This is still my favorite picture of Robert Spencer.

Robert Spencer loves to flaunt and name drop his speeches to “officaldom,” it serves to legitimize his anti-Islam/anti-Muslim crusade. However, as we have copiously catalogued on our website, the chorus of those speaking out and exposing Spencer is growing larger every day. They include Conservatives as well as Liberals, from various groups across the nation.

Spencer used to regularly write on his blog about speaking in front of this security group or that security group. The truth is that those requests for Spencer’s speeches have decreased over the years, especially under the Obama administration (another reason for  the hate he and his buddy Pamela Geller direct towards Obama).

The fact that the FBI has erred so terribly in giving a voice to a bigot such as Spencer does not in the least legitimize Spencer as a trusted, objective or authoritative voice on Islam, terrorism or American Muslims. It just means that it has taken the FBI longer to realize what everyone is realizing, Spencer is a fraud, a Crusading (to use Andrew Sullivan’s term) Christianist bigot who sees Islam as the competition that must be eliminated.

It is only a matter of time before the FBI realizes that inviting Spencer to speak on Islam is akin to inviting David Duke to speak on the holocaust or a member of the KKK to speak about race relations in America. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Robert Spencer popularized the term “Stealth Jihad,” and some in the Conservative wing such as Newt Gingrich have ran with it and are using it all the time. As has been exposed on Loonwatch and other sites, “Stealth Jihad” is paranoid speak and just another anti-Muslim conspiracy theory.

Lisa Miller takes on this term in her recent article which no doubt will have Spencer, whose site is described as “a hyperventilating anti-terror blog,” in fits.

The Misinformants

By Lisa Miller

Here is the latest semantic assault from the party that brought you “Islamo-facism” (circa 2005) and “Axis of Evil” (2002). The term “stealth jihad” is suddenly voguish among politically ambitious right wingers who see President Obama’s approach to terrorism as insufficient. If it sounds like a phrase from a military-fantasy summer blockbuster, that’s on purpose: in its cartoonish bad-guy foreignness, “stealth jihad” attempts to make the terrorist threat broader and thus more nefarious than it already is. The only thing scarier than an invisible, homicidal, suicidal enemy with a taste for world domination is one who’s sneaking up on you. In the words of former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich at a July speech at the American Enterprise Institute, “stealth jihad” is an effort “to replace Western civilization with a radical imposition of Sharia.”

The term wasn’t Gingrich’s invention. It’s the title of a two-year-old book by Robert Spencer, whose hyperventilating antiterror blog, Jihad Watch, is cited and circulated widely on the far right. But the recent vicious debate over the proposed community center and mosque near Ground Zero gives Gingrich an excuse to use “stealth jihad” and its variants frequently—not just at the AEI but in an interview with this magazine. (In an essay on the conservative Web site Human Events, he referred instead to “creeping sharia.”) Gingrich’s like-minded peers have seized on the language, too. “Muslim Brotherhood operatives, like [Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the center’s founder and leader] are extremely skilled at obscuring … their true agenda,” said Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy, on FOX’s Glenn Beck show. “It’s part of the stealth jihad.”
‘A Little Intolerant, But Good Reason To Be’ Protesters for and against the building of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero talk about their reasons for supporting or opposing the project.

Words matter, and if you say them often enough and with enough authority, they start to sound true—even if they’re not. Abdul Rauf, for instance, has no affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood and is an “operative” (another nefarious word) only in the sense that running a small, progressive interfaith nonprofit is an “operation.” As for his “stealth jihad,” it’s virtually impossible to imagine how such an event would—logistically—occur. Would the construction of an Islamic prayer site near Ground Zero inevitably lead American women to wake up one morning and find themselves veiled and confined to their homes? “The term is ever-so-slightly goofy,” says Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley. The paranoia conveyed by “stealth jihad” brings to mind the anticommunist campaigns of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, Nunberg adds. Just as McCarthyites imagined a communist behind every lamppost, the word “stealth” conflates all Muslims with terrorists. In a stealth campaign you never know who your friends are.

Also, simply put, foreign words freak people out. “Jihad” and “Sharia” reinforce the sense among Americans that Muslims in general have an unfathomable world view. During World War II, formerly obscure words like “hara-kiri” and “kamikaze,” which suggested the “warlike ferocity” of the Japanese, became common parlance, Nunberg says. “There was this sense of being confronted with this hostile, alien culture.” The Japanese were “literally demonized,” he says.

Gingrich has already used the mosque debate to evoke many of America’s historic enemies, comparing Muslims indirectly with Nazis and communists and even the Japanese. “We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor,” he said on FOX recently.

But that is not true. Fourteen percent of Hawaiians call themselves ethnically Japanese, according to the U.S. Census, and dozens of Japanese temples stand near Pearl Harbor—as they have for decades. One of them, the Buddhist Aiea Hongwanji Mission, is less than half a mile away. “You can see Pearl Harbor from the roof, maybe. We’re really close,” says Wade Yamamoto, the temple’s treasurer. The temple allows people “to practice their religion from back home,” he says. Gingrich, a historian, might take a lesson here. After the attacks of Dec. 7, 1941, more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent—two thirds of them American citizens—were interned in camps in a shameful episode that later legislation called the result of “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” Last week, a New York City cab driver was stabbed for answering the question “Are you a Muslim?” in the affirmative. Our enemies are dangerous. Let’s be clear about who they are.

With Johannah Cornblatt

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Robert Spencer, a Christian crusader who likes to cover his anti-Muslim fanaticism with a pretense to scholarship is fond of saying “Obama may be a Muslim,” and his buddy Pamela Geller often dubs Obama as a “Socialist” and “Communist.”

That’s why it is quite ironic to learn that Spencer himself in a previous incarnation used to be a Communist. In his younger days before he went zealous with Christianity Spencer was a devoted Communist,

Robert Spencer…[a] canny operative who likely has the inside track on the State Department’s Middle East affairs desk should the tea party win the White House in 2012, Spencer nonetheless offered that he had spent part of his youth working at Revolution Books, which is run by the Revolutionary Communist Party (and its cultish leader Bob Avakian), a hard-line Maoist group most sixties-style radicals, like, say, Bill Ayers, would consider beyond the pale.

Not only was Spencer a Commie but he was a hard core Communist, such that even the boogie monster known as Bill Ayers wouldn’t want to touch.

It is also another point of similarity between Spencer and his boss David Horowitz who used to be a Communist and now is a hardcore Conservative. Interestingly enough Spencer’s embrace of capitalism has been quite profitable, he is making six figures for his anti-Muslim work.

The article in the New York Magazine also reveals some other interesting if irrelevant tid-bits about Spencer, his father used to work for the Voice of America.

The following is the relevant portion relating to Spencer in the article, I suggest everyone read the whole thing by Mark Jacobson titled, Muhammad Comes to Manhattan:

Dhimmitude was the state to which Muslim caliphs reduced their “useful” but decidedly second-class subjects, those who had to be made to “feel themselves subdued” (the Koran, Sura 9:29), Robert Spencer told me as we dined in the T.G.I. Friday’s on the scenic lower level of Penn Station. A canny operative who likely has the inside track on the State Department’s Middle East affairs desk should the tea party win the White House in 2012, Spencer nonetheless offered that he had spent part of his youth working at Revolution Books, which is run by the Revolutionary Communist Party (and its cultish leader Bob Avakian), a hard-line Maoist group most sixties-style radicals, like, say, Bill Ayers, would consider beyond the pale. Spencer—whose father worked for the Voice of America during the Cold War—contended that terror, the threat of the A-bomb in the burka, while worth worrying about, was “just one tactic” in Islam’s clash with the U.S. What was afoot was a more insidious thing, a burrowing infiltration of the enemy.

“Muslims are the first immigrant group that has ever come to this country with a ready-made model of society and government they believe to be superior to what we have here,” Spencer told me. The thinking was clear to anyone who took the trouble to study the plan, the blogger and author of Stealth Jihad contended. “Muhammad said, ‘When you meet the unbelievers, invite them to accept Islam; if they refuse, offer them the dhimma—second-class status—and, if they refuse that, go to war with them.’ That’s it. Conversion, subjugation, or war. Three steps. Conversion, subjugation, or war … That’s what Muhammad said. And in chapter 33, verse 21 of the Koran, it says Muhammad is the excellent example for the Muslim, you ask any Muslim and they’ll tell you that: That is nonnegotiable, what Muhammad said goes, and that’s not some hijacker extremist Islam, that’s mainstream … This is how it is, you don’t need a bomb. I don’t think Feisal is ever going to blow anything up, because that’s not his game; his game is a societal, cultural penetration … ”

After that, Spencer peered up from his plate of Caribbean chicken and bid me to look around the T.G.I. Friday’s. “Remember this moment and this spot,” he said. “Because the freedoms we enjoy are in danger. You might not know it now, because it is just beginning. But 25 or 30 years from now you’re going to think of this place and say to yourself, Spencer was right.”

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Spencer with fellow anti-Muslim writer Bostom during happier days.  (Bostom too has accused Spencer of fake scholarship since).

Robert Spencer is indeed a strange breed. He has curiously thin skin for someone who is a career bigot and hatemonger. He freely throws punches (that mostly miss) but cries to the heavens when any are thrown back (maybe because they usually land).

I mean if you are going to put yourself out there as a bigot, you may not want to cry yourself to sleep every time someone calls you out as one.

Grow some gonads.

Robert Spencer, “the acclaimed scholar”, makes a living painting Muslims as murderers, terrorists, misogynists, liars, hypocrites, thugs, and bloodthirsty savages.

But then when the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein correctly characterized him as anti-Muslim, he throws a hissy fit, arguing that she “smeared” and “maligned” poor little Spencer, and even put his life in danger.

You could not make this stuff up. The man is plain bonkers. (Spencer’s tearjerker of a schoolboy letter to Boorstein is a riot to read and is a must see for every Silly-Spencer lover.)

Now, his feelings are hurt again.

This time the ego-bruised Mr. Spencer goes after the Chicago Tribune’s Manya Brachear, one of the few objective religion reporters left in the newsroom business. Spencer is reeling from Tribune religion blog contributor Ahmed Rehab outing him as:

“a long-time anti-Muslim goon from the annals of the hate blogosphere.”

Sounds like an apt characterization of Spencer alright.

Browsing Spencerwatch.com you will find plenty of evidence that corroborate this description of Robert Spencer.

Browse Spencer’s very own Jihadwatch.com and you will find it bursting with a thousand more examples of Spencer’s anti-Muslim loonieness, personal megalomania, and general creepiness.

And yet Spencer apparently is soft in the center and needs to shed a tear for his hurt feelings when people call him “mean things.”

But here’s the best part:

Spencer has the wool pulled so deeply over his eyes that he utters the name of “David Duke” to describe someone who criticizes him, apparently while completely oblivious to the irony of the analogy: Spencer’s rabid Islamophobia being an identical counterpart to David Duke’s brand of anti-Semitism.

Perhaps the “scholar” Mr. Spencer, can heal the pain inflicted upon him by truth tellers Ms. Brachear and Mr. Rehab by singing himself a soft lullaby filled with his heartwarming bigoted and hateful rants against Muslims.

Here’s the Tribune article, enjoy (hat tip: Jihadwatch.com):

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/religion_theseeker/2010/08/untold-story-behind-the-mosque-at-ground-zero.htm

It seems like more people are catching on to Spencer’s lies. Here’s a new book available at Amazon.com.

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, N.J., Aug. 19 /PRNewswire/ — Incensed with how much the American public are lied to about Islam (the latest rampant Islamophobia regarding building the mosque near Ground Zero and the planned burning of the Holy Quran in a Florida church), well-known Muslim American scholar Moustafa Zayed struck back by releasing the anticipated book “The Lies about Muhammad,” in which he refuted, paragraph by paragraph, all false claims and allegations about Muhammad and Islam in the well-publicized Islam-bashing book “The Truth about Muhammad” by Robert Spencer. Zayed explains that, “My contention is that all misperceptions that the average American has about Islam (from what jihad truly is, to what women, minorities, and human rights are), are not just outright fallacious but, worse, are the total opposite of the truth!”

