him as a philosopher whose worldview requires “interreligious ethical dialogue.” One moment Spencer is a puppet; the next, he is a prophet of hate worth engaging in scholarly disputation. Ashrof cannot decide whether he wishes to exorcise Spencer or to debate him over cappuccino at the Vatican Library.
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Also Read: Upholding Universal Human Dignity in Islamic Thought- A Response to Robert Spencer
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He needs a footnote of his own. His prose now overflows with citations from papal encyclicals and fictional popes (there is, for the record, no “Pope Leo XIV”). The moral vocabulary he borrows from Catholic humanism is as out of place in Qur’anic discourse as Gregorian chants at a qawwali. Instead of countering Spencer with Qur’anic moral clarity, he offers a homily on Christian compassion. That is not resistance; it is religious cosplay.
One wonders if he is trying to win back his Judeo-Christian constituency — too polite to notice that he has scored a self-goal by branding Spencer’s criticism as Zionist propaganda. His interreligious formula is yet another signal that he is the Empire’s favourite “Good Muslim.”
His two essays are without a moral for the Muslims: that they must avoid confrontational and performative piety, which makes them look both ridiculous and easily excitable. But that would require criticising individuals from his own town. His playbook is clear — all criticism is reserved for the Wahhabis, and the rest must be courted to maintain the façade of being a Muslim sympathiser.
This pattern runs through his work. He has written six essays attacking Wahhabism and called it “self-criticism,” yet never extended the same scrutiny to others guilty of equal excesses. He spares the Sufis who institutionalised exaggerated reverence for the Prophet — the very sentiment that, in some Muslim societies, sustains blasphemy persecution. He sidesteps the uncomfortable truth that every Sunni traditionally accepts Muawiyah’s precedence over Ali, even while condemning Wahhabis for justifying monarchy by his example. He avoids mentioning how the first three Caliphs’ political decisions enabled the dynasty he now laments.
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Such Is His Reform: Bold Where It Is Safe, Silent Where It Matters.
The Qur’an commands: “Stand firmly for justice, even against yourselves” (4:135). But Ashrof’s moral arithmetic always subtracts the self from the equation. He wishes to defend Muslim dignity without demanding Muslim discipline — a noble pose that never risks offence or reflection.
So we arrive at the paradox of his title: a man calling out “Pro-Zionist Global Depiction” while performing a Pro-Audience Local Display.
He attacks shadows abroad and then reflectively courts the same people through an interreligious discourse drawing on papal encyclicals, flatters sensibilities at home while drawing no useful lesson from the incident. His scholarship remains an elegant echo chamber where courage and convenience politely take turns.
If he truly sought the Prophet’s example, he would remind Muslims of the Meccan model — non-confrontational, accommodative, dignified — and reserve his critique for what the Qur’an actually condemns: arrogance disguised as virtue.
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Also Read: How to Silence a Spencer
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Until then, his pen will continue to write essays like invitations to a masquerade — everyone wearing sincerity, no one wearing truth.
Unke Lafzon Se Na Noor Nikla Na Dhoop Ki Taa-Ba-Kārī,
Bas Ek Guhar Tha Jo Gir Gaya — Aur Ek Tamāshā Baqī Raha.
(From his words emerged neither light nor warmth; a single gem was dropped, and only the spectacle remained.)
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Ibn e Guffaw wields wit and irony in defence of Qur’anic reason, exposing the absurdities of both fanaticism and fashionable piety. His satire seeks not applause but clarity — the laughter that cleanses falsehood of its dignity.
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/debating-islam/pro-zionist-fig-leaf-failed-argument/d/137399
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