Robert Spencer with loon Pamela Geller

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer hosted a video of a young Hindu girl obviously inspired by extremists such as the fanatics who destroyed the Babri Mosque on their respective websites. (hat tip: Jack) In the video she calls for “wiping Pakistan off the map.” Does that sound familiar? Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer now have no right to complain about Ahamdinejad’s statements to “wipe Israel off the map” as it rings hollow and hypocritical as they are more than happy to entertain the destruction of a whole country when it is predominantly “Mooslim.”

This is the video that both Pamela and Robert hosted on their site:

Pamela Geller commented that: “Perhaps with an online Colb. (collaboration) we can run her for president in ‘16. She gets it.”

Robert Spencer remarks: “The girl is right: do not fear. Fight back against the jihad. Fear hands the jihadis a weapon.”

One thing that Pamela and Robert don’t seem to understand or care about is that this girl’s hatred is not limited to Muslims but it extends to Christians and Americans. At 24 seconds the video translates what she says as, “Tell those clerics, Pakistanis and Jihadis that you do not fear bomb blasts and acts of terrorism,” in fact what she says is, “Tell those clerics, Pakistanis and Christians that you do not fear bomb blasts and acts of terrorism.” A mistranslation that seems to have ironically gone right over the head of the “scholar” Robert Spencer and his lunatic buddy Pamela Geller.

Commenters on Geller’s site were enthusiastic, calling the girl a “natural-born leader,” “incredible,” “amazing,” “fantastic,” while a few of the more “restrained” commenters argued that while they were all for nuking Pakistan it wouldn’t solve the problem. The video drew little heated debate and exchanges on JihadWatch with the usual commenters fawning over her calls for the destruction of Muslims, while a few critical voices accused of “taqiyyah” pointed out the fact that Spencer was a hypocrite for hosting this video.

As his arguments become exposed, so does he.

As many of you well know, I have taken it upon myself to refute Robert Spencer’s book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), cover to cover, page by page, and line by line.  I have already written several articles refuting Spencer, exposing him for the fear-mongering fraudster that he is.

Omer Subhani, a reader of our website, blogged it out best:

Spencer dodging LoonWatch… again

Robert Spencer has said something like the following many times:

“…I am always happy to debate any serious Muslim spokesman…”

Really?

Then why not debate the writer of multiple refutations of your work?

That writer goes by the name of Danios and he or she writes over at Loon Watch. Danios has written numerous refutations of Spencer’s work without much of a peep leaking from Spencer. Yet, Spencer was more than happy to share with his audience a list of people he has formerly debated.

But no mention of anything written by anyone at Loon Watch.

I smell something. And it smells like chicken.

What’s the excuse? Danios is writing anonymously? That shouldn’t matter. Spencer, you have continuously proclaimed from the day you started writing your blog that you would debate anyone, anywhere, any time. Well, Danios has penned multiple refutations of your work and yet you have failed to reply. You have hinted at Danios’ work in previous posts, but you haven’t gotten around to refuting Danios. You have called Danios a “slick liar,” but have failed to respond substantively to what Danios wrote.

Why are you chickening out, Spencer?

You’re aware of Danios’ refutations of your work, but you won’t engage in dialog. Usually when someone doesn’t respond to another person’s argument it means that they’ve conceded the point. Maybe Danios’ refutations of your claims were so absolute that it really isn’t worth debating. If that’s the case, then be a man about it and say so.

Subhani notes that Robert Spencer referred to me as a “slick liar,” but it may interest you to know that Spencer was so frustrated that he went even further, declaring:

The slick liar who penned that piece ought to get 100 lashes

In another article, Spencer upped the ante, and decided that 100 was just not enough, and threw in one more for added effect:

The slick liar who penned that piece ought to get 101 lashes

Instead of using such violent language, why doesn’t Spencer just refute the points I raised?  Isn’t that always his gripe against those who write about him negatively in the media?

The “piece” I wrote for which I became a “slick liar” can be found here: Robert Spencer Rapes the Truth, Part 1: Does Sharia Reject the Testimony of a Rape Victim? In that article, I contest Spencer’s bold claim that in rape cases a woman’s testimony is rejected under Sharia.  And I promised that in part 2 (coming to a theater near you soon) I will discuss Spencer’s claim that under Sharia a woman is lashed if she claims rape but cannot produce four witnesses.

So let’s read Spencer’s response, which is as follows:

Recently someone forwarded me a pseudo-scholarly piece by a smooth Islamic apologist purporting to prove that I was wrong, wrong, wrong (and therefore evil as well, of course) about Islamic rules of evidence for crimes of zina (adultery, fornication, and other sexual offenses), and claiming that rape victims in the Islamic world are never punished for being raped. The slick liar who penned that piece ought to get 100 lashes instead of “Camille” for his obfuscation and enabling of this kind of torture of women.

OK, let’s take that one line at a time, shall we?  First, Spencer writes:

Recently someone forwarded me a pseudo-scholarly piece

Here is a really bad case of projection.  Robert Spencer tries passing himself off as a scholar, and therefore assumes that I would too.  Apparently, Spencer has no idea what a scholarly paper looks like, because if he did, he would know that my article is far too irreverent a piece to be scholarly.   Does that mean that every piece of writing that is not scholarly becomes pseudo-scholarly?  What an absurd understanding.  Do newspaper articles or op-eds then become pseudo-scholarly works?

Then, Spencer says:

by a smooth Islamic apologist

I haven’t revealed what religion (if any) I follow.  In fact, I think the fact that I approach these debates as a neutral outsider–instead of approaching them as a vested Muslim–is what gives me the edge over other people who have debated with Spencer.  And in any case, Spencer can then be considered “a smooth Catholic apologist.”  Actually, he’s more like a Catholic crusader who attacks the infidel Islamic world with his vitriolic pen.

He goes on:

I was wrong, wrong, wrong (and therefore evil as well, of course)

No complaints here.

Here is the real doozie:

and claiming that rape victims in the Islamic world are never punished for being raped.