Zayed comments, “Today’s Islamophobia is not a misunderstanding, or a difference in beliefs or opinions, but a deliberate fabrication and misinformation of clear facts perpetrated upon the American people.” Zayed gave an example: In his book, Mr. Spencer brought a verse from the Quran, claiming that it proves that Islamic law mandates male witnesses of “sexual immortality” in order to support the male criminal! It appears that Mr. Spencer has intentionally omitted the first sentence of the verse that shows it is only related to recording debts!
Zayed asks further, “If Islam is that awful, why is it that it was not only the only religion that grew in America the past 18 years, but actually doubled in population?” He continues, “Islam is the same religion whose Prophet made the condition to enter paradise to ‘spread peace amongst yourselves.’ If it is inherently a violent and intolerant religion, why is it the fastest growing religion in the entire world, with over 1.6 billion followers?” Zayed adds ominously, “Some people are seriously misled about Islam.”
Zayed, featured as a leading scholar in Britain’s Ch. 4 documentary “Islam in America,” adds about the 400 page book “The Lies about Muhammad,” “I didn’t just refute over 154 false claims with my own word against theirs, but with the most undisputed Islamic references, historical facts, common sense logic, testimonies from some of the world’s greatest thinkers, and even evidence straight from the Torah and New Testament.”
“The Lies about Muhammad” has just been released on amazon.com.
Contact: Moustafa Zayed
732-698-8812
theliesaboutmuhammad@gmail.com
http://www.theliesaboutmuhammad.com

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.

Marisol, who presumably posts when Spencer is not around, blogged about a Muslim women’s shelter in Tulsa that she titled, Shelter helps abused women in Kabul? No. In Riyadh? No. Where? In Tulsa.

You can’t win with these Islamophobes. First they complain about the domestic violence in the Muslim world and how women have no recourse to shelters, and then they complain about the existence of such shelters arguing that they are indicative of inherent misogyny and violence in Islam and amongst Muslim males.

Marisol asks the question,

Why does such a relatively small population need a dedicated Muslim women’s shelter for domestic abuse?

The truth is about 15 women, most of whom have been Muslim (meaning not all) have been housed at the shelter since it opened. The Muslim population of Tulsa is estimated between 6,000 and 8,000.

Marisol then answers her own question by stating that Islam and the Quran are the problem. Read the rest at Spencerwatch.com.

Justin Elliot has a good piece on Salon.com, but he would have benefited from our pieces, Pamela Geller: The Looniest Blogger Ever and SIOA is an anti-Muslim Hate Group.

How the “ground zero mosque” fear mongering began

by Justin Elliot

A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There’s another mosque two blocks away from the site. City officials support the project. Muslims have been praying at the Pentagon, the other building hit on Sept. 11, for many years.

In short, there is no good reason that the Cordoba House project should have been a major national news story, let alone controversy. And yet it has become just that, dominating the political conversation for weeks and prompting such a backlash that, according to a new poll, nearly 7 in 10 Americans now say they oppose the project. How did the Cordoba House become so toxic, so fast?

In a story last week, the New York Times, which framed the project in a largely positive, noncontroversial light last December, argued that it was cursed from the start by “public relations missteps.” But this isn’t accurate. To a remarkable extent, a Salon review of the origins of the story found, the controversy was kicked up and driven by Pamela Geller, a right-wing, viciously anti-Muslim, conspiracy-mongering blogger, whose sinister portrayal of the project was embraced by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.

Here’s a timeline of how it all happened:

• Dec. 8, 2009: The Times publishes a lengthy front-page look at the Cordoba project. “We want to push back against the extremists,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the lead organizer, is quoted as saying. Two Jewish leaders and two city officials, including the mayor’s office, say they support the idea, as does the mother of a man killed on 9/11. An FBI spokesman says the imam has worked with the bureau. Besides a few third-tier right-wing blogs, including Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs site, no one much notices the Times story.
• Dec. 21, 2009: Conservative media personality Laura Ingraham interviews Abdul Rauf’s wife, Daisy Khan, while guest-hosting “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox. In hindsight, the segment is remarkable for its cordiality. “I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it,” Ingraham says of the Cordoba project, adding at the end of the interview, “I like what you’re trying to do.”
• (This segment also includes onscreen the first use that we’ve seen of the misnomer “ground zero mosque.”) After the segment — and despite the front-page Times story — there were no news articles on the mosque for five and a half months, according to a search of the Nexis newspaper archive.
• May 6, 2010: After a unanimous vote by a New York City community board committee to approve the project, the AP runs a story. It quotes relatives of 9/11 victims (called by the reporter), who offer differing opinions. The New York Post, meanwhile, runs a story under the inaccurate headline, “Panel Approves ‘WTC’ Mosque.” Geller is less subtle, titling her post that day, “Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction.” She writes on her Atlas Shrugs blog, “This is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident. Just as Al-Aqsa was built on top of the Temple in Jerusalem.” (To get an idea of where Geller is coming from, she once suggested that Malcolm X was Obama’s real father. Seriously.)
• May 7, 2010: Geller’s group, Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), launches “Campaign Offensive: Stop the 911 Mosque!” (SIOA ‘s associate director is Robert Spencer, who makes his living writing and speaking about the evils of Islam.) Geller posts the names and contact information for the mayor and members of the community board, encouraging people to write. The board chair later reports getting “hundreds and hundreds” of calls and e-mails from around the world.
• May 8, 2010: Geller announces SIOA’s first protest against what she calls the “911 monster mosque” for May 29. She and Spencer and several other members of the professional anti-Islam industry will attend. (She also says that the protest will mark the dark day of “May 29, 1453, [when] the Ottoman forces led by the Sultan Mehmet II broke through the Byzantine defenses against the Muslim siege of Constantinople.” The outrage-peddling New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser argues in a note at the end of her column a couple of days later that “there are better places to put a mosque.”
• May 13, 2010: Peyser follows up with an entire column devoted to “Mosque Madness at Ground Zero.” This is a significant moment in the development of the “ground zero mosque” narrative: It’s the first newspaper article that frames the project as inherently wrong and suspect, in the way that Geller has been framing it for months. Peyser in fact quotes Geller at length and promotes the anti-mosque protest of Stop Islamization of America, which Peyser describes as a “human-rights group.” Peyser also reports — falsely — that Cordoba House’s opening date will be Sept. 11, 2011.

(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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Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) ranked Robert Spencer as the second leading Islamophobe in the country, losing out the number one position to his boss and financier David Horowitz.  Former Nixon advisor Robert Crane calls out Spencer as “the principal leader…in the new academic field of Islam-bashing.”  Even though Horowitz can be credited with funding the modern day online Crusade against Islam, it is Robert Spencer who fights on the online battlefield, attacking his Muslim foes and their liberal dhimmi allies.  In order to bolster his credibility, Spencer and his allies not only claim that he is a scholar, but his own website touts him as “the acclaimed scholar of Islam”.  Because these words are boldly emblazoned on his own site, we can only assume that he takes such claims seriously.  It is thus fair game to call him to task for this.

His claims notwithstanding, Robert Spencer simply does not possess any scholarly credentials.  To be seriously considered a scholar in the academic world in this day and age, one must at minimum possess some rudimentary academic education in the field in which one is claiming scholarship. In order to be considered a scholar, one must have published numerous peer-reviewed articles in reputable journals, the articles being subjected to rigorous critique by established authorities before being accepted.  First year students in Ph.D. programs have published far more of such articles than Robert Spencer ever has.  There is good reason for that: Spencer has published no such articles, contenting  himself with reproducing work in non-academic and populist publications.  Spencer does not even possess a Master’s Degree in anything related to Islam, let alone a Ph.D. and post-doctoral fellowship.  Spencer does have in M.A. in the field of early Christian studies; does that make him a scholar of Christianity?  If not, then why is he considered a scholar of Islam without even an M.A. in Islamic studies?

It seems that Spencer wishes to bypass the minimum of eight years of studies needed to even be considered a serious student (let alone a scholar) and wishes simply to anoint himself the title of “scholar.”  It is difficult to take any of his supporters seriously when they claim someone is “the acclaimed scholar of Islam” when he does not even have a Master’s Degree in the subject.  Spencer’s followers, fans, and sister sites refer to him as a “scholar” and that’s enough of a credential for him.  Ahmed Rehab wrote an excellent article on the Huffington Post that succinctly sums up Robert Spencer’s (lack of) “qualifications” as a scholar:

Spencer postures himself as an “Islamic Scholar.” But unlike most people we tend to call “scholars,” Spencer did not burden himself with the traditional scholarly route that puts an emphasis on objectivity and academic rigor.

There is a good reason for this: his “scholarly” methodologies would not jive in any of our nation’s accredited PhD programs let alone a path for tenure where he would have to get his papers peer-reviewed and have his methodology checked by notable scholars for objectivity and a lack of bias (unless, of course, David Horowitz decides to build the David Horowitz Freedom University).

Spencer dismisses such criticism as follows: he is right, and all of the tenured professors of Islamic studies, with their inconvenient knack for unbiased scholarship, are wrong. After all, universities are the establishment of the left-wing liberal conspiracy.

Besides who needs peer-reviewed papers, Spencer seems content to receive rave reviews from Weasel Zippers, Nice Doggie, Atlas Shrugs, Muslims are Terrorists, and of course, frontpagemag.com, that other gem of a creation, and bastion of objectivity, by the guy who cuts his checks.

Now, I will be the first to admit that there are plenty of problems in the Muslim world. I welcome an honest and responsible critique any day. But honest and responsible Spencer’s agenda-driven hatemongering is not. I am not not the only one to take issue with Spencer’s technique. Most objective scholars and professors of Islamic studies dismiss the guy as laughably fraudulent and amateur.

The fact that Robert Spencer posits himself as a “scholar” calls to question his credibility, and one cannot escape the conclusion that he is nothing but an intellectual huckster.  Just as we would view a person as a quack for claiming to be a physician without having gone to medical school, likewise we must declare Spencer a fraud.  Quite frankly, he is a boldfaced liar, for claiming to be something that he is not.  His claims to scholarship ought not be taken seriously, and his title of “the acclaimed scholar of Islam” ought to be considered the epitome of hilarity.

Neither is Robert Spencer’s methodology scholarly.  Because he is not accustomed to nor subjected to scholarly peer review, Spencer can use populist arguments that appeal to the layperson but not to the serious student or scholar.  Ahmed Rehab explains Spencer’s basic methodology:

So let us take a quick look at the crux of Spencer’s methodology which is as disingenuous as his conclusions are sensational. In fact, it can be analogized to the three acts of a magic trick as described in the movie The Prestige.

The Set Up: Spencer and his associates scour the web for the most sensational and extreme expressions within the Muslim world. They may be related to a certain extremist interpretation of Islam, or may not even have anything to do with Islam altogether, but that won’t matter, so long as the perpetrator is a Muslim, it will do.

The Performance: Spencer then supplants his own commentary on the story which he meticulously crafts with the ultimate goal of convincing his readers that the bizarre incident in question is representative of the faith of Islam and Muslims at large. This subtle leap of faith that he hopes no one notices is the key to his magic act.

The Prestige: He can then rightly claim, with the innocence of a schoolboy, that he does not make up the material he produces, that he is merely quoting things as is, hoping no one notices that he uses the aberrant to define the normative.

Rehab’s analysis is good, but it seems necessary to add the missing element.  Yes, it is true that Spencer points to the most extremist interpretations of Islam and then claims they represent the faith.  But he also points to ultraconservative interpretations of Islam (which ought not be considered exactly synonymous with “the most extremist interpretations of Islam”) and then reinforces the authority of these interpretations by quoting texts from the classical Islamic texts.  It does not matter to Spencer or his audience that these medieval texts were written hundreds of years ago; these views become the “normative” understanding of the religion.  He ignores the fact that, like Judaism and Christianity, Islamic thought is not static and has developed over the last century.  It is thus that a contemporary Muslim can read an ancient legal text without taking it as the Gospel truth, perhaps agreeing with it in general but disagreeing on certain points.  But to Spencer, a Muslim who picks up any such book must automatically agree with it 100%, without question.

Spencer’s work involves labeling the extremist or ultraconservative views of Islam as “the real (and only) Islam” 70% of the time, and wholesale fabrication 30% of the time.  This 70/30 strategy works well for him, because he can claim that he didn’t make up the 70% by quoting REAL Muslims who say such.  And the remaining 30% is slipped in between the 70%, requiring an astute and informed mind to catch it.  Let’s see this article of Spencer’s to see the 70/30 strategy in action.  He makes two arguments on that page, as follows:

The two recent cases in which I was involved had to do with the closure of the gates of ijtihad and the arrangement of Qur’anic suras…

1. The gates of ijtihad are closed…

2. The Qur’an is arranged from the longest to the shortest chapters…

Point #1 is the 70%, and point #2 is the 30%.  In point #1, Spencer claims that the “gates of ijtihad” are closed.  The Arabic word ijtihad refers to the independent analysis of the Quran and Prophetic traditions.  If the gate is closed, this means that Muslims are “stuck with” the traditional opinions expressed hundreds of years ago during a very intolerant time in world history.  In other words, Muslims cannot reform their religion because the gates of ijtihad are closed.

