A very good piece.

Islamophobia Imported From Europe: An Ugly Trend Gets Uglier

As if to cement our embrace of such seemingly imported notions, Geert Wilders, the rabidly anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim politician from the far-right “Freedom” Party of the Netherlands, has been invited to speak at a memorial rally at Ground Zero on Sept. 11. This is a man who has declared war on immigration from Muslim nations, who was once banned from the U.K. for his positions, who has called Islam “fascist” and who told the Guardian in 2008 that Islam was “the ideology of a retarded culture.” He has, according to his website, agreed to appear at the New York rally next month.

The reason for this discomfort and questioning, he says, is because “Islam is from now on part of the ‘internal’ landscape of the West, not only an outsider, and this is a hard pill to swallow for a ‘Judeo-Christian’ or ‘secular’ West.”

The anti-Muslim movement is gaining momentum

Danial Luban examines the people and ideas behind the growing anti-Muslim hysteria. What he finds is a mixture of crusader-inspired nuts and right wing politicians willing to compromise sanity for electoral success.

The New Anti-Semitism

by Daniel Luban

After Abraham Foxman waded into the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy,opposing ^[1] plans to construct an Islamic community center a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, the Anti-Defamation League chief was assailed by critics who charged that the ADL was giving license to bigotry and betraying its historic mission “to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike.” A week after initially coming out against the mosque, Foxman announced that the ADL was bowing out of the controversy, but the damage to the group’s reputation had been done.

The problem for the ADL is that there simply isn’t much anti-Semitism of consequence in the United States these days. While anti-Semitism continues to thrive elsewhere in the world and to molder on the fringes of American society, Jews have by now been fully assimilated into the American ruling class and into the mainstream of American life. A mundane event like the recent wedding of Protestant Chelsea Clinton and Jewish Marc Mezvinsky drove this point home. What was notable was not the question “will she convert?” but how little importance anyone attached to the answer; the former first daughter’s choice between Judaism and Christianity seemed as inconsequential as the choice between Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism would have a few decades ago.

At the same time, many of the tropes of classic anti-Semitism have been revived and given new force on the American right. Once again jingoistic politicians and commentators posit a religious conspiracy breeding within Western society, pledging allegiance to an alien power, conspiring with allies at the highest levels of government to overturn the existing order. Because the propagators of these conspiracy theories are not anti-Semitic but militantly pro-Israel, and because their targets are not Jews but Muslims, the ADL and other Jewish groups have had little to say about them. But since the election of President Barack Obama, this Islamophobic discourse has rapidly intensified.

While the political operatives behind the anti-mosque campaign speak the language of nativism and American exceptionalism, their ideology is itself something of a European import. Most of the tropes of the American “anti-jihadists,” as they call themselves, are taken from European models: a “creeping” imposition of sharia, Muslim allegiance to the ummah ^[2] rather than to the nation-state, the coming demographic crisis as Muslims outbreed their Judeo-Christian counterparts. In recent years the call-to-arms about the impending Islamicization of Europe has become a well-worn genre ^[3], ranging from more sophisticated treatments like Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe to cruder polemics like Mark Steyn’s America Alone and Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia.

It would be a mistake to seek too precise a correspondence between the new Islamophobia and the old anti-Semitism, which differ in some key respects. Jews have never threatened to become a numerical majority, or even a sizable minority, in any European country, so anxiety about Jewish power naturally gravitated toward the myth of the shadowy elite manipulating the majority from behind the scenes. By contrast, anti-Muslim anxiety has focused on the supposed demographic threat posed by Muslims, in which the dusky hordes overwhelm the West by sheer weight of numbers. (“The sons of Allah breed like rats,” as the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci put it.) It may be that in many ways this Islamophobia shares more of the tropes of traditional anti-Catholicism than classic anti-Semitism.

But if the tropes do not always line up, there is some notable continuity in the players involved. One of the most striking stories of recent years has been the realignment of segments of the European far right behind a form of militant support for Israel. Much of the traditional neofascist right remains both anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic, but savvier far-right leaders have realized that by dropping the anti-Semitic elements of their platforms and doubling down on Islamophobia, they can tap into a new base of support from pro-Israel hawks across the Atlantic. Both the British National Party and the Vlaams Belang in Belgium have gone this route, although it remains questionable whether the move away from anti-Semitism is more than skin-deep. (The Vlaams Belang’s predecessor party, for instance, was disbanded after a controversy ^[4] concerning Holocaust-denying statements made by one of its top officials.) Equally striking has been the rise of Geert Wilders, the controversial Dutch politician whose Islamophobia, virulent enough to draw thecondemnation ^[5] of even the ADL, has made him a darling of “anti-jihadists” in the United States.

Although there was a predictable upsurge in anti-Muslim sentiments in the United States following the Sept. 11 attacks, much of the most virulent Islamophobic discourse remained marginal on this side of the Atlantic in the early years of the war on terror. There are several possible reasons for this, but one of the most important is simply that George W. Bush, as president, was committed to a rhetoric about Islam as a “religion of peace” divided into a moderate majority and an extremist minority. The justification for the Iraq war came to depend heavily on this distinction, and right-wing hawks, with some grumbling, generally fell into line. The election of Obama, however, freed the hawks from any obligation to temper their rhetoric and simultaneously provided ample material for conspiracy theories about Muslims and fellow travelers in the White House. The result has been an intensification both in the amount of Islamophobia and in its political prominence, as ideas that were once marginal have moved to the center of political debate.

***

The two years since Obama’s election have seen a sudden flood of books describing an alleged Muslim conspiracy against the United States. Examples include Robert Spencer’s Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America Without Guns Or Bombs, Spencer and Pamela Geller’s new The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America, Paul Sperry’sInfiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington, and Sperry and P. David Gaubatz’s Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America.

The works share a set of common themes. Radical Muslims who engage in violence are only the tip of the iceberg, goes the argument; the more insidious threat comes from the far larger group of religious Muslims (most, perhaps all) who aim to subjugate the United States under sharia law through ostensibly peaceful and legal means. In this they are aided and abetted by the leftist elites controlling the government, media, and academy—above all, the ambiguously Muslim Obama himself—and a cast of villains that includes some mix of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jeremiah Wright, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Obama adviser Dalia Mogahed, ACORN, and George Soros. Some of the authors of these works have ties to the European far right themselves; Geller and Spencer, for instance, have alienated former political allies by championing Geert Wilders and the Vlaams Belang.
Andrew C. McCarthy’s The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America is among the most recent, and likely the most comprehensive, contributions to the genre. McCarthy is, on the surface, a credible figure: A former federal prosecutor, he came to prominence by winning convictions against Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and others linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. During the Bush years, he was a vociferous defender of the administration’s detainee policies, while Obama’s election caused him to venture into nuttier territory. (He has speculated ^[6], for instance, that Bill Ayers may have been the real author of Obama’s Dreams From My Father.) His book helps illustrate both the potency of the Muslim-conspiracy myth and the extent to which it has taken hold of mainstream right-wing discourse.

McCarthy’s thesis is simple: Muslims aiming “to supplant American constitutional democracy with sharia law” have joined forces with leftists—including Obama himself—to impose a shared “totalitarian, collectivist” vision. Which Muslims? McCarthy hints that the real problem is Islam itself but that for reasons of political correctness it is wiser to stick to the term “Islamist”—a distinction that loses some of its force given his estimation that two-thirds of Muslims are Islamists. (Indeed, he applies the term to some, like Edward Said, who were not Muslims at all.)

The bulk of the Muslim population, then, aims to impose sharia over every aspect of American life. How will they do this? Through violence, if need be—but McCarthy is keen to note that Islamists are above all master dissimulators who will seek to impose sharia through legal means if they can (“grand-jihad-by-sabotage,” he calls it). This means that even peaceful attempts to follow Islam through strictly private means (for instance, through sharia-compliant finance) are simply precursors to a takeover of the overall system. Muslims who live within religious or ethnic enclaves are not merely trying to remain within a familiar community or preserve shared values; rather, they are presented as deviously following the “voluntary apartheid” strategy of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood—the group whose “global tentacles” extend into nearly every Muslim-American civil society organization. It is too obvious to be worth belaboring that no one would dream of applying a similar logic to Orthodox Jews or evangelical Christian homeschoolers.

At times, McCarthy speaks the language of religious tolerance, arguing simply that Islam should not have a “sacrosanct status” denied to other religions. Yet it becomes increasingly clear that he is in fact arguing for special targeting and discriminatory measures against Islam, and he eventually concedes that he believes it is wrong to place Judaism and Christianity “on a par with an inherently discriminatory, supremacist doctrine.” As a result, “foreign Muslims should not be permitted to reside in America unless they can demonstrate their acceptance of American constitutional principles.” (But how, given the Muslim propensity for dissimulation, can we be sure that their professions of loyalty are genuine?)

The Islamist threat to the United States, McCarthy further argues, would not be so dire if it weren’t for their alliance with the leftists who “dominate policy circles, the academy, and the media.” The most important of these, of course, is Obama himself. Obama “publicly professes” to be a Christian, and McCarthy generously allows that there is no reason to doubt him—although he goes on to include two full chapters on Obama’s Muslim roots—before asserting that the “faith to which Obama actually clings is neocommunism.” This distinction ultimately matters little, however, for the Marxism of Obama and the rest of the American elite coalesces in key respects with the Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood and its American minions.

The overall tone and content of McCarthy’s polemic will be familiar to students of 1850s Know-Nothing anti-Catholicism or 1950s anti-Communism—or, for that matter, late-19th-century European anti-Semitism. It is tempting to dismiss him as a crackpot, and on an obvious level he is one. But his speculations and those of his fellows are far from irrelevant to the political moment. They are not being published in anonymous blog comments sections, but in widely publicized and bestselling books. More to the point, they have already made a notable impact on American political discourse.

The mosque furor is only the most recent and revealing demonstration of the anti-jihadists’ political influence; from the beginning of the controversy, McCarthy and his allies have dictated the terms of debate on the right. In his July 28 statement attacking the Islamic center, Newt Gingrich cited The Grand Jihad and framed the controversy in McCarthy’s terms of Western civilization under siege from creeping sharia. More recently, the American Family Association—a leading fundamentalist Christian group—cited the book to argue that no more mosques should be built anywhere in the United States because “each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.” A campaign spearheaded by Pamela Geller, the right-wing blogger who was previously most notorious for publishing a lengthy piece alleging that Obama is the illegitimate child of Malcolm X, will place ads on New York City buses opposing the Islamic center. On September 11, she and Gingrich will lead a major rally against the center that will also feature Wilders, the Islamophobic Dutch politician. What was once a lunatic fringe now appears to be running the show, aided and abetted by mainstream figures like Gingrich.

It is quite possible that the next Republican president will also be a party to what can justly be called the new McCarthyism; for that reason alone, McCarthy and his allies deserve our attention. But even more important is the impact of this steady stream of anti-Muslim vitriol on the popular consciousness. Cynical politicians like Gingrich may know that all the talk of the Islamic center as a “9/11 victory monument” and of ordinary Muslims as stealth sharia operatives is mere agitprop designed to win votes in an election year, but ordinary citizens may take them at their word and act accordingly.

While activists like Pam Geller have led the anti-mosque campaign and the broader demonization of Muslims that has accompanied it, leaders like Abe Foxman have acquiesced in it. In doing so they risk providing an ugly and ironic illustration of the extent of Jewish assimilation in 21st-century America. We know that Jews can grow up to be senators and Supreme Court justices. Let’s not also discover that they can grow up to incite a pogrom.

Daniel Luban is a doctoral student in political science at the University of Chicago.

UPDATED below (8/20/10).

Michelle Boorstein, a journalist with the Washington Post has written on anti-Muslim bigots Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer and their growing influence amongst Conservatives. We have extensively followed these two, providing evidence of their hate, bigotry, genocidal rants, and pseudo-scholarship through links, snapshots and in-context quotes.

Boorstein puts on the kids gloves when tackling these two, and labels them “Islam critics.” However, they are more than  mere “critics” of Islam, (a statement one might make of Orientalist Bernard Lewis), they are anti-Muslim Islamophobes. They wallow in, pander and promote the vilest and weirdest conspiracy theories about Islam and Muslims, and sometimes non-Muslims as well.

Boorstein’s article, though it recognizes Geller and Spencer as the principal front figures and activists propelling the anti-mosque agitation is at the end of the day an epic failure due to its neutrality. Despite one mention of Geller’s nutty claim that Obama was the “love child” of Malcolm X, it glosses over the plethora of bigoted, hateful, irrational and borderline genocidal statements Geller has made.

When it comes to Robert Spencer the failure is even more pronounced, Boorstein cites Islamophobe Daniel Pipes (whom she dubs, “perhaps the most prominent US scholar on radical Islam”) opinion of Spencer as a “serious scholar.” This is like a kid being asked what grade his best friend should get on his report card, especially since Pipes considers himself allied with Spencer and Geller against similar “enemies.”

Pipes, according to Boorstein claims to be in the middle now, but that is belied by the fact that he admits he is “raising money” for the “most anti-Islam” individual out there, Dutch politician Geert Wilders, to supposedly “protect freedom of speech.”

Wilders you will remember says Islam is not a religion, compares the Quran to the Mein Kampf and wants it banned, wants to tax the hijab, and repatriate “criminal” Dutch Muslim citizens to their lands of origin. So how in his right mind can Pipes claim to be in the middle?

In the same breathe that Pipes says the “anti-Islam” agitation is growing in the US he admits that the “anti-Islam” bloggers (presumably including Spencer and Geller) have brought an “unsophisticated tone to the debate,” but then nimbly moves to say he shares the “same goals” as them. Double talk anyone? In reality the divide between Pipes and Spencer is a difference without a distinction.

You cannot have your cake and eat it as well. You can’t say that you don’t share in the methodology or beliefs of vociferous anti-Muslims whose goals are to eradicate Islam and strip Muslims of their citizenship but then join them because you have similar goals of “preserving freedom.” That is hypocrisy wrapped up in a contradiction.

In the mean time what is being missed by reporters and journalists in news papers and on TV alike is that these mere “critics” of Islam are at the forefront of a growing, organized anti-Muslim movement. The Park51 “Ground Zero” mosque controversy did not come out of nowhere, it is part of a plan to dig up and spread controversy about Islam and Muslims.

What is surprising is that Michelle Boorstein made no mention of the link between Geller and Spencer and the anti-Muslim movement, especially considering we featured her as an anti-loon in June for asking the question in her blog, “How influential will anti-Muslims become?”

What is the future of the anti-Muslim movement in the United States?

For years there has been a small but passionate group of people concerned with the influence of Islam, and their activism seemed to be largely focused on blogging and lobbying political conservatives. But their presence — and the arguments they raise — seem to be coming into the broader sphere of late.

There’s the fight over a mosque at the Ground Zero site, and this weekend the on-line electronic payment firm PayPal reportedly cut off the anti-Muslim blog Atlas Shrugs, saying it’s a hate site.

Needless to say, this has prompted a roar from Atlas Shrugs supporters who see political bias.

Commentators across the spectrum, from the libertarian Becket Fund to the progressive Media Matters are asking: Where is this anti-Muslim movement going? How significantly will it steer the debate in this country about religious freedom and bias?

Why couldn’t she make that connection about these two leaders in the anti-Muslim movement in this article? Is it a reversal of nomenclature on her part due to pressure from the anti-Muslims? Hopefully she is not kowtowing to pressure.

Boorstein mentions Loonwatch towards the end of her piece (hat tip: Marco). One sentence, in a very obscure paragraph.

A site monitoring the Muslim critics is called Loonwatch. Conspiracy theories on the blogs about murder attempts and bestiality are common. People on both sides say they get death threats and thus can’t disclose where they live.

This paragraph is odd and it is a poor transition from the previous paragraph. Loonwatch does not monitor “Muslim critics” which is what that sentence implies. Muslims and Islam may justifiably be criticized by anyone. We don’t have a problem with that. We monitor anti-Muslims and Islamophobes. The paragraph also doesn’t specifically assign the “conspiracy theories” and “bestiality” to the Spencer and Geller blogs and for that reason is too ambiguous. It leaves the door open for people to think we partake in “conspiracy theories” or talk about “murder attempts” and “bestiality” which we do not.

Boorstein could have used a number of our posts and pieces to highlight how insane it is for the Right-wing to allow these two Muslim haters to rise up to stardom in their ranks. How, in fact they belong on the periphery amongst the fringe, but she chose not to and for that reason her article leaves a lot wanting.

However, I did find the final few sentences of her piece quite revealing,

Asked if he was being deliberately combative and provocative, Spencer chuckled.

“Why not?” he asked. “It’s fun.”

This gives us a glimpse into who Spencer is and what he really is about. He finds the fact that he is dooping Conservatives and others in America by creating controversy funny. It is not at all about being a “serious objective scholar,” it is all about the anti-Muslim crusade.

Update: Michelle Boorstein changed the title of her article it is no longer, In flap over mosque near Ground Zero, conservative writers gaining influence, now it is “The pens of anti-Muslim conservatives impact N.Y.C. mosque debate mightily.” She deserves kudos for that.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ9g4WDIy4o 350 300]

On the heels of the Salon.com article that traced the Ground Zero mosque controversy back to Pamela Geller, CNN ran a special segment on the anatomy of this story. In it Pamela Geller is called out for who she is, an “anti-Muslim blogger.” The evidence for that abounds,

Geller: Obama “is a third worlder and a coward” who’s “appeas[ing] his Islamic overlords.” In an April 13 blog post, Gellerwrote: “Obama is a third worlder and a coward. He will do nothing but beat up on our friends to appease his Islamic overlords. All this is going down while Obama plays footsie at his nuclear nonsense campfire — sucking up to Iran’s enablers while beating up our allies.”

Geller: Liberal Jews are “lost souls,” “self-hating wretches.” In her January 25 Newsmax column, Geller wrote that Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League “has come out against a great and wonderful friend of the Jews, Rush Limbaugh.” Geller added that this “is symptomatic of a deeper problem: I have for years derided Jews in America and the Jewish lay leadership for tolerating and supporting clear and present enemies of the Jewish people among our senior ranks. It is a sickness of the soul.” She further wrote, “The liberal Jew worships at the church of human secularism. These lost souls are married to their liberal dogma” and asked, “Which Jews support deleterious characters like Foxman? Which Jews give blood money to these self-hating wretches?”

Geller on Obama’s Israel policy: “Jews Refuse to Get on Obama’s Trains.” In a post apparently responding to Obama’s opposition to settlement growth, Geller wrote, “Jews refuse to get on Obama’s Trains.” She added: “Obama is pressuring Jews to “evacuate” from parts of Israel? And what Warsaw ghetto does the muhammadan [sic] president have in mind? I think I am gonna hurl. The Jews will not go. The Jews will not submit to this century’s nazis [sic] and Mansourian poser. No way, bloodsuckers. Not again. Never again.”

Geller on transgender Obama appointee: “What a freak show this presidency is.” In a January 4 blog post, Geller responded to a report that Obama named a transgender appointee to a Commerce Department position by stating, “Does Obama know anyone who isn’t wacky, radical, militant, judeophobic, socialist, marxist, pedophilic? …… Does he chill with anyone who is normal? Isn’t there one Marilyn Munster in the family? What a freak show this presidency is.”

Geller: Obama “wants jihad to win. That’s what he is doing.” In an April 1 blog post titled, “”President Jihad: Obama Encouraged Violent Palestinian Muslim protests against Israel,” Geller claimed Obama “is agitating Muslims against Jews” and stated, “The President of the United States is advancing jihad against the oath of office that he took.” Geller also stated in an April 11 post, “President Sarkozy called [Obama] ‘a madman,’ ‘a lunatic.’ Perhaps, I don’t know — but one thing is for sure: Hussein is a muhammadan. He’s not insane ………..he wants jihad to win. That’s what he is doing. Of course, to the western mind, the rational mind, the logical mind, the American mind, that is insane.”

Geller called Democrats “National Socialists.” In a March 13 blog post, Geller wrote, ”National Socialists [Democrats] Obamacare: Sheeps to ‘Slaughter Solution.’” She added, “The buzz on Capitol Hill is that the Democrats are now considering what is being called the ’Slaughter Solution’ that will allow ObamaCare to be signed into law WITHOUT HOUSE MEMBERS EVEN HAVING TO VOTE.“

Geller: Senate Democrats supporting health care reform voted “to rape the American people.” In a December 21, 2009, blog post, Geller wrote of the cloture vote for health care reform: “The moochers and the looters, the crooks and degenerates voted at 1 am this morning to rip the constitution to shreds, to rape the American people and to nationalize medicine.” She added that passing the bill on Christmas Eve would be “an act of treason and blasphemy.”