I’ve noticed that Robert Spencer always does this in his polemical pieces.  First, he builds up his argument with half-truths, and then near the end he will insert an outright lie.  Nowhere did I claim that “rape victims in the Islamic world are never punished for being raped. “  This is a complete strawman argument.  Clearly, there are uneducated fundamentalists who do that, and who need to be stopped.  My contention with Spencer is his claim that such a thing is inherently part of Islam itself or the Islamic jurisprudential tradition.

Spencer then proceeds to report a case of a rape victim being punished in the Islamic world.  So instead of critically analyzing the arguments I put forward in my article (Robert Spencer Rapes the Truth, Part 1: Does Sharia Reject the Testimony of a Rape Victim?), Spencer constructs a strawman argument (claiming that I think or said that rape victims are never punished in the Islamic world) and then proceeds to knock it down by citing a case of just such a thing.  Clearly, Spencer’s need to construct a strawman is rooted in his inability to address any of my arguments.  Meanwhile, my own arguments against him are always precision guided surgical strikes.

My ever so dearest Robert Spencer: please do address the actual points I raised in the article.

Spencer Responds to My Latest Article on Dhimmitude

Awhile back, I published part 1 of my rebuttal of Robert Spencer on the topic of dhimmitude.  I already addressed Spencer’s bumbling reply to part 1.  Once again, he was absolutely unable to debate the actual topic, which was the historical treatment of dhimmis (vs perpetual serfs).  After Spencer refused to respond, I called him out as a chicken.

Then a few days back, I published part 2 of my dhimmitude series.  Just now, Spencer issued a response.  For some odd reason, however, Spencer refuses to take my name and suffices himself with veiled (but painfully obvious) references.  (Similarly, he refused to take LoonWatch’s blessed name when one of our intrepid writers broke the story about how FuckAllah.com and FuckIslam.com mysteriously redirected to his website; instead, he somehow chose to target CAIR, who simply reproduced our article.)

Spencer writes (emphasis is mine):

More or less on a regular basis I am sent purported refutations of what I say here and in my books — essays that purport to show that Islam doesn’t really teach warfare against unbelievers and their subjugation as inferiors under the rule of Islamic law,

Clearly a reference to yours truly.

Spencer goes on:

although these purported refutations usually content themselves with showing that Christians or someone else were doing something worse,

Completely false.  I only contented myself after proving that contemporary Muslims reject the Pact of Umar (a document which is so central to your Islamophobic viewpoint that you call it the “the foundation for Islamic law regarding the treatment of the dhimmis”).  So yes, I was quite pleased with myself after I toppled the foundation of your argument.  (I treated myself with ice cream.)

If you are referring to part 1, I had already been quite clear that my rebuttal would come in multiple parts, and that the first part would simply contest your claim that historically Muslims treated Jews worse than Christians did. And I have already answered this argument of yours in my response to your bumbling reply.  Or do we have to go through this again?  You had said earlier:

It is an extended (very extended) example of the familiar tu quoque fallacy in which Islamic apologists always indulge: other people have done evil, and therefore our evil is not so bad or not to be spoken of.

To which I had replied:

I certainly never said that the “evil is not so bad.”  What I said was that the “evil” (your choice of words) done to infidels in the Islamic realm was historically less than that done to infidels in Christendom.  And I said that to negate chapter four of your book, in which you specifically wrote “the idea that Jews fared better in Islamic lands than in Christian Europe is false,” and “the Muslim laws were much harsher for Jews than those of Christendom.”  I am fact-checking your book, and you made a claim, and I refuted it.  Simple as that.  Now it is up to you to either defend your initial claim or concede that you were wrong to state it.

Back to Spencer’s recent response, he goes on:

or that some document or other to which I refer in my books is held in no esteem by Muslims

That’s it?  You’ve conceded the point?  Wow.  This was easier than I thought.  Suddenly, you’ve moved the goalposts, as evidenced by what you say next:

or virtually anything other than actually proving that there exists a sect or school of Islam that teaches that Muslims must live with non-Muslims as equals on an indefinite basis

I’m starting to sense a pattern here.  Every time I refute one of your arguments, you will move to the next one.  But don’t worry, Spencer my love, your wish is my command.  In fact, the third (and final) part of my dhimmitude series will prove exactly what you asked for, namely that contemporary Muslims do believe that they should live with non-Muslims as equals.  Stay tuned for that.  (I’m sure by that time you’ll skip to another topic, never standing up like a man and defending the actual issue I write on.)

Then Spencer goes off on another tangent, writing:

In any case, the fundamental problem with all these alleged refutations is that if I am misunderstanding Islam, an awful lot of Muslims, including Islamic clerics who have devoted their lives to studying the Qur’an and Sunnah, misunderstand it in the same way. And here we have another. Afzali says he betrayed his religion, but that is, I suspect, just in order to bamboozle the unbelievers yet again.

Notice how Spencer tries to prove that there is a “fundamental problem with all these alleged refutations” by giving the example of Ahmad Afzali, an Imam who tipped off an Al-Qaeda militant.  Ummm…am I missing something here?  What does Ahmad Afzali have to do with any of my refutations of Spencer?  What does Afzali tipping off an Al-Qaeda militant have to do with the historical treatment of dhimmis vs perpetual serfs (part 1) or the Pact of Umar (part 2)?  It’s completely nonsensical and shows the sheer desperation Spencer is feeling right now.

How about instead of going off on random tangents you address the points I raised?  You obviously have enough time to rant about me on your website (although in a veiled manner), yet don’t have the time to construct a few decent logical arguments? Why then did you make the claim that “I am always happy to debate any serious Muslim spokesman”?  You after all call me an “Islamic apologist”, and I assume “Islamic apologists” are also “Muslim spokesmen”, so why don’t you debate me?  Your loyal readers argue that LoonWatch is “beneath you,” and thus “unworthy of your time.”  Yet, here you are ranting about me (albeit in a veiled manner); so why not better use that time to give more substantive responses?