To “prove” his claim, Spencer says: “Here is some material from Muslims” and then quotes a few random Muslims who said as much, linking to an Islamic website.  This is how Spencer cites sources, using as authoritative even no-name random websites.  For example, on p.76 of his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Spencer makes the following incredible claim:

…As many as 75 percent of the imprisoned women in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape. [34]

When one flips to the back of his book, one reads that the source, footnote [34], reads:

[34] See Sisters in Islam, “Rape, Zina, and Incest,” April 6, 2000, http://www.muslimtents.com/sistersinislam/resources/sdefini.htm

The link is broken, but the site he sourced has been archived here.  It’s just  random website that says:

In Pakistan, it is reported that three out of four women in prison under its Hudud laws, are rape victims.

“It is reported…”?  By whom?  What authority?  Who reported it?  There is no footnote, reference, or citation given.  But Spencer uses it anyways, assuming that his opponents are simply supposed to accept it because it is “your side” saying it.  No academic publication would ever accept such a spurious reference.  A real scholar, whose work would regularly be subjected to scholarly critique (i.e. peer-reviewed), would never even cite like such.  The number 75% is truly astronomical and beyond belief.  Likewise, Spencer “backs up” his claim about the gates of ijtihad by citing REAL LIFE Muslims, as if somehow quoting from “your side” will prove his statement.  For example, he says:

Then there’s this from Muslim-Canada.org:

“Thus the schools of the four Imams remain intact after a thousand years have passed, and so the ‘Ulama’ recognize since the time of these Imams no Mujtahid of the first degree. Ibn Hanbal was the last….Since their Imam Qazi Khan died (A.H. 592), no one has been recognized by the Sunnis as a Mujtahid even of the third class.”

A mujtahid is someone qualified to perform ijtihad. Ahmed ibn Hanbal died in 855 AD. Qazi Khan died in 1196.

The truth is that his claim that the gates of ijtihad are closed is bogus, because there is no real such thing as “gates of ijtihad.”  It’s just a phrase used, and is not a real physical thing.  Some conservative elements in the Islamic world believe that the gates of ijtihad are closed, and Spencer quotes these Muslims as “proof.”  But there is no dearth of Muslims who think otherwise.  The gates of ijtihad are open for whoever wants them to be open, and closed for whoever wants them to be closed.  Indeed, this has always been the case, with jurists who lived hundreds of years ago engaging in ijtihad.  Even the conservative Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyya firmly believed that the gates of ijtihad were open, engaged in ijtihad, and was (and is) considered a mujtahid (one who is capable of engaging in ijtihad) of the highest order by many Muslims.  And he died in 1328 A.D., more than 130 years after the passing of Qazi Khan (the imam Spencer claims was the last mujtahid “even of the third class”).  Even those Islamic jurists (past and present) who say they believe that the “gates of ijtihad” are closed would (and do) often engage in ijtihad but simply call it something else; others would (and do) believe that it is closed in general (i.e. on most topics) but open for other issues.

Professor H. Patrick Glenn, in his book Legal Traditions of the World (pp.203-204), wrote of the so-called “gates of ijtihad” (or “door of endeavor” as he translates it):

Of course, there never was a door, and there never was a closing (that anyone could see, or hear) but everyone can instantly seize what a closed door means.  It is a silent but effective barrier, and you can never know what will be on the other side if you open it and go through.  So the proponents of the closed door argue not only that God’s will has been fulfilled in existing teaching, but that the re-opening of the door would raise fundamental questions about the future direction and even identity of Islam.  Yet the controversy within Islamic legal thought on this subject in the last century has been described as ‘violent.’  Some say the door should be re-opened, at least for the least precise of the Koranic injunctions; others say it is already open,  or even never closed…Nobody today can say whether the shari’a, in the totality of its primary sources, is immutable.

Professor M.B. Hooker writes in his book entitled Indonesian Islam: Social Change through Contemporary Fatawa (p.232):

The gate to ijtihad was opened long ago.

Perhaps a more precise statement would be that the gate of ijtihad was opened for whoever wants to view it as opened.  Conservative Muslims will view it as closed, whereas less conservative Muslims will see it as opened. Conservative Muslims who repeatedly make the claim–that “the gates of ijtihad are closed and have always been closed”–must be understood to be chastising their less conservative brethren for engaging in what they view as unacceptable modernization via ijtihad.  In other words, their claim is not stating that no Muslim is engaging in ijtihad, but only that no Muslim ought to engage in it or is properly authorized to do so (according to them).

Robert Spencer’s claim that the gates of ijtihad are closed is incredibly misleading and uninformed as it is completely misses out on the entire theme of the nineteenth century of Islamic thought, which was rampant with “modernist Islamic thinkers” who demanded an unfettered “opening” of the gates of ijtihad.  They not only successfully opened it, they smashed it, much to the chagrin of conservative Muslims.  Professor F.E. Peters mused in his book The Monotheists (V.1, p.118):

Today the gate of ijtihad seems agape rather than merely ajar.

But a Muslim said otherwise!  “Your own side” said so!  Such silliness cannot be tolerated in academia, and it is no surprise that Spencer could not tolerate a scholarly peer-review of his work.  This, then, is Spencer’s 70%, wherein he cites extremist or ultraconservative/conservative opinions and cites them as not only the most authoritative views in Islamic thought, but the only ones.  Less conservative views (especially reformist interpretations) are viewed as not being “real Islam.”  Once Spencer has discounted these reformist understandings of Islam, he then disingenuously laments about why Islam is not being reformed.

Moving on to the 30%, we see Spencer’s second argument, as follows:

2. The Qur’an is arranged from the longest to the shortest chapters…

Spencer claims that aside from the very first chapter (sura), “the Qur’an is indeed arranged longest chapter to shortest.”  This seems like an innocuous mistake, so why should we dwell on it?  Certainly it would not be worthy of a second thought, except that he is specifically berating Dinesh D’Souza for saying otherwise.  Wouldn’t Spencer have simply opened up the Quran to see if it is true or not before he responded?  Instead of doing this very simple task, he looks around for “Muslim sources” that “say the same thing”.  He cites www.islamset.com and an article published on an oil company’s magazine (written by a random anthropologist named Geert Mommersteeg).  Well, if Geert Mommersteeg the anthropologist says it, then it must be true!

The last chapter of the Quran is al-Nas, and it is 6 verses long.  It is not the shortest chapter in the Quran as Spencer claims.  Rather, the shortest chapter in the Quran is al-Kawthar, which is only 3 verses long.  The fact that “your side” said that the last chapter is the shortest doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t. There can only be one of two possibilities: Spencer did not even open the Quran to check, in which case his “scholarship” is extremely shoddy.  Or alternatively, he is guilty of academic deceit, using the “your side said it” argument to “disprove” reality.  Spencer’s audience congratulates him on the fact that “he never says something of his own, but always quotes from Muslim sources.”

An even clearer proof of the 30% (and this time not an innocuous lie at all) can be seen here, where Spencer claims that the word “dhimmi” means “guilty person.”  His entire chapter on “dhimmitude” used the 70/30 approach.  The 70% came by quoting ultraconservative interpretations of how to treat non-Muslims, and reinforcing it by citing the views of “classical” scholars (i.e. those that died hundreds of years ago).  The 30% came by slipping in the “guilty person” fib, which Spencer hoped nobody would be astute enough to notice.

Robert Spencer is no scholar, nor is his methodology scholarly.  He is a fraud, an intellectual huckster, and a sham artist.  And he’s about to be exposed.

Robert Spencer next to his Perpetual Serf Pamela Geller

Robert Spencer contradicts himself once again. In a recent article in the Daily Caller, Spencer is quoted as saying,

“[Kagan] would knowingly and wittingly abet the advance of Sharia, but she wouldn’t do it understanding anything about Sharia. She would do it out of her ignorance.”

Yes, because the only one who understands Sharia is Robert Spencer.

What a convoluted way of saying what he really wants to say, “Kagan will ‘advance Shariah.’”

So will she “knowingly” or “ignorantly” advance Sharia?

Spencer attributes Kagan’s fondness for Sharia to naïveté and liberalism. “There is a general tendency on the part of political liberals in the United States today to take a benign view of Islam and Islamic law,” he said. “They are generally uninformed and share a hatred of the West and Western civilization.”

Essentially, if someone disagrees with Spencer they are cast as either “ignorant” or “taking a benign view of Islam and Islamic law.” This woman has devoted her whole life to the study of law, does he not think for a second that Kagan might know more about Islamic law than himself?

According to Spencer, Kagan will be a willing accomplice in the ongoing stealth jihad — or the institution of Sharia into non-Muslim societies via non-violent means, such as the courts and mainstreaming Islamic customs — currently underway against the West. “The goal of the jihad is to assert the primacy of Islamic law over non-Muslim society and over Muslim societies where it is not fully enforced, and that can take place either through violent or non-violent means and the goal is the same,” he said.

This is still my favorite picture of Robert Spencer.

Professional anti-Muslim bigot Robert Spencer is cashing in a huge paycheck. He makes $132,537 from blogging on JihadWatch, courtesy of the David Horowitz “Freedom Center.” That doesn’t include all the money he makes from advertisements, speaking engagements and book deals.

So, yes Islamophobes, it isn’t all altruistic defense in the name of Western Civilization that inspires your heroes to crusade against Muslims, it turns out the spoils of the Islamophobic cottage industry are quite lucrative.

David Horowitz’s Freedom Center 990 tax return,

One can make a comfortable living off of hate and bigotry. The rest of the document is quite worth seeing as well and we will expose more of it in the near future.

Spencer has quipped many times that he is not funded by big “rich” Conservatives, that he has a “modest income.” Maybe modest in relation to his boss David Horowitz who is raking in nearly half a million dollars, which makes me wonder how much is my local school teacher making?

The “shrieking harpy” as she is known by many, Pamela Geller is at her business once again — lunacy. Now she is taking it to another level and reiterating her support for Serbian war criminals.

In another maniacal post, Geller writes,

Radovan Karadžić, the former Bosnian Serb politician, is on trial (more like a sharia court) in the United Nations Detention Unit of Scheveningen, accused of “war crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats during the Siege of Sarajevo” (now an entirely Muslim city, completely ethnically cleansed of non-Muslims.)

Obviously stating that the Hague Court is a Shariah Court is a lame attempt at deligitimizing the Hague and the UN. It is sad to see the depths that Pamela will go to white wash crimes against humanity just because its victims were Muslim.

She goes on,

(Remember that in matters concerning the former Yugoslavia — the media, the court, the prosecution, world governments, NATO, and Hollywood are a single conglomerate.) In the example below, the prosecution and the media attempt to twistKaradzic’s efforts to avoid ethnic cleansing, into a fiendish desire to commit ethnic cleansing

You see it is all a conspiracy from the whole world working in one unit to persecute Karadzic who was actually trying to avoid ethnic cleansing.

An example of Radovan Karadzic preventing ethnic cleansing,

“There are 20,000 armed Serbs around Sarajevo … it will be a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die. They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the earth.”

The things that make you go hmmmmm? Karadzic really was trying hard to stop the ethnic cleansing. Imagine if Ahmedinejad said those exact words about Israel, he would rightly be labeled an anti-Semite seeking the destruction of the Jews. Hypocritical Pamela Geller can’t see the rank hypocrisy in her own words.

Sureyya Ozkaya

A 14 year old Muslim girl recently was brutally beaten and burned by assailants who made racial insults and attacked her for her faith (hat tip: Milda).

Girl attacked burned and robbed in broad daylight

By Mike Didymus

These are the shocking injuries inflicted upon schoolgirl Sureyya Ozkaya during a brutal daylight assault near her Thornton Heath home.

The 14-year-old’s hair was set on fire and her hands and feet were cut with glass during the attack in Grangewood Park, before her attackers smashed her head against a tree and left her bleeding in a bush.

She was stumbled upon by a woman walking her dog and carried home to nearby Kitchener Road following the attack, at about 7.30pm on June 9.

Sureyya’s mother Pemdegul Kale, 39, said three girls taunted her daughter about her Muslim faith as they carried out the assault, before burning her hair with a lighter and stealing her trainers.

Mrs Kale said: “My daughter is so scared. She does not want to stay in the house – she is staying at a relative’s now and wakes up crying.

“She comes here and stays for an hour, but only gets to the front door before she wants to go again. I miss her and I want her to come home.”

The family have been critical of the police’s response to the attack, complaining they had to collect hair cut from Sureyya’s head themselves several days after the incident.