Geller declared “VICTORY!” after Swiss established ban on minaret construction. In a November 29 post to her Atlas Shrugs blog — headlined “VICTORY! SWISS BAN MOSQUE MINARETS IN A LANDSLIDE VOTE” — Pamela Geller commented: “The Swiss have hand [sic] enough. They actually had the spine to take back their country. I wonder how the religion of peaceniks will react…in their usual tolerant and pacifist manner?”

Geller: “Obama Goes Full On Nazi.” Geller headlined a November 9, 2009, post “Obama Goes Full On Nazi: Subject: “Democratic consultant says he got a warning from White House after appearing on Fox News.”

Geller: ” ‘Kick a Jew’ days … are part of this growing evil Evil unleashed with an anti-semite in the White House.” In a December 14, 2009, post, Geller wrote:

It’s as if the floodgates of hell have been thrown open. The moratorium on the holocaust is officially over and all the savages are free to incite, hate and destroy. Clearly those “Kick a Jew” days discussed here and here in schools are part of this growing evil Evil [sic] unleashed with an anti-semite in the White House.

Geller: “Obama is bringing his jihad to Illinois.” In a December 15, 2009, post, Geller responded to reports that Guantanamo Bay detainees may be housed at the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois by stating: “Obama is bringing his jihad to Illinois. Has anyone asked the people of Chicago if they want KSM’s soul mates in their state? Obama’s treachery is breathtaking. A killer’s paradise.”

Geller: “It is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth,” and he only visited Pakistan while in college because of “jihad or drugs.” In an August 1, 2009, post, Geller discussed rumors of a Palin divorce being spread by bloggers, including one supposedly tied to CNN and stated:

Let’s understand this. CNN won’t touch the birth certificate issue, the Rezko/Auchi corruption, Obama’s anti-semitism, his ACORN/SEIU ties and corruption, and other legitimate stories that need investigation. But they write fiction about Palin. Daily. So why not tell the truth about Obama and his reported strange sexual predilections? My question is, it is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth. Very seedy stuff. Why aren’t they pursuing that story? Find the ho, give her a show! Obama allegedly trafficked in some very deviant practices. Where’s the investigation?

Geller further stated of Obama’s trip to Pakistan during college: “Back in the early 80′s, there were only two reasons to travel to Pakistan. Jihad or drugs. I think he went for the drugs and came back with jihad.”

Geller on Dome of the Rock: “The dome has got to go.” On September 27, 2009, Geller posted an image of Muslims praying at the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s holy sites, and stated, “On Erev Yom Kippur, Muslims attack Jews in Jerusalem. The dome has got to go. It is sitting atop the great Jewish temple. The dome has got to go. It’s time to push back and stop indulging evil. Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction (paraphrasing Rand).”

There is more where this came from, please read our profile of Geller, The Looniest Blogger Ever. The sad thing is that this segment on CNN had Pamela Geller on unopposed. The host, John Roberts, obviously didn’t do his research and didn’t press her enough with the tough questions that Geller should be asked.

Instead, the show in effect gave Pamela Geller an opportunity to lie and cover up the fact that she is a Muslim hater. It is now common to see Pamela in her TV appearances claim that she “loves Muslims,” though the type of love she seems to be talking about is some twisted love in which the only good Muslim is one who doesn’t practice Islam, or believe in the Quran or the Prophet Muhammad.

The fact is she is against the building of mosques. Even in this CNN program she exposes herself by equating terrorists as representatives of “pure Islam,” echoing her friend, Euro-supremacist demagogue Geert Wilders who wants to tax the Hijab, ban Muslim immigration and outlaw Islam in the Netherlands.

The truth is Geller is opposed to the building of mosques, as is clear when she triumphantly claims victory after the Swiss ban minarets and when she calls for the destruction of mosques like the Golden Dome.

(Note: To properly view footnotes to this article, kindly click here.)

What follows is a refutation of “Lying: It’s wrong–except when it isn’t”, found in Chapter 6 (“Islamic Law: Lie, Steal, and Kill”) of Robert Spencer’s book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

Part of the grandiose anti-Muslim conspiracy theory espoused by Islamophobes today includes the idea that Muslims are, in the words of Robert Spencer, involved in “large scale deception campaigns today.” ^[1] Spencer dedicates chapter 6 of his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) to convince his readers that Islamic law allows for and even encourages lying “if it fosters the growth of Islam.” ^[2] In this manner, moderate Muslim-Americans are cast away as “stealth jihadists”, who are simply using deception to further their belligerent faith.  Any Muslim who says otherwise is accused of lying.  When moderate Muslims express their peaceful views, these are dismissed as “deception campaigns.”  On the other hand, when extremist and fundamentalist Muslims express their belligerent views, these are accepted as being “real Islam.”

Is Lying Acceptable in Certain Circumstances?

The Prophet Muhammad repeatedly commanded his followers to be truthful.  Lying is no small sin in Islam, and in fact leads to Hell.  Robert Spencer himself acknowledges as much, saying:

Muhammad minced no words about the necessity of telling the truth: “It is obligatory for you to tell the truth, for truth leads to virtue and virtue leads to Paradise, and the man who continues to speak the truth and endeavors to tell the truth is eventually recorded as truthful with Allah, and beware of telling of a lie for telling of a lie leads to obscenity and obscenity leads to Hell-Fire, and the person who keeps telling lies and endeavors to tell a lie is recorded as a liar with Allah.” ^[3]

There are dozens of other Prophetic traditions that say the same.

However, Spencer argues in his book that while lying is generally prohibited, “Islam allows for lying…in certain circumstances.”  ^[4] Having established this, Spencer boldly entitles the chapter “Islamic Law: Lie, Steal, and Kill,” arguing that Islam is the one religion on earth that advocates lying.  On the same page, Robert Spencer opposes “the idea that Islam shares the general moral outlook of Judaism and Christianity.”  In particular, “Islam doesn’t have a moral code analogous to the Ten Commandments.”  By this, he means to say that the religion of Islam does not hold fast to the 9th Commandment, which prohibits lying: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

Before we proceed, it should be very clear that it is Robert Spencer himself who opens up the chapter by comparing the Judeo-Christian belief system to Islam.  Therefore, when we question this comparison, let our opponents not cry “tu quoque, tu qouque!” as they always do whenever we point out their bold-faced hypocrisy and double standards.  What Spencer is saying is quite clear: unlike other religions, Judaism and his own Christianity in particular, Islam advocates lying in certain circumstances.

The revelation, that Islam allows for lying in certain circumstances, is supposed to shock the mind. Ohmigosh, how could a religion sanction lying!? But if we move past sanctimonious outrage, we realize that any moral code, be it based in religious faith or atheistic humanism, should allow for lying in certain circumstances.  That’s the most obvious thing in the world.  If, for example, the Nazis knock on your door and ask you “are you hiding any Jews in your attic?”, would Robert Spencer demand you to be truthful and say “yes”?  In that circumstance, lying should not only be allowed, but encouraged or even obligated.  A moral code that did not allow for a lie in this circumstance would be highly flawed. This is simply common sense.  No moral code, be it religious or otherwise, ought to command honesty without exception.  It’s common sense that there should be some exceptions to truth-telling.

In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad allowed for three (and only three) exceptions to the rule of truth-telling:

Lying is not permitted except in three cases: (1) a man’s speaking to his wife to make her happy; (2) lying at times of war; (3) and lying in order to reconcile between people. ^[5]

Let us review each of these scenarios one by one.

A Man’s Speaking to His Wife to Make Her Happy

Under Islamic law, a husband is permitted to lie to his wife if she asks him “do I look beautiful?”  So as not to hurt her feelings, the husband may claim she is the most beautiful woman on earth, even if in reality she looks horribly ugly.  This permission is given to the husband, argue Islamic jurists, to safeguard the woman’s feelings.  It would be cruel, they say, to be honest in this case. (One cannot help but be reminded of the epic Geico commercial.)

Lest our opponents, the self-proclaimed defenders of the Judeo-Christian tradition, doth protest too much, let us note that the Jewish tradition itself discussed this very situation in none other than the Talmud.  In the book entitled The Book of Jewish Values, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin says:

When, If Ever, Is It Permitted to Lie? (2): Judaism and White Lies

The Talmud records an unusual debate between the houses of Hillel and Shammai concerning the words celebrants should sing when dancing in front of a newly married woman. According to the House of Hillel, the dancers should chant the same words in front of all brides: “What a beautiful and graceful bride!” Their opponents, the House of Shammai, disagree. “If she is lame or blind, are you going to say of her, ‘What a beautiful and graceful bride?’ Does not the Torah command, ‘Stay away from falsehood?’” (Exodus 23:7) They thus oppose reciting a standard formula; rather, each bride should be described “as she is” (see Ketubot 17a). ^[6]

The opinion of the house of Hilel, that a lie should be uttered in this case, became “accepted as Jewish law”:

Hillel’s position is accepted as Jewish law.  One praises the beauty of all brides.  ^[7]

Rabbi Telushkin continues:

If somebody at a party asks you how they look, and you think they don’t look well at all, a blunt statement of what you feel may cause the person terrible discomfort, and accomplish no good whatsoever…There are indeed times when a petty lie is preferrable to an ugly truth. ^[8]

Christians have also debated this topic.  Professor Michael Heiser, an instructor at the MEMRA Institute for Biblical & Ancient Studies and Academic Editor for Bible Study Magazine, argues that the 9th Commandment does not prohibit all lies.  In a post entitled Lies and Deception, this professor gives his Biblical view that “deception” is sanctioned in certain circumstances:

Let’s think about some real life situations. I do not believe the ninth commandment was given to force full, exhaustively detailed “truth telling” to questions like the following:

1. Do I look fat in this dress?
2. Doctor, did my little boy suffer before he died?
3. How do I look?

Not only is deception permitted to a Christian (in certain circumstances, of course), but the Christian God and a Christian prophet (Samuel) engaged in deception.  Prof. Heiser writes:

In regard to the 1 Samuel 16 incident and the “does God lie?” question, I do not think God lied.  He did, however, certainly deceive…Samuel also did not lie…But, again, he plainly withheld information and deceived Saul’s men. Both God and Samuel were deceivers in this passage, but neither were liars. God may use deception to punish evil, but he does not lie.

Imagine Robert Spencer’s reaction if an Islamic scholar said that God deceives to punish the evil of unbelievers.  Just imagine.

Lying in Order to Reconcile People

Another exception in Islam with regard to telling the truth is when it comes to reconciling people.  This, argue Muslims, is based on Islam’s emphasis on peace.  The Prophet Muhammad said:

He who makes peace between the people by inventing good information or saying good things, is not a liar. ^[9]

The Islamophobic website ReligionofPeace.com mocks this Prophetic saying, arguing that it justifies lying.  Yet, these “defenders of the Judeo-Christian tradition” do not realize that the exact same thing is found in their own religious tradition.  Rabbi Telushkin writes:

According to Jewish law, one also should not go about telling people critical comments you hear made about them.  Indeed, if somebody asks you what another person said about him, you should leave out the negative comments by the other person…

When it comes to trying to reconcile feuding parties, Jewish law is remarkably tolerant of “white lies.”  Of Aaron, Moses’ brother and Israel’s first high priest, the Rabbis relate that he would utilize untruthful means to make peace between peopel who had fought.  He would go to one, telling how sad his adversary was about the dispute, and how ashamed and disheartened he felt.  Then he would go to the other and tell him the same thing.  As the Midrash concludes, “Later, when the two met, they would embrace and kiss each other” (The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan 12:3)…

Jewish tradition endorses Aaron’s behavior…In instances of personal feuding, when truth and peace conflict, peace usually should take precedence. ^[10]

Christian professor Dr. Michael Heiser recognizes something similar in his own religious belief system:

The ninth command was not given so evil could progress; it was given to STOP evil. It was not given to force us to hurt people’s feelings or crush their spirit, either. Withholding information is virtuous in these instances for reasons that should be obvious in context.

Will these self-declared “defenders of the Judeo-Christian tradition” now burn in their own fury?

Lying in Times of War

It is this third instance of permissible lying that Robert Spencer et al. make the most fuss about, especially the Prophet Muhammad’s statement that “war is deceit/deception.”

As mentioned by our very own Inconnu, the Prophet Muhammad made this statement during the Battle of the Trench.  The Confederates were threatening to use their overwhelming numbers to destroy the fledgling Islamic city-state of Medina.  They lay siege to the beleaguered city, and the entire religion of Islam was on the brink of being snuffed out entirely.  It was in this particular circumstance that a man named Nuaym ibn Masud was instructed by the Prophet Muhammad to break the deadly siege.  Nuaym said he could do this, but that “this requires me to lie.”  The Prophet replied with those now infamous words “war is deception.” And so Nuaym went to the various factions making up the Confederates and convinced them of the supposed disloyalty of their own allies.  This sowed discord and disunity in the enemy ranks, which the Muslims capitalized on to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. ^[11]

Two things are of note here.  First, the fact that Nuaym protested that “this requires me to lie” implies that he was cognizant of the fact that the Prophet Muhammad and the religion of Islam forbid lying in general.  Otherwise, he would not have said it.  It thus indicates that the early Muslims were known for their honesty.  Second, the context of the statement is imperative to understand:  The city of Medina was under siege, and the defenders of the city were heavily outnumbered by a ratio of more than 3:1.  This was a situation of “national importance.”  Lives would have been lost had these lies not been said.  It is strange that the extreme right-wingers like Robert Spencer can justify the nuclear annihilation of Japanese cities because “lives would have been lost” but can’t seem to understand why the Prophet Muhammad justified lying in this particular scenario.  Which is worse?  Nuclear annihilation or lying?

The idea that it would be necessary to lie during war is so self-explanatory that I feel a bit silly needing to draw this out.  But because Robert Spencer makes a great fuss about this, let me go over the top with this.  The idea that “war is deceit/deception” has been accepted since time immemorial.  As our very own Inconnu writes:

In fact, “War is deceit” is one of the oldest military principles in history. It is found in none other than The Art of War by Sun Tzu, a Chinese strategist from the Sixth Century B.C. This book is the oldest military treatise in the world. In Part I, principle No. 18 says:

All warfare is based on deception.

This book forms the foundation of modern military thinking, and is listed in the United States Marine Corps Professional Reading Program.  The book is required reading for CIA officers, and recommended reading for all U.S. military intelligence personnel.   The book is required to be stocked in every major military library.  Is Robert Spencer being unpatriotic and un-American by criticizing the foundation principle of our U.S. military, namely that “all warfare is based on deception”?  But Spencer’s double standard is quite clear: it’s OK when Evangelical Christians in the U.S. military believe such a thing, but completely unacceptable if Muslims do.

Inconnu goes on:

How about the Trojan Horse, a story from one of the oldest poems in Western Civilization? …Why doesn’t Spencer condemn the Greeks, the Fathers of Western Civilization, for practicing deceit in times of war?

Not only did Sun Tzu write of deception in warfare, but Italian Renaissance thinker Niccolo Machiavelli wrote:

Though fraud in other activities may be detestable, in the management of war it is laudable and glorious, and he who overcomes the enemy by fraud is as much to be praised as he who does by force.

How about more recent times? During World War II, there was a military operation called “Operation Fortitude.” It was a disinformation campaign to deceive the Germans about the Normandy invasion:

“Fortitude” was the codename given to the decoy (or disinformation) mission mounted by the Allies to deceive the Germans about the date and above all the place of the landings…[The Germans] had to be made to think that a whole group of [Allied] armies was present in Kent, opposite the Pas-de-Calais.

To deceive the German observation planes…the local estuaries, creeks and harbours were crammed with dummy landing craft, made out of bits and bobs…For the benefit of the Germans, a team of technicians maintained constant radio traffic between totally fictitious units.

Fortitude succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Long after June 6^th, Hitler remained convinced that the Normandy Landings were a diversionary tactic to induce him to move his troops away from the Pas-de-Calais, so that a decisive attack could then be launched there. He therefore kept his best units in readiness there, until the end of July, desperately scanning an empty horizon, while the fate of the war was being decided in Normandy.

Dr. Joseph Caddell, Lecturer on Military History at North Carolina State University, wrote in 2004:

Deception in warfare is probably as old as armed conflict itself. The logic of confusing an adversary is obvious, and the rewards can be realized very quickly.

On the website of the Air University, the military education system for the United States Air Force, there is a list of numerous books, documents, and periodicals that chronicle deception in WW I and WW II. Here is just some of the examples of the books written about deception in warfare:

Barros, James and Gregor, James. Double Deception: Stalin, Hitler, and the Invasion of Russia. DeKalb, IL, Northern Illinois University Press, 1995. 307 p. Book call no.: 940.532247 B277d

Basic Deception and the Normandy Invasion. New York, Garland, 1989. 1 vol. Book call no.: 940.5485 C873 v.15

Breuer, William B. Hoodwinking Hitler: The Normandy Deception. Westport, CT, Praeger, 1993. 263 p. Book call no.: 940.54 B846h

Breuer, William B. The Secret War with Germany: Deception, Espionage, and Dirty Tricks 1939-1945. Novato, CA, 1988. 318 p. Book call no.: 940.5485 B846s

I think Inconnu makes his point very clear, but allow me to give another example:  The U.S. military used deception during the invasion of Iraq:

Its war plan successfully deceived the Iraqis regarding disposition of allied ground forces

Is Robert Spencer being unpatriotic and un-American for criticizing the U.S.’s tactic of using deception in their invasion of a Muslim-majority country?  If the U.S. military can be justified in its use of deception to invade and occupy a far weaker country, then how is the Prophet Muhammad to be faulted for using deception during war to defend his city-state from attack and destruction by a far superior force?

How about CIA officers trying to infiltrate the ranks of Al-Qaeda?  Should they not utilize deceit in order to safeguard their cover?

This is of course a completely absurd line of attack Robert Spencer has employed against Islamic law. But to completely cripple Spencer’s argument, let us once again turn to the Judeo-Christian tradition that Spencer so valiantly defends and promotes in his book.  Once again, a familiar pattern emerges: Spencer criticizes something about Islam that is found in his own religious belief system as well.

The Menorah: A Monthly Magazine for the Jewish Home expounds:

Deception in war…is legitimate according to Jewish law.  Joshua used stratagem in capturing the city of Ai (Josh. viii), and the same was copied against Bejamin (Jud. xx).  Ehud ben Gera killed Eglon, King of Moab, by disguise and deceit (Jud. iii., 20-22)…In our own times Gen. Fred Funston devised an artful plan to entrap Emilio Aguinaldo.  Such deceit, however, is recommended in order to avoid needless bloodshed and hasten peace. ^[12]

Notice that the excerpt above seems to indicate that deceit is not only permitted in Jewish law but recommended in times of war.  Rabbi Telushkin says the same in his book entitled A Code of Jewish Ethics, and even indicates that assassinations by stealth are permitted according to the Bible:

During a war, one may deceive enemies.  The Bible relates how Ya’el, a Kenite woman, invited the fleeing Canaanite general Sisera into her tent: “Turn aside, my Lord, turn aside to me; have no fear,” she told him, before lulling Sisera to sleep and then killing him…The prophetess Deborah praised Ya’el for her deception of Sisera (Judges 5:24-26; see also Judges 4:17-21)

…In short, in the proper circumstances, deception is not only tolerated, but applauded. ^[13]

In the example of Ya’el and Sisera, we have Biblically-sanctioned treachery and assassination.  To bring this topic closer to home for Robert Spencer, let us quote from the Christian tradition.  The British and Foreign Evangelical Review says of Ya’el and Sisera:

That there was treachery, is admitted on all hands.  The whole question resolves itself into this: Did Sisera deserve to be treacherously dealt with?  Was Jael [Ya'el] justified in taking the advantage of him [as] she did? …If the deceptions of war we noticed just now [in the Bible] are not immoral, then we regard Jael’s act as morally defensible…She must use stratagem to kill him. ^[14]

In a section entitled When Deceptions becomes Legitimate, The British and Foreign Evangelical Review writes:

Again, we find in the conquest that the Israelites were directed [by God] to practise certain deceptions upon their enemies…The moral aspect of these cases of deception on the part of God…[are justified by the] general understanding that in such circumstances “everything is fair” that can secure an advantage…There is no moral delinquency, therefore, in denying the whole truth to men, that is, in practising deception upon them, when it is understood that deception is part of the risk of war. ^[15]

Should we berate Christians for their belief in lying during war and that “‘everything is fair’ that can secure an advantage”?  Can one imagine Robert Spencer’s reaction if a Muslim said that “everything is fair” if it secures an advantage for Islam?