Well, the answer is obvious: you’re a bully, and you’ve been bullying people for a very, very long time.  But like all bullies, when you meet someone your own size, you run away like the coward you are.  Sorry to burst your bubble, but I’m not going anywhere.  You are in quite a bind: if you try to respond to my arguments, the weakness of your case will become even more apparent.  If you decide not to engage me due to this fear, you still lose by virtue of forfeiture.  Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  Either way is fine by me.

"The time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end."

David Horowitz

David Horowitz, the former Marxist turned neo-Conservative and the person who funds such loathsome individuals as Robert Spencer and his Jihad Watch was at UMass where he faced strong opposition from students. He ended up calling Palestinians Nazis, said Islam is worse and more dangerous than Nazism and other crazy stuff.

Horowitz Brings Controversial Ideas to Student Union

By: Michelle Williams | February 25, 2010 | ShareThis

Editor’s Note: Due to the snow day, this article will appear in the paper edition of Thursday, Feb. 25. As such, the online article has been slightly updated.

Ashley Lesperance/Collegian

On Tuesday evening, former New Left radical turned conservative pundit and author of such works as “Hating Whitey: and Other Progressive Causes,” and “Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left,” David Horowitz spoke in the Cape Cod Lounge in the Student Union.

Outside the Lounge two UMass Police officers were stationed at the door, with numerous law enforcement officials inside in plainclothes.

Justin Thomas, vice president of the University of Massachusetts Republican Club, the RSO which brought Horowitz to UMass, defended the heavy police presence at the event, citing previous events including Don Feder’s speech in March 2009, which was disrupted by protesters.

David Horowitz is described by the Republican Club as a well-known author and lifelong civil rights activist. He was sponsored to speak at UMass for a payment of $5,000 plus expenses, including transportation, lodging, and payment for protection.

Those protesting disagree that his speech was worth funding.

“I am here protesting because, as a UMass student attending a public university, I don’t welcome homophobia, and Islamophobia that is integrated in Horowitz’s hate speech.” said Marah DeFlavia, a junior at UMass. “I feel that bringing Horowitz to this campus was socially irresponsible, and it sends a negative message regarding our campus.”

Protesters passed out flyers labeling Horowitz a racist, citing an article he wrote which likened calling Rush Limbaugh a racist to calling minorities racial epithets.

The evening seemed a perfect test of some of Horowitz’s primary tenets, as he has asserted that liberal thinkers suppress free thought in academia in such pieces as “The Professors: 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.”

Ultimately, this forum turned out better than last year’s contested gathering. Some protesters did speak out, and while they were asked to leave, none were forcibly removed or arrested.

The UMPD also implemented security measures, including not allowing audience members to bring backpacks with them inside. Members of the audience were also asked not to hold up signs or interrupt, though some disruption did occur.

UMass student Alex Tuffile was excited for the night’s events, having read all of Horowitz’s books. When asked his thoughts on the protesters, after viewing them quietly passing out flyers, he responded that he liked them. Citing past speeches, specifically the Don Feder speech, Tuffile said he feels the security measures are necessary.

“It was a disaster. I don’t have a problem with people when they protest, but it was ugly,” he said.

Thomas, the Republican Club vice president, gave opening remarks and thanked everyone for attending the speech, stating that Horowitz’s presence would hopefully facilitate conversation and debate.

Thomas explained why the Republican Club chose Horowitz.

“David Horowitz has been a strong proponent of free speech on campus,” he said.

Horowitz also provided an outlet for the club to display a more conservative speaker.

“You may remember Ms. Meghan McCain, who brought a more independent viewpoint [coming to campus.] Surprisingly for some, she wasn’t conservative enough,” said Thomas.

Next to speak was Derek Khanna, the president of the Republican Club. Khanna spoke of Horowitz’s lack of political correctness and the need for such in the University environment. Khanna spoke of not being able to call his country a “she,” and said, “Today, we live in a society where use of the word ‘niggardly’ requires an apology,” which the audience greeted with hissing sounds.

As he took the stage, Horowitz began his speech with an attack on liberals.

“Universities were set up to be free institutions that taxpayers pay for. It is due to out of control spending on faculty and out of control governmental loans that tuition costs are so much,” said Horowitz.

He went on to call college professors lazy, claiming they only work “nine hours a week, eight months out of the year.”

He continued to claim that professors generally represent just one side of the aisle politically. Horowitz sat in on a 90 minute civil liberties class during Tuesday’s classes, which he felt did not show multiple viewpoints on the subject.

“The professor tried to sell students on the decency of the Supreme Court, and denied them key information,” he said, furthering that he believes an educator’s job should entail “teaching you how to think, not what to think.”

Midway through his speech, Horowitz spoke on an educational department with which his views are commonly connoted. Horowitz said that women’s studies departments’ goals are to “make students into radical feminists.”

On the issues of gender and racial hierarchies in society, Horowitz claimed such inequities do not exist in America. He also said, to much audience protest, that the women’s studies department “doesn’t actually care about women,” because of genital mutilation occurring in Islamic cultures.

Horowitz expanded on his view of education stating that “the entire liberal arts college cannot give you a good education.” The only department Horowitz felt was of value was the engineering college, because through science, he believes the department presents facts without political slant.

Horowitz also told the crowd his views on religion. He deemed Muslims radicals, citing a poll claiming ten percent of Muslims agreed with jihad, or holy war. Making numerous comparisons to Nazi Germany, Horowitz called the Islamic jihad worse.

“Islamists are worse than the Nazis, because even the Nazis did not tell the world that they want to exterminate the Jews,” he said. In another comparison to Nazis, he added, “there are good Muslims and bad Muslims just like there were good Germans and bad Germans.”

After an hour of speaking, Horowitz took questions. Numerous students asked him about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, to which Horowitz responded heatedly, “The Palestinians are Nazis. Every one of their elected officials are terrorists.”