Mrs Kale said: “We are doing the police’s job for them. We had a phone call 24 hours after it happened saying they were taking statements from someone on July 22.

“It is too long. I want this to be done and over with.”

A 14-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman have been arrested in connection with the attack and bailed to return to a south London police station on July 22.

Anyone with information can call Croydon police on 03001 231212, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

This highlights just how odious the embrace of Islamophobia by the likes of Robert Spencer and company is. They revel in something that in its worst manifestations can lead to physical harm and even death.

Just recently Spencer posted a piece containing a photo of him holding an “Islamophobia pills” box. At a lecture in Sweden (probably canoodling with Euro-supremacists), a “Muslim” (loonwatcher no doubt) gave him the box to cure him of his Islamophobia. Instead Spencer posted a picture of himself holding the box and then went on to blame Muslims for Islamophobia.

Robert Spencer holding "Islamophobia Pills"

I was speaking in Sweden yesterday, and during the Q&A a Muslim presented with the little box of “Islamophobia” pills I’m holding in the photo above. It’s a clever little piece, if you like that sort of thing, listing the ingredients of this “cure” for “Islamophobia” as “multiculturalism,” “open-mindedness,” and the like.

But of course none of that will cure this disease, which is non-existent in any case.

We don’t want to make big hay over errors even from the likes of Robert Spencer, the pseudo-Scholar who swears he is “never wrong.” We just like to take a hammer to those assumptions being parlayed as facts and reduce them to rubble. Loonwatch, over and over again has done just that to Spencer’s work and we will continue to do it until Spencer acknowledges his folly.

We wrote a piece on one more instance of Robert Spencer getting basic information wrong and then trying to pass it off as fact. He claimed Pope Pius XII was a victim of misinformation and that he was in fact “memorialized in Yad Veshem.” Tipped by one of our readers we pointed out the easy to find out fact that Pius XII was not memorialized in Yad Vashem, in fact he has constantly been rejected.

Spencer, originally wrote:

The record of Pope Pius XII is controversial, but there has been a good deal of misinformation publicized about it. In reality, he helped save many hundreds of thousands of Jews and was memorialized at Yad Veshem.

(Click here for a snapshot of the original comment by Spencer)

One of Spencer’s readers, Raqnu, who the JihadWatchers figured was a Muslim Taqqiyah artist because his name is an anagram for Quran (only problem is it also seems to be a name for the Spirit of Justice in the Zend Avesta) asked Spencer what he thought about our claim. Spencer replied,

As far as I know Pius XII is not honored at Yad Veshem.

(Click here for a snapshot of the reply to Raqnu from Spencer)

A clear contradiction to his early comment. Yet, Spencer doesn’t have the guts to acknowledge his mistake and he especially is not going to acknowledge a mistake when it is pointed out to him by Loonwatch. C’mon Spencer where is our hat tip?

Interestingly, Spencer went back to his original comment, and without telling anyone changed what he had written, so instead of saying,

The record of Pope Pius XII is controversial, but there has been a good deal of misinformation publicized about it. In reality, he helped save many hundreds of thousands of Jews and was memorialized at Yad Veshem.

It now says,

The record of Pope Pius XII is controversial, but there has been a good deal of misinformation publicized about it. In reality, he helped save many hundreds of thousands of Jews. The campaign to blacken his name began much later.

(Click here for a snapshot of Spencer’s quiet attempt at covering up his error)

Not a word about how he was propelled by Loonwatch’s article to change his comment. Not even a disclaimer signifying “Update” as most professional bloggers would react in this scenario. Instead, Robert Spencer keeps trudging along hoping no one will notice his error. To do so would concede that he is wrong, and that would bruise his fragile ego. More worrisome for him, it would open up the door in his and his minions’ brains (if it already hasn’t) that maybe Loonwatch is right about his other arguments.

For a paid polemicist that is a scary proposition.

One of the spies

Many in the Islamophobosphere claim that Muslims are secret Taqiyya imposters, seeking to “Islamize” America under the guise of living “ordinary lives.” In his The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Robert Spencer wrote:

When Shi’ite Muslims were persecuted by Sunnis, they developed the doctrine of taqiyya, or concealment: They could lie about what they believed, denying aspects of their faith that were offensive to Sunnis…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…Remember that the next time you see a Muslim spokesman on television professing his friendship with non-Muslim Americans and his loyalty to the United States. Of course, he may be telling the truth–but he may not be telling the whole truth or he may be just lying. (p.79-81)

In fact, last Fall, four actual U.S. Representatives in the House accused the Council on American Islamic Relations of infiltrating Capitol Hill “with undercover spies.” Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia said:

If an organization is connected to or supports terrorists [and] is running influence operations or planting spies in key national security-related offices, I think this needs to be made known. So I join my colleagues here today in calling for action.

Their “evidence” was a book written by P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry entitled Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America. The book is based on Chris Gaubatz, the son of David Gaubatz, posing as a Muslim convert to inflitrate and expose CAIR as “part of an organized crime network.”

Yet, last Sunday, 10 people were arrested on charges of being part of a deep-cover Russian spy network. These people lived like “ordinary Americans while secretly reporting to Moscow.” The Washington Post reports:

Details that emerged Tuesday about the alleged spies’ lives added to the mystery of a network that prosecutors say extended from Manhattan to Seattle and the heart of the Washington area. Though utterly unremarkable to their neighbors, the suspects allegedly buried stashes of money and wrote messages in invisible ink as they sought to collect tidbits about U.S. policy and secrets.

Other details about the spies include:

Indeed, the alleged agents lived in the suburbs, went to parties and rooted for American sports teams. Eight men and women, authorities say, were “paired off” by Russian intelligence as married couples, and at least three of those four couples had children in the United States.

Two of those arrested in Arlington, a couple known as Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, took their young son on walks each evening in Seattle, where they lived until last year, neighbors said. Zottoli worked for an investment firm; Mills was a stay-at-home mom. The family lived in a neat and carefully decorated fifth-floor apartment.

“How would you ever think somebody next door would be involved in something like this?” said John Morrison, a neighbor. “You wouldn’t think a spy would care about what color curtains or about making things look nice.”

Mikhail Semenko, the third Arlington resident, helped neighbors at his apartment complex dig out after last winter’s massive snowstorms. On his Facebook page, he lists a New Jersey Devils hockey player as one of his “likes.”

“He’s warm, not calculating,” said Slava Shirokov, a co-owner of the Virginia travel agency where Semenko worked. “It’s straight from a movie.”

Those familiar with the case say that the details revealed in court documents do indeed read like an old-fashioned spy novel. According to prosecutors, the spies’ real purpose was to:

…infiltrate academic, policymaking and government-connected circles. Semenko, for example, often attended events sponsored by embassies and nongovernmental organizations.

Donald Howard Heathfield, an international business consultant who lived with his “wife,” Tracey Lee Ann Foley, and their two teenage sons in Cambridge, Mass., sought membership in more than 30 professional, academic and business associations — including one linked to the Department of Homeland Security, according to his page on LinkedIn.

More direct hints emerge in court documents. When agents covertly searched Foley’s bank safety deposit box in 2001, they found a series of photographic negatives of her. The name of the company that produced the negatives had been excised on all but one. Authorities identified the producer of the final negative as TACMA, a Soviet film company, court documents said.

Last Fall, we had actual Members of Congress accuse CAIR of implanting “spies” in the U.S. Congress, while there were individuals living as “ordinary Americans” but actually spying for a foreign government. These people were actually doing what many in the Islamophobe sphere accuse ordinary American Muslims of doing: posing as “ordinary Americans” but being something else entirely. Why, that’s Taqiyya!

But, what if these alleged Russian spies were Muslim? Think of the absolute hysteria of the Islamophobes: they would be claiming that they were right all along about Muslims; they would be calling on investigations and racial profiling of all American Muslims; they would be screaming Taqiyya! from the tops of their lungs.

Meanwhile, there were actual spies living in America who were recently caught. And the Islamophobes are silent…because the arrested spies are not Mooslims. Forgive my Canadian: pathetic, eh?

This is still my favorite picture of Robert Spencer.

A while back Danios wrote one of his most popular pieces debunking Robert Spencer’s work. It dealt with a chapter from Spencer’s, Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and was titled The Church’s Doctrine of Perpetual Servitude. Spencer wrote a reply that basically skirted around the subject and in effect dug himself into a bigger hole then he was in previously. Danios replied to Spencer who has remained mum on the debate since then, essentially conceding to Danios and Loonwatch.

One of our readers, Paterfamilias, wrote to inform us that Spencer’s reply contained more factual errors. Spencer claimed that Pope Pius XII, though “controversial” was “memorialized at Yad Vashem.”

The record of Pope Pius XII is controversial, but there has been a good deal of misinformation publicized about it. In reality, he helped save many hundreds of thousands of Jews and was memorialized at Yad Veshem.

Oh really, a lot of misinformation? So much for Robert Spencer’s research abilities. He could have easily done a Google search to check the veracity of such a claim, but for a paid polemicist with an ax to grind it’s probably considered a waste of time.

The following article, Pope Pius XII and Yad Vashem, from Wikipedia makes it clear that not only is Pope Pius XII not memorialized at Yad Vashem, his candidacy has been repeatedly rejected for decades.

Yad Vashem, the state of Israel‘s official Holocaust memorial, has generally been critical of Pope Pius XII, the pope during The Holocaust. For decades, Pius XII has been nominated unsuccessfully for recognition as Righteous Among the Nations, an honor Yad Vashem confers on non-Jews who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust altruistically and at risk to their own lives.

Yad Vashem affixes the following captions to two pictures of Pius XII in both English and Hebrew,

In 1933, when he was Secretary of the Vatican State, he was active in obtaining a Concordat with the German regime to preserve the Church’s rights in Germany, even if this meant recognizing the Nazi racist regime. When he was elected Pope in 1939, he shelved a letter against racism and anti-Semitism that his predecessor had prepared. Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the Pope did not protest either verbally or in writing. In December 1942, he abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews. When Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the Pope did not intervene. The Pope maintained his neutral position throughout the war, with the exception of appeals to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia towards its end. His silence and the absence of guidelines obliged Churchmen throughout Europe to decide on their own how to react.

Pretty damning stuff.

Yad Vashem’s official website has this to say about Pope Pius XII,

The controversy about Pius XII and the Holocaust is still open. At the end of his visit to Israel in 1964, Pope Paul VI came to Pius’s defense in Jerusalem. On March 12, 1979, Pope John Paul II met with Jewish leaders in Rome and said: “I am happy to evoke in your presence today the dedicated and effective work of my predecessor Pius XII on behalf of the Jewish people.” In a meeting with American Jewish leaders in September 1987 in Miami, John Paul II again recalled the positive attitude of Pius XII. However, his passivity in the face of the Holocaust remains a controversial subject.

How could Robert Spencer get a fact so brutally wrong? Maybe one day Yad Vashem will find Pope Pius XII legitimate for memorializing, but as of now the controversy surrounding his actions and inaction during the Holocaust continue to make the attempts of various Pope’s and advocates unsuccessful.

Robert Spencer should think twice before undertaking a task of disinformation, it just doesn’t fly anymore.

It isn’t surprising that Pamela Geller, who runs a hate group herself (SIOA) would support fascist groups. Charles Johnson rips her a new one,

Pamela Geller Supports Yet Another Fascist Group

by Charles Johnson

"Bad Eagle" or just "Plain Loon"?

What happens when you cross a white supremacist with someone who claims to be half-white and half-Native American? Answer: David Yeagley (hat tip: Mallorcaman). Yeagley is a rare and strange specimen, self-described as the “lone Conservative Indian voice,” he rails against Native Americans and anyone who he considers to be liberals. He is known amongst Native Americans, for reasons we will come to shortly as the Indian apple,

apple n. An Indian who is red on the outside, white on the inside.
Tonto n. Sidekick, lackey, Indian Uncle Tom.
Tepee Tom n. Native American version of an Uncle Tom. Synonyms: Tonto, Fort Indian, Hang-around-the-fort Indian

Amongst his many peculiarities is that he claims to be the descendant of a Comanche Indian chief, Bad Eagle, while at the same time allying with and espousing White supremacist beliefs,

Yeagley is associated with a long list of figures on the far right, the John Birch Society, white nationalists VDare, neo-Nazis Stormfront, the White Boy Society, and the National Alliance, and eugenics groups Gene Expression and American Renaissance.

Native Americans find him offensive for many reasons and also dispute his claims of being a Comanche,

According to sources at the Comanche headquarters, David is not Comanche. His adopted mother is Comanche.