Dr. Hans Martensen, the nineteenth century Catholic bishop who penned the epic book Christian Dogmatics: Compendium of the Doctrines of Christianity, writes in his book entitled Christian Ethics:

Mutual deception cannot in this respect be condemned, since both sides are agreed in employing against each not force alone, but craft, together with all the artifices of war. ^[16]

Dr. Mortensen is stressing an important point here, which I will return to later: deception is mutually expected in war.

In any case, it could be said–using the emotive language of Robert Spencer–that deception in war is part of Christian ethics.  Christian professor Dr. Michael Heiser concurs that the “act of deception” and even “outright lie” is tolerated in war, even “HOLY war.”  In a post entitled “Does God lie,” Prof. Heiser says that God uses deception, and even argues that Jesus himself used deception:

We know that there are specific statements asserting very clearly that God does not tell lies (e.g., Num. 23:19; Titus 1:2). However, God does use deception.  Some of you no doubt will want to define lying so that it includes deception, but that is not only unwise, it puts you (and God) in a theological pickle…Why did Jesus demand deception (withholding the truth) on occasion? Why is that permissible?

Why is it that Robert Spencer takes great offense to the Islamic prophet using deception in war to defend his city-state and religion from being wiped off the map, but on the other hand takes no issue with the Biblical prophet Joshua using deception in war, by the Command of God no less, to invade the city of Ai?  In a book entitled The Art of Darkness: Deception and Urban Operations, we read:

In roughly 1200 BC, Joshua captured the city of Ai by means of deception. ^[17]

The Wiersbe Bible Commentary, after citing numerous examples of Biblically sanctioned deception during war, concludes:

Many people have been honored for deceiving the enemy during wartime and saving innocent lives, and this was war! ^[18]

The gentleman Robert Spencer doth protest too much methinks.

Lying to Unbelievers?

Robert Spencer has implied in his book and website that Muslims are instructed to be honest only to fellow Muslims, and that they can lie to unbelievers.  Says Spencer:

Muhammad minced no words about the necessity of telling the truth…However, as with so many other Islamic principles, this is largely a matter between believers.  When it comes to unbelievers–particularly those who are at war with Muslims–Muhammad enunciated a quite different principle: “War is deceit.” Specifically, he taught that lying was permissible in battle. ^[19]

As I have said in my previous article criticizing Robert Spencer’s methodology, he mixes half-truths (70% of his writings) with outright lies (the remaining 30%).  Here is where Spencer slips in a bold-faced lie.  (The irony of using deception while writing an article on deception should not be lost.)  In the text above, Spencer implies that Muslims don’t have to be honest with non-Muslims.  However, the reality is that the Prophet Muhammad never said that a Muslim can lie to a non-Muslim.  What he did say was:

Lying is not permitted except in three cases: (1) a man’s speaking to his wife to make her happy; (2) lying at times of war; (3) and lying in order to reconcile between people. ^[20]

Do you see the word “unbeliever”, “non-Muslim”, or “infidel” anywhere there?  No, no, and no.  Lying is permitted during war, and this has nothing to do with being a Muslim or non-Muslim.  Being a non-Muslim in this case is merely incidental.  Spencer’s insinuation to the contrary is dishonest and…deceitful.  Had the Prophet Muhammad wanted to say that lying to unbelievers is permitted, then he would simply have said as much: “Lying is not permitted except in three cases…(2) lying to unbelievers.”  But he didn’t.  And I challenge Spencer to bring forth a single quote from the Quran or the Prophetic traditions saying anything of the sort.

In fact, the early Muslims fought a civil war (the Battle of Siffin): Muslims vs. Muslims.  And guess what?  In this battle, one side used deception to cause discord in the opposing side’s ranks.  In Islamic history, this is one of the famous examples of the use of a ploy during battle.  To give a modern day example, the fundamentalist Taliban–whom Spencer considers “the real Muslims”–used deception to kill their fellow Muslim, a war hero who led the Northern Alliance. Deception, then, is merely a consequence of war.  Spencer is needlessly trying to make this into a Muslim vs. non-Muslim thing, when in fact it is simply a matter of war.  When Nuaym ibn Masud said that the ploy would require him to lie, the Prophet Muhammad did not justify it by saying “oh well, they are infidels anyways.”  Instead, he said that it was a time of war and therefore permissible.  The fact that Nuaym even asked indicates that the Muslims at that time did not think it was permissible to lie to unbelievers, nor were ever taught such.

The Prophet Muhammad was known by the name of Al-Amin (The Trustworthy), and even his greatest enemies did not know of him as a liar.  The only “lie” they counted against him was his claim to be a prophet of God.  Abu Sufyan, the leader of the Quraish (the archenemy of the Muslims at the time), was asked by Heraclius about the Prophet Muhammad’s honesty.  Heraclius asked: “Have you ever accused him of telling lies?…Does he break his promises?”  To both these questions, Abu Sufyan was forced to respond in the negative.   The Prophet Muhammad was known as being honest to all, regardless of religion.  Muslims today remember him as being honest to both Muslims and non-Muslims, which indicates that the religion of Islam honors honesty towards all human beings, irrespective of religious affiliation.

The Quran repeatedly mentions that the believers are those who stay honest to their oaths with the non-Muslims, and criticizes the Quraish idolaters for their failure to live up to their word.  After the battle of Uhud, the Muslims enter into a degrading peace treaty with the non-Muslims, and the Prophet Muhammad not only lives up to his side of the bargain, but also says that he does not even want to give a hint of not being honest to the agreement.  The Prophet was entrusted on numerous occasions with the wealth of non-Muslims, and he never violated or usurped their belongings.  And in the capacity of a merchant, he was just and honest with non-Muslims when it came to business transactions.  One could certainly argue that the Prophet Muhammad’s purported honesty may be a thing of legend, i.e. Islamic hagiography, but this is irrelevant: what is important here is that Muslims remember the Prophet as being honest to non-Muslims, a fact that indicates that Islam values honesty towards all human beings, including those outside the faith.

Clearly, Spencer has used deception to craft his argument, trying to conflate being non-Muslim with being at war.  The burden of proof is on Robert Spencer to prove his claim that Islam honors honesty only towards Muslims.  Can he show even one Quranic verse or Prophetic saying that advocates anything of the sort?

What Constitutes War?

Now Spencer and co. will claim that Muslims consider themselves at war with the United States and/or Western Christendom, so this allows them to lie.  After all, isn’t a state of war in the eyes of the beholder?  Yet, all of these arguments can equally be used against Judaism and Christianity.  As we have demonstrated earlier, Jews and Christians are allowed to lie during times of war.  The United States is at war with at least two Muslim-majority countries, and many would argue–such as Robert Spencer and other nutty right-wing extremists–that we are at war with radical Islam.  If this is so, does this mean that Robert Spencer and co. are allowed to lie and use deception in their campaign against radical Islam?  Ahh, perhaps this explains Spencer’s recurrent use of deceitful argumentation!  Suffice to say that any argument that the Islamophobes craft against Islam using this line of reasoning can be equally applied to Judaism and Christianity.

Having said that, Islamic law clearly defines what a war is.  It is an open state of hostilities, in which both sides recognize that they are at war with each other.  I explained in this article here (see the comments as well) why a Muslim-American cannot consider himself at war with the United States.  Hence, Robert Spencer’s claims against Islam and Muslim-American spokesmen have no theological grounding.

Furthermore, Islam differentiates between “deceit/deception” and “treachery.”  The former is permitted in war, whereas the latter is not.  While it is true that the Prophet Muhammad said “war is deceit/deception”, one of his commandments to the Muslim soldiers was “do not be treacherous.” ^[21] So there is a difference in Islam between deceit and treachery, the former which is allowed and the latter which is not.  One Islamic apologist explained it as follows:

Deceit in war simply means deceiving your enemy into thinking that your strategy is A while it is actually B. A perfect example is the deception that the Muslims employed on the kuffar in the Battle of the Ditch. Treachery means betrayal of a trust. Hence, you can deceive in war without being treacherous because you were never loyal to your enemy in the first place in order to have betrayed them.

This is similar to what Dr. Hans Mortensen said as I quoted above, namely that there is a mutual expectation of deceit/deception during war.

The ultraconservative Islamic website, Islam-qa.com, explains the difference between deceit/deception and treachery:

[Question:] Does Islam permit deception in war? Is this considered to be betrayal and treachery?

[Answer:] Praise be to Allaah.

Allaah has forbidden treachery and has condemned those who do it. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“They are those with whom you made a covenant, but they break their covenant every time and they do not fear Allaah” [al-Anfaal  8:56]

And the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said:

“Every betrayer will have a banner on the Day of Resurrection, by which he will be known.” (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 6966; Muslim, 1736)

Al-Bukhaari narrated that Ibn ‘Umar (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: ‘The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: ‘There are four characteristics, whoever has them all is a pure hypocrite: when he speaks, he lies; when he makes a promise he breaks it; when he is entrusted with something he betrays that trust; and when he argues, he speaks in an obscene manner. Whoever has one of these traits has a trait of hypocrisy until he gives it up.” (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 3878; Muslim, 58)

And it was narrated that Maalik said: “I heard that ‘Abd-Allaah ibn ‘Abbaas said: ‘There is no people who betrays their covenant but Allaah gives their enemies power over them.” (al-Muwatta’, Baab ma jaa’a fi’l-wafa’ bi’l-‘ahd)

Yet despite this condemnation of betrayal, Islam allows deception in war in order to attain victory. Al-Nawawi said: “The scholars are agreed that it is permissible to deceive the kuffaar [infidels] in war in any way possible, except if that would mean breaking the terms of a treaty or trust, in which case it is not permitted.”

The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “War is deceit.” (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 3029; Muslim, 58).  One of the most dangerous elements of deceit is taking the enemy by surprise and catching them unawares before they can get ready to fight. When the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) wanted to head for Makkah in order to conquer it, he ordered the Muslims to get ready without telling anyone of his intention until after they had set out for Makkah, and after taking all precautions to prevent news of that reaching the mushrikeen. And the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to send out many raiding parties, and he would tell them to travel by night and conceal themselves by day so that they could catch the enemy unawares.

Although it is permissible to use deception in war, we say that Islam has attained a high standard of ethics with regard to the use of these tricks in war. Among the most prominent examples of that are the following:

‘Umar ibn al-Khattaab wrote to the commander of an army that he had sent out: “I have heard that some men among you look for kaafirs, then when they run to hide in difficult mountainous terrain they say, ‘Do not be afraid,’ then when they catch up with them they kill them. By the one in whose hand is my soul, if I hear that anyone has done that I will chop off his head.”

It was narrated that Abu Muslimah said: “ ‘Umar ibn al-Khattaab said: ‘By the One in Whose hand is my soul, if any one of you were to point to the sky [i.e., a gesture to imply that he will not harm him] to make a mushrik come down to him and then kill him, I would kill him for that.’”

Islam has forbidden treachery, and treachery is not one of the kinds of tricks and deception that are permitted in war. This Islamic sharee’ah makes a distinction between the kinds of deceit that are permitted and that which involves treachery and breaks treaties. See al-‘Allaaqaat al-Khaarijiyyah fi Dawlat al-Khilaafah, 197. Islam Q&A Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid

Notice the quote from the classical Islamic scholar who clearly said:

The scholars are agreed that it is permissible to deceive the kuffaar [infidels] in war in any way possible, except if that would mean breaking the terms of a treaty or trust, in which case it is not permitted.

According to Islamic law, the status of citizenship is considered a trust.  It cannot be violated.  Therefore, it would be impermissible for a Muslim-American to violate his American citizenship.  As such, it would be completely forbidden in Islam for a Muslim-American to plot against the United States of America.  Such a person would be resurrected on the Day of Judgment with the Banner of Treachery, according to Islamic theology.

According to Islamic law, when a person enters a non-Muslim country using a visa, by doing so he enters into a covenant of peace with them.  It thereby becomes forbidden for such a person to plot against them, and their wealth, lives, and property are considered sacrosanct.  As the classical Islamic jurist Imam Shafi’i opined: “If he is safe from them, they should be safe from him.”  In other words, a Muslim may not plot against the non-Muslims who allowed him to enter their country.  During the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, a man named Mughira bin Shuba converted to Islam while living in the lands of the non-Muslims.  Upon his conversion, Mughira killed the men while they were caught unaware, and ran off with their wealth.  When Mughira fled to the lands of Islam with this wealth, the Prophet Muhammad rejected his action, calling it “treachery.”  The Prophet said: “The wealth…is obtained through treachery, and we have no need of it.”  The ultraconservative Islamic website Islam-qa.com says:

When a Muslim enters a kaafir country, it is as if he entering into a peaceful agreement with them – which is the visa which is given to him to enable him to enter their country – so if he takes their wealth unlawfully, then he is breaking that agreement, in addition to being a thief.

The wealth that he steals from them is haraam. It was narrated that al-Mugheerah ibn Shu’bah kept company with some people during the Jaahiliyyah. He killed them and took their wealth, then he came and entered Islam. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “As for your Islam, I accept it, and as for the wealth, I have nothing to do with it.” According to a report narrated by Abu Dawood, “As for your Islam, we accept it, and as for the wealth it is obtained through treachery, and we have no need of it.”

(Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 2583; Abu Dawood, 2765; classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh Abi Dawood, 2403)

Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar said:

The phrase “and as for the wealth, I have nothing to do with it” means, I will not touch it because it was obtained through treachery. What we learn from this is that it is not permissible to take the wealth of the kuffaar [non-Muslims] by treachery when they have trusted you and granted you safety, because when people accompany one another (when travelling), they do so on the basis of mutual trust, and that trust should not be betrayed, whether the other person is a Muslim or a kaafir…

Fath al-Baari, 5/341

Al-Shaafa’i (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: When a Muslim enters dar al-harb (the non-Muslim lands) on peaceful terms, and finds himself in position to take something of their wealth, it is not permissible for him to take it, whether it is a little or a lot, because if he is safe from them, they should be safe from him…

Al-Sarkhasi (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: It is not right for a Muslim who is on peaceful terms with them to betray them, because betrayal is haraam. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Every betrayer will have a banner by his backside on the Day of Resurrection, by which his betrayal will be known.”

If he betrays them and steals their wealth, and brings it to the Muslim lands, it is not right for a Muslim to buy from him if he knows about that, because he has obtained it in an evil manner, and buying from him is encouraging him in that, which it is not right for the Muslim to do. The basic principle in this matter is the hadeeth of al-Mugheerah ibn Shu’bah (may Allaah be pleased with him), when he killed his companions and brought their wealth to Madeenah and became Muslim, and asked the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) to take the khums of his wealth, and he said, “As for your Islam, we accept it, and as for the wealth it is obtained through treachery, and we have no need of it.”

Al-Mabsoot, 10/96

Al-Sarkhasi (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: It is not right for a Muslim who is on peaceful terms with them to betray them, because betrayal is haraam. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Every betrayer will have a banner by his backside on the Day of Resurrection, by which his betrayal will be known.” If he betrays them and steals their wealth, and brings it to the Muslim lands, it is not right for a Muslim to buy from him if he knows about that, because he has obtained it in an evil manner, and buying from him is encouraging him in that, which it is not right for the Muslim to do. The basic principle in this matter is the hadeeth of al-Mugheerah ibn Shu’bah (may Allaah be pleased with him), when he killed his companions and brought their wealth to Madeenah and became Muslim, and asked the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) to take the khums of his wealth, and he said, “As for your Islam, we accept it, and as for the wealth it is obtained through treachery, and we have no need of it.”

Al-Mabsoot, 10/96

It is very clear: Islam does not permit Muslim-Americans to engage in treachery against their fellow American citizens, or against the American state.  Deceit/deception is only allowed against those with whom one is at war with, not against those who “have trusted you and granted you safety.”  Muslim-Americans are granted safety and refuge in the United States, and therefore it is not permissible to betray this trust, especially not by treachery.

It is not even allowed to steal electricity from the government, let alone plot against it!  The same website says:

Stealing phone time from a kaafir [unbeliever] state

[Question:] I decided to ask about…stolen phone time….Many people justify [stealing phone time] by saying that the government is not Muslim and is hostile towards Islam and Muslims, so we are entitled, indeed obliged, to corrupt their economy. So they regard this as permissible if the phones belong to the government.

[Answer:] It is not permissible for you to transgress against the property of this government even if they are kaafirs, because they have trusted you and have allowed you to enter their land on the basis of this trust, and you have promised to respect their trust and not betray it. Simply by entering their land you have given them this covenant and promise, otherwise they would not have allowed you to enter.  The Muslim should not break his promise or covenant deceitfully or betray a trust. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“And fulfil (every) covenant. Verily, the covenant will be questioned about”

[al-Isra’ 17:34]

“O you who believe! Fulfil (your) obligations”

[al-Maa'idah 5:1]

And the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “The signs of the hypocrite are three: when he speaks he lies, when he makes a promise he breaks it, and when he is entrusted with something, he betrays that trust.” Agreed upon; narrated from Abu Hurayrah. Muslim added: “… even though he prays and fasts and claims to be a Muslim.”

Notice that this ultraconservative Islamic website forbids even waging “stealth economic jihad” against the United States.  Treachery is not permitted at all.  The idea, then, that Muslim-Americans are conspiring against their government, supposedly because “war is deceit/deception”, is completely bogus.  It is alarmism of the highest order.

Although Robert Spencer will insist on interpreting the religion of Islam for Muslims, what is known to Muslims is that the deceit/deception being referred to by the Prophet Muhammad was simply fooling the enemy that one’s troops are located at X location instead of Y.  Or to make the enemy think that the assault will come during the evening but in fact it comes at noon.  To analogize all this to World War II, the type of deception that is permitted in Islam would be the Allies’ fooling the Nazis as to where the invasion would take place.  The forbidden type, i.e. treachery, would be the Nazis’ attacking the Soviet Union in violation of their mutual pact.

Do Robert Spencer’s Claims Sound Familiar?

Notice the title of Robert Spencer’s chapter: “Islamic Law: Lie, Steal, and Kill.”  And he says further that Islam “sanctions lying, stealing, and killing in order to advance Islam.” ^[22] Spencer’s claims against Islam are in fact frighteningly similar to those made against Judaism by anti-Semites.  Bein Yisroel Lo’amim, which describes itself as “a global Jewish organization with the goal of undermining the foundations of anti-Semitism that have led to so many tragedies in the past”, declares (emphasis is ours):

Many anti-Semites, in their efforts to vilify the Jewish people, have focused on certain passages in the Talmud which, they claim, prove that the Talmud considers gentiles [non-Jews] less than human and permits Jews to kill, steal from and cheat gentiles. Such propaganda, supported with inaccurate, misleading and out of context quotations, has always existed, and formed the substance of many Jewish-gentiles debates over the centuries. However, today the problem is perhaps greater than ever due to the widespread accessibility of this material via the Internet.

Just as anti-Semites have always claimed that Talmudic law “permits Jews to kill, steal, and cheat gentiles [non-Jews]“, so do Islamophobes like Robert Spencer claim that Islamic law “sanctions lying, stealing, and killing” against non-Muslims.  One hundred years from now people will wonder how people could have actually believed such nonsense about Islam, just as today we wonder how people could have believed such stuff about Judaism. And let’s be clear: the anti-Semites bring forth their “proof” just as Islamophobes do.  anti-Semites quote extensively from the Talmud, the most authoritative book of Judaism.  For example, one anti-Semitic website cites the following proof from the Talmud:

Hitting a Jew is the same as hitting God

Sanhedrin 58b. If a heathen (gentile) hits a Jew, the gentile must be killed.

O.K. to Cheat Non-Jews

Sanhedrin 57a . A Jew need not pay a gentile (“Cuthean”) the wages owed him for work.

Jews Have Superior Legal Status

Baba Kamma 37b. “If an ox of an Israelite gores an ox of a Canaanite there is no liability; but if an ox of a Canaanite gores an ox of an Israelite…the payment is to be in full.”

Jews May Steal from Non-Jews

Baba Mezia 24a . If a Jew finds an object lost by a gentile (“heathen”) it does not have to be returned. (Affirmed also in Baba Kamma 113b).

Sanhedrin 76a. God will not spare a Jew who “marries his daughter to an old man or takes a wife for his infant son or returns a lost article to a Cuthean…”

Jews May Rob and Kill Non-Jews

Sanhedrin 57a . When a Jew murders a gentile (“Cuthean”), there will be no death penalty. What a Jew steals from a gentile he may keep. Baba Kamma 37b. The gentiles are outside the protection of the law and God has “exposed their money to Israel.”