He spoke of how the countries in the Middle East were created and had no right to the lands that now make up Israel. “The Jews were attacked. They had every right to expel every Arab from both Israel and, when they were attacked in ‘67, from the West Bank.”

Zamil Akhtar, president of the UMass Muslim Student Association, spoke of how every Muslim, himself included, did not support the jihad, and said, “You said that you had not heard Muslims condemn the jihad. I can show you hundreds of Muslim scholars that disagree.”

“You also spoke of genital mutilation,” added Akhtar, “which is not a part of the culture – of my culture – as you said.”

Horowitz asked if Akhtar would denounce Hamas, to which Akhtar responded he would, and retorted by asking Horowitz if he would denounce Ann Coulter’s Islamophobic remarks, to which he responded, “It was a very apt satire.”

On the differences between sex and gender, UMass student Ashley Lesperance tried to explain the differences between gender and sex.

“Gender is defined as socially constructed to oppress women, versus sex which is what you are born with, gender is what is in fact socially constructed,” Lesperance told Horowitz.

Horowitz retorted by referencing former Harvard President Larry Summers, who drew criticism when he claimed women had lesser scientific abilities than women.

“Women possibly have a lower aptitude for math and science than men. And that’s a gender difference. Women have a lower aptitude in mathematics than men, and that is a scientific fact,” said Horowitz.

After a 30 minute question-and-answer of agitated remarks between the protesters and Horowitz, he told audience members lined at the microphone that he was finished answering questions and was escorted out of the room by his bodyguard.

Michelle Williams can be reached at mnwillia@student.umass.edu

The Looniest Blogger Ever: Pamela Geller

Lets take a trip over the rainbow into loonyland where we will meet the Queen loon blogger Pamela Geller. Once here we must suspend all reality and truth.  Here Barack Obama is a Mooslim who is furthering Jihad and working to destroy Israel. Israel is light and goodness and vanilla ice cream fighting against the evil, dark smelly hordes of Izzzlaaaaaaaaaam. The Mooslims have taken over everything and must be destroyed before they destroy us.

That is what Geller’s every waking existence is like or at least the existence she purports to believe in on her comical conspiracy site, Atlas Shrugs. Her recent tirades include calls for Israel to nuke Muslim capitals/holy sites and Europe. Enjoy!

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. (This New Hatred Comes from Muslim Immigrants. The Jewish People are Afraid Now)

So according to Pam, in response to a hypothetical situation in which Iran hits Israel with a nuke, it should respond with everything it has on not only Iran but Saudi Arabia, and Europe? If you didn’t get it, “Everything she has” is a not so subtle way of saying Israel should unload its stockpile of nukes.

Her hatred of Europe and desire to see it destroyed is very odd as well (she claims to defend Western civilization) and just exposes her genocidal predilections further, she wants the present generation of Europeans to pay for the sins of the Nazis (who weren’t all of Europe by the way). How crazy is she?

She also claims that the rise in anti-Semitism is linked to the “next generation of Jew killers” whom the Europeans imported. An insinuation that Muslim immigrants are at fault for rising violence against Jews in Europe, a statement completely devoid of any basis in fact. On the contrary recent research shows that the growing Muslim population is not linked to the growing anti-Semitism (which parallels growing Islamophobia). One point that illustrates this fact clearly is that Hungary which has almost no Muslim presence has seen the greatest increase in anti-Semitism,

Some commentators have tried to link the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe to a growing Muslim population there. But in Hungary, where there is hardly any Muslim presence, anti-Semitism is both more rabid and crude than anywhere else in Europe.

It seems that Pam’s deep hatred of Islam and Muslims has finally allowed her to complete the trifecta: first she advocated the destruction of the Golden Dome (Islam’s third holiest site), and now she seeks the destruction of Mecca and Medina.

Over a week ago the Fiqh Council of North America, which is a council of Islamic scholars who give religious opinions said that Body Scanners (Nude-Scanners) violate the requirements of  modesty and respect for human dignity and were,

against the teachings of Islam, natural law and all religions and cultures that stand for decency and modesty.

This is a respectable position since the objectives of the body scanner can be achieved through a pat-down by an officer of the same sex. When the Council came out with the verdict it was big news with the usual culprits on Fox News saying, ‘here go Muslims again trying to get special treatment.’ Robert Spencer in fact commented that Muslims were seeking special treatment, and implied that the council was just up to some taqiyyah. His commenters and followers weren’t as ‘civil,’ one commenter stated that we should break out a shotgun on Muslims, another said Muslims should go back to riding ‘camels’ if they don’t like scanners, and other bile filled racism.

undaunted | February 11, 2010 1:46 PM | Reply

How ’bout this?

We stand them all in a line out in front of God and everybody and one-by-one break open like a shotgun each and every Muslim and Muslima who wants to get on any sort of mass transportation device and look until we find that for which we are searching.

And anyone who bitches about it goes through thrice.

Then there is this genius,

Islam_Macht_Frei | February 11, 2010 2:06 PM | Reply

Too obvious - let ‘em saddle up the ol’ camels then.

Yet another reason for a new airline: “No-Mo Air” - they’ll serve pork rinds rather than chips, etc.

Then there is this comment from Vee who seems to think that only Muslims oppose body scanners,

Vee | February 11, 2010 3:23 PM | Reply

Where are all the Catholic nuns protesting body scanners?

They are out there, right?

Well you’re in luck Vee because it seems not only are nuns protesting body scanners but the Pope himself opposes them. I’m sure Catholic Robert Spencer will just call him a Dhimmi, right?

Pope Sounds Warning Over Airport Body Scans

The head of the Roman Catholic Church spoke out against the use of body scanners at airports, saying human dignity must be preserved even as countries attempt to protect their citizens against acts of terrorism.

Pope Benedict XVI , making his comments during an audience with airport workers and officials at the Vatican on Sunday, did not specifically use the words body scanner in his address, according to reports in U.K. newspapers the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian.