One website devoted to exposing Yeagley, DavidYeagley.blogspot.com, has skewered him and exposed him for the fraud that he is. It is run by Al Carrol, a scholar who is truly descended from Natives. On the site we find more expositions of Yeagley’s persistent White supremacy and anti-Native American stances,

Yeagley describing a gathering of white supremacists and anti-Indian groups:

“It’s their people that created America, not Indians. Only a diabolically self-righteous liberal politician would take America out of the hands that created it, and give it to those who either lost it, or never had anything to do with it.”
“The white blood flowing is the purest I’ve ever seen.” http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13399

“Superior beauty is in the white race, with its scintillating varieties of color: red, brown, amber, golden hair… green, blue, light brown, gray eyes. In the darker races, everything is always the same, dark brown and black a beastly bore.”

“These days the white woman is expected to humble herself before the darkie.”

“Judeo-Christian religion allowed the European Caucasian race to advance above all other people.The darker races now encroach through integration and intermarriage.”

“Maybe Hitler was partially right on ‘the hated white race’ thing.”

“There is a reason for differences. This is to keep the human race separated into smaller groups. Love of race is the only ‘saving grace’ left in the world.” http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=273

“Indian men… and also typical of black women, together, is just the kind of thing that says these races deserve to be on the bottom of the barrel. They cannot appreciate good will, they are possessed by envy, and have no higher thought than lies.” http://www.indianz.com/board/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=14169&whichpage=3 (Quoting from Yeagley on his Badeagle forum. Note that the poster quoting him was neither an Indian man nor a Black woman. It is typical of Yeagley’s racist paranoia to assume a “plot” by the races he hates.)

And as if to remove all doubt, Yeagley’s conversation with a white supremacist reluctant to admit it until he reassured her he believed the same:

“You are simply a white supremacist, complete with a theology to justify it.
THAT’s OKAY! I’m not knocking that. But you can’t talk about it. You have to guise it in different terms. That’s NOT exactly okay….you DON’t believe in equality, and THAT’s OKAY, TOO. I really mean that. ”
http://www.badeagle.com/cgi-bin/blog/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=650

Yeagley wrote a lot of these supremacist rants on Frontpagemag, David Horowitz’s zany far-right rag, where he was a regular contributor, and on his own website. Not too long ago he also posted a piece called White Man Rising: The Confederacy, which extols the South as the last bastion of true America.

Amongst Yeagley’s other novel pursuits has been his support for the portrayl of Native Americans as mascots. A touchy issue with Native Americans, amongst whom a consensus against such mascots exists. Isn’t it strange for a self-proclaimed descendant of a Comanche chief, who claims to want to help the Comanche, to then go and support the use of Indian mascots?

Yeagley’s maniacal hate and demented racism manifests itself when it comes to Muslims and Arabs. Yeagley writes about Rima Fakih nearly a dozen times on his site, bringing up the familiar wacko claims that she is a secret Hezbollah plant. He writes that she is a Muslim mascot propped up by Muslims to infiltrate and “rape the West.”

The Huffington Post’s Ahmed Rehab in an excellent piece entitled, Miss USA Scrutiny indicates Weird Obsession with Islam, ripped into the loon world who were obsessing over Rima Fakih for being a Muslim, and accusing her of everything from cultural infiltration to being a terrorist. He linked to Bad Eagle as an example, calling it a “Kooky blog.”  That really hurt David Yeagley’s feelings causing him to once again unleash his hate filled feelings about Islam, Muslims and all Americans,

Rima Fakih, the Lebanese immigrant supported by terrorists, who was “judged” to be the new Miss USA 2010, is clearly a nude mascot for Muslims. She is Islam, stripped of all pretense. Despite the pathetic defense of terrorist associate Ahmed Rehab, both on Huffington Post and Celebutopia, Islam is offensive to America. Muslims are repugnant. They have made their name to stink in all the free world. Rehab, typically Muslim, typically liberal, attempts to denigrate and demean Americans who happen to be offended by Islam, and by the unpredecented hypocrisy of the Rima mascot. Americans don’t have “a weird obsession” with Islam. We hate it!

…

I call you out, Mr. Ahmed Rehab, and everyone like you. I call you a deceiving coward, liar, and enemy of America. Go home. You, who are afraid to reveal your family background and country of origin; you who presume to represent American freedom, but speak only for Muslims, or Communist Democrat liberals; I challenge you, one on one, man to man. Was it not you who had the audacity to post your Twittered comment (No.21) on my site? Or was it some lackey in the office? It doesn’t matter. I call you an extremely offensive individual, and I don’t want you in the free world. You need to be in Saudi, or whatever country believes like you do. You are an unwanted and odious alien in this country. I despise how you think, and what you represent. You are not welcome here in this country. Leave. Now.

The delusions held by this self proclaimed descendant of Bad Eagle are momentous. To him Rima is Islam, and all Muslims are de facto terrorists, Islam not only isn’t American it is “liberal” and “alien.”

Ahmed Rehab must have really pissed Yeagley off, (not a hard task: just say you are a Muslim or not white) considering he wants to expel him from the “free world.” Does Yeagley notice the contradiction, or is his brain so muddled with right-wing racist propaganda that he can’t see the contradiction in wanting to expel someone from the “free world” for not believing or being the same as him? Freedom obviously has a different meaning for Yeagley than the one in the Constitution.

Moreover, in Yeagley’s typical self-victimizing fashion, the old kook tried to argue that he was being ridiculed by Rehab because he was “Indian” not because he was a Kook.

Rehab didn’t mention BadEagle.com in hisHuffington Post defense of Rima the Muslim Mascot, but instead mererly linked to my article behind the words, “kooky blog.” So, an American Indian patriot site is “kooky.” Kooky because I quoted Debbie Schlussel? Or kooky because I hate liars like Ahmed Rehab?

Arab Muslims immigrants apparently feel superior to all other races, and are anxious to demonstrate it. They come from a history of lording over others, from enslaving others, from humiliating others. This is their visceral way of exalting themselves. Equality is anathema to them. I am not suprised that Rehab should consider the American Indian the lowest of the low, or merely “kooky.” We’re easy to denigrate. And honesty is certainly not Rehab’s strong point. Truth he must demean, or nullify somehow. Rehab’s attitude is abundantly clear. Islam has no respect. Islam was the invention of an angry Arab. It is a military death cult from the day it was born. Deceptive, specious words in the societies of the free world may fool those willing to be fooled, but, not me.

I am an American Indian conservative patriot. I hate Islam, and everything it stands for. I hate liars, who attempt to pawn Muslims off as a blessing to the free world. Islam is the enemy of freedom. I love freedom, and I love what America has provided, despite the ironies of history. I defend America, at least verbally, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Amed Rehab is an invader, an enemy, and a lying deceiver. This is what I say, because this is what I see.

Rehab responded directly on Bad Eagle’s blog by calmly ripping him a new one,

Show me where I made any disparaging remarks about Indians. Copy and paste them here for all to see. I challenge you.

You will fail to do so because I never made a single negative remark about Indians, and you sir are a liar.

I merely called your blog kooky – because it is.

You generalized my opinion of your blog to an opinion of all Indians, mostly because you are a dishonest person; I myself did not and would not make that generalization.

Badeagle.com is not representative “Indians,” it is representative of “David Yeagley”

In the same vein, in venting your anger at my negative opinion of your blog, you proceeded to disparage Islam and Muslims at large, rather than to limit your reaction to me. Again, stupid generalization is your sin.

As to the “Kooky” designation for your blog, I stand by that. While your lackeys may entertain your madness, I have no doubt that any objective person will take a look at this blog and reach the conclusion that it is kooky, and that you sir are a classic kook.

Your blog posts are all over the place, your arguments make no sense, you seem to suffer from an ego the size of Alaska, and a good number of delusions, such as that you somehow speak for Indians just because you claim Indian ancestry or that you have the moral authority to decide who is an American and who is not. Your grammar sucks, your posts are filled with schoolboy typos, etc. Most significantly, your blog posts and the comments from your friends are filled with ridiculous generalizations and filthy hatred of Muslims.

I imagine that self-respecting Indians cringe to see someone like you claim to speak for them. You defile the sanctity, glorious history, and honor of the great native tribes of this country. I count Native Americans as friends, I find them to be compassionate, intelligent, and some of the least bigoted people I know.

That anybody would take you seriously is an enigma. Fortunately, your kookiness speaks for itself. I imagine most people who browse your blog can only laugh at what a silly individual you are.

Good luck to you sir.

Ouch. Bad Eagle down.

Yeagley’s filthy racist attacks are plenty, he writes about Arabs,

Arab Muslims should be immediately deported from the free world, and returned to their own homelands, with a travel ban placed on all of them for the next decade.

Not only does he believe that Arab Muslims should be immediately deported, he also believes that,

The Arab personality is the perfect cohabitation of fear and aggression. It reacts to itself. It comprises fear of the Jew, and the assertion of superiority, not only to the Jew, but to all other races. The Arab personality is desperate for superiority. It must achieve superiority–by any means. Words are first, then actions. It is characterized by impatience, argumentativeness, arrogance, violence, and cruelty. It is essentially a mindless reaction to its own fear. It is a most private writhing, manifested in offense to all other people. It seeks to overcome its fear by enslaving or lording over others. That is its natural way. That is its approach to reality–a jaded reaction to itself. There is no objectivity, no self-reflection, or moral evaluation.

He has a lot in common with other more savvy and less out right racist Islamophobes such as Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller (both people he cites favorably on his site). They hold common conspiracy theories such as “Obama is a Mooslim,” “Muslim demographic take over of the West,” etc.

In the end, David Yeagley is just another garden variety loon who belongs in the category of dejected and unknown backwater wingnuts such as Bob Beers, i.e the Loon blog dungeon. His semi-coherent verbal diarrehea and racist Hitler-esque meanderings serve only as a warning to mankind that such inanities and impossibilites are possible.

The Looniest Blogger Ever: Pamela Geller

Pamela Geller’s website, Atlasshrugs, (a.k.a AtlasDrugs) according to her has been declared a “hate site” by Paypal, though it is not clear whether PayPal has banned her specifically for “hate” or other violations,

Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime.

As far as I am concerned all of the above apply to Atlasshrugs.

Of course for Pamela, the victim, “the Jihad” is to blame,

The little money that Atlas generates (I have no large donors) is about to be cut off. Apparently the jihad is hard at work trying to kill free speech (and the bus ads and the 911 no mosque movement and the book), preventing the truth from making its way to those in pursuit of it. Paypal contributions help pay for bus ads, rallies, live coverage (everything), and I so much as said so when asked repeatedly by the press who paid for the bus ads. Readers do and did.

Paypal is calling Atlas a “hate” site and will close my account if I do not remove the paypal option from my website. Accurate reporting and news is hate.

Pamela has a lot of money, as this snapshot of the house she lived in until at least 2008 makes quite clear (hat tip: JustAFan),

Pamela's Mansion-Courtesy of Zillow.com

This image doesn’t really reflect the poor blogger shtick that she attempts to portray. She might argue that the money that allows her to live in luxury came from her husband, Michael Oshry (now deceased), who along with Pamela ran a car dealership that was raided by authorities, initially as part of an homicide investigation that uncovered a tangled web of financial fraud and deceit,

As part of the homicide probe, Nassau County police raided the dealership, owned by auto czar Michael Oshry, and Oshry’s Hewlett Harbor home and seized business records.

Cops found banking records were sent to the house, though the state requires such files be kept at businesses, according to court papers filed in a civil forfeiture action by the Nassau district attorney.

“The dealership knew what was going on,” an investigator said.

Oshry’s lawyer, William Petrillo, said his client “has not engaged in any criminal activity.”

His ex-wife, Pamela Geller, former associate publisher of the New York Observer and a conservative blogger, burst into tears when told her ex is under criminal investigation.

Now Pamela, in her characteristic excessive verbiage is crying that PayPal has called her out for who she is, a hatemonger akin to the likes of Stormfront and other racists/bigots. For their principled stand of not promoting her hate, Pamela now refers to the people at PayPal as “pussies,” and she is asking her readers to join a campaign in intimidating PayPal, while at the same time affording them the “privilege” of helping to fight “the Jihad” by sending a check to her PO Box.

I say to the Loonwatchers, we should respond to this by thanking PayPal for rightfully denying Atlasshrugs their service as long as it continues to be the bastion of far-right, hateful loonacy that it is.

Acceptable Use Policy Department: aupviolations@paypal.com.

Send us a question by email.

Speak to Paypal

Call us if you can’t find your answer in the Help Center.