Jews May Lie to Non-Jews

Baba Kamma 113a. Jews may use lies (“subterfuges”) to circumvent a Gentile.

Non-Jewish Children are Sub-Human

Yebamoth 98a. All gentile children are animals. Abodah Zarah 36b. Gentile girls are in a state of niddah (filth) from birth. Abodah Zarah 22a-22b . Gentiles prefer sex with cows.

In fact, just Google the words “Judaism cheat Gentiles”, “Talmud cheat Gentiles”, and similar such search phrases, and you will find dozens of anti-Semitic websites.  In reality, they look no different than the sites geared against Islam.  Just replace “Judaism” with “Islam” and “Talmud” with “Quran.”  The anti-Semitic site I quoted above places a disclaimer that they are not racists, just as Robert Spencer always has to clarify that he opposes white supremacists who use his material.  The anti-Semitic site reads, in a very Jihad Watch sort of way:

The racist, white supremacist “Stormfront” organization has illegally appropriated this Talmud articles against our wishes and without our permissible.  (Legal action has been initiated and litigation is pending).  We are opposed to all forms of racism, whether “white Aryan” or rabbinic.

Those of you who follow Robert Spencer’s site will realize the similarities, even to the laughable “legal action has been initiated…”  (What ever happened to Spencer’s supposed litigation against whoever registered FuckIslam.com and redirected to his site?  I guess most court systems do not permit people to sue their own selves.)

Notice the similarity between the title of the anti-Semitic article, Truth about the Talmud: Racist, Rabbinic Hate Literature, and Robert Spencer’s Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion. Likewise, Jihad Watch claims Robert Spencer is “the acclaimed scholar of Islam”, just as the anti-Semitic website claims that the author of the article is the “foremost scholar of Judaism in the English-speaking world.” The anti-Semitic site is a bit more modest, in that it constrains it to “the English-speaking world” only!

The anti-Semitic site goes on to say that they are not racists, since Judaism is a religion not  a race.  Sound familiar?  It’s exactly what the Islamophobes say to justify their bigotry towards Islam.  And if they are pushed more, they might say they are only opposed to “radical Islam” just as the anti-Semitic site will claim that it is only opposed to “rabbinical Judaism.”  The fact that the Islamophobic rhetoric is so similar to anti-Semitic propaganda is worrisome indeed.

Ironically, Robert Spencer’s books against Islam read very similar to anti-Christian books as well. For example, Spencer has penned a book entitled The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, a title remarkably similar to T. Joyner Drolsum’s anti-Christian work entitled Unholy Writ: An Infidel’s Critique of the Bible.  Spencer entitles chapter 6 of his book “Islamic Law: Lie, Steal, and Kill.”  How remarkably similar is this title to Drolsum’s section heading of “Biblically Sanctioned Lying, Killing, and Stealing”, the only difference being in the order of the words!  Drolsum argues that “there are numerous instances in the bible” of lying, killing, stealing, “often with God’s blessing”, which “appear to be something of a divinely sanctioned double standard” between believers and unbelievers.  He goes on to say that “God promotes killing elsewhere in the bible and is often directly involved in it” and that “Paul and others are willing to lie a little to further God’s truth (Rom 3:7; 2 Cor. 12:16). ^[23]

Although I will refrain from commenting on the alleged “double standard” of the God of the Bible, I will certainly comment on the double standard of Robert Spencer:  how many times will I hammer him with his inconsistencies?  How many times will he be caught sparing no stone when it comes to Islam, while found living in the flimsiest of glass houses himself?

Lying About the Religion

Robert Spencer claims that Muslims are permitted to lie about their religion. Hence, Muslim-American spokesmen will come on television and routinely lie about Islam, according to Spencer.  However, the truth is that it is Spencer who is lying, and no such belief exists in the Islamic religion.  There are, as we have seen, only three permitted instances of lying, and this is not one of them.

In fact, lying about the religion is considered more heinous than a regular lie, and constitutes an act of disbelief (kufr).  It is classified as a “lie against God and His Messenger”, and leads straight to Hell.  For example, a Muslim is not permitted to say to a non-Muslim that beer is permitted in Islam, even if he wishes by this to entice the person to Islam.  Not only is this not acceptable, but such a Muslim would be considered an apostate from the religion, because he lied about Islam (which is considered a lie against God and His Messenger).  Similarly, a Muslim who denies that jihad is an active part of Islam is considered an apostate, which is why mainstream Muslims expelled Ahmadis/Qadianis from Islam.  (I will write an article on the topic of jihad in the future, and in that I will explain that jihad does not mean what many people think it does.)

There is not a single instance in the life of the Prophet Muhammad in which he lied about Islam or allowed anyone else to do that.  Spencer’s claim–that Islam permits lying about the religion to further it–is complete fabrication.  It is Spencer who is lying when he claims that Islam allows for lying about the religion.  The reality is the exact opposite: lying about the religion is completely forbidden.  This is why many Muslims are cautious about giving religious rulings, for fear that they mistakenly say something about Islam that is not really true.  If this is their attitude with simple mistakes, one can imagine the opposition to intentional lying.  The burden of proof is on Spencer to prove otherwise.

Lying to Further the Religion

Closely linked to the above claim is the idea, furthered by Robert Spencer, that Muslims are allowed to lie in order to “further the religion of Islam.”  This is, once again, a fanciful argument.  There is no proof whatsoever that Muslims are allowed to do this.  The burden of proof is on Spencer to provide a verse from the Quran or Prophetic tradition in which this is allowed.

What kind of vile religion would permit lying in order to further the religion, wonders an incredulous Spencer.  The gentleman doth protest too much.  Although some Christian theologians were staunchly against all lies, other major Christian thinkers were less particular about it, especially if it would further the interests of the church.  Martin Luther, the founder of Protestant Christianity, felt that “lying for the sake of the Christian church would not be a sin.”  Luther wondered:

What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church…a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies that would not be against God… ^[24]

Can one imagine Spencer’s reaction if an Islamic text said that “lying for the sake of the Islamic religion would not be a sin”?  But for some reason, this statement–ascribed to the founder of Protestantism–does not find Spencer’s ire.

And what about Spencer’s own Catholicism?  The Catholic Encyclopedia writes that “St. John Chrysostom held that it is lawful to deceive others for their benefit, and Cassian taught that we may sometimes lie as we take medicine, driven to it by sheer necessity.”  So would “deceiving others” to bring them to Christ be considered “for their benefit”?

The gentleman doth protest too much methinks!

Taqiyya and Kitman

One of the favorite buzz words of Islamophobes is “taqiyya!”  They translate it to mean “holy lying” (alternatively as “holy hypocrisy” or “religious deception”) and say that it is a central tenet of Islam that Muslims are allowed to lie to non-Muslims.  When moderate Muslim spokesmen declare Islam to be a religion of peace, Islamophobes like Robert Spencer will accuse these Muslims of “taqiyya!”  Spencer explains in his book:

The doctrines of religious deception (taqiyya and kitman) are most often identified with Shi’ite Islam and are ostensibly rejected by Sunnis (over 85 percent of Muslims worldwide) because they were sanctioned by the Prophet.  However, they can still be found in traditions that Sunni Muslims consider most reliable…When Shi’ite Muslims were persecuted by Sunnis, they developed the doctrine of taqiyya, or concealment…

Closely related to this is the doctrine of kitman, or mental reservation, which is telling the truth, but not the whole truth, with an intention to mislead.  Sunnis have also practiced them throughout Islamic history, because of their Qur’anic foundation.  Ibn Kathir, who was no Shi’ite, explains that “the scholars agreed that if a person is forced into disbelief, it is permissible for him to either go along with them in the interests of self-preservation, or to refuse.” ^[25]

Taqiyya is a doctrine that developed in Shi’ism, exactly for the reason that Spencer stated, namely persecution at the hands of the majority Sunnis.  Based on this belief, Shi’ites could pretend to be Sunnis in order to avoid torture and death.  In other words, if a Sunni tyrant threatened to kill a Shi’ite, that Shi’ite could claim to be a pious Sunni and thereby save his life.  Although it is a Shi’ite-specific doctrine, it is true that there is some justification for such a belief in Sunni canonical sources.  In fact, Robert Spencer himself quotes the relevant Quranic verse, namely 16:106, which reads:

Anyone who, after having once accepted faith in God, verbally renounces his faith and of his own accord opens his heart to unbelief, on such falls the condemnation of God, and a tremendous penalty awaits such.  This, to be sure, does not apply to those who do it under duress if their hearts are full of faith. (Quran, 16:106)

If we read Azbab ul-Nuzul (The Reasons for Revelation), we find the context of this verse:

Said Ibn ‘Abbas said: “This verse was revealed about Ammar ibn Yasir. The idolaters had taken him away along with his father Yasir, his mother Sumayyah, [etc.]…and tortured them. As for Sumayyah, she was tied up between two camels and stabbed with a spear in her female organ…[and] killed. Her husband Yasir was also killed…As for ‘Ammar, he was coerced to let them hear what they wanted to hear [i.e. renunciation of Islam]. God’s Messenger was told that Ammar has renounced faith, but he said: ‘Never, Ammar is filled with faith from his head to his toes; faith is admixed with his flesh and blood!’ Ammar then went to see God’s Messenger, crying.  God’s Messenger used his hands to wipe Ammar’s tears, and said: ‘If they return to you, let them hear again what you told them’. Then Almighty God revealed this verse [16:1o6].”

Mujahid said: “This verse was revealed about some Meccans who accepted faith [i.e. Islam]… The Quraysh caught up with them…and coerced them to renounce their faith. It is about them that this verse was revealed.”

It amazes me that Robert Spencer would take any issue with this.  If Al-Qaeda captured some Christian missionaries and threatened to kill them unless they declare belief in Islam, would any sane person take issue with a feigned confession?  Even U.S. law takes into account acts done under duress.

This, i.e. renouncing Islam under duress, is the only application of “taqiyya” that exists in Sunni Islam, which 85% of Muslims follow.  Virtually all Shi’ites believe in a similar restriction of taqiyya.  Did some fringe Shi’ite sects of the past develop the doctrine of Taqiyya more elaborately?  I honestly don’t know because I haven’t studied such a topic (and neither has Robert Spencer).  I have read accusations by Sunnis against Shi’ism that say so (and Robert Spencer often reproduces these charges), but excuse me if I take that with a grain of salt.  It’s a bit like taking information about Catholicism from a fundamentalist Evangelical Protestant. But in any case, what is 1,000% certain is that Sunni Muslims do not believe in any other application of taqiyya except renouncing Islam under duress, i.e. torture and death.

Once again, we find Robert Spencer throwing stones from his glass house.  “Taqiyya” is permitted in the Judeo-Christian tradition itself.  Although there is some debate wether renouncing one’s faith is permitted or not, Judaism permits lying to save one’s own life. JLaw.com, a website dedicated to expounding Jewish law, declares:

There is no question that Jewish law obligates one to prevaricate in order to save one’s own life or the life of another person.

Rabbi Michael Broyde writes:

It can be clearly demonstrated that lying to save the life of an innocent person is permissible. Thus, this lie becomes legally justifiable to save one’s own life too.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin writes:

Jewish law condemns as foolish and immoral both telling the truth to an evil person and thereby enabling him to go on doing evil, or telling the truth to an evil person that leads to your [own] murder.

And he says further:

We are permitted to lie, or otherwise deceive, unscrupulous people even if we only suspect that our lives may be in danger. ^[26]

The Christian tradition has generally been less tolerant towards lying, as Rabbi Telushkin explains:

Some of the greatest figures in Christian theology and Western thought have argued that lying is always wrong, even when life is at stake. Saint Augustine, the great fourth-century Church Father (in his treatise “On Lying”) argued that lying bars one from eternal life; hence, it makes no sense to give up one’s place in the next world to save another life if it means having to lie: “Does he not speak most perversely who says that one person ought to die spiritually, so another may live? …Since, then, eternal life is lost by lying, a lie may never be told for the preservation of the temporal life of another.”

Some fifteen hundred years after Saint Augustine, Immanuel Kant, in an effort to establish a universally binding secular ethic, also condemned all lying, whatever the circumstances. Thus, Kant taught (in his Critique of Practical Reason) that if a man fleeing for his life is hiding in our house, and the would-be murderer asks whether “our friend who is pursued by him has taken refuge in our house,” we are forbidden to lie or mislead him.

The Catholic Encyclopedia expounds:

According to the common Catholic teaching it is never allowable to tell a lie, not even to save human life.

The stricter Christian position can be partially explained by the fact that after the rise of Augustine the Christians were never generally faced with a situation like the Inquisition.  In other words, they had the convenience of theorizing about the greatness of martyrs, without facing the fear of having their religion being wiped off the face of the earth by those in power.  (Contrary to the misconception harbored by Islamophobes, the Christians under Islamic law were generally never forced to convert en mass to Islam as Jews and Muslims were in many parts of Christendom.)

After World War II, this absolutist position against lying became less tenable.  The question arose: was it permissible to lie to Nazi stormtroopers when they ask you “are you hiding any Jews in your attic?” Should we now berate Robert Spencer’s Catholic faith, and say that it is his faith that is responsible for the killing of so many Jews during the Holocaust? Should we impugn his entire faith for the lackluster response of the Catholic church to the plight of Jews during this period of intense persecution?

In any case, many Christians now believe that lying to save life is generally permitted. Christian professor Dr. Michael Heiser includes the question “Are you hiding Jews in your attic?” as one of those instances in which it is permitted to lie.  Surely this is the more sensible position.  If the church permitted lying to further Christianity, as Martin Luther and others believed, then surely it would be permitted to lie to save life.

Eric Sammons, a Catholic speaker and head of evangelization at St. John Neumann parish, writes (emphasis is ours):

Can we lie to save lives?

One of the classic moral dilemmas of the 20th century was the case of hiding Jews during Nazi Germany. If a Nazi officer comes to the door asking if any Jews are in the house, are you morally permitted to lie to the officer in order to protect the lives of those Jews hiding within? …The answer is that telling an untruth in such a situation is not a lie, and therefore it can be moral to be deceptive in such situations…So we cannot “lie” to save a life, but we can tell an untruth if necessary, but in doing so, that is not a lie.

Similarly, Islamic jurists discussed and debated this situation.  Their rulings are remarkably similar to Jewish and Christian opinions on the matter.  George F. Hourani discusses how Islamic jurists of one theological school argued that lying was permitted in such a case, whereas another argued “one can always escape from such a dilemma by insinuations or silence…[instead of] a direct lie.” ^[27] An application of this came during World War II, when for example a French mosque hid and saved almost two thousand Jews from their Nazi tormentors.  Is this the kitman (i.e. “mental reservation” or “half-truths”) that Spencer so opposes?

All three Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) discussed the hypothetical situation in which hoodlums–bent on murdering a man hiding inside your house–knock on your door and ask if that man is inside.  The Jewish tradition, as we have seen, is unequivocal in the fact that in this case lying is permitted. As for Christianity, the Catholic Encyclopedia says (emphasis is ours):

According to the common Catholic teaching it is never allowable to tell a lie, not even to save human life. A lie is something intrinsically evil, and as evil may not be done that good may come of it, we are never allowed to tell a lie. However, we are also under an obligation to keep secrets faithfully, and sometimes the easiest way of fulfilling that duty is to say what is false, or to tell a lie. Writers of all creeds and of none, both ancient and modern, have frankly accepted this position. They admit the doctrine of the lie of necessity, and maintain that when there is a conflict between justice and veracity it is justice that should prevail. The common Catholic teaching has formulated the theory of mental reservation as a means by which the claims of both justice and veracity can be satisfied.

The entry goes on to talk about the Catholic doctrine of “mental reservation”.  If, for example, hoodlums demand to know if a man is hiding inside your home, it is permissible to deceive them using mental reservation:

Such expressions as “He is not at home” were called equivocations, or amphibologies, and when there was good reason for using them their lawfulness was admitted by all. If the person inquired for was really at home, but did not wish to see the visitor, the meaning of the phrase “He is not at home” was restricted by the mind of the speaker to this sense, “He is not at home for you, or to see you.” Hence equivocations and amphibologies came to be called mental restrictions or reservations…

All Catholic writers were, and are, agreed that when there is good reason, such expressions as the above may be made use of, and that they are not lies. Those who hear them may understand them in a sense which is not true, but their self-deception may be permitted by the speaker for a good reason.

Deception using “mental reservation” is therefore permitted in Catholicism, if for “a good reason.”  What’s quite surprising is that this is in fact the exact same belief in Shi’ism that Robert Spencer takes offense to, namely kitman.  Let’s recall Spencer’s own definition of kitman, as follows:

Closely related to this [i.e. taqiyya] is the doctrine of kitman, or mental reservation, which is telling the truth, but not the whole truth, with an intention to mislead. ^[28]

What is truly mind-boggling is that Robert Spencer takes offense to kitman which he himself translates as “mental reservation” when in fact his own religious creed believes in mental reservation!  Spencer didn’t even choose to translate the word kitman differently! To reiterate: Spencer opposes Shi’ite Islam’s belief in mental reservation, but either ignores or is oblivious to the Catholic doctrine in support of mental reservation!  This is truly amazing, and really makes me think that Spencer seriously thought nobody would challenge his writing. His own religious doctrine sanctions the use of kitman if there is “a good reason” to use it.

When the Nazis rounded up Jews, many Jews claimed to be Christians in order to save themselves and their children.  This is “taqiyya” in every sense of the word.  (The word “taqiyya” is properly translated to “religious dissimulation” and is accepted in Judaism as it is in Shi’ism.)  Would Robert Spencer like to condemn these Jews for engaging in taqiyya?  As we can see, taqiyya and kitman are both found in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Of course, the reality is that most Muslims have never even heard of the words “taqiyya” or “kitman” until Islamophobes bring them up.  Usually what happens is that an Islamophobe will mention these words, and then the bewildered Muslim will have to go look up the meaning of these words, usually finding definitions on an Islamophobic website.  Taqiyya and kitman are obscure words that were only found in any real significance in old Shi’ite texts, mostly in regards to situations of mass religious persecution.  Today, these two words have fallen into utter disuse and are only invoked by Islamophobes.  Contrary to the claims made by Robert Spencer and co., taqiyya and kitman do not form a fundamental part of Islam.  Rather, these are two doctrines that have fallen into disuse and obscurity, and were in fact never developed doctrines in mainstream Islam.

Showing Friendship to Disbelievers Outwardly but not Inwardly?

In the same chapter of his book, Robert Spencer quotes verse 3:28 in the Quran, which reads as follows:

Let not the believers take the disbelievers for awliya (friends) rather than believers; and whoever does this God will have nothing to do with him, except by way of precaution when you fear them. (Quran, 3:28)

Spencer follows this verse by saying:

Remember that the next time you see a Muslim [American] spokesman on television professing his friendship with non-Muslim Americans and his loyalty to the United States. ^[29]

In this manner, Spencer uses verse 3:28 to support his xenophobic conspiracy theory: Muslim-Americans, especially their nefarious spokesmen, are just professing loyalty to the United States (“taqiyya!”) but in reality plotting to overthrow Western democracy to replace it with Islamist Sharia.  This is the basis for his alarmist claim that Muslim-American organizations are involved in “stealth jihad.” His claim seems outlandish at first, but he convinces his audience by pointing to the verse above, which says that you can only take non-Muslims as friends “by way of precaution”, i.e. taqiyya.  Spencer then quotes the tafsir (commentary) of this verse, written by Ibn Kathir, a prominent medieval jurist.  Spencer explains verse 3:28 as follows:

In other words, don’t make friends with unbelievers except to “guard yourselves from them”: Pretend to be their friends so that you can strengthen yourself against them.  The distinguished Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir explains that, in this verse, “Allah prohibited His believing servants from becoming supporters of the disbelievers, or to take them as comrades with whom they develop friendships, rather than the believers.”  However, exempted from this rule were “those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers.  In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly.”

In fact, Ibn Kathir goes on to say:

Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, “We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.”

Based on this, the Islamophobes argue that the Muslim-Americans, especially those pesky spokesmen, are smiling at our faces while their hearts curse us!  It’s right there in the Quran and the classical commentary of the Quran!