But he said that even when facing the threat of terrorism, airport security officials should not forget to respect “the primacy of the human person.”

“[With] every action, it is above all essential to protect and value the human person in their integrity,” he told the representatives from the aviation industry.

The United States began using the scanners capable of detecting items hidden under clothing at airports as part of new security protocols put in place in the wake of the failed bombing attempt on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day.

Canada and European countries have followed suit and begun installing their own scanners, particularly for flights destined for the United States.

The Pope is not the first religious leader to speak out against the scanners.
Muslims urged to choose pat-down over scanner

The Fiqh Council of North America, an Islamic group with membership in Canada and the United States, said earlier in February it believed the body scanners were “against the teachings of Islam, natural law and all religions and cultures that stand for decency and modesty.”

The group urged Muslim travellers to choose to be patted down by airport security rather than go through the scanners.

Canada is in the process of installing 44 scanners to be used on U.S.-bound passengers selected for secondary screening at Canadian airports.

The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority has said the scanners would protect the privacy of the passenger, and that the officer viewing the image would do so in a separate room and never see the actual traveller.

The focus on security measures stems from the failed attempt by a Nigerian man to set off a bomb on a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, is accused of trying to ignite the bomb on the Northwest Airlines flight. Officials said he has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

God's Law vs the laws of man

Shortly after the Fort Hood Shooting, I published an article entitled Muslim Americans Must Obey U.S. Laws; Major Nidal Hasan Violated Islamic Doctrine, in which I detailed how Islamic doctrine dictates that Muslims  are religiously obligated to obey the laws of the land.  (This is similar to the Jewish concept of dina d’malchuta dina.)  The article generated an interesting discussion, with Islamophobes struggling to prove that Major Nidal Hasan’s treason was sanctioned by the Islamic religion.

An Islamophobe who routinely comments on our site posted the following:

Volume 4, Book 52, Number 203:

Narrated Ibn ‘Umar:

The ‘Prophet said, “It is obligatory for one to listen to and obey (the ruler’s orders) unless these orders involve one disobedience (to Allah); but if an act of disobedience (to Allah) is imposed, he should not listen to or obey it.”

This hadith, and others similar to it, are used by Islamophobes to call into question the loyalty of Muslim Americans.  Muslims must obey the Sharia over and above the Constitution, they bellow. Yet, what these self-proclaimed defenders of the Western Judeo-Christian tradition fail to mention is that Christians believe in obeying God’s Law (the Christian Sharia) over and above the laws of the land.  If God’s Law and the Constitution were to be in conflict, the Christian would be religiously obligated to follow the former.

Let’s take a gander at some reputable Christian “fatwa sites”…The Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry decrees:

[Question:] Shall we obey God’s Law or human law?

[Answer:] …The simple answer is that Christians are to obey human law except where that human law violates God’s Law.  Our supreme duty is to obey God.  Since God tells us to also obey human laws, we should.  But, when they come in conflict, we are to “obey God rather than men.”

GotQuestions.org says (emphasis is mine):

Question: “Do Christians have to obey the laws of the land?”

Answer: …We are to obey the government God places over us…

The next question is “Is there a time when we should intentionally disobey the laws of the land?” The answer to that question may be found in Acts 5:27-29, “Having brought the apostles, they made them appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. ‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this Name,’ he said. ‘Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.’ Peter and the other apostles replied: ‘We must obey God rather than men!’” From this, it is clear that as long as the law of the land does not contradict the law of God, we are bound to obey the law of the land. As soon as the law of the land contradicts God’s command, we are to disobey the law of the land and obey God’s law…

And the same site says elsewhere:

God commands us to obey the governmental authorities. The only allowance we have for disobeying the authorities is if they demand that we disobey something God has commanded (Acts 5:29)

And:

Romans 13:1-7 makes it abundantly clear that God expects us to obey the laws of the government. The ONLY exception to this is when a law of the government forces you to disobey a command of God (Acts 5:29).

In fact, the Christian apologist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645)–who is called “the father of modern international law”–writes in his book The Law of War and Peace (as quoted on p.184 of William J Federer’s The Ten Commandments and Their Influence on American Law):

Among all good men one principle at any rate is established beyond controversy, that if the authorities issue any order that is contrary to the law of nature or to the commandments of God, the order should not be carried out. For when the Apostles said the obedience should be rendered to God rather than to men they appealed to an infallible rule of action.

In Judaism as well, there are times when a Jew is obligated to break the laws of the land; Rabbi Israel Schneider writes:

Indeed, there are times when the civil law, in conflict with the halacha [Jewish Law], is not binding.

In fact, this has created problems for the peace process, with some Jews refusing to evacuate the illegal settlements, thereby breaking international law in favor of their interpretation of the Halacha.  The Jerusalem Post writes:

Ex-IDF rabbis: Halacha is above military orders

A group of seven former IDF rabbis, including the former chief rabbis of the air force, the navy and the IDF Educational Division, have declared that in situations where Halacha and military orders clash, Halacha takes precedence.

So this belief, of following God’s commands above man’s, is shared by all three of the Abrahamic faiths.  It is strange then that Islamophobes, the self-proclaimed defenders of the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, only fear monger when it comes to Islamic beliefs.  It is this huge double standard that we have come to expose on our site.

Addendum:

A Muslim is religiously obligated to obey the laws of the land he lives in.  But he is only religiously permitted to live in non-Muslim lands in which he is free to practice his religion.  If the laws of the land would compel him to sin, then the Muslim is commanded to emigrate to another land where this is not the case.  (He is advised to leave the land, but is not permitted to rebel against the authority.)  Muslim Americans feel comfortable living in the United States of America, because of the country’s dedication to maintaining the freedom of worship.  As such, they feel there is no conflict between being an observant Muslim on the one hand and an American citizen on the other.