Update: Per the suggestion from Kenya Nomad, here is some relevant info on Pamela:

The Dome has to go
“The dome has got to go. It is sitting atop the great Jewish temple. The dome has got to go.”

Israel should Nuke Mecca, Medina and Tehran
“And I pray dearly that in the ungodly event that Tehran or its jihadi proxies (Hez’ballah, Hamas etc) target Israel with a nuke, that she retaliate with everything she has at Tehran, Mecca, and Medina……………

Not to mention Europe. They exterminated all their Jews, but that wasn’t enough. Those monsters then went on to import the next generation of Jew killers.”

Nazis Adopted Jihad
“Nazis adopted the Muslim idea of Jihad – total destruction and complete annihilation in the spirit of a Holy War.”

Obama is our first Muslim President
“And who can forget Obama’s bald-faced lies to the Jews? In February 2008, Obama told Jewish leaders: “If anyone is still puzzled about the facts, in fact I have never been a Muslim.” Yet he was registered as a Muslim in an Indonesian school…And so now we have our first Muslim presidency, just eight years after 9/11. The media can spin their subjugation and adulation a million different ways, but America did not vote for a “Muslim presidency,” which is what this is.”

Update II: Pamela is gloating that her hysterical campaign against PayPal worked,  they have (predictably) reinstated her account. Loonwatchers should continue to email and call PayPal to let them know the character of Pamela’s hate site.

How about the 300 Muslims who died?

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, leaders of the hate organization SIOA (Stop the Islamization of America), were going nuts advertising their protest against the Cordoba House, a center that will contain a mosque, gym, swimming pool and museum that is to be built a few blocks away from Ground Zero. According to the Islamophobic duo, and their “save-Western-Civilization-from-evil-Mooslims” crowd, this protest was similar to D-Day, when the allies stormed Normandy. Hysteria much?

The protest itself was filled with anti-Muslim and Islam hating personalities. Placards read that building the mosque would be similar to building a” memorial to Hitler at Auschwitz,” labeled Prophet Mohammed a “pedophile,” “terrorist” and other names and stated that “Islam Hates Women,” etc.

According to Pamela’s highly inflated estimate, 5,000 people showed up while in reality only around 200-300 came to the event.

Geller said the NYPD and security at the rally told her about 5,000 demonstrators were there. But NYPD spokesman Sgt. Kevin Hayes said the police department’s policy is to not provide crowd estimates and that he could not confirm Geller’s number. CNN iReporter Julio Ortiz-Teissonniere, who attended the rally and sent photos to CNN, said the number was closer to 200-300 while he was there for the first 45 minutes of the event.

Can this woman ever quit with the hysterical, disproportionate and excessive lies? Another news agency put the number of protesters squarely at 300.

According to Geller and Spencer this protest not only turned out large (fictional) numbers of people, but was also looked upon with approval from the heavens! Pamela wrote joyously that, “despite weather forecasts of thunderstorms and rain, the skies were clear and beautiful — but not as beautiful as this patriotic crowd of great Americans and Europeans.” Robert Spencer hinted at Divine approval,

And the truth is powerful. The forecast had called for rain, but it didn’t start raining in New York until after the rally had broken up. Many took it as a sign that we represented the cause of right and justice.

Debbie Schlussel, an open Islamophobe and bigot, whom Robert Spencer once dubbed a “freedom fighter” refers now to her former friend Pamela Geller only as Scamela Geller, had this scathing assessment of the protest (hat tip: BMD),

a cleverly designed PR vehicle for people like car loan fraud scammer Scamela Geller and others who are using them to raise money and get attention.  Because having a whole car dealership making gazillions by ripping off banks with car loan scams using Muslim straw buyers wasn’t enough.  Nor was the murder of an investigating cop and the execution of the one honest car salesman employee who told police.  Behavior worse than a mobster’s wife apparently breeds no shame.  But it does breed faux-outrage in a “battle” that we already know won’t be won.  It’s already lost.  They have the property.  Move on to something we can win, not a car loan defrauder’s attention-whore trick, just weeks before her book is about to be released and needs to earn back a bloated advance.  If you think it’s anything other than this, you are a malleable tool, easily manipulated and not of much substance.

Wow, did Debbie just drop the elbow from the sky on Pamela here? This assessment is from a woman who wants all Muslim immigration to America to stop and for there to be no Mosques in the USA, so it can’t be said that she is sympathetic to the plight of Muslims.

Also, I have to ask why no mainstream media outlet, cable or otherwise has taken Pamela to task not only for her crazy and loonie conspiracy theories, but the fact that she isn’t only against this specific center which will house a mosque, but against mosques in general. She is the same person who called for the DESTRUCTION of the Golden Dome in Jerusalem, and for it to be replaced with a Jewish Temple (insert World War III)! Someone needs to smack her with that question.

The height of irony probably came when two Christian Arabs who came to protest the mosque were mistaken for being Muslims, and became targets of their fellow protesters bigotry and harassment. I wonder if they will dispute whether Islamophobia really exists? From Mike Kelly’s great article, On this Ground, Zero Tolerance,

At one point, a portion of the crowd menacingly surrounded two Egyptian men who were speaking Arabic and were thought to be Muslims.

“Go home,” several shouted from the crowd.

“Get out,” others shouted.

In fact, the two men – Joseph Nassralla and Karam El Masry — were not Muslims at all. They turned out to be Egyptian Coptic Christians who work for a California-based Christian satellite TV station called “The Way.” Both said they had come to protest the mosque.

“I’m a Christian,” Nassralla shouted to the crowd, his eyes bulging and beads of sweat rolling down his face.

But it was no use. The protesters had become so angry at what they thought were Muslims that New York City police officers had to rush in and pull Nassralla and El Masry to safety.

“I flew nine hours in an airplane to come here,” a frustrated Nassralla said afterward.

The incident underscores how contentious — and, perhaps, how irrational — the debate over the mosque has become.

A mosque, for instance, has been located since 1983 on West Broadway, about 12 blocks from Ground Zero. After the 9/11 attacks, the mosque’s imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, began shaping plans to build an Islamic cultural center closer to Ground Zero as part of an attempt to build cultural ties between Islam and America.

Called Cordoba House, the center would rise 13 stories and would include a 500-seat auditorium, a swimming pool and a mosque.

I guess the lesson here is don’t speak Arabic or look foreign at an Islamophobic protest or you might get harmed.

Pamela Geller

Pamela Geller unfortunately has been all over the news recently. First because she was an invited speaker at a Tea Party conference in Tennessee, second for her and her  hate group’s (SIOA) active role in opposing the proposed Mosque in Manhattan that is near ground-zero, and for her inciting Ad campaign that essentially calls on people to “Leave Islam.”

Geller doesn’t make any distinctions between radical Muslims and Islam, she doesn’t blame Islamism or violent Islamism but instead impugns the whole religion of Islam.

Video of Geller being interviewed about the anti-Muslim Bus Ad’s (hat tip: Abdullah):

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Y3ybmLWjY&feature=player_embedded 350 300]

There are a number of things wrong with this video, it is too easy on Pamela. No where is her background or radical conspiratorial beliefs brought to the fore to inform the viewer. The fact that she is the looniest blogger out there should be the first piece of biographical information that we hear. This is the equivalent of interviewing a KKK member or an anti-Semite and not bringing up their zany ideas.

Should a woman who believes and regularly states that Obama is an anti-Semitic, Jihadist Mohammadan who is aiding the Iranian regime get a pass? Does someone who calls for the Golden Dome Mosque (Masjid as-Sakhra) to be destroyed and replaced by a Jewish temple get a pass? Should a historical revisionist who says Hitler adopted Jihad and was inspired by Islam to commit the Holocaust get a pass? Should someone who states that Israel should nuke Mecca and Medina be given a pas?

The scary thing is there is so much more that we can go into in regards to the loonie and wing-nut beliefs that Pamela Geller holds dear to her heart but what’s the point, we have documented it all and it is easily retrievable by anyone who cares to search for it on our site. Unfortunately, none of the news reports, including the one above see fit to challenge Pamela on her obvious as day and night hateful beliefs.

In the meantime James Wolcott took the words right out of my mouth,

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)

As his arguments become exposed, so does he.

Robert Spencer is finished. The cloak of objectivity he claimed has long been undone, as he received blistering blows from not only Loonwatch, but former allies and mainstream organizations disavowing and condemning his anti-Muslim stance.

We have seen an odd metamorphosis on the part of Spencer. For years he tread a fine line, making statements that neared the boundary of Islamophobia without being outright anti-Muslim; veiled Islamophobia if you will. He fashioned himself as a rational, objective scholar when all along he was a right-wing Christian supremacist with an ax to grind against Islam and Muslims. Slowly the truth about who he is and what he believes came out over the past two years. One can only hide falsehood for so long.

It may be that Spencer has spent too much time with Pamela Geller, tea baggers and other nuts, or maybe this is what he has believed all along and it is in fact him influencing Geller, regardless he has hopped on a new loonie train: the “Obama is a Mooslim” conspiracy.

So lets count the conspiracies Spencer either believes or supports now:

1.) Eurabia: Muslim demographic take over of Europe.

2.) Stealth Jihad: Peaceful, law abiding Muslims are really just subverting Western Civilization and trying to impose Shariah law.

3.) Bosnia: The genocide in Bosnia and the massacre in Srebrenica never occurred or are exaggerated.

4.) Congressional Intern Spies: CAIR was sending spies into our government in the form of congressional interns.

and now,

5.) Obama is a Mooslim: The possibility that Barack Obama ever was or is still a Mooslim.

The evidence:

Happier times, Andrew Bostom and Robert Spencer

Wow. How the mighty have fallen. It might be too early to call it the end but it looks like ex-booze buddies Andrew Bostom and Robert Spencer are at each others throats. Bostom is accusing Spencer of plagiarism, and Spencer is replying that he is “miffed” by the accusation.

The sorry fact is that both of them plagiarize from Orientalists who have made the same arguments and presented the same research centuries ago.

Spencer wrote on his blog yesterday in reference to Bostom,

Department of Corrections: No plagiarism

It is a shame that this kind of thing has to be done, but occasionally it must.

A certain writer claims that I plagiarized his work. He presents no direct evidence (i.e., textual comparison) to support his claim, and that is because he cannot do so: I have not plagiarized his work, or anyone else’s.

The above is a reply to Bostom’s withering attack on Spencer’s theft of his work. Bostom refers to Spencer as the “little king,” and “swine.”

The Little King

This fine morning, what did I see?

A Little King Plagiarist, running behind, desperately…to plagiarize me.

From here (mostly), here, here, etc., etc. , etc.

Update: The Little King Doth Protest My Original Posting

According to Webster, there is no doubt The Little King “plagiarized,” and therefore is a “plagiarist.”

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiarize

transitive verb: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own : use (another’s production) without crediting the source intransitive verb : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

The plagiarism, and accompanying complete lack of attribution are so obvious one need go no further than review Jihad Watch postings by The Little King himself, from 2007 and 2008

The Little King posted my review/essay on “Jihad and Jew Hatred,” and subsequent debate with Matthias Kuntzel—the earliest and most definitive debunking of the bizarre, ahistorical “Nazi-origins” of Islamic Antisemitism (and modern jihad) theory,  in December, 2007

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/12/kuntzel-vs-bostom-on-islamic-antisemitism-print.html

One can also simply go to Jihad Watch and see the following extensive material on the Antisemtic motifs in the Koran, hadith, and sira drawn from the opening survey of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism from two essays posted there by The Little King in 2008:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/04/antisemitism-in-the-hadith-and-early-muslim-biographies-of-muhammad-motifs-and-manifestations.html

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/04/antisemitism-in-the-quran-motifs-and-historical-manifestations.html

Update 2. Oy vey, this is tedious and obnoxious! Some important clarification is required to jog the Little King’s apparently lapsed memories. Here gentle reader you will find it edifying to go online and read a copy of The Little King’s “Religion of Peace,” published in 2007. On pp. 125-126, he uses a block quote from Lawrence Wright’s, The Looming Tower, that has also appeared in some of my essays, and in “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.” But who does the Little King himself cite as his source for this Wright quote?  Proceed to the citation for the reference (ref. 80) to this quote on p. 232 of “The Religion of Peace” and you will see this: “Quoted in Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, 2007” Now my Islamic Antisemitism book was delayed in publication till 2008, but Little King was given an advance copy manuscript that he read, and it provided him with the Wright quote and six other sources for that chapter, including primary sources, which are cited on pp. 232-233 of his 2007 book.

Apparently Little King is now claiming I got the Wright quote from him!