Case closed?  Not really.  A closer analysis of verse 3:28 gives another picture.  While it is true that many fundamentalist Muslims believe it is forbidden to become friends with non-Muslims, moderate Muslims believe the term awliya does not properly translate to “friends.”  Rather, the Arabic term awliya refers to a specific type of friendship, an unequal friendship to be exact.  It refers to a relationship wherein a Muslim is considered an inferior, receiving protection from the non-Muslim; in particular, the Muslim is at the mercy of the non-Muslim.  A better translation of the word awliya would be “protecting friends”, or simply “patrons.”  There is abundant proof for this, but to do the topic justice I will write another article on it in the near future.

Suffice to say, there are very similar verses in the Bible that seem to say that a Christian should not be friends with infidels.  In particular, 2 Corinthians 6:14 forbids being friends with infidels, i.e. “do not be yoked with unbelievers”, but many Christians understand it to mean “do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers”, very similar to how Muslims view 3:28 as referring to unequal friendships.

The prohibition of taking disbelievers as awliya is repeated in verse 60:1, wherein God says:

O you who believer, do not take My enemies–who are your enemies as well–as your awliya–offering them your love, even though they have rejected the Truth that has come to you, and have on the contrary driven out the Prophet and yourselves from your homes, simply because you believe in your Lord God!  (Quran, 60:1)

Just a few lines down, God clarifies that He is only talking about those disbelievers who oppress the Muslims by fighting them for their faith and driving the Muslims out of their homes:

As for those disbelievers who do not fight against you on account of your faith, and who do not expel you from your homelands, God does not forbid you to show them kindness and equity, for verily God loves the equitable!  God only forbids you from taking as awliya (protecting friends) those who fight you for your faith, and who drive you out of your homes and support others in driving you out.  Those who seek their protection are indeed wrongdoers.  (Quran, 60:8-9)

We see here quite clearly how the Islamophobes take verses out of context, reproducing the first part but not the second part which explains that the Quran is only referring to those disbelievers who oppress the Muslims.  Even if we–for argument’s sake–accept the definition of awliya as simply “friends”, the Quranic verse would only prohibit taking those disbelievers as friends who oppress the Muslims…not all non-Muslims.

Furthermore, 3:28 was revealed in a certain context: the Prophet Muhammad had begun preaching his new religion in Mecca, his birthplace.  The pagans of Mecca oppressed and tortured his followers.  As has been discussed earlier, the Prophet Muhammad gave permission to some of the weaker and more vulnerable converts to pretend to renounce their faith in order to avoid being tortured and killed.  (This developed into the Shi’ite doctrine of taqiyya.)  Eventually, the persecution reached such a level that the Prophet ordered his followers to flee to the city of Yathrib (Medina), an event that came to be known as the Hijra (Emigration).  However, some of the early Muslims were too weak to travel and/or were prevented from leaving by the pagans of Mecca.  It was these that were permitted to use “taqiyya” to save their lives.

The pagans of Mecca threatened to destroy the city-state of Medina, and with it the religion of Islam.  They established a network of spies in Medina, by reaching out to some of the non-Muslims of Medina as well as some of the Muslims weak in faith.  The looming threat of a pagan conquest of Medina caused many of the weaker willed Muslims to lose their faith in the Prophet; many of them sought the protection of the Meccan pagans.   It was these Muslims that the Quran was calling out in verse 3:28 and 60:1, urging the Muslims not to “take the disbelievers (i.e. the pagans plotting to overthrow Medina) for awliya (protecting friends) rather than believers (the Prophet and the defenders of Medina).”

The words “except by way of precaution when you fear them” was referring to those Muslims left behind in Mecca, reassuring them that they were not to be faulted for trying to save their lives (from torture and death) by using “taqiyya.”  However, a key point here is that the Muslims of Mecca were commanded to flee to Medina, and whoever did not do so was considered sinful, except those physically incapable of doing so.  The Quran says:

When the angels collect the souls of those who die in sin against themselves (because they did not emigrate from Mecca), the angels will ask: “What was wrong with you?”  The people will answer: “We were too weak on earth.”  The angels will say: “Was God’s earth not spacious enough for you to migrate to some other place?”  For such the goal is Hell, what an evil refuge!  Except those who are truly weak and prevented by the oppressors, those men, women, and children who have no means in their power to emigrate.  For these, there is hope that God will forgive them: for God blots out sins and forgives again and again.  He who forsakes his home in the Cause of God finds the earth wide and spacious, with many places of refuge.  Should he die as a refugee from his home, his reward from God is sure.  God is Most Forgiving and Most Merciful.  (Quran, 4:97-100)

Clearly, it is not appropriate to analogize the circumstance in verse 3:28 to the situation of Muslim-Americans today.  Unlike the Muslims of pagan Mecca who were tortured and killed if they professed their faith in Islam, Muslim-Americans have freedom of religion.  The state will not kill Muslim-Americans for being Muslim.  Yes, if Muslim-Americans are ever rounded up and sent to concentration camps, as some of the Islamophobes so desire, then in that situation a Muslim-American could use taqiyya to deny that he is a Muslim.  But what relevance is taqiyya when their lives are not at stake?  Even the verse that Spencer himself quotes, verse 3:28, says “except by way of precaution when you fear them.”  Do Muslim-Americans fear for their lives?  Spencer doesn’t even believe that Islamophobia is real, let alone the idea that Muslim-Americans fear for their lives due to their profession of faith, so how does this verse apply at all?

It would only apply to a situation such as the Inquisition in Spain.  And even in this case, the first option would not be taqiyya.  Rather, the Muslims would be commanded to emigrate to another place, such as to the Muslim majority world, wherein they could freely practice their religion.  Any Muslim who willingly stayed behind in Spain and pretended to become Christian would be considered sinful (and go to Hell!).  God would only forgive those Muslims who were physically incapable of leaving Spain, due to handicap or prevention by the Spanish authorities.  Therefore, we see that taqiyya is a last case option, and only when there is no other choice.  Even if a Muslim-American felt like he was tortured or killed for his faith in the United States, he would still have the option of migrating to another country.  Taqiyya would simply not be an option, and anyone who resorted to that would be considered sinful and Hell-bound.

Furthermore, taqiyya has nothing to do with lying about Islam, or lying to further one’s religion.  Rather, taqiyya simply means lying about one’s own faith, denying one’s Muslim identity in order to save one’s life.  So how does it make sense for Robert Spencer and co. to claim that Muslim-American spokesmen are “doing taqiyya”?  Those spokesmen are not only boldly claiming their Muslim-ness, but they are claiming to be the spokesmen of Muslims!  Surely, Spencer should only accuse non-Muslims of taqiyya; for example, nutty Spencer has alluded to the fact that President Obama may be a Muslim doing taqiyya.  But even that doesn’t make sense, since it is not as if Obama would be killed if he openly stated he was Muslim!

The reality is that Robert Spencer et al. throw around the word “taqiyya” with little care for its actual meaning.  It’s an attempt to prey on the ignorance of the masses, who have no idea what the word means.  It is quite sloppy rhetoric, with no real substantive value.

Kol Nidre

If Robert Spencer vilifies Islam because of the concept of taqiyya, then let him also vilify Judaism for the belief in Kol Nidre. This is a prayer said by Jews every year on Yom Kippur, which reads as follows:

All vows and oaths, all promises and obligations, all renunciations and responses, that we shall make from this Yom Kippur till the next–may it come to us in peace–all of them we retract. May we be absolved of them all, may we be released from them all, may they all be null and void, may they all be of no effect. May these vows not be vows, may these oaths not be oaths, may these responses not be responses.

Anti-Semites have used this Jewish prayer to vilify Judaism, arguing that it exonerates Jews from all truth-telling to Gentiles (non-Jews): all vows, oaths, promises, and obligations to infidels–for the entire year–can be broken.  Just imagine, simply imagine, if this prayer was an Islamic one!  Imagine the reaction of Robert Spencer!

Jewish apologists argue, quite rightfully, that this prayer was historically used in a time of great persecution, and must therefore be understood in that context: Christian authorities were forcing Jews to take oaths against their own faith.  But an anti-Semite would not care for such details, and still rejoice in the fact that “Judaism allows its adherents to lie to infidels!”  How is Spencer’s argument against Islam any different?  If anything, due to the seemingly explicit text of the Kol Nidre, a stronger argument could be made against Judaism’s Kol Nidre than Shi’te Islam’s taqiyya.

Benjamin Sarlin of The Daily Beast noted the marked similarity between the Islamophobic taqiyya line of argument with the Kol Nidre tool used by anti-Semites:

“Have you heard of ‘taqiyya?’” [Geert] Wilders said, referring to a provision in Islamic law in which believers can conceal their faith in order to escape physical harm and persecution. “Taqiyya means Muslims can lie. They are even rewarded to lie, and they should lie. I’m not saying all do, but most of the time it’s Muslims living under non-Muslim rule in non-Muslim countries. Taqiyya means that they can fool and lie and are allowed, even have incentive, to lie until they become stronger and change their tune.”

The explanation bore a creeping resemblance to anti-Semites’ historic use of the Kol Nidre prayer on Yom Kippur, in which religious oaths made before God are declared void, to inaccurately claim that Jews had carte blanche to lie.

The white supremacist website WhiteRevolution.com boasts an article entitled Kol Nidre: Judaism’s License to Lie.  How remarkably similar is this to an Islamophobic website entitled Taqiyya is Islamic license to lie.  The racist white supremacist website explains what Kol Nidre is, and then asks the readers: “Can you trust your Jewish Congressman?”  (I’ll give you one guess as to what the answer is!)  And once again, quite similarly, we find that Islamophobes–such as this website that links back to Spencer’s Jihad Watch–asks about a Muslim Congressman: “Will he be allowed to practice taqiyya?”

If a Jewish person says that he doesn’t believe in Kol Nidre–at least not in the way the anti-Semite claims–then the anti-Semite nullifies this by saying that the Jew is just lying (and will be forgiven because of Kol Nidre).  Likewise, if a Muslim claims that he doesn’t believe in taqiyya–at least not in the way that the Islamophobe claims–then this will be nullified by saying that the Muslim is just lying (and using taqiyya).

An anti-Semite asks “How can a Jew take an oath of loyalty to America, when he is allowed by his religion to lie and disregard this oath if it benefits him or his people?”  Likewise, Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch argues that a Muslim-American taking an oath of loyalty to America is “the purest taqiyya, or kitman, or combination of both…” and that such “an oath, given to an Infidel polity” is invalid in Islam.

If we were to use the tactics of Robert Spencer against any other religion, including Judaism and Christianity, we could fill pages and pages with alarmist accusations.  For example, in his book entitled A Code of Jewish Ethics Rabbi Telushkin lists over thirty different instances in which a Jew is permitted to lie.  If Islam is to be considered a “lying religion” for permitting three instances of lying, then what can be said of a religion that permits 30+ instances of lying?  Rabbi Telushkin says that one of those instances of “permitted lying” in the Bible was with regard to lying to idolaters in order to kill them for their idolatry:

Jewish law normally opposes “sting operations” in which police or other government officials lie and attempt to bribe or otherwise induce a person to commit a crime…However, the Bible does record a “sting operation” that was set up to catch only those who were engaging in behavior that Judaism regards as abhorrent: idolatry.  Fifty-one of the Torah’s 613 commandments oppose idol worship.  During a spread of such worship in ancient Israel–a veritable life-and-death struggle betwene the God of Israel and the god Baal–King Jehu pretended to be a follower of Baal (as his father, Ahab, had been).  The king then invited the priests of Baal to a large religious gathering.  When they arrived, the Bible reports, “Jehu acted with guile in order to exterminate the worshippers of Baal” (II Kings 10:18-19). ^[30]

Can one imagine the reaction of Robert Spencer and co. if it had been an Islamic cleric that cited the Quran to claim that it is permitted to lie to infidels in order to kill them?

Spencer Tries to Slip Another Lie into His Work

As I was reviewing the section entitled “Lying: It’s wrong–except when it isn’t” in order to ensure that I had refuted each and every line Robert Spencer wrote, I noticed this doozie here:

Jihadists today have spoken of the usefulness of deceptive practices. ^[31]

Oh yeah, which ones?  Who and where?  What have they said?  Notice Spencer slips this in, without providing a single quote or reference to back his claim.  I’ve never seen an Al-Qaeda member or some other “jihadist” invoke taqiyya or kitman.  Far from it: they seem to openly declare their enmity and hatred for infidels.  They may have brutish beliefs, but they are painfully honest about these beliefs.  Although Al-Qaeda and co. operate sleeper cells, I’ve never seen any proof that they justify these based on any doctrine of taqiyya or kitman.  I’ve never seen any of the jihadists invoke taqiyya; instead, they vilify Shi’ites for believing in this doctrine.

Conclusion

The irony is not lost on the perceptive reader that Robert Spencer and the Islamophobes use deceptive arguments to claim that Muslims are engaging in “large-scale deception campaigns today.” ^[32] It is paranoid alarmism of the worst order, designed to spread anti-Muslim sentiment.  Spencer’s vitriol is similar to the anti-Muslim polemic used by the Church during the Crusades, which does not come as a surprise, considering that his book opens up with the Crusader slogan “Deus Vult!” (God wills it!) and the very last word in it is “Crusade.”  What is contained between “Deus Vult!” and “Crusade” is the propaganda needed to wage this Crusade that God so willed.

Taqiyya simply means that a Muslim can renounce his faith in order to save his life from torture or death.  The doctrine of taqiyya is found in Judaism, which commands its followers to save their own lives even by lying.  Many Christian thinkers also believe this is something permissible.  As for kitman, this means “mental reservation” (i.e. telling half the truth in order to mislead someone), and is a doctrine accepted by the Church.   Kitman is also accepted in Judaism.

If Muslims are to be vilified for believing in lying and using deceit in war, then Jews are to be condemned even more for believing that lying is permissible to kill idolaters for their idolatry.  If Muslims are to be vilified for allowing lying to save life, then Christians are to be vilified more for the belief that lying is permitted to further the interests of the Church.  Naturally, our opponents will balk and cry “tu quoque, tu quoque!”  They wish Islam to be judged by a standard that their own religious belief cannot withstand.  These Islamophobes engage in “mental reservation” when they mention half-truths about Islam.  One must wonder if Robert Spencer believes it is permissible to lie in order to further the interests of the Catholic church?  Considering that he is a fervent anti-Muslim Catholic apologist, it would not be hard to believe.

Footnotes

(Note: To properly view footnotes to this article, kindly click here.)

refer back to article 1. Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), p.79. ISBN 0-89526-013-1

refer back to article 2. Ibid.

refer back to article 3. Ibid.

refer back to article 4. Ibid.

refer back to article 5. Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Sahih al-Muslim

refer back to article 6. Joseph Telushkin, The Book of Jewish Values: A Day-by-Day Guide to Ethical Living, p.102. ISBN# 0609603302, 9780609603307

refer back to article 7. Ibid.

refer back to article 8. Ibid., p.104

refer back to article 9. Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol.3, Book 49, #85

refer back to article 10. Telushkin, p.103

refer back to article 11. see N.K. Singh’s The Prophet Muhammad and His Companions, pp.259-263. ISBN# 8187746467, 9788187746461

refer back to article 12. B’nai B’rith, Jewish Chautauqua Society; The Menorah: a monthly magazine for the Jewish home, Volume 33; p. 35. Menorah Pub. Co., 1902

refer back to article 13. Joseph Telushkin, A Code of Jewish Ethics, p.429. ISBN# 1400048354, 9781400048359

refer back to article 14. Robert M’Cheyne Edgar, British and Foreign Evangelical Review, p.30. Published in 1878. Oxford University

refer back to article 15. Ibid.

refer back to article 16. Hans Mortensen, Christian Ethic: Special Part, Vol. 2, Published in 1884, p.233

refer back to article 17. Scott Gerwehr, The Art of Darkness: Deception and Urban Operations, p.32. ISBN# 0833027875, 9780833027870

refer back to article 18. Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersbe Bible Commentary, p.386. ISBN# 078144540X, 9780781445405

refer back to article 19. Spencer, pp.79-80

refer back to article 20. Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Sahih al-Muslim

refer back to article 21. Sahih al-Muslim, #1731

refer back to article 22. Spencer, p.79

refer back to article 23. T. Joyner Drolsum, Unholy Writ: An Infidel’s Critique of the Bible, p.132. ISBN# 1434300374, 9781434300379

refer back to article 24. Herant Katchadourian, Guilt: The Bite of Conscience, p.44. ISBN# 0804763615, 9780804763615

refer back to article 25. Spencer, pp.80-81

refer back to article 26. Joseph Telushkin, A Code of Jewish Ethics, p.428

refer back to article 27. George F. Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics, p.104. ISBN# 0521035635, 9780521035637

refer back to article 28. Spencer, p.81

refer back to article 29. Ibid., pp.80-81

refer back to article 30. Joseph Telushkin, A Code of Jewish Ethics, p.430

refer back to article 31. Spencer, p.81

refer back to article 32. Ibid., p.79

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Even those who used to debate whether Islamophobia exits or not probably have no leg to stand on, as it is evident with all the rhetoric and flashpoints across America, Islamophobia is on the rise.

Bryan Fischer a leader in the conservative American Family Association echoes Euro-supremacist Geert Wilders statements that Islam isn’t a religion. This line of attack is becoming more and more common.

Conservative activist calls for nationwide mosque moratorium

by John Cook

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dauhe5be7Rc&feature=player_embedded 350 300]

One of the leaders of the conservative American Family Association has taken the debate over the Cordoba Mosque in lower Manhattan to a new level. Bryan Fischer, the group’s director of issue analysis, is calling on his blog and radio show for a nationwide moratorium on the construction of any mosque, anywhere. “Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero,” Fischer wrote on Tuesday. “This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.”

That’s an odd position for an ostensibly religious organization to have. But it’s especially odd because the American Family Association filed a federal lawsuit in 2003 accusing a county government in Georgia of violating federal law and the Constitution for refusing to grant a permit to build a church.

As we’ve mentioned previously, many of the groups who have endorsed the idea of using preservation laws to block the construction of the mosque have previously argued precisely the opposite when the imperiled project was a church. Indeed, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA) explicitly bars local governments from “implement[ing] a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of … a religious assembly or institution,” unless there’s a compelling government interest in doing so. Many of the groups that have come out against the mosque — and in favor of stopping it with land-use laws — have filed federal lawsuits under the act.

You can add the American Family Association to their number. In 2003, the AFA helped the Victory Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Henry County, Ga., file a federal lawsuit accusing the county of violating RLUIPA, as well as Victory’s constitutional rights to free exercise of religion, due process, and equal protection under the laws, for refusing to grant a building permit for a new church. The group prevailed, and celebrated the win in the AFA newsletter.

Now the AFA appears to be advocating the express violation of the very law that allowed for that victory, under the theory that mosques don’t count. A call to the AFA to clear up the inconsistency was not immediately returned.

UPDATE: Fischer returned our phone call. Turns out we weren’t too far off: Mosques don’t count! “I’m not a lawyer,” he told The Upshot, “but I have a layman’s understanding of the RLUIPA. And there’s a key difference between that case and mosques: Islam is not just a religion. It’s a subversive ideology. And as a subversive ideology, they can’t seek protection under the First Amendment.” Since Islam is really a political movement that advocates the imposition of sharia, he said, it doesn’t deserve the same sort of protections that the Victory Tabernacle Missionary Church gets. By the way: One of the bad things about sharia, according to Fischer, is “there is no such thing as religious liberty.” Sounds awful.

Fischer went on to say that “the First Amendment was designed to provide religious liberty for the Christian faith,” but that he is happy to let other religions enjoy its protections so long as they’re not “subversive.” Asked to identify any other subversive religions aside from Islam as a point of comparison, he came up empty. Not even Satanism? “Not that I’m aware of,” he said.

Finally, we asked Fischer why, if Islam is so dangerous, he’s stopping at a moratorium on new mosques. Why not shut down the ones that already exist? “We need to take things one step at a time here,” he said. “We need to turn off the hose first, and then we can figure out how to clean up the mess.”

Fischer said he was speaking as a talk-radio host (he hosts a show on the American Family Radio network),  and not as a representative of the AFA, which “hasn’t taken a position on the building of mosques.”

Geert Wilders

(For everything on Geert Wilders, check out the Dutch site: Krapuul)

Here’s something scary from TimesOnline:

Poll favourite may put anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders in Cabinet

By: David Charter, The Hague

Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch politician who wants to tax Muslim headscarves and ban mosque building, could join the next government, the leader of the country’s biggest party said.

Mark Rutte, who is tipped to be the next Prime Minister after Wednesday’s vote, told The Times that he was prepared to share power with the anti-Islamic MP in a new coalition.