Muslim Americans are naturally weary of fighting their coreligionists in foreign wars that they feel are illegal and immoral.  However, there is currently no draft, and there has not been one for over thirty years.  (The draft is unconstitutional.)  As such, Muslims are not forced to fight in wars they feel are religiously impermissible, and thus there is no conflict.  At the same time, Muslim Americans feel that they have a very important role to play, building lines of communication and understanding between Muslims and Americans.  Muslim Americans believe in using all legal and peaceful political means at their disposal to bring their country away from war and to the path of peace.

Robert Spencer with loon Pamela Geller

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are joining forces (a regular occurrence) and holding an “event” at the  Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) slated for February 19 from 10 am until noon. CPAC is billed as the “preeminent yearly conservative gathering” and will have such worthies as Glenn Beck (who will be the keynote speaker), Andrew Breitbart, John Ashcroft, Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum and many others. The sponsors include such far right-wing organizations as the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the John Birch Society, Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation and others.

I imagine there will be a cadre of undercover liberals and documentarians, the Max Blumenthal’s of the world who will cover all the craziness that we are accustomed to from right-wingers. If he is there, I am sure one of his exposes will be covering the anti-Muslim loonacy sure to be on display at the Geller-Spencer event.

Pamela Geller brought to our attention the event over on her website Atlas Drugs, oh excuse me Atlas Shrugs in which she practically begs for donations because she complains that she is not funded by big right wing groups or persons (just ask your buddy Spencer he gets paid a pretty penny by the David Horowitz Freedom Foundation). We can’t confirm whether Geller gets funded but it is a little hard to believe she doesn’t have her hand deep into the pockets of the right-wing hate racket.

Here is the hilarious post from Pam replete with her usual over the top verbiage and endless hyperbole:

Last year in an unprecedented event at CPAC, Geert Wilders met Joe Sixpack, and it was good.

This year, Atlas does not disappoint. We are ratcheting it up a few notches. Robert Spencer and I are organizing a joint venture to educate, elucidate and scare the bejeezus outta ya. (emphasis added)

Pam sums up in one sentence what her and her friends’ agenda is with regards to “Mooslims” and “Islam,” “to scare the bejeezus outta ya!” Can it be any clearer they are using the buffoons on their site, manipulating them with fear mongering, but don’t expect the zombies who are deluded into following her to budge because it seems they love a good horror show.

THIS IS A NOT A CPAC EVENT - THIS IS A GELLER-SPENCER EVENT.

Jihad: The Political Third Rail
What they’re not telling us about the war on America

It’s Friday, February 19th from 10 am until Noon.

We are still firming our speakers up, but here is a list of the invited:

Wafa Sultan [confirmed]
Doctor, author, “A God Who Hates”

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff [confirmed]
Criminal complaint filed for  “hate speech” under Austrian law
Human Rights Activist

Steve Coughlin [confirmed]
Leading Islamic Specialist at the Pentagon, who was fired by Islamic infiltrators

Simon Deng
Former Slave in Sudan, leading human rights activist against jihad

Lt. Colonel Allen West [confirmed]
Running for Congress, Future Leadership

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer

Invited:

Rifqa Bary [invited]
teenage apostate

Kurt Westergaard [invited]
Danish cartoonist targeted for death by axe-wielding Muslim

The latest assassination attempt on Kurt Westergaard’s life by an axe-wielding Muslim (in his home with his five year old granddaughter present) has thrown an axe a wrench into this …………

Rifqa Bary is a free American. She should be free to speak anywhere she wants. Should she not?

Plan to be at CPAC this year, or at least in DC, and set aside Friday, February 19th from 10 am to noon. I need your help getting it off the ground. I will not be charging for attendance, but it costs.

No one underwrites me. No one. Not a penny.

All of these right wing organizations have donors, big donors, small donors …. and fund raising arms. They are, by their very nature, fund raising machines. Not Atlas.

Huge thanks to BigFurHat for the killer art ………. he’s da best!

If you can contribute, please do (and those who have — G-d bless you).

The woman is after money! Does she have any self-respect at all?

Look at the all stars on the list of confirmed speakers, they include Wafa Sultan (bettter known as Wafa Stalin) who we exposed as a hateful, lying poseur playing off the ignorance of her audience and also an advocate for Nuking Muslims.  There is the Austrian, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff whose claim to fame is that she has been charged with hate speech for saying “Muslims rape children” and believes that Austria’s culture is in danger because of Islam. There is Steve Coughlin who we are supposed to believe was an Islam specialist and was “fired from the Pentagon” by so-called “Islamic infiltrators.” Maybe these infiltrators were also the Islamic congressional interns who were “spying” on America for the world-wide Khaliphate? There is Simon Deng who seems to have taken his horrible experience in the Sudan into an all out crusade against Muslims, and of course there is the Biblical Literalist Allen West, the near court-martialed former lieutenant running for Congress on the platform that Palestine should not exist and that all Palestinians should move to Jordan.

Seems like a swell bunch doesn’t it? Well it doesn’t end there, they also “invited” Fathima Rifqa Bary, the poor girl whose life they have constantly intefered in and labeled as the “apostate.” Throughout the whole saga involving Rifqa Bary it is instructional to note that it is only Pam’s group that have been eager to label her an “apostate,” none of those evil Mooslim organizations, ISNA, CAIR, MPAC, ICNA, MAS, Muslim Advocates, etc. have ever called her “apostate.”

So if you want to get together to see a group of flunkies, bigots, charlatan’s and clowns then don’t miss out on this show February 19th that will “scare the beejuzus outta ya!”

Robert Spencer next to his Perpetual Serf Pamela Geller

Terry Krepel had an excellent piece on Pamela Geller in the Huffington Post, though what is “pretty” about Pamela?

Check it out:

Pamela Geller’s Pretty Hate Machine

Newsmax has had a bad run of late with its columnists.

Longtime writer John L. Perry penned a column advocating a military coup against President Obama; Newsmax removed it after a public outcry, and Perry hasn’t written for Newsmax since. After giving Bernard Kerik a column and spending months trying to rehabilitate his reputation amid corruption allegations, quietly put him aside after he pleaded guilty to several of the charges.