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/department-of-corrections.html#comment-664221

“My (i.e., Little King’s) April 21 article is a chapter from my 2007 book “Religion of Peace?”. If Bostom used the quote from “Looming Tower” in a 2009 piece, he got it from me (i.e., Little King).”

At least as egregious, is this unattributed material which comes from The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, (pp. 259-260):

Notably, Maimonides directed that Jews could teach rabbinic law to Christians, but not to Muslims. For Muslims, he said, will interpret what they are taught “according to their erroneous principles and they will oppress us. [F]or this reason … they hate all [non-Muslims] who live among them.” But the Christians, he said, “admit that the text of the Torah, such as we have it, is intact”–as opposed to the Islamic view that the Jews and Christians have corrupted their scriptures. Christians, continued Maimonides,” do not find in their religious law any contradiction with ours.”

Indeed, Spencer quotes and paraphrases without attribution from, specifically, footnote 222 of a magisterial 70 pp. 1937 essay by Georges Vajda on the Antisemitic motifs in the hadith. My first time English translation of Vajda’s unique, seminal work required both French and Hebrew text translations of contents within this single, complex footnote.

And I will cast no more pearls before such “royal” swine.

Robert | April 29, 2010 2:47 AM | Reply

Meeker

My April 21 article is a chapter from my 2007 book “Religion of Peace?”. If Bostom used the quote from “Looming Tower” in a 2009 piece, he got it from me.

The April 21 piece has no footnotes. I don’t generally footnote blog entries. There is material sourced from Bostom in the original chapter from “Religion of Peace?,” and lo and behold, it is footnoted to Bostom. In fact, he knows this, as he and I discussed this material at the time.

Which fact makes his current attack all the more gratuitous and libelous.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Robert | April 29, 2010 2:51 AM | Reply

Frank Hesp:

Your continued insistence that personal disputes between individuals must be aired out in public is to me inexplicable and unseemly. I have a public presence in regard to the jihad, and that’s it. I don’t have any obligation to you or to anyone else to make any aspect of my private life public. I have responded to Bostom’s substantive charge with a substantive reply. No other details, should any exist, are anyone’s business but Bostom’s and mine.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Robert | April 29, 2010 2:55 AM | Reply

Frank Hesp — one other thing:

You should look up the term “plagiarism” in a dictionary. It is a verbal dependence. There is no verbal dependence anywhere in my work on any part of Bostom’s work.

In my book “Religion of Peace?,” the source for my April 21 post, Bostom is footnoted where appropriate. But he apparently believes that if he discovered, or thinks he discovered, salient quotes from this or that Islamic authority or anyone else, that they belong to him forever, and anyone who ever cites the same quote has to also mention Bostom. That is not the case according to any standard of academic usage that has ever prevailed in any part of the globe at any time in history. It is a form of academic megalomania that has no justification, and no warrant, and I am not going to be cowed by it.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Robert | April 29, 2010 2:59 AM | Reply

Meeker:

One other thing. I cited Richard Fletcher in my 2003 book “Onward Muslim Soldiers,” long before Bostom wrote his “Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.” I know Bostom read “Onward Muslim Soldiers.” For all I know he got the Fletcher material from me. Should I then indict him for plagiarism because he doesn’t mention me in his citation?

The very idea is absurd. And it shows up the absurdity of Bostom’s charge against me.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Well folks, sit back with a bag of popcorn and enjoy the fireworks. Who knows maybe Barack Obama can bring the two back together over some beers on the White House lawn.

Is this the only image of suicide terrorism?

Resident “Islam expert” Robert Spencer is at it again, using his skills of obfuscation to smear Islam. In a recent post, he claims “suicide for jihad” is nothing new in Islam:

Actually the idea of suicide in the cause of jihad is no innovation. It is founded upon Qur’an 9:111, which guarantees Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah. It is a phenomenon that is actually found throughout Islamic history, and is not new. In the 18th century John Paul Jones wrote about Ottoman sailors setting their own ships on fire and ramming the ships of their enemies, although they knew this meant certain death for them.

And centuries before that, the Assassins, Hashishin, went into their missions knowing that death was virtually certain, and energized by the promise of Paradise that had been made vivid for them in an artful scenario that was used as a recruitment tool: the prospective assassin would be given hashish and then taken into a garden full of beautiful women, and told that he was enjoying a taste of Islamic Paradise. Then to return to that Paradise, he was told that he had to go out and kill his victim, and be killed in the process.

Wow. Let us address the verse in question (9:111):

Behold, God has bought of the believers their lives and their possessions, promising them paradise in return, [and so] they fight in God’s cause, and slay, and are slain: a promise which in truth He has willed upon Himself in [the words of] the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Quran. And who could be more faithful to his covenant than God? Rejoice, then, in the bargain which you have made with Him: for this, this is the triumph supreme!

As outlined by the Quran, fighting in Islam is allowed in defense, and aggression is prohibited (2:190-193). Thus, those who “fight in God’s cause” in the verse are fighting in a battle to defend “those [civilians] who have been expelled from their homes” (22:40) by an aggressor.  In this context, able-bodied men are called to defend the people with their lives.  When one fights a battle, he tries to kill his enemy and avoid being killed himself. Spencer, however, claims that those who “slay and are slain” are actually committing suicide. Huh?

Suicide is when you take your own life: the death blow comes from your own hand.  This is dramatically different than valiantly fighting the enemy in battle when the odds are heavily stacked against you, such that death is “near certain.” The former is suicide, the latter is not.  Unless Robert Spencer is being un-American and claiming that the countless U.S. soldiers who have thrown themselves upon the enemy–facing “near certain death” by doing so–committed suicide?  In fact, the medal of honor is routinely given to soldiers who throw themselves upon the enemy (thereby facing “near certain death”) to protect their fellow soldiers and advance their position.

There are several examples of this during World War II. For example, Private First Class Leonard Foster Mason received the medal of honor for “his exceptionally heroic act in the face of almost certain death.”  The American soldiers were under heavy fire, and with total disregard for his own life, Mason ran out of his foxhole and killed five enemy soldiers.  He was critically wounded in the arm and shoulder, and subsequently died.  Today, he is remembered as a hero who fought and died for his country.  Would Spencer like to claim that he committed suicide, and that the U.S. military has been using “suicide jihad” tactics during WWII?

Private George Phillips received the medal of honor because he “unhesitatingly threw himself on [a] deadly missile, absorbing the shattering violence of the exploding charge in his own body and protecting his comrades from serious injury.”

And let’s read about the bravery of Private First Class Harold Glenn Epperson who gave up his life for his country:

Determined to save his comrades, Pfc. Epperson unhesitatingly chose to sacrifice himself and, diving upon the deadly missile, absorbed the shattering violence of the exploding charge in his own body. Stouthearted and indomitable in the face of certain death, Pfc. Epperson fearlessly yielded his own life that his able comrades might carry on the relentless battle against a ruthless enemy. His superb valor and unfaltering devotion to duty throughout reflect the highest credit upon himself and upon the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.
Another suicide jihad terrorist attack, I suppose?  In fact, what about the American soldiers who took the island of Iwo Jima? According to historians, the Japanese fought tenaciously for the island, and only 216 out of more than 18,000 soldiers were alive at the end of hostilities. This invasion must have “meant certain death” for the scores of American soldiers who took part. Were these American soldiers “committing suicide”? What about the soldiers who took part in the invasion of Normandy? The odds against the Allied soldiers were tremendous, and it “meant certain death” for the scores of soldiers who valiantly chose to be on the front line. Did these American heroes also “commit suicide”?

Anyways, the Quran is crystal clear on suicide:

“And do not take a life that God has made sacred, except for just cause.” (17:33)

“And spend for the sake of God, and do not invest in ruin by your own hands. And do good, for God loves those who do good.” (2:195)

“And do not kill yourselves, for God has been merciful to you.” (4:29)

But I do know of a holy book that mentions (and seems to condone) suicide attacks. You may have heard of it, Spencer.  It’s called the Bible.  The Mighty Samson kills himself in order to kill three thousand men and women (civilians):

Samson said to the servant who held his hand, “Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple, so that I may lean against them.”  Now the temple was crowded with men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform.  Then Samson prayed to the LORD, “O Sovereign LORD , remember me. O God, please strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.”  Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other, Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived.  (Judges 16:26-30)”

Samson was one of the good guys in the Bible, and nowhere are his actions condemned.  Far from it: he got the strength from God to do it.  How are his actions any different than the Palestinian suicide bombers who blow themselves up in shopping malls to kill Israeli men and women?  And in 1 Samuel 31:1-6, we have another good guy in the Bible killing himself rather than being taken alive by the enemy; in fact, it’s a group suicide–Saul, his three sons, his armor bearer, and all of his men commit group suicide in this battle. Two can play at this, Mr. Spencer.

With regard to the example of the Ottomans ramming their ships, this is a technique that dates to antiquity.  As a last resort (since they were going to lose/die anyways), the captain would order that they use the ship to ram the enemy’s.  To use another American example, even civilian boats were equipped with this capability: the Seattle fireboat Duwamish, built in 1909, was designed to ram wooden vessels, as a last resort. More “suicide jihad” I suppose?

As for the Hashashin, or Assassins, they belonged to an extremely heterodox extremist sect of Islam.  They did not believe in committing suicide, but rather put themselves in harms way to complete missions such that oftentimes they would be facing “near certain death.”  In any case, even at that time the orthodox Muslims used to write about how crazy they thought these Hashashin were, so how can we take the most extreme example as indicative of the general rule?  In fact, at the time of the Hashashin, there were the Crusaders.  Would Spencer like to take the bloodthirsty Crusaders (who engaged in cannibalism and mass murder) as indicative of Christianity overall?

It seems that Spencer is becoming desperate; desperate to link anything to his fanciful imaginary Islam that is totally devoid from reality. Umm…nice try.

Spencer and Geller's proposed banner

Crossposted with permission from Omer Subhani’s blog

Robert Spencer and Pam Geller are part of an organization called Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). SIOA just announced a bus ad campaign on Tuesday, April 13 in Miami-Dade County, FL designed to thwart the supposedly “misleading” bus ad campaign created by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and CAIR to promote the shared commonalities of Islam with Christianity and Judaism.

SIOA’s bus ad campaign had the following remarks on the 10 or so buses running their ads:

Fatwa on your head?

Is your family or community threatening you?

LEAVING ISLAM?

This ad was apparently designed for the purpose of promoting freedom of religion. Obviously, the purpose is a bit more sinister once you start to dig deeper into what Spencer and Geller are promoting here.

The ad includes an address to a website: refugefromislam.com. Go ahead and check out that web site. What do you find there? A web site dedicated to slandering Islam and promoting the views of Spencer and Geller.

Here’s a fair and poignant remark from this web site:

Muslims like you who have seen the falsity of Islam and have made the difficult decision to be free.

Oh sure, that’s just speaking the hard truth. Islam is false and Spencer and Geller want all Muslim apostates to know they got their back in saying so.

Well, it’s Friday, April 16 now, and guess what? The Miami Herald is reporting that the Miami-Dade transit authority took a look at the ads after they were posted on some buses and decided to remove them because they “may be offensive to Islam.” Ya think?

Of course, there’s a freedom of speech issue here. Certainly, Spencer, Geller and their lunatic fringe can spew their hatred on their blogs, but once they take their trashy bigotry outside of their internet cesspool into civil society it only goes to show you that normal, civilized people aren’t going to go along with the whole freedom of speech defense these bigots might use.

Do you think the Miami-Dade transit folks would be okay with posting up ads for the KKK or for some neo-Nazi group? Of course not. So why should ads smearing Islam and manufacturing propaganda against Muslims be tolerated? It shouldn’t, and it isn’t. Kudos to Miami-Dade County for standing up and doing the right thing here.

This entire ad campaign being led by Spencer and Geller is not about freedom of religion anyway, but is about their agenda of smearing Islam and Muslims.

There may in fact be Muslims out there who want to change their faith and fear doing so, but this ad campaign is nothing but propaganda designed to smear Islam and scare ignorant Americans into believing there is a genuine problem with Muslim apostates fearing for their safety. There is no such problem.

The real problem is the double standard Spencer and Geller hold when it comes to Muslim Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.

So for example, Spencer and Geller argue for the freedom of apostates to leave Islam. But what about Muslims who want to be able to practice their faith here in the United States?

Such Muslims don’t get any love from Spencer and Geller. In fact, they only get scorn and vitriol.

For example, recently a Muslim woman in Michigan was refused a position with McDonald’s because she wore the hijab or Muslim headscarf. Spencer accused Muslims of wanting America to conform to their “Islamic sensibilities.” No mention of freedom of religion there. Of course not, because freedom of religion doesn’t apply to Muslims, according to Spencer. The EEOC was quoted in the article Spencer referenced as saying that it had issued new guidelines for accommodating religious practices and beliefs in the workplace. The EEOC must also be a part of this whole Islamic sensibilities campaign, too.