Mr Rutte’s right-wing Liberal Party (VVD) is expected to win the largest number of seats in the general election and polls suggest that it could form a majority with the Christian Democrats and Mr Wilders’ Freedom Party.

Mr Wilders, 46, was prohibited from visiting Britain last year by Jacqui Smith, the then Home Secretary, because of his inflammatory views but managed to overturn the ban. His party is in fourth place after briefly topping opinion polls this year.

Mr Rutte dismissed suggestions that his country could suffer an international backlash if he offered a Cabinet post to Mr Wilders. He said that he saw the Freedom Party as “just another party”, and disagreed with its policies on headscarves and mosques. He and Mr Wilders agreed however that the Netherlands should restrict immigration and cut benefits to recent arrivals.

Speaking to The Times during a break in campaigning in The Hague, Mr Rutte, 43, said that he was open to forming a coalition with Mr Wilders, just as he was with the Labour Party led by Job Cohen, the former Mayor of Amsterdam, which is second in the polls. “For me, the Wilders party and the social democratic Labour Party — we do not rule out a coalition with any of the two,” he said. “With both of them, we have many points of difference. But I am not distancing myself from Wilders on the basis of morality, like the Labour Party leader Job Cohen. He is saying Wilders’ party is wrong.

“The problem with Wilders is that he is quite left-wing on the economy . . . while at the same time we agree with some of the measures we could take on immigration in the Netherlands. We disagree on this issue of Islam.”

Asked if he thought that the Netherlands would suffer from problems in the Islamic world if Mr Wilders were part of the government, he said: “I don’t think so. For me it is just another party.”

Latest polls for the 150-seat Parliament put the VVD on 36 seats, Labour on 29, the Christian Democrats on 24, the Freedom Party on 18 — double its current number of MPs — and the Socialist Party on 12.

Dutch commentators believe that Mr Rutte is keeping open the possibility of coalitions involving Mr Wilders and Mr Cohen to try to attract their voters.

Spencer resembles someone here.

Sheila Musaji and The American Muslim have done a great job in compiling different sources, including a number of links from Loonwatch for a concise piece on Robert Spencer with the apt title: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Robert Spencer.

by Sheila Musaji

Robert Spencer describes himself as an impartial scholar of Islam, and maintains that he is not an Islamophobe, and that in fact the term Islamophobia is either irrelevant or an attempt to silence critics.  He is only one of a number of individuals whose statements about Muslims and Islam can only be called alarming.  Although, he is not alone, he is perhaps the most prolific Islamophobe.

Clearly we have free speech in the U.S., and free speech must be defended.  The line between hate speech and free speech is difficult to draw, but I believe that we need to at least attempt to recognize when speech crosses that line as important, and to respond to that speech appropriately.  My hope as an American Muslim is that we are able to learn to have respectful speech that does not close off the possibility of dialogue and alienate the very Muslims who could act as a bridge between cultures.

The villification of Muslims, Arabs, and Islam has become relentless.  Repeating the same things over and over again has been shown to create credibility. False logic seems plausible, and even outright lies repeated often enough begin to sound like the truth.  Sadly, these stereotypes have replaced knowledge with ignorance and misperception, and ignorance fuels hatred of what we don’t know much about.  Muslims are consistently portrayed as “the other”, not part of us, and imposible to understand, and so not worthy of tolerance.  Just the mention of Islam creates a feeling of fear on the part of many non-Muslims because of what they have heard so often and causes them to believe that this fear is reasonable.

“The leap from deviant Muslims perpetrating atrocities to a religion being impugned for the sins of its supposed adherents is breath-taking in its audacity. This distinction has become critical ever since the ‘’showdown with Saddam” transmuted into the ‘’war on terror.” With the daily mind-numbing imagery of maniacal Muslim ‘’insurgents” savaging troops and civilians alike, a transformation rapidly took place: The problem was just not Muslim terrorists but an ‘’evil” Islam itself. This is a theme broadcast with malevolent glee by talk shows on a daily basis thereby intensifying suspicion, fear, contempt, and hatred of Islam. Demonizing Islam makes it the enemy in the ‘’war on terror.” … Ironically, it is us Muslims who have the greatest vested interest in eradicating terrorism. We need to do this to salvage our religion and our self-respect. As long as we are marginalized by the West and taunted by the extremists, we are made to feel as if we were part of the problem rather than of the solution, and our commitment becomes ambivalent. If the so-called war on terrorism has any chance of being won, there needs to be an immediate redefinition of the enemy.” Foe isn’t Islam, it’s Binladenism, Abdul Cader Asmal

And, the repetition of such statements results in seeing Muslims in a false light.

The most commonly repeated claims about Muslims are that “everyone knows” that most or all terrorists are Muslims, and there are no Christian and no Jewish terrorists (or terrorists of any other religious stripe), and that Muslims are inherently violent.  Everyone also knows that Muslims are not equivalent to real Americans, that they are the enemy within, and a fifth column,  that good Muslims can’t be good Americans, that they are not a part of our American heritage, that they are all militant,  that Islam makes Muslims “backward”, that Muslims have made no contribution to the West,  that Islam is “of the devil”, a Crescent menace, and an “evil encroaching on the United States”, and not a religion.  Everyone knows that this is a Christian nation, which everyone knows the Muslims are trying to take over, starting with getting an Eid stamp which is the first step towards shariah law, and by purposefully having more children than others to increase their numbers.  Everyone knows that Muslims have no respect for the Constitution.  Everyone knows that Muslims are given a pass by the elite media.  It’s “us versus them”.  They don’t speak out against extremism or terrorism, and even those Muslims who do speak up or seem moderate are simply lying or practicing taqiyyah.  The problem is that what “everyone knows” is wrong.  These self-righteous and incorrect statements are usually followed by a demand that the Muslim community do something about whatever is the false flag of the day or face the inevitable consequences.

In addition to these “everyone knows” statements of demonization and misrepresentation, there is also a whole industry of simply connecting with Islam or Muslims with any negative idea, event, or societal trend (even when there is no sane connection to make).  These I think of as “Through the Looking Glass” claims.  For example, lots of “news” items never happened, or are simply not true.

Arabs didn’t celebrate 9/11 at a Dunkin Donuts in New Jersey.  Budweiser did not pull all its product from the shelves of a convenience store where there was celebration of the terrorist attacks – this never happened.  The Muslim statement of faith (Shahada) is not an expression of hate.  An American Missionary in Africa didn’t face possible murder charges and hanging because of a traffic accident.  There is no verse of the Qur’an on “The Wrath of the Eagle”.  The supposed bomb threat made by an Arizona student that led to an evacuation of the school was a hoax by non-Muslim students.  The story that Iran was considering forcing Jews to wear a yellow star appeared in several publications and it was totally false.  The slaying of the New Jersey Coptic family was falsely charged to Muslims.  The story about the British banks banning piggy banks so as not to offend Muslims never happened.  Muslims are not more likely to support terrorism and violence than Christians or Jews.  Muslims did not destroy the Library of Alexandria.  Nurses in Britain were not “ordered to drop everything and turn Muslims’ beds toward Mecca five times daily”.  There is no Muslim sword through the 41-cents mark on the U.S. Eid stamp.  Sirhan Sirhan is a Christian, not a Muslim.  The Virginia Tech massacre had no connection with Islam.  A bus driver in Britain didn’t tell passengers to get off the bus so he could pray.  Rachel Ray’s Paisley scarf is not a symbol of “murderous Palestinian Jihad” (and neither is a Keffiyah).  A Muslim student in Florida did not refuse to stand for the pledge of allegiance.  There were no Muslims acting suspiciously on Air Tran flight 297. Wearing a tee-shirt with Arabic writing on it does not make a person dangerous.  A Madrassah is simply a school.  The zebibah (prayer bruise) on some Muslims foreheads is not a sign of a “commitment to jihad”.  Jihad is not terrorism. Ashura is not a “Muslim blood festival”.  Muslims are not forbidden to have non-Muslims as friends.  The Nuclear Security Summit logo is an atom on a circular path, not an Islamic symbol, the U.S. Missile Defense Logo is not evidence of Obama’s ‘Submission To Shariah’, and neither is the Flight 93 memorial.  Barack Obama is not a Muslim, but so what if he was?  (Note: click on the links to see responses to particular claims or incidents

The fact that these “news stories” and articles are simply wrong doesn’t change the fact that they are “out there” and that they will be read and believed by many of the same folks who believe the supermarket tabloids.  They will be forwarded or passed on, and commented on, and the stories will grow and more and more people will accept them as “facts”.  I would hope that not only Muslims would be concerned with the dangers in this sort of stereotyping and dehumanizing of any segment of our population.  Here is a link to a collection of English translations of Nazi Propaganda: 1933-1945.  Exactly how is this different?

Robert Spencer’s views on Islam are a part of this demonization industry, and lead to seeing Muslims as suspect and Islam as the source of every negative action.  If Muslims are so different from other human beings that there can never be any motive for any action they undertake other than Islam (no Muslim criminals, no political, economic, social, or cultural motives for actions), if you can’t tell a moderate from an extremist, and even the moderates are dangerous, then that really does seem to limit the options to either criminalizing Islam, or carrying out a “final solution” against the Muslims.  This is the only direction that Robert Spencer’s arguments lead.

In order to see where this sort of inflammatory rhetoric comes from and might lead see:  Terrorism and violence carried out by non-Muslims (the majority) – Jewish extremist statements and views – Religious extremism/ religious right – Incidents of Islamophobia by year – Prejudiced, racist, or violent incidents at mosques (by state and/or country) – Responses to particular incidents, events or claims A to L and M to Z (This includes: Responses to Claims Made ABOUT Islam and Muslims in General – Responses to Claims Made ABOUT Qur’an Verses, Arabic Terms, Prophet Muhammad – Responses to False Claims ABOUT Muslim Individuals & Organizations & Incidents Involving Muslims – Responses to Actual Extremist Statements & Incidents of Extremism or violence BY Muslims – Responses to Claims Made BY Specific Individuals and Organizations About Muslims.

The Runnymede Trust in Britain identified eight components that define Islamophobia:

1) Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
2) Islam is seen as separate and ‘other’. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
3) Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.
4) Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a ‘clash of civilisations’.
5) Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage.
6) Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand.
7) Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.

I personally believe that Robert Spencer is an Islamophobe, and that all of these eight components of Islamophobia are prevalent in his writings.  Consider his own statements and make up your own mind.

IN HIS OWN WORDS:

Robert Spencer said that Islam itself is an incomplete, misleading, and often downright false revelation which, in many ways, directly contradicts what God has revealed through the prophets of the Old Testament and through his Son Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh… For several reasons… Islam constitutes a threat to the world at large.

Spencer regarding Keith Ellison taking an oath on the Qur’an “I hope there will be some who have the courage to point out that no American official should be taking an oath on the Qur’an, since—as we have been pointing out here for over three years now—there are so many elements of traditional and mainstream Islam that are at variance with our system of government, our Constitution, and our entire way of life. But since that is blandly denied and unexamined by the mainstream media and government officials, it is much more likely that Qur’anic oath-taking will be allowed without any discussion at all.”

He wrote regarding the Arab Israeli Knesset member who had sold secrets to Hisballah that “I have maintained from the beginning of this site and before that that there is no reliable way to distinguish a “moderate” Muslim who rejects the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism from a “radical” Muslim who holds such ideas, even if he isn’t acting upon them at the moment. And the cluelessness and multiculturalism of Western officialdom, which make officials shy away from even asking pointed questions, only compound this problem.” Then when the news came out that the Knesset member involved was Christian and not Muslim, a “correction” was posted:  “I have been reminded that Bishara is a Christian, which makes him instead of a false moderate, an example of what Hugh calls an “islamochristian,” or a dhimmi Christian who has imbibed the values of his Muslim overlords. I apologize for the error.” Amazing logic here.  If a Muslim did it, he’s guilty.  And, even those Muslims who are not guilty right now are just temporarily not acting on their negative impulses.  If a Christian did it, he was corrupted by the Muslims.

He said regarding the Hutaree militia arrests “For years now we have heard, in the indelible formulation of Rosie O’Donnell, that “radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam,” and yet proponents of this exercise in wishful thinking and ignorance have had precious little evidence to adduce in support of it. But now it is certain that for years to come this Hutaree group will be thrown in the face of anyone who takes note of jihad activity in the United States and around the world, as if this group in itself balances and equals the innumerable Islamic groups that are waging armed jihad all around the world today.  …  The Islamic jihad is global, well-financed (courtesy our friend and ally Saudi Arabia) and relentless. One self-proclaimed Christian group should not divert us from the ongoing need to defend ourselves against that jihad. But for many, it will.” This refusal to acknowledge the reality that terrorism, extremism, and violence are a problem that is not confined to Muslims.  In fact, the majority of such acts are carried out by non-Muslims.

He said at CPAC “It’s absurd” to think that “Islam is a religion of peace that’s been hijacked by … extremists”

Spencer said “The misbegotten term “Islamo-fascism” is wholly redundant: Islam itself is a kind of fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes the powers of the state.”

Spencer said “The term “Islamo-Fascists” no more blames the religion of Islam than the term “Italian Fascism” blames Italy for fascism. It merely refers to those Muslims—who obviously really exist—who invoke Islam to justify violence and supremacism, whether they are invoking Islamic doctrines correctly or not.”

Spencer said about Muslim population in Europe “And those who are talking about it are smeared and vilified as racists and bigots. When a nuclear-powered Islamic Republic of France threatens the U.S., however, some Americans may come to regret the ease with which they swallowed and even propagated defamation and lies about anti-jihad European politicians such as Geert Wilders.”
He totally missed the point of the unconstitutionality of Franklin Graham speaking at the Pentagon and called the decision to exclude Graham “the Army’s dhimmitude”

He wrote “Ever since I began doing this work publicly my point has been simple and consistent: that the jihad terrorists are working from mainstream traditions and numerous Qur’anic exhortations, and that by means of these traditions and teachings they are able to gain recruits among Muslims worldwide, and hold the sympathy of others whom they do not recruit. This explains why there has been no widespread, sustained, or sincere Muslim outcry against the jihad terrorist enterprise in general. The mainstream media, both liberal and conservative, does not want to face these facts.” His scholarship somehow doesn’t include the fatwas, statements by Muslim organizations, statements by Muslim individuals – or these quotes that clearly denounce extremism and terrorism.  He also clearly has never heard about the Muslim voices promoting Islamic non-violent solutions to political and social problems.

Spencer promoted the fraudulent Iranian yellow badge story and even after it was proven untrue, he couldn’t bring himself to issue an unqualified disclaimer:  “Untrue, or too hot for public consumption at this time? That remains to be seen. While Nazi analogies dominate analyses of this, as I pointed out yesterday it is actually a revival of traditional elements of Islamic law for dhimmis. That makes it entirely reasonable that an aggressive Islamic state like Iran would reinstitute such laws; but now that international attention has focused upon them for contemplating doing so, it is likely not that they will abandon the project, but simply implement it when the world media has turned to other matters.” He has a particularly hostile view of all things Iranian, as he also promoted the fraudulent August 22, 2006 “Doomsday” story.

Spencer wrote “I have written on numerous occasions that there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven.”, and as Islamophobia Watch has pointed out, this is the same man who has said “Islam is not a monolith, and never have I said or written anything that characterizes all Muslims as terrorist or given to violence.” There seems to be a disconnect in his logic.

During the incident with Debbie Almontaser and the Khalil Gibran Academy in NYC, he posted an article from the NY Post with his own heading reading “Does an Islamic supremacist have a right to head a New York City public school?”  This description does not appear in the referenced article, so it can only be assumed that this is his take on the question.

When Muslim Charities and individuals responded to the Haiti earthquake with humanitarian relief, Spencer posted an article with the title “Jihad groups set up camp in Haiti”, and another article saying that Muslim aid was conspicuous by its absence

RESPONSES TO SPENCER
- attacking Mark Levine’s ‘hudna’ article [1] (Mark Levine)

- about the Roxbury Mosque controversy[2]

- on Muslim feminism [3] (Khaleel Mohammed), [4a] (Tariq Nelson)

- statement about Arab Israeli spy [4] (Sheila Musaji)

- claim that terrorists are acting on Islamic teachings [5]

- statement about rape as Jihad [6] (Yusuf Smith)

- statement on meaning of jihad as holy war [7] (Yusuf Smith), Islamic war doctrine [7a] (Robert D. Crane)

- claim that Qur’an is anti-Semitic [8] (Khaleel Muhammad)

- Obsession With Islam [9] (Khaleel Muhammad)

- Spencer, the NDU scholars, the securocrat and his books [10] (Yusuf Smith)

- Smearcasting report on Spencer [11],

- American Library Assoc. incident [12],  [12a] (Ahmed Rehab)

- altercation with Svend White [13] (Svend White),

- on Rifka Barry case [14] (Loonwatch),

- on CAIR airbrushing woman’s photo [15] (Sheila Musaji),

- dodges debate with Loonwatch [16],

BOOKS
- book Politically correct guide to Islam & the Crusades[17],  [17a] (Loonwatch), [17b] (Loren Rosen)
- book The Truth About Muhammad [17c], [17d], and [17e] (Robert D. Crane), [19d] (Karen Armstrong)
- book Religion of Peace? — Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t [17f] (John Derbyshire)
- book Complete Infidels Guide to the Qur’an [17g] (John R Bowen)
- book Islam Unveiled [17h] (Danny Doueri)

- attack on Khaleel Muhammad [18] (Khaleel Muhammad)

- and EDL neo-Nazi’s [19] (CAIR), [19a] (Richard Bartholemew)

- attack on Louay Safi [20] (Louay Safi)

- accused of Islamophobia [21] (Carl Ernst), [21a] (FAIR)

- article mistranslating Ahmedinejad [22] (Loonwatch)

- on testimony of a rape victim [23] (Loonwatch)

- Spencer’s position on Kosovo [24] and his relationship with Serge Trifkovich [24a] (Kjeda Gjermani)

- views on the Qur’an and violence [25] (Louay Safi), 25a] (Aaron Hess)

- on confusing Buddhist Sri Lanka as a country “where the Shafi’i school of Islamic jurisprudence prevails” [26] (Richard Bartholemew)

- on Obama as a Muslim [27], on Obama using full name at his inauguration [27a] (Richard Bartholemew)

- on the cancellation of the LA Premiere of Geert Wilders Documentary [28] (Richard Bartholemew)

- involvement in the film Islam: What the West Needs to Know [29] (Zahir Janmohamed)

- on CPAC panel “Jihad: The Political Third Rail” [30] (Eli Clifton), [30a] (Christine Schwen), CPAC and the Freedom Defense Initiative [30b] (Kelly Vlahos)

- involvement with SIOA [31] (Eli Clifton)

- on his support of the conspiracy theory that Iran would nuke Israel on August 22, 2006 [32] (Andrew Sullivan)

- his endorsement of the book The Islamic Anti-Christ by Joel Richardson – a book claiming that the Bible predicts that the anti-Christ will be a Muslim [33] (Richard Bartholemew)

- on Virginia neo-Nazi license plate incident [34] (Sheila Musaji), [34a] (Loonwatch)

- comments on Hutaree militia group [35] (Sheila Musaji)

- comments on Pres. Obama’s Middle East peace initiative [36] (Hussein Ibish)

- misrepresentation of Qur’an 5:60 [37] (Hussein Ibish), misrepresentation of Qur’an by cherry picking verses to prove a point [37a] (Louay Safi)

- statements about “taqiyya” [38] (Hussein Ibish), [38a] (Sheila Musaji)

- his claim that Tariq Ramadan is a “stealth jihadist” [39] (Sheila Musaji)

- claim that Muslims don’t object strongly to extremists like Anjem Chaudary [40] (Shahed Amanullah)

-  views on what constitutes a “moderate” Muslim [41], [46a] (Sheila Musaji)

- on use of terms like “Islamofascist/Islamo-Fascist” [42] (Chip Berlet), [42a] (Sheila Musaji)

- on his views about Islam and Muslims generally [43] (Cathy Young), [43a] (Adem Carroll), [43b] (Tariq Nelson)

- on his op ed in Emory University paper [44] (Ali Eteraz)

-  attack on Prof. M. Cherif Bassiouni [45]

- promoting the false Muslim bus driver stopping bus to pray story [46] (Sheila Musaji)

- on his concept that radical Muslims are the “real” Muslims [47] (Dinesh D’Souza)

- on his smearing of Rashad Hussein [48] (Media Matters)