Then Pat Boone, in a Nov. 2 column, described Obama and his administration as “political voracious varmints” who must be dealt with, “figuratively, but in a very real way,” by “tenting” the White House the way one does with a house infested by rodents; Newsmax had to pull that one too, though Boone has continued as a columnist. (WorldNetDaily, meanwhile, does not object to Boone’s eliminationist rhetoric, as the column still resides there.)

So who’s next? We nominate Pamela Geller as the next Newsmax columnist most likely to have a claim quietly retracted.

Pamela Geller

Newsmax officially added Geller as a columnist in August. Her bio claims that at her regular blog, Atlas Shrugs, she is “bringing you the news you will not hear from the mainstream media, covering little-reported events of great import.” But of course, there’s no attention given to the wacky extremist views she holds.Geller — a former associate publisher of the New York Observer formerly married to a New York car dealer that owned a dealership linked not only to an alleged fraud scam but the killing of two police officers (the dealership is listed as partly owned by Geller, who has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the alleged scam) — is rabidly anti-Obama, anti-Islam and pro-birther. She has also had dalliances with European fascists and promoted the far-right British National Party. (Geller doesn’t think these folks are “neofascist,” apparently feeling that their anti-Islamic activism excuses their political leanings.) Geller’s Newsmax columns reflect these views.

Indeed, Geller — who once notoriously published a video blog of herself in a bikini — is one pretty hate machine.

Her very first Newsmax column, on Aug. 4, went deep into birther territory, rehashing discredited and irrelevant conspiracies regarding Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Geller spent a needlessly large amount of space on the case of Jay McKinnon, who in July 2008 posted what he claimed to be Obama’s birth certificate on the Daily Kos website that, according to Geller, “even to the layman’s eye, it was obvious that the Kos COLB had been altered.” Geller touted how the Israel Insider website broke the news that McKinnon “implicated himself in the production of palpably fake Hawaii birth certificate images.”

Missing from Geller’s account is McKinnon’s side of the story. In an interview posted on Daily Kos, McKinnon said that he posted the fake certificate to serve as a magnet for conspiracy theorists (like Geller). McKinnon also discussed Israel Insider, a right-wing, anti-Obama blog with ties to WorldNetDaily’s similarly right-wing, anti-Obama reporter Aaron Klein:

Opendna: Reuven Koret, publisher of Isreal Insider, has written that you admitted to forgery.

Jay McKinnon: Reuven Koret wrote me a number of emails before he published his article. Using a kind of Good Cop/Bad Cop style he alternatively offered to keep my statements off the record, and threatened to report me to DHS and CSIS and reveal my identity before an audience larger than DailyKos. When I asked for his questions, he sent me five which required that I both admit to a crime and suggested I implicate other innocent people (including Markos Moulitsas and unidentified members of the Obama Campaign staff) in a conspiracy. I regarded his overtures as a form of journalistic blackmail, in which I either told him what he wanted to hear or he would libel me on his website.

I informed him that I believed his article was based on libel and provided him with this statement: “I believe there is overwhelming evidence that Senator Obama is a natural born US Citizen, and I have no evidence to contradict that belief.”

Evidently that wasn’t what he wanted to hear because a few days he published his article omitting that quote.

Opendna: What do you think of Reuven Koret?

Jay McKinnon: He appears to write under his own name and is skillful at his craft: smearing his ideological opponents. I would not call him a journalist, investigative or otherwise. An internet pundit, maybe. Probably just a blogger who thinks writing scurrilous things about Senator Obama is good for site traffic.

Geller then went on to claim that the birth certificate posted on Obama’s campaign website is a “horrible forgery,” according to the analysis of “Techdude.”Geller summarized “Techdude’s” credentials:

He is an active member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the American College of Forensic Examiners, the International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners, the International Information Systems Forensics Association — the list goes on.

He is also board certified as a forensic computer examiner, a certificated legal investigator, and a licensed private investigator. He has been performing computer based forensic investigations since 1993 (although back then it did not even have a formal name yet) and he has performed countless investigations since then.

Only, not so much. Not only has “Techdude’s” analysis of the birth certificate been discredited, his credentials have been called into question as well.

Geller also referenced other baseless Obama conspiracies, such as “the passport on which he traveled to Pakistan in 1981.” Surprisingly, though, she dismissed the Kenyan birth certificate that WorldNetDaily desperately wanted to believe was real as an “obvious forgery.”

Geller then complained about the “veritable birth certificate circus” for distracting right-wingers, blaming not ringleaders like herself for this situation but … Obama:

Let’s not cloud the issue. Obama’s COLB was altered. He should produce the vault copy. Then the opposition can get on with the business of stopping his destruction of the economy and his weakening of American hegemony as he pursues his disastrous foreign policy.

Geller doesn’t seem to comprehend the possibility that the “circus” could easily end when circus clowns like herself choose to stop telling lies.

When a report surfaced in October purporting to describe a college thesis Obama wrote, Geller was among the right-wingers to promote it at her blog — at least, until it was proven to be a fraud. Writing about it in her Oct. 27 Newsmax column, Geller not only embraces the fake-but-accurate defense — that Obama could have plausibly written it — but also invents a way to blame Obama for the whole thing:

If Barack Obama would release his Columbia thesis, this latest media pseudo-controversy would never have happened. But now the tittering hyenas on the left are howling at the moon over the satire of Obama’s thesis that was taken for the real thing by Rush Limbaugh, as well as by Denis Keohane at The American Thinker and Michael Ledeen at Pajamas Media.

The fake thesis has Obama criticizing the Constitution, saying that “the so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.”

That sounded to me like something Obama would have said, so I cited it and ran it with it at my blog AtlasShrugs.com. But when I couldn’t find the actual link to what purported to be the “first ten pages” of Obama’s thesis, I took it down.

But bear in mind one thing: as Michael Ledeen says, “it worked because it’s plausible.”