Applying Spencer’s logic to other faiths would mean that a Sikh man shouldn’t complain if he is not given a job at McDonald’s either, or an orthodox Jew. They simply want to impose their “sensibilities” on the rest of us real Americans. Freedom of religion? Pssh.

After saying things like that, Spencer has got a lot of gall to be talking about freedom of religion. The Miami-Dade County transit folks aren’t buying his and Geller’s propaganda, and neither should anyone else.

Addendum by Danios:

The astute law student Omer Subhani has pointed out that this has nothing to do with freedom of speech, as nobody is stopping Spencer et al. from posting his profuse vitriol on his website.  However, he does not own the buses and therefore has no right to dictate what goes on them, as I do not have the right to dictate what ads run on JihadWatch.  Hypocritically, these Islamophobic elements supported the removal of the WhyIslam.org banners on metro stations, but now they seem to be struck with partial amnesia, claiming that it is a violation of their rights to remove their Islamophobic ads.  Apparently, freedom of speech to them is the freedom for them to voice their views and silence those of their opponents.   The issue is made exceedingly clear by the example given above, namely that nobody would expect the buses to put up ads supporting the KKK or some neo-Nazi group.  Alternatively, one can hardly imagine Usama bin Ladin being allowed to promote his message on these buses.

This is less of an issue about freedom of speech, but more about common human decency.  It revolves around Spencer and Geller’s departure from the bounds of reasonableness and entrance into the realms of fringe fanaticism.  (A reader of ours noted: “The word ‘departure’ implies that there was a time they were ever within the bounds of reasonableness.” Good point!) Their ad campaign reflects their juvenile behavior.  One can hardly expect better from Geller, but shouldn’t Spencer have at least some standards so he can continue to uphold his false claim to scholarship?  Bravo, Spencer.  You continue to expose yourself as the lunatic you are.  Please continue, so we can show the world what a raving lunatic you truly are.

The Looniest Blogger Ever: Pamela Geller

Is this woman worth covering anymore? Do our readers even care to read the verbal diarrehea that she recycles endlessly? Contradicting herself at every turn? The lunatic, fanatic, charlatan Pamela Geller has now thrown her support behind a Nazi sympathizer and leading figure in the former apartheid regime of South Africa, Eugene Terreblanche.

For us at LW it is not surprising that she would throw her support behind Terreblanche. She is an avid supporter of Israeli Apartheid and supremacy and so when a historical parallel such as South African apartheid comes to the fore she has no option but to condemn Nelson Mandela and the struggle for freedom of the Black South Africans. For her it is a matter of consistency in hatred, oppression and injustice. She sees clearly that Palestinians are the new Black South Africans and the TerreBlanche’s of White South Africa are today’s Avigdor Lieberman’s and Benyamin Netanyahu’s.

One has to ask Pamela to step back for a moment. Maybe she is writing before thinking? Or maybe she just doesn’t care? Pamela, as a Jew can you honestly say you support a man whose emblem is eerily similar to the Nazi bent cross? Have you lost any shred of reason and integrity that you may have had left?

Eugene Terreblance addressing his followers

So what does Pamela have to say?

Every single headline calls Terreblanche a “white supremacist,” alluding to his position in the waning days of the apartheid government, thirty-odd years ago. But the real story here is not that Terreblanche was a “white supremacist” — if he really was (and I know how the left loves to throw around those labels).

Ridiculous. Only Pamela doesn’t seem to get the fact that Terreblanche was an avowed white supremacist.

we have been taught to believe that the ANC and Nelson Mandela are the “good guys.”

So now Nelson Mandela is one of the bad guys? This woman is in her own world. This is the exact same thing that Pamela and her buddies tried to do to Jimmy Carter. Paint him as some sort of crazy evil radical and an anti-Semite. Don’t be surprised if next Nelson Mandela is called an anti-Semite.

Maybe she should read the following article in the Daily Mail to remove her ignorance but my guess is we won’t be seeing a retraction anytime soon.

Funeral of Eugene Terreblanche Takes Place Amid Tight Security by Jane Flanagan

Their arms raised in a Nazi salute, thousands of angry white followers greet the coffin of Eugene Terreblanche as it leaves church.

The South African white supremacist was buried on Friday, six days after being hacked to death by two black farm workers.

Supporters travelled from across the country to mourn his murder and, in some cases, plot revenge.

Children and even babies were dressed in the uniform of 69-year-old Terreblanche’s party, the AWB.

Haunting: Mourners give the Nazi salute as a hearse containing the body of slain white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche drives by in South Africa today

Flags bearing the swastika-like emblem of Terreblanche’s party, the AWB, are waved as mourners give the salute today

A massive security operation was mounted for the ceremony amid fears of violent clashes between whites and blacks.

But there were few black faces to be seen. Some mourners muttered ‘housemaid’ in Afrikaans when a black government minister paying official respects walked past.

Despite calls for calm from political leaders following Terreblanche’s brutal killing, the crowd were united in the view that the death of the white supremacist leader was a political assassination.

‘None of us are safe,’ said Jan van der Merwe, a small scale farmer.

‘White farmers are always been murdered in this country, but now they have killed our leader, there must be consequences.’

Mourners still appear to be giving the Nazi salue as Terreblanche’s coffin goes by – but in reality they are simply taking pictures with their cameras

Enlarge

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A little girl reads the order of service, left, while a dog and guard provide security, right

Terreblanche, the 69-year-old leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) was bludgeoned to death last weekend, allegedly by two of his farm workers.

But the Afrikaner community is increasingly convinced his death is part of a sinister plot to decimate the descendants of South Africa’s original white settlers.

Although the funeral, in Terreblanche’s rural home town of Venterdorp, passed off peacefully, the country’s worst racial crisis since the end of apartheid is far from over.

And with only nine weeks until the start of the World Cup, funeral goers expressed fears for the safety of the 32 competing teams.

‘This government has lost control of the country,’ Cornelia Jonck said.

‘They cannot even protect those of us who live here, how can they guarantee the safety of hundreds of thousands of football fans.

‘There will be bloodshed and then people of the world will know what we have to face every single day of our lives.’

Mrs Jonck, 61, was among the first to pitch a camping chair on the lawn in front of the brick church in the North West Province town, to hear the funeral broadcast on loud speakers.

As strains of the Afrikaner national anthem, Die Stem, meaning The Call, blasted out, police helicopters hovered overhead.  The bumper of an armoured police car, parked outside the church, provided a seat for some elderly mourners who were unable to find room inside.

Laid to rest: Terreblanche’s brother lays the flag of the AWB over the coffin

There was audible tutting and a vigorous shaking of heads among those lining the road outside the church as the convoy carrying family of ‘the leader’ was followed by police cars with black officers at the wheel.

‘It is not that we don’t like the blacks,’ said Margarite Dreyer, a lifelong member of Mr Terreblanche’s AWB party.

‘It is just that we want to be apart from them.  We have our God and our ways, and they have their ancestors and the things that are important to them.

‘God did not want us to be mixed like this. It is not a coincidence that Oom Gene [Terreblanche] died at Easter.

‘He died so that we may be saved – so that God will give us our own homeland at last, so that the Afrkaners may be alone, like the people of Israel.’

A number of homemade banners blamed the country’s President Jacob Zuma, and the firebrand leader of the ruling party’s youth wing, Julius Malema, directly for the killing of Mr Terreblanche, a father of one daughter.

Tension: Supporters of Eugene Terreblanche raise their hands in a Nazi salute and sing (above) while others waved supremacist flags (below) ahead of his funeral in Ventersdorp today

‘That black group from Julius, it doesn’t matter to them who you are, if your skin is white, they are going to kill you,’ shouted one tearful woman as she queued for a seat in the small church.

‘He is a monkey auntie, he belongs in the bush,’ a young boy added.

Mr Malema’s resurrection of the township refrain ‘Shoot the Boer’ has stoked anti-white feeling within the country in recent weeks, many in the crowd claimed.

A number of mourners called for Mr Malema to be ‘taken out’ for his part in creating an atmosphere of rural lawlessness.

At least two white farmers are murdered each week in South Africa.

‘I would have no trouble pulling the trigger myself,’ an AWB member from Ventersdorp said. ‘I am happy to kill him, but I don’t want to go to jail for doing it. I’d rather die myself.’

Andre Erasmus, a pastor who was among the crowd, was adamant that Mr Terreblanch was not murdered in a row with his workers over pay.

He believed that about 10 years ago, ‘a war was declared on the white man in the country and nobody has done anything about it’.

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Loyal: AWB members stand guard outside the church grounds

There were audible wails of grief as the murdered Afrikaner’s coffin was carried into the church draped in the red, black and white Nazi-like flag of his AWB movement. Two men wearing the group’s military-style uniform stood at each end.

On the other side of town, the country’s trade union federation called a mass meeting to ensure there would be no repeat of the black versus white clashes that had taken place earlier in the week when the alleged killers appeared in court.

Police and army units were drafted into the tiny town to ensure the funeral service and burial on Terreblanche’s farm passed off peacefully.

Terreblanche was an iconic figure in the country; a large man with silver beard and piercing blue eyees, he attended rallies on horseback.

He was a fervent opposer of black rule.  He had lived in relative obscurity since his release from prison in 2004 after a sentence for beating a black man nearly to death.

Despite fears to the contrary, his death has not sparked wider violence.

The acrimonious aftermath of Terreblanche’s murder revealed strained race relations 16 years after apartheid collapsed and Nelson Mandela became president, urging all races to come together.

Terreblanche was hacked to death while he slept at his farm, apparently after a row over wages.  The attack with machetes and pipes is said to have been so violent that Terreblanche’s body was ‘unrecognisable’ .

His alleged killers worked for him on the farm outside Ventersdorp, north-west of Johannesburg.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1264753/Funeral-Eugene-Terreblanche-takes-place-amid-tight-security.html#ixzz0kvBLF30a

Loonwatchers, please welcome Inconnu to the team of authors on Loonwatch.

As his arguments become exposed, so does he.

It is baffling how Robert Spencer downplays the fact that members of a Christian militia group, the Hutaree, were arrested and charged with planning to wage ware against the United States. In his post, he writes:

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.

This is in direct contrast to the report issued by the Department of Homeland Security that documented the rise of right-wing extremism, one which many right-wing commentators attacked vigorously. The much maligned DHS report was recently corroborated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups in the United States. Clearly, the intelligence and data has led authorities to believe that there is real reason to be concerned about these groups, but Spencer pays it no mind because they are not Muslims.

But, he bemoans the fact that there are no quotations in media reports from Christian leaders denouncing this Christian militia:

Meanwhile, in the Detroit News story on the raids, which as tendentious, superficial, and slanted as all the mainstream media coverage of the Hutaree’s downfall, the Hutaree is matter-of-factly identified as Christian. Yet there are no quotations in the story from Christian leaders explaining how they condemn this “Christian militia,” and saying that Christianity doesn’t condone such violence, and that these militiamen have twisted and hijacked their peaceful faith. Why didn’t the News take care to gather such quotes? After all, they always include such quotes from Muslim leaders in every story about Islamic jihad terror activity. Why is the practice different in this case?

The reason for this is that most everyone knows, including us here at LW, that the actions of a radical few do not reflect upon the nature of the majority. These alleged “Christian soldiers” do not represent the mainstream. We here at LW know that. Most resonable people understand this basic fact.

We here at LW know that the actions of a few pedophile priests do not reflect upon the overwhelming majority of the good people who are Catholic priests, men who have sacrificed a great deal to minister to their flock. Would it be right and proper to smear all of Catholic Christianity with the stain of pedophilia and sexual abuse because of the actions of a relatively small number of priests? Of course not. We here at LW know this.

Spencer, however, does not share such logic. He continually cherry picks bad news stories from among the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world to somehow smear the entire group. Notice how he calls the Hutaree a “self-proclaimed Christian group,” which they are, to dismiss them. But, when a self-proclaimed Muslim group does something bad, according to Spencer, Geller, and Co., it is because of Islam itself. What fallacy.

Spencer calls the Hutaree, a group that allegedly planned on killing a cop and then bombing the funeral to kill more cops, a “dream come true” for the mainstream media. Actually, this group (and the others like them) is a nightmare come true. They must be fought against with as much vigor as is needed in the fight against radical Muslims who wish to do Americans harm.

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.

So Who Are The Nazis? Meet Atlas’s Thugs by Max Blumenthal

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?