Happier times, Andrew Bostom and Robert Spencer
Wow. How the mighty have fallen. It might be too early to call it the end but it looks like ex-booze buddies Andrew Bostom and Robert Spencer are at each others throats. Bostom is accusing Spencer of plagiarism, and Spencer is replying that he is “miffed” by the accusation.
The sorry fact is that both of them plagiarize from Orientalists who have made the same arguments and presented the same research centuries ago.
Spencer wrote on his blog yesterday in reference to Bostom,
Department of Corrections: No plagiarism
It is a shame that this kind of thing has to be done, but occasionally it must.
A certain writer claims that I plagiarized his work. He presents no direct evidence (i.e., textual comparison) to support his claim, and that is because he cannot do so: I have not plagiarized his work, or anyone else’s.
The above is a reply to Bostom’s withering attack on Spencer’s theft of his work. Bostom refers to Spencer as the “little king,” and “swine.”
This fine morning, what did I see?
A Little King Plagiarist, running behind, desperately…to plagiarize me.
From here (mostly), here, here, etc., etc. , etc.
Update: The Little King Doth Protest My Original Posting
According to Webster, there is no doubt The Little King “plagiarized,” and therefore is a “plagiarist.”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiarize
transitive verb: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own : use (another’s production) without crediting the source intransitive verb : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
The plagiarism, and accompanying complete lack of attribution are so obvious one need go no further than review Jihad Watch postings by The Little King himself, from 2007 and 2008
The Little King posted my review/essay on “Jihad and Jew Hatred,” and subsequent debate with Matthias Kuntzel—the earliest and most definitive debunking of the bizarre, ahistorical “Nazi-origins” of Islamic Antisemitism (and modern jihad) theory, in December, 2007
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/12/kuntzel-vs-bostom-on-islamic-antisemitism-print.html
One can also simply go to Jihad Watch and see the following extensive material on the Antisemtic motifs in the Koran, hadith, and sira drawn from the opening survey of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism from two essays posted there by The Little King in 2008:
Update 2. Oy vey, this is tedious and obnoxious! Some important clarification is required to jog the Little King’s apparently lapsed memories. Here gentle reader you will find it edifying to go online and read a copy of The Little King’s “Religion of Peace,” published in 2007. On pp. 125-126, he uses a block quote from Lawrence Wright’s, The Looming Tower, that has also appeared in some of my essays, and in “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.” But who does the Little King himself cite as his source for this Wright quote? Proceed to the citation for the reference (ref. 80) to this quote on p. 232 of “The Religion of Peace” and you will see this: “Quoted in Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, 2007” Now my Islamic Antisemitism book was delayed in publication till 2008, but Little King was given an advance copy manuscript that he read, and it provided him with the Wright quote and six other sources for that chapter, including primary sources, which are cited on pp. 232-233 of his 2007 book.
Apparently Little King is now claiming I got the Wright quote from him!
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/department-of-corrections.html#comment-664221
“My (i.e., Little King’s) April 21 article is a chapter from my 2007 book “Religion of Peace?”. If Bostom used the quote from “Looming Tower” in a 2009 piece, he got it from me (i.e., Little King).”
At least as egregious, is this unattributed material which comes from The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, (pp. 259-260):
Notably, Maimonides directed that Jews could teach rabbinic law to Christians, but not to Muslims. For Muslims, he said, will interpret what they are taught “according to their erroneous principles and they will oppress us. [F]or this reason … they hate all [non-Muslims] who live among them.” But the Christians, he said, “admit that the text of the Torah, such as we have it, is intact”–as opposed to the Islamic view that the Jews and Christians have corrupted their scriptures. Christians, continued Maimonides,” do not find in their religious law any contradiction with ours.”
Indeed, Spencer quotes and paraphrases without attribution from, specifically, footnote 222 of a magisterial 70 pp. 1937 essay by Georges Vajda on the Antisemitic motifs in the hadith. My first time English translation of Vajda’s unique, seminal work required both French and Hebrew text translations of contents within this single, complex footnote.
And I will cast no more pearls before such “royal” swine.
Frank Hesp:
Your continued insistence that personal disputes between individuals must be aired out in public is to me inexplicable and unseemly. I have a public presence in regard to the jihad, and that’s it. I don’t have any obligation to you or to anyone else to make any aspect of my private life public. I have responded to Bostom’s substantive charge with a substantive reply. No other details, should any exist, are anyone’s business but Bostom’s and mine.
Cordially
Robert SpencerFrank Hesp — one other thing:
You should look up the term “plagiarism” in a dictionary. It is a verbal dependence. There is no verbal dependence anywhere in my work on any part of Bostom’s work.
In my book “Religion of Peace?,” the source for my April 21 post, Bostom is footnoted where appropriate. But he apparently believes that if he discovered, or thinks he discovered, salient quotes from this or that Islamic authority or anyone else, that they belong to him forever, and anyone who ever cites the same quote has to also mention Bostom. That is not the case according to any standard of academic usage that has ever prevailed in any part of the globe at any time in history. It is a form of academic megalomania that has no justification, and no warrant, and I am not going to be cowed by it.
Cordially
Robert SpencerMeeker:
One other thing. I cited Richard Fletcher in my 2003 book “Onward Muslim Soldiers,” long before Bostom wrote his “Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.” I know Bostom read “Onward Muslim Soldiers.” For all I know he got the Fletcher material from me. Should I then indict him for plagiarism because he doesn’t mention me in his citation?
The very idea is absurd. And it shows up the absurdity of Bostom’s charge against me.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Well folks, sit back with a bag of popcorn and enjoy the fireworks. Who knows maybe Barack Obama can bring the two back together over some beers on the White House lawn.
Meeker
My April 21 article is a chapter from my 2007 book “Religion of Peace?”. If Bostom used the quote from “Looming Tower” in a 2009 piece, he got it from me.
The April 21 piece has no footnotes. I don’t generally footnote blog entries. There is material sourced from Bostom in the original chapter from “Religion of Peace?,” and lo and behold, it is footnoted to Bostom. In fact, he knows this, as he and I discussed this material at the time.
Which fact makes his current attack all the more gratuitous and libelous.
Cordially
Robert Spencer