- on his posting a video on his site of a Hindu girl calling for wiping Pakistan off the map [49] (Chasing Evil)

- reprinting Danish cartoons on his site [50] (Sheila Musaji)

- claims about ISNA and the Muslim Brotherhood [51] (Louay Safi)

-  claims about Islam forbidding music [52] (Ali Eteraz)

- claim that the root of terrorism is Islam [53] (Mustafa Aykol)

- his views on “dhimmitude” and jizya [54] (Loonwatch), [54a] (Robert D. Crane)

- on Ayesha’s (Aisha) age at marriage [55] (Tarek Fatah)

- his comments on CAIR and GOP claims about Muslim interns on Capital Hill [56 (Sheila Musaji), [56a] (Loonwatch)

- his calling the Archbishop of Canterbury, the “Archdhimmi” of Canterbury [57] (Sheila Musaji)

- on Keith Ellison and oath on Qur’an [58 (Sheila Musaji)

- his alarmism over Muslim demographics [59] (Sheila Musaji) [59a] (Loonwatch)

- participation in David Horowitz’ Islamo-Fascism awareness week [60] (Sheila Musaji)

- his views on honor killings [61] (Omer Subhani)

-  on making Islamophobia mainstream [62] (Steve Rendall and Isabel Macdonald)

- on Cologne Conference and neo-fascists [url=http://www.kejda.net/2008/11/07/jihadwatchwatch-robert-spencers-amorous-flirt-with-european-fascism/][63] (Kjeda Gjermani)

- claims about suicide terrorism and Islam [64] (Loonwatch)

- connecting witchhunts and Islam [65] (Loonwatch)

- claim that radical Christianity is not as dangerous as radical Ilam [66], [66a] (Sheila Musaji)

- on his willingness to debate Muslims [67] (Omer Subhani) [671] (Loonwatch)

- his views on the Pace of Umar [68] (Loonwatch)

- his comments on Fiqh Councils fatwa on body scanners [69] (Loonwatch)

- his views on Muslims and Haiti humanitarian efforts [70] (Sheila Musaji), [70a] (Loonwatch)

- his blog post titled titled Uighur Muslims in China Stabbing Opponents with Tainted Needles [71] (Loonwatch)

- On the website url’s “f**kallah.com” & “f**kislam.com” which redirected people to Spencer’s Jihad Watch site [72], [72a], [72b] (Loonwatch)

- on his falling out with Charles Johnson of LGF [73] (Loonwatch)

- his views on the Fort Hood massacre [74], [74a] (Loonwatch), [74b] (Mehdi Hasan)

- on his support for Bat Ye’or [75] (Loonwatch)

-  confusing views on reliability/unreliability of hadith and sirah/seerah [76] (Robert D. Crane)

- views on “Satanic verses” [77] (Robert D. Crane)

- views on Muslim attitude towards Christians and Jews as friends (wali) [78] (Robert D. Crane)

- views on apostasy and Islam [79] (Robert D. Crane)

- views on Obama’s Cairo speech to Muslim world [80] (Chris Good)

- offensive comments by readers of his site [81]

- his views on Spanish Fatwa against bin Laden [82

- KFC controversy as creeping Sharia [83] (Edmund Standing & Yusuf Smith)

- his views on Bible verses on rifle scopes used by soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq [84] (Sheila Musaji)

- his views on Islam and violence against women [85] (Robert D. Crane)

- Spencer and the politics of fear [86]

- his views on the South Park incident and the Revolution Muslim lunatics [87] (Sheila Musaji)

- his views on slavery and Islam [88] (Sheila Musaji)

By Ruben L. Oppenheimer

Sheila Kamerman and Dirk Vlasblom have an interesting article about how Dutch Muslims are dealing with the ascendancy and rhetoric of Geert Wilders. Some are choosing to ignore him while others see what he is calling for as impossible and unactionable.  While they are concerned, some Dutch Muslims also think that the best thing might be for Wilders’ PVV to actually win elections and lead the country because the PVV would then be forced to confront and offer more than just anti-Muslim rhetoric. What are your thoughts?

(make sure to check out Krapuul.nl, which is an anti-hate site and ally of ours tracking everything Wilders does. You will need Google Translator for the site.)

Muslims Quietly Take Wilders’ Abuse by Sheila Kamerman and Dirk Vlasblom

Day in and day out, Dutch Muslims are told their religion is “a fascist ideology” and “a threat to Dutch society”. They hear their “so-called prophet Muhammad” is “a barbarian, a mass murderer and a paedophile”, or words to that effect. The indignities come from a member of parliament: Geert Wilders.

After leaving the right-wing liberal VVD party in 2006 and setting up his own Party for Freedom (PVV), Wilders has made criticism of Islam his one main issue. He is being heard by native Dutch people who fear the country of 16 million is suffering under the burden of its estimated one million Muslim citizens. Wilders obtained 5 of the 25 Dutch seats in European parliament last year. His PVV did very well in the two municipalities in which it participated in recent local elections. Some polls have predicted his party could become the biggest in parliament after the upcoming national election.

One wonders why the Muslims he is targeting are not standing up against his attacks and letting themselves be heard.

When asked this question, Islam expert Mohammed Cheppih immediately countered it: “Aren’t we all Dutch?,” he asked. “Society as a whole should stand up to Wilders. Wilders is destroying the Netherlands. We should all ignore him.”

Counterproductive?

Farid Azarkan, the director of an interest group of Moroccan-Dutch people, SMN, agreed. “Where are all the reasonable Dutch people who say: ‘This is not how we treat each other here’?” Ideally, non-Muslims would support their Muslim compatriots en masse, Azarkan ventured. “Suppose that all the women in Almere [the one city where Wilders' PVV won the most council seats in the local election] would don a headscarf.” Azarkan chuckled at the idea of such a form of protest against the PVV’s proposed headscarf ban in municipal buildings there: “But that is not realistic.”Azarkan has thought about instigating large-scale protest, but believes it would ultimately be counterproductive. “Imagine we would organise a mass demonstration, say, on the Malieveld in The Hague,” he said, referring to a meadow near buildings housing the national government. “It would suddenly be filled with thousands of headscarves. People who don’t fear Islam wouldn’t be bothered by it. But those are not the people we need to convince. The people who support Wilders however, will go ’Yuk, there they are’.”

The fear of rubbing native Dutch people the wrong way by lashing out at Wilders is one argument why Muslims aren’t organising themselves. Another is that a movement would be hard to establish because there is no single Muslim community in the Netherlands. Moroccans, Turks, Somalis, Surinamese, Iranians and Iraqis in the Netherlands all have their own religious lives and communities. They are impossible to mobilise, according to Azarkan.

Faith in democracy

A unifying, Dutch Islam has yet to develop, said Loubna el Morabet, who is a PhD researcher in social science at Leiden University. “This is an ongoing process. Muslims in the Netherlands are already very Dutch,” she said. “I have done research in the Netherlands and England and learnt that Muslim students here have adopted the Dutch mentality. This is their country.”

Arkazan offered the example of the lack of success of Muslim parties as an argument why any fear of Muslims “taking over” the Netherlands is “a joke”. In this month’s municipal elections, Islamic parties failed to obtain a single council seat anywhere but in The Hague. “Obviously, Muslims vote for a party that suits them, they don’t vote for a religion,” said Arkazan. “We call that integration.”

Many Muslims and non-Muslims in the Netherlands are uncomfortable with the things the PVV has been saying. The party has suggested Muslims who don’t adjust to the dominant Dutch culture should be deported. It has also talked about shooting criminals of Moroccan descent in the knees.

But for most who disagree with him, their faith in democracy is larger than their fear of Wilders.

“Of course I feel threatened when I hear Wilders speaking,” said Loubna el Morabet. “But if I take a step back, I realise he will never be able to carry out his ideas. Taxing headscarves is nonsense and halting immigration from Islamic countries is discrimination. The principle of equality is deeply embedded in Dutch law.”

Compromises

Even if he wins the upcoming national election, many Muslims don’t believe he can change Dutch, let alone European, laws that protect them. “And you can’t rule a country ranting and raving,” Farid Azarkan said about Wilders’ politics.

Several Muslims interviewed said they would welcome a large PVV after the June election. If Wilders were to be forced to take responsibility and make compromises, his rank and file would realise he can’t deliver, they said.

The Netherlands is always ruled by coalition governments and if Wilders were to form one “he would need to have clear ideas about other issues than just Muslims,” said El Morabet. “What does he really want for our country? The only statements he yells are anti-Islam, everything else is hazy.”

Cheppih, however, disagreed. “It is extremely frustrating that other parties don’t preclude governing with Wilders. It would be a clear sign if other parties would say: ‘We don’t want to cooperate with the PVV’. The party is empty and has hardly taken positions on anything.” Cheppih encouraged other political parties to rule out any coalition with the PVV after the election. “Society as a whole should hit back hard: we do not accept this! Make that clear. Otherwise, things could escalate. The fear he sows is imaginary, but he is being heard. The higher the minarets, the more frightened the people.”

Personal encounters

This fear of Islam is fuelled by the media hype surrounding Wilders, said El Morabet. “I think it is ridiculous that media pay so much attention to a party that has garnered a handful of seats in the municipal elections. [Left-wing liberal party] D66 was the real winner of the local elections and that happens to be the one party that tells Wilders: ‘You are shutting people out, you discriminate’. That gets relatively little attention.”

To counter the anxiety some native Dutch feel for Islam, Farid Azarkan thinks, Muslims need to try to remove this through personal encounters. “You have to reach out to people. A minority happens to be xenophobe. I don’t believe you can sway all of them. They have to notice out on the streets that you may be Muslim, but apart from that, you are all right.”

Manya Brachear

The Seeker, Manya Brachear’s blog about religion on the Chicago Tribune website has a post, Chicago welcomes once-banned Muslim Scholar, about the upcoming trip of Islamic scholar/reformer and Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan to the United States (hat tip: iSherif).

You may remember that Tariq Ramadan had his visa revoked by the Bush administration, ostensibly because he donated money to a charity organization that it was later charged had links to Hamas. The charge was clearly fallacious as the organization was not listed as a banned charity in America at the time that Tariq Ramadan made his contribution.

The real reason seems to be that Tariq Ramadan was banned by Bush due to a policy of ideological exclusion and Ramadan’s fierce opposition to the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was further confirmed when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered Ramadan’s visa to be reinstated.

Unfortunately the blog post quoted Robert Spencer, one of the leading Islamophobes in the West today.

But author Robert Spencer says that popularity is dangerous. In interviews, he has criticized Clinton for making an exception to U.S. law that prohibits supports of terrorist groups from entering the country. Spencer said Ramadan should still be barred for donating money to a group that funds Hamas.

Spencer contends that the scholar has the same goals as Osama bin Laden–to impose Shariah law in the West. While Ramadan paints himself as a moderate intellectual, Spencer said, he is actually a “stealth jihadist.”

It is a severe lapse in judgement for Brachear to quote Spencer’s claims since they are false on their head. It is an attempt on Spencer’s part to “poison the wells.” The fact is Ramadan has never supported Hamas or terrorism, in fact he has been one of the most outspoken critics of both. “Stealth Jihad” is just paranoid new speak that serves bigots who wish to cast normal, law abiding Muslims as evil villains who are secretly working behind the scenes to take over the West. It is in fact the new “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Our website has copiously dissected many of Robert Spencer’s blog posts exposing his unsavory associations, pseudo-scholarship and blatant bigotry against Muslims and Islam. One of our premiere contributors, Danios has gone through whole chapters in Spencer’s books and revealed how shoddy and inaccurate a lot of his work has been. To quote Robert Spencer on Muslims and Islam is equivalent to quoting David Duke on Judaism or Jews.

One instructive point in regards to all of this is that one of Spencer’s closest friends and a co-founder with Spencer of The Freedom Defense Initiative, Pamela Geller has gone to the extreme (and insane) level of calling Tariq Ramadan, “a cold blooded Jihadists.” An exercise in hyperbole that the worst enemies and strongest critics of Ramadan won’t even engage in. However, one must ask Spencer if he agrees with that characterization by his friend Geller who he cross-posts from regularly? It also seriously puts into doubt the objectiveness of Spencer and whether he should ever be quoted by mainstream media.

I urge our readers to contact Manya and to politely express their disappointment at the inclusion of a bigot such as Spencer on a professional blog such as hers.

Contact: mbrachear@tribune.com

Here is some information that may be helpful to share with Manya (remember to be polite and topical):

The fact is Spencer is not taken seriously by academia especially in the field of Islam: He has been repudiated over and over. Take a glance at our archives:

Academics and members of the American Library Association condemn Spencer and his work: Robert Spencer Rejected by Academics, still Supports Geert Wilders

DePaul Law Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni condemns Spencer

His former friend and ally Charles Johnson has also condemned Robert Spencer as an “Anti-Islamic Bigot:”

Robert Spencer goes postal on Charles Johnson

Spencer’s association and fervent support for anti-Muslim European neo-Fascists and supremacists also disqualifies him from being mentioned as a true neutral observer and commenter on Islam or radical Islam:

Robert Spencer Teams up with Euro-Supremacists Again

Spencer has also joined a genocidal Facebook group which called for the extermination of Turks:

Robert Spencer: Wanna be Conquistador

Robert Spencer’s arguments have been shown to be filled with errors and excessive prejudice:

The Church’s Doctrine of Perpetual Servitude worse than Dhimmitude

Robert Spencer Misrepresents Facts — Again

Robert Spencer Worried about ticking ‘Muslim Demographic Time Bomb’

There is more information exposing the bigotry and anti-Muslim motive that mars the work of Robert Spencer in our archives, if Manya Brachear truly cares about the information she wishes to present to readers then she should take a serious look at who she chooses to quote as an expert.

Enjoy! (For some of our sensitive viewers be aware that there are some raunchy pictures)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm1reVyKDqw 400 350]

Translation:

Our Geert

I know exactly how things stand,

Don’t bore me with the facts.

Give me one of those lefty newspapers,

So that I can sh*t on it.

The Dutch broadcasting corporations,

Pretend to be journalists,

They don’t do anything but lie,

Those dirty socialists.

They hate our Geert,

We hate the government,

That is secretly heading

For islamization.

We were born stupid,

Never had any education,

But we don’t give a damn,

We’ll vote for Geert anyway.

The government doesn’t do anything

About all those Moroccans

Who are on the dole

And stealing our jobs.

They also have a god,

But ours is better.

Their women are all ugly,

Ours are much hotter.

They don’t have any respect

For rules and legislation,

But Geert is not at all afraid,

He’ll throw them out of the country.

We were born stupid,

Never had any education,

But we don’t give a damn,

We’ll vote for Geert anyway.

As soon as Geert is Prime Minister,

As he’s told us oftentimes,

He’ll ban the Koran,

Allah and His prophets.

But that’s not all,

Geert is not easily satisfied,

The Imams will have to go

He’ll close down all their mosques.

And if the Muslims

Start protesting

Geert will shoot them through the knee

And we’ll all chant:

We were born stupid,

Never had any education,

But we don’t give a damn,

We’ll vote for Geert anyway.

© Lyrics: Lucien Van Rooy

For more on the exposition of Geert Wilders please visit: Krapuul.nl (Use Google Translator)

Geller and Spencer both were giddy over their Hollywood debut, they had visions of red carpet treatment, sips of champagne and for Pamela maybe, mercifully some plastic surgery?

All kidding aside their Hollywood dreams blew up in their faces when the obvious despicable history of Martin Mawyer and CAN went viral in Holland and Europe. It was up to Geert Wilders to deliver the coup de grace as his carefully cultivated ‘legitimacy’ as the heir to Pim Fortuyn was threatened.

Huib gave us permission to reproduce his article with a few minor touches, enjoy:

LA Wilders Sanctification Movie Aborted: Yes We CAN*! by Huib Reithof

The May 1st launch of an one hour Wilders adoration movie, produced by Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and Martin Mawyat’s Christian Action Network (CAN) in Los Angeles (Ca), fell lamentably through, two days after its proud announcement.

The “Islam Rising” video features Geert Wilders, posing as an Old Testament prophet, calling off the numerous mene tekels on the wall of dhimmi-ridden Christianity. Among the illustrations: The unavoidable Ground Zero, loony bearded hysterics and Barack Obama meeting an Arab authority.

Outrage rose in Geert Wilders’ home country, Holland, after the announcement. In Europe, he never shows off with the extreme right. He never disowns their support either. Wilders pretends to fight for abortion rights and gay rights. CAN’s homophobic and pro-life agitation does not rhyme well with that.

At first, Wilders tried to play down the issue but last night, the “21st century Churchill” (Pamela’s description) met his Dardanelles (1915) against the modern Turks. He backed off, telling the news agencies that he “did not know” about CAN’s ideas, that he would NOT go to LA, and disappeared behind a “no-comment” wall. At the website of his political “party” (no members, only Pipes-money), the jubilant references to the movie and its launch disappeared all at once.

Spencer received a very “Dutch Treat”

Spencer had to call off the May 1st event. The damage to his cause is immense. “Going Dutch: Never More!” and receiving a “Dutch Treat” will best describe his inner feelings.

Our inner feelings are quite the opposite. Something like: “Yes We CAN”. What CAN couldn’t, we achieved.

We, the men and women who time and again exposed Wilders’ hypocrisy, finally met with some acknowledgment:

• In Holland he is behaving like a middle of the road politician, denouncing a “dangerous ideology, the Islam”, denying that he is against Muslims or Arabs, adopting some progressive issues like women’s liberation, freedom of choice (abortion), gay rights, gay marriage and keeping the pension age at 65.
• Outside Europe, Wilders associates with Christian fundamentalists, Great-Israel religious ultra-Zionists and American Birthers and Tea Party ideologues.

Why does Wilders do so? I think, that in his heart, he agrees with the ideas of his foreign sponsors. But he cannot win the vote in Holland with statements like he made in Copenhague last year (“deportation of tens of millions of Muslims out of Europe” and “the Palestinians already have their state: Jordania”). His racist rants in some US synagogues were not adapted for home consumption either.

But, I think, he HAD to tell his sponsors from time to time the things they want to hear from him, so he did, leaving out the subjects they would certainly have objected to, like abortion, gay rights, etc. Wilders chose his locations as far away from Holland as possible. Hoping that the Dutch are too dumb to see the difference. Hoping that Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer and Avigdor Lieberman do not master enough of the Dutch language, to see the fraud.

Well, this is the beginning of Wilders’ exposure as a Fraud. The stream of US money that helps him to stay out of Dutch party funding control and to run a no-member “party” without inner political discussion will wither away. Good for Holland.

The Loony Right will have to look for another, more reliable hero.

The movie will just be a collector’s item.

Anne Coulter is the well known crazy Conservative who stated that the US should invade “Muslim countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” so I guess it isn’t much of a surprise that she told a Muslim student to ‘take a camel.’

Coulter Tells an Ont. Muslim to ‘take a camel’

It didn’t take long for firebrand U.S. conservative Ann Coulter to live up to her reputation on her Canadian tour, telling a University of Western Ontario Muslim student to “take a camel” as an alternative to flying.

Coulter made the comment Monday night after she received an email about the limits of free speech in Canada from the provost of the University of Ottawa, where she appears Tuesday.

The private email, which was leaked to conservative news organizations, noted that Canada’s Charter of Rights meant that “promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges.”

Francois Houle, vice-president academic and University of Ottawa provost, invited Coulter to educate herself on Canadian free speech laws.

“We, of course, are always delighted to welcome speakers on our campus and hope that they will contribute positively to the meaningful exchange of ideas that is the hallmark of a great university campus,” wrote Houle,

The letter only added fuel to the fire of Coulter’s speaking tour, which is titled, “Political Correctness, Media Bias and Freedom of Speech.”

“I was the victim of a hate crime and plan to file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission,” Coulter said Monday.

Coulter, who wore a short black dress to her speech, is one of the most divisive characters in American conservatism.

She is well-known for her vehement views against Muslims. In a post-September 11 column, she wrote that the U.S. should invade Muslim countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

It didn’t take long for her controversial views to emerge at Western.

The student, Fatima Al-Dhaher, asked Coulter about previous comments in which she said Muslims shouldn’t be allowed on airplanes and should take “flying carpets” instead. Al-Dhaher noted she did not own a flying carpet and asked what she should take as an alternative transportation.

Coulter did not deny making the flying carpet comment and replied to the university student: “What mode of transportation? Take a camel” to a mix of jeers and cheers.

Some students walked out after the comment.

“She stabbed me in the heart, she was rude,” Al-Dhaher said. “I walked out after she said that.”

“As a female, as a Muslim, as a student of this university, I felt an obligation to kind of represent that,” the student said of her question.

Coulter spoke in front of a packed audience of about 800 at the university.

It was a decidedly pro-Coulter audience. One man, who identified himself as a U.S. citizen, described U.S. President Barack Obama as a “Marxist.”

Wrong approach by U of Ottawa: MPs

Coulter, who often comments on Fox News, once said Canada is “lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent” after the Canadian government did not join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Her tour was organized by International Free Press Society, a group whose website sets up Islam as the preeminent threat to democracy in the Western world.

“This jihad, like all jihads before it, will continue until a sharia-based caliphate rules the world, or until it is defeated,” the society’s policy statement says.

The group also sells one of the infamous Danish Mohammad cartoons, signed by cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, for $250. They are currently sold out.

Among the group’s board of advisers are Canadian conservative bloggers Ezra Levant and Kathy Shaidle, author Mark Steyn and far-right Dutch political leader Geert Wilders.

Coulter reportedly commands a $10,000 speaking fee. Her fee is being covered in part by the Claire Boothe Luce Policy Institute, an American group that calls itself the “home of conservative women leaders.”

Some critics say trying to quiet Coulter is the wrong approach to discrediting her views.

“In terms of putting limits on what she … should say or shouldn’t say, I’m not sure that helps,” New Democrat MP Paul Dewar, told The Canadian Press. “It might add fuel to the fire that she will be probably starting tomorrow.”

Liberal MP Scott Brison made a similar comment.

“If you don’t agree with what she has to say, then ignore her,” he said.

Coulter’s Canadian tour wraps up at the University of Calgary on Thursday.

In Leeds, we have the story of Muslim gravestones being desecrated:

Muslim Graves Damaged in Leeds Cemetery

Nineteen gravestones have been vandalised in a section of a Leeds cemetery used by Muslims.

One headstone was broken and a number of name plaques on wooden stands were damaged at Harehills Cemetery.

Police said they were “keeping an open mind” on whether the graves were deliberately targeted because they were linked to Muslim families.

The damage is believed to have happened overnight last Thursday. Witnesses are being asked to contact police.

Insp Nik Adams said: “This incident has caused a great deal of upset and distress to a number of people in the local community.

“Over the weekend we have worked alongside community and religious leaders to identify and contact the next of kin of those whose graves have been affected by this mindless vandalism.

“At this stage in the investigation we are keeping an open mind on whether the graves were deliberately targeted because they were linked to Muslim families or whether they were vandalised because of their proximity to a nearby path and two thoroughfares that run through the cemetery.”

In the Netherlands, that bastion of tolerance and liberty where polls have shown an increase in popularity for neo-fascist Muslim hater Geert Wilders we have the story of a pig head left by a Mosque which was also smeared with blood and animal intestines.

Groningen Mosque Smeared with Blood

A mosque in the Selward neighborhood of Groningen was smeared with blood Tuesday night, police reports. In addition to the blood, animal innards and the head of a wild boar were found by the mosque.

The Groningen city council responded in shock to the attack Thursday.

“We are deeply affected, because Groningen hadn’t known such outrages till now. Only expressions of indignation and disgust are proper here,” according to deputy mayor Frank de Vries. “This doesn’t belong in our city. We immediately promised the mosque board our support.”

The police opened an investigation and will keep extra watch for the mosque and the area.

Our final story comes from Canada, where someone obviously wants to intimidate the “Mooslims.” (via: Islamophobia-Watch)

Ontario Mosque Vandalized

Regional police are investigating a possible hate crime after the mosque of the Muslim Society of Waterloo & Wellington Counties was vandalized this week.

Two windows were broken and offensive graffiti painted around the Erb Street building, leaving many members to question why someone would do such a thing to a place of worship. Offensive pentagonal symbols and the numbers 666 were painted around the building. The windows that were broken were in the women’s prayer area. “It’s a hate crime,” said Faheem Uddin, president of the mosque. “It’s pretty bad. It’s upsetting.”

Yesterday, a large crowd attended a funeral at the mosque, with the graffiti and broken windows in plain view. “We just pray for the person who did this,” said Abdul Mannan. “May God guide him. We’re peace-living people. We love everyone and we want everyone to love us.”

A news release sent out by Waterloo Masjid public relations states that similar incidents have occurred at mosques in Hamilton and Montreal.

The Record, 20 March 2010

See also IQRA, 21 March 2010

In October, 2009, the EDL gave Nazi "Sieg Heil" salutes and the racists chants of, "If you all hate Pakis clap your hands."

In the days leading up to Israeli Apartheid Week’s opening event at Columbia University, leading anti-Muslim blogger Pam Geller posted an image of an SS officer with the name of one of the event’s speakers, Ben White, emblazoned on his uniform. (The image recalled placards held by far-right settlers depicting Yitzhak Rabin in an SS uniform just days before he was assassinated.) Geller was among the crowd at the Columbia event, making sure to catch White’s eye as he walked to the podium to speak. He told me that she mouthed to him, “You’re a Nazi.” The day after the event, Geller posted another characteristically juvenile screed describing White as “Nazi boy.”

There is little reason to engage a figure like Geller on the merits of her deranged characterizations. And it would be unfair to ascribe crude views like hers to the established pro-Israel groups working to discredit Israeli Apartheid Week. Their tactics are slightly more sophisticated, even if they have also demonstrated a reluctance to engage White and other participants on the facts about Israel’s systematic dispossession of the Palestinians. (Canadian pro-Israel students have united around a vaguely pornographic counter-campaign called “Size Doesn’t Matter” that invokes insecurities about penis length and equates traveling to Israel with the pleasure of oral sex.)

Geller’s attacks on White are worth discussing only in light of their irony. She is, after all, a fervent supporter of a British fascist group comprised of soccer hooligans and skinhead thugs who have delivered sieg heil salutes en masse at their rallies while also displaying Israeli flags — a most bizarre melange. Geller’s endorsement of the shadowy fascist group, called the English Defense League, highlights the reorganization of the British far-right around an anti-Muslim, pro-Zionist platform designed to cultivate alliances with influential online fanatics like her.

On the same day Geller posted her smear of White, she promoted a rally in defense of the Dutch anti-Muslim extremist Geert Wilders by the English Defense League (EDL) (Wilders has called for a “head rag tax” on Muslim women who wear hijab).

So what happens at a typical EDL rally? According to a report by Wales Online, at an October 2009 rally in Swansea by the EDL’s Wales-based affiliate, the Welsh Defense League, “onlookers were confronted with scenes of jeering men giving Nazi salutes.” At another rally in Stoke on Trent in January, intoxicated EDL activists in black masks attempted to break through police lines to assault anti-racist protesters around the block, injuring several police officers in the process.

Who belongs to the EDL? The group’s muscle is provided by thugs affiliated with the right-wing football hooligan club, Casuals United. The Casuals are led by an infamous thug who goes by the name “Tommy Robinson” and who will only appear in public in a balaclava. The Casuals are themselves a front for another violent football hooligan gang called Soul Crew. Soul Crew’s former leader, Jeff Marsh, is now the head of the Welsh Defense League and a recruiter for the Casuals.

According to the Daily Mail, neo-Nazis from Combat 18 and the British Freedom Front have insinuated themselves into the ranks of the EDL along with activists from the incipient neo-fascist British National Party (BNP), which is led by former white supremacist organizer Nick Griffin.

Though the BNP has distanced itself from the EDL, the two groups enjoy clear membership cross-pollination. For example, BNP activist Chris Renton helped set up the EDL’s website. While the EDL remains amorphous, its leadership appears to be following the organizational techniques employed by neo-Nazi groups like the British Peoples Party, which attempted to translate its acts of street terror into political power; and the BNP, which declared a “race war” on Muslims at a 2001 meeting. (Go here for a comprehensive look at ties between the EDL and BNP.)

British extremist right groups like the BNP have reorganized around a pro-Zionist, anti-Muslim platform to broaden their support. Israeli flags are a routine sight at EDL rallies.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the EDL is its identification with Israel. EDL activists routinely wave Israeli flags at rallies and carry placards declaring the groups support for Israel’s “right to exist” (go to :50 of this excellent BBC video report). The group’s support for Israel reflects a gradual reorientation of Britain’s far-right in favor of the policies of the Jewish state and against the rights of Muslim immigrants. While their motives for the strategic shift are largely cynical, they are also rooted in a genuine fascination with the image of Israel as a state fighting for ethnic purity against armies of Muslim marauders.

The BNP’s Griffin, who has openly denied the Holocaust and accused Jews of controlling the media, urged his allies to transmute their anti-Semitism into Islamophobia to broaden the party’s political appeal. He wrote in 2007, “It stands to reason that adopting an ‘Islamophobic’ position that appeals to large numbers of ordinary people – including un-nudged journalists – is going to produce on average much better media coverage than siding with Iran and banging on about ‘Jewish power’, which is guaranteed to raise hackles of virtually every single journalist in the western world.”

Ruth Smeed of the Board of Deputies of British Jews observed with astonishment, ”The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web – it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel and at the same time demonises Islam and the Muslim world.”

When Israel attacked the Gaza Strip in 2008 and ‘09, leading BNP figures celebrated. ”This sort of ‘disinfecting’ process whereby Israel is required to sterilise areas of radical Islamist support … is what all nations have to do in order to eradicate Islamist cells who have managed to take over territory either within or on the edges of their borders,” BNP head of legal affairs Lee Barnes proclaimed on his blog on January 4. He continued, “Get used to the casualties – for without them any nation so infected with Islamism will surrender, rot away into liberal apathy and then dies as it is taken over.”

Griffin echoed Barnes’ comments in an essay called “Israel’s Gaza affair:” “The Israelis will NEVER get unbiased reporting on the Brussels Broadcasting Corporation, despite being the only civilised country in the region & fighting for their very existance [sic],” Griffin proclaimed. “It is NOT our place to get involved but you aren’t the only one to be 100% behind them, they are an example to us all because the only thing the Islamic Terrorists understand is FORCE.”

The reorientation of the BNP around a pro-Zionist, Islamophobic platform led directly to the rise of the EDL. Now Pam Geller has volunteered as perhaps the group’s most prominent online promoter. So who is the Nazi?

Geert Wilders

His star is growing in the circles of hate but rational people still regard him as a creep.

Dutch Populist Wilders ‘unwelcome’ in Eifel Town

The Dutch anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders has been told he is “not welcome” in the western German town of Monschau after he spent the weekend in the Eifel region.

The parliamentarian and leader of the far-right Party for Freedom, along with several armed bodyguards, stayed from Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning in the town, according to police in the city of Aachen.

Wilders, who promotes a strongly anti-immigration and anti-Muslim platform, has called for the Koran to be banned in the Netherlands, among other incendiary positions. His party recently performed strongly in council elections.

Monschau Mayor Margareta Ritter said she was concerned that Wilders’ presence had tainted her town with the suspicion that it was sympathetic to his views. As a result, Monschau had unfairly been connected with extremism in the European press.

“Of course I care very much if such persons feel comfortable here,” she said. “Anyone who pollutes the integration debate in the Netherlands with poisonous right-wing populism as Wilders has, is not welcome in Monschau. I wanted to distinguish Monschau from that.”

But she was not in favour of a legal bar against Wilders’ coming to the area and if he wanted to return, he could, she said. The populist politician was briefly barred from entering Britain in 2009 for his unsavoury views.

Wilders presence in Monschau only became public knowledge because he suffered a dizzy spell there.

Whether Wilders was merely holidaying in Monschau or had been meeting with like-minded people, Ritter was unable to say.

Police were in contact with Wilders’ bodyguards drove past his hotel several times to check there was no trouble, according to a police statement. The outspoken opponent of Islam has received death threats from Muslim militants and therefore has his own, round-the-clock bodyguards.

DPA/The Local (news@thelocal.de)

If desecrating Nottingham Castle was not enough, on Friday the 5th of March, whilst in London to pay homage to their far right extremist prophet Geert Wilders, the “patriotic crusaders of England’s cultural heritage” paid their ultimate respect to one of England’s most historic sacred Christian sites, deluging Westminster Abbey with gallons of filthy urine.

Engaged in a tsunami of continuous racist chanting, the EDL’s (in denial) neo-Nazi “defenders of England’s Christian heritage” made a beeline for one of London’s most famous place of worship, unzipping their floppy pink mitres in majestic unison, baptising walls, doorways and memorials with an almighty torrent of pungent hops-tinged English excreta.

Given a free reign to do what they pleased, while sober anti-fascist demonstrators were kettled, jostled, arrested, and released later without charge, the drunken racist thugs of the so-called English Defence League were allowed to do just what they pleased in Britain’s capital, free to roam the streets of London without censure, inflicting conflict and hatred upon anyone and anything as they pleased.

Scuffling in city pubs, drinking in the streets, racially abusing passers-by, intimidating shoppers, threatening anti-racist campaigners with violence, the very worst of England’s binge-drinking yob culture was on display in the nation’s capital last Saturday.

Rampaging through the streets, disturbing the peace in the Tate Gallery, was not enough to keep the violent fascist yobbos occupied. Once they had paid lipservice to wildeyed Wilders, they set off on their most hypocritical mission yet.

Their Hitler salutes and incessant racist chanting hardly demonstrating to the world the EDL are not bigots, by displaying the same contempt towards Christianity as they openly display towards Islam, Stopping off at a sufficient number of drinking holes along the way, paying homage to cheap fizzy Australian, Danish and Belgian lagers, the self-styled “defenders of England’s native culture”, slurped, stumbled and vomited until their bladders were ready for the big one, the defining moment for the english nationalist hooligans to leave their mark upon one of Britain’s most historic churches.

Making a pissing pilgrimage to Westminster Abbey, the usual suspects including the same lout dressed like St George captured urinating on Nottingham Castle (they never learn), ran in desperation towards the historic church, disproving the sceptics who thought they only defiled mosques with racist valdalism after dark, by doing their utmost to show the world what the EDL truly thinks of Christianity.

The Metropolitan Police, church officials and embarrassed tourists looked away while the filthy louts of the riot-igniting EDL (including some of their ringleaders) sprayed walls, doors, commemorative plaques, and anything they could land on including a medieval doorway. Westminster Abbey was used as a toilet by the thugs of the EDL.

Urinating in public always has been a criminal offence. In this CCTV era, so much as dropping a bus ticket onto the pavement can warrant a hefty fine and even a court appearance, but even though the recognisable culprits had been captured many times on camera, none of the despicable fascist scrotes who thought it funny to behave like tomcats on one of London’s most visited sacred places of Christian worship have so much as been interviewed by the boys in blue.

Try pissing not in broad daylight but late night, down some hidden rubbish-strewn alley of no importance, and expect to be arrested, handcuffed and rushed to the nearest nick to spend the night. The EDL regard themselves as untouchables since the bail terms for their leaders were overturned in court, but this fails to explain why the capital’s bastians of law and order see fit not to apply the letter of the law to these lawless racist football hooligans, when law-abiding social workers, students and humanitarian anti-racist campaigners are jostled, harassed, and even arrested without charge for peacefully opposing fascism, is beyond explanation.

Given a licence to chant offensive slogans, pick fights with opponents, and indecently urinate in broad daylight on Britain’s historical tourist sites willy-nilly, beyond their curtain of spin and internet trolling, the so-called “English Defence League” are nothing more than the shamelessly moronic dregs of society, a gang of uncontrollable racist louts who bring nothing but hatred, fear and shame to the country they claim to love.

Glenn Beck

I guess when you are a supporter of fascists you are to the right of some of the most hardline and dogmatic Conservatives. It looks like Glenn Beck is going to be getting some grief from the extreme Right-wingers of the Horowitz-Geller-Spencer axis if he doesn’t take back his statement that Geert Wilders is a fascist. Sit back and enjoy!

From the Atlantic Wire:

Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician and outspoken critic of Islam, sparked outrage across Europe last week when he showed his anti-Islamic film in the UK’s House of Lords. Though the backlash against Wilders from America media has also been harsh, some of it has come from the unlikeliest of sources: Fox News. The conservative network ran a special report from Bret Bauer on Wilders, and Glenn Beck indirectly lumped him in with French politician Jean Marie Le Pen as members of a rising fascist movement in Europe (starting at the 13:00 mark).

Beck’s comments were relatively benign–at least for him. But that didn’t appease hardline conservatives, who slammed Beck and Fox in general for denigrating Wilders. The backlash has taken on several forms, but the one consistent theme on the right is anger.

• What’s Up, Glenn? “What is he doing?” asks a befuddled Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs. “Was Beck saying that the UK was right to ban Wilders in the interest of ‘community harmony?’ And the fact that he was allowed to enter the UK last week was a dire sign?” After extolling Wilders’ virutes, Geller warns Beck to think twice in the future. “Is this going to be be Beck’s narrative? If so, he is wrong. And he ought to be silent until he learns everything.”

• Next Time, Know Your Stuff At Power Line, Paul concludes Beck was simply uninformed. “It was apparent to me that Beck was out of his depth with Wilders. [...] I’ve said before that the European ‘right’ is a complex phenomenon that does contain fascist elements. It takes a little bit of work to identify those elements.”

• Denigrating a ‘Hero’ “Shame on you, Glenn,” chastises The RightScoop’s Cubachi, who proceeds to heap praise on Wilders.

Geert Wilders. A hero, a man who is risking life and limb to rescue the Netherlands and Europe from radical Islamization and communism taking grip of his country and continent. Everyday he has to wear a safety vest and hide his family and give them 24-hour security because he is willing to say the unpopular thing to protect and defend his nation.

• No More Beck for Me Vowing never to trust Beck again, iOwnTheWorld’s BigFurHat embarks on a screed-worthy tirade to set the Fox News host straight. “Glenn – there is NO MODERATE ISLAM. This is what you get when you go out on a limb with a guy that is largely fueled by emotion rather than brains. I’m not saying Beck isn’t smart, but he is a bit Howard Bealish for me, and this is what you will have to endure with him.”

Geert Wilders

At the same time that he is facing charges for hate speech his party is making advancements in local polls which bode ill for future national elections. Islamophobia is on the march!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buVPm0LzmR8 350 300]

For more on Wilders, read Krapuul.nl which is the number one site tracking Geert Wilders.

Wearing a Yarmulke (Yamaka) is okay but not the Hijab

Geert Wilders previously called for a tax on the Hijab, now a recent political event reveals a new tactic in his  discriminatory political agenda. On a side note this is a good compliment to Danios’ article, as it ironically reveals that it is contemporary, if marginal Westerners who want to repress religious freedom and are advocating repressive conditions and restrictions on minorities akin to the ones in the fabled ‘Pact of Umar.’

Wilders goes for headscarf ban in the Hague

A ban on headscarves for city council workers and in all institutions and clubs which get local authority money will be the most important point in the PVV´s negotiations to join governing coalitions in Almere and the Hague, says party leader Geert Wilders.

Speaking to RTL news, Wilders said the ban would be central to talks to form new local authority executives in the only two cities where the party is contesting the March 3 local elections.

The ban will apply to ‘all council offices and all other institutions and clubs which get even one cent of council money,’ he said.

The PVV is tipped to emerge as the biggest party in Almere and second biggest in the Hague.

Speech

Wilders brought up the ban again in a speech to supporters in Almere, where he entered the room to the Rocky theme tune Eye of the Tiger.

The ban will not apply to other religious items such as Christian crosses and Jewish skull caps because these are symbols of our own Dutch culture, Wilders said in his speech, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.

The speech began with a ‘lengthy tirade’ against the ‘arrogant Labour party’, according to the Volkskrant report of the meeting. ‘If you translate the PvdA’s Arabic language election brochures they say ‘bring your family here. You get benefits, we pay for everything’, the Volkskrant quoted the PVV leader as saying.

‘Almere must become the safest city in the Netherlands,’ he said. ‘There will be an end to subsidies for Turkish macramé and Arabic finger painting. Not just the Netherlands but all of Europe will look to Almere.’

Discrimination

Wilders is currently facing charges of discrimination and inciting hatred against non western immigrants and Muslims. He always maintains he is opposed to Islam, not Muslims themselves.

Earlier this week, Wilders told the Telegraaf the PVV´s commitment to maintaining the current retirement age of 65 would be crucial in negotiations to form a new national government, following the collapse of the CDA, Labour and ChristenUnie alliance last weekend.

Most parties have already ruled out forming a coalition with Wilders. Only the Christian Democrats and right wing Liberals VVD have not done so.

Opinion polls make it likely that four parties will be needed to form a new government after the June 9 vote.