Funny how the same defense right-wingers hated when CBS employed it in the case of the Bush National Guard papers is embraced by them when they’re caught repeating bogus information.

Geller went on to falsely portray Obama’s statements in a 2001 radio interview in order to fit her preconceived script that Obama wants to redistribute the nation’s wealth:

He said that it was a tragedy that the Constitution wasn’t radically reinterpreted to force redistribution of the wealth: “I am not optimistic,” he said, “about bringing about redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way.” He praised the civil rights movement and its “litigation strategy in the court” for succeeding in vesting “formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples.”

In fact, as ConWebWatch documented when other right-wingers did the same thing, Obama never claimed it was a “tragedy that the Constitution wasn’t radically reinterpreted to force redistribution of the wealth.” What Obama called a tragedy was the civil rights movement’s reliance on the court system to bring about change instead of grassroots work.

Geller went on to write:

This was the fault of the Supreme Court and the Constitution itself: “But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical.”

And that was because of the constraints of the Constitution: “It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties.

“It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted.”

That’s a false interpretation as well. Obama never expressed a desire for the court to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution” during that interview, as Geller claimed; he was merely pointing out that it didn’t.

Sometimes Geller just explodes with visceral hatred for Obama, as she did in a Nov. 17 column on the decision to try suspected terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a civilian court instead of a military court:

President Obama is dropping another O-bomb on America with the decision to try the masterminds of the shocking attack of Sept. 11, 2001, in a New York courtroom.

That’s right: Obama is trying to reduce the Sept. 11 act of war to a law enforcement issue. So our wartime enemy is going to face a civilian trial in New York City. It’s another O-bomb on American leadership.

[...]

America going on a witch hunt and prosecuting those who kept this country safe from people like Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, as Obama has announced he intends to do, sets back our moral authority. America turning her back on the jihad against women, Christian, Jews, and non-believers has set back America’s moral authority. America electing a radical for a President has set back America’s moral authority.

America electing an America-hater for president vanquished our moral authority.

[...]

This is yet another vile chapter in the Obama presidency. As long as he is president, the man will never stop punishing America for being so foolish as to elect him.

Geller hates Obama as much as she hates Islam. Here’s one of her anti-Muslim rants, from a Nov. 12 column:

We are witnessing an Islamized America. This is well beyond political correctness. We are enforcing Shariah. We will not insult Islam. That is Shariah. We self censor. That is Shariah. We disrespect ourselves, our nation, so that we might respect Islam. This is dhimmitude.

[...]

Every “Soldier of Allah” who goes jihad is an enemy combatant. Every devout Muslim who believes in the word of the Quran has his duty to Islam, her call to jihad. Hence this terrible act of war, the 14,363 Islamic attacks across the world since 9/11, and all of the relentless plots and plans to take down America in the past month alone. Devout Muslims should be prohibited from military service. Would Patton have recruited Nazis into his army?

One of Geller’s biggest cause celebres in her Newsmax column is Fathima Rifqa Bary, an Ohio teen who fled to a Florida pastor claiming her parents want to kill her for converting from Islam to Christianity. But Geller took a one-sided view of the Bary case, ignoring exculpatory evidence.

In an Aug. 13 column, Geller hyperbolically asserted: “Rifqa’s testimony is a plea to the free world to stand for its values and its principles. How far we have fallen when a young woman is pleading to be free in the land of the free, home of the brave. Rifqa Bary’s life hangs in the balance. The West should do everything in its power to save her.”But the full facts of the case diverge greatly from what Geller wrote. As Christianity Today reported, Bary’s story is being promoted by the pastor who whom she fled, Blake Lorenz, whom the girl found through Facebook, and the parents are telling a much different story:

The attorney representing Bary’s mother told Orlando-based 10TV News that they were “allowing [Bary] to explore her Christianity,” and that Bary wasn’t fearful until she met Pastor Lorenz, who holds Bary tightly throughout the video.

Meanwhile, Sgt. Jerry Cupp with the Columbus missing persons bureau disputes Bary’s claims, telling The Columbus Dispatch that Mohamed Bary has known about his daughter’s conversion for months and appears to be caring. And today, the attorney for Bary’s parents issued a statement that they have never threatened Bary: “If this case is perceived as a clash of religions, it is because Mr. Lorenz recklessly and without authorization put someone else’s child in front of television cameras to publicly renounce her previous faith,” McCarthy said in the statement. “The parents who love Rifqa are in the best position now to protect her from the mess that Mr. Lorenz has made.”

Further, as religious blogger Richard Bartholomew points out, the pastor to whom Bary fled, Blake Lorenz, “believes that he receives special personal messages from God about the imminent end of the world,” which raises questions about whether he’s exploiting Bary to promote his own ministry.

Christianity Today concluded:

Of course, believers can rejoice that this teenager has come to Christ in a cultural context in which it would be difficult to betray her parents’ teaching. And if Bary’s claims are true, we can also hope that her legal case is handled fairly and wisely, and that she finds support from Christian mentors and friends. But none of this requires that Christians be quick to use Bary’s claims to prove that Muslims — in this case, her parents and mosque leaders — are intent on killing Bary because their beliefs make them inherently violent.

That last point is exactly what Geller appears to want to push by ignoring the full story. indeed, Geller used an Aug. 17 column to defend Lorenz via misdirection: She doesn’t deny the accusation, asserting instead that Islam, “the group that silently approves of the murder of a daughter who shames her family by not wearing the proper head dress … or by choosing another religion (like Rifqa Bary),” is the real cult and not “the group that offers sanctuary to a poor threatened girl.”

Geller didn’t note that the claim of receiving personal messages directly from God is arguably de facto evidence of a cult leader, nor did she mention that Ohio police have said that Bary’s parents have known about Bary’s conversion for months and “appear to be caring.”In an Aug. 24 column, Geller accused the “media shills and Islamic machinery in the United States” of distorting the Bary case. But of course, Geller was still hurling her own distortions.

Geller’s main target of ire is Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas, whose column pointing the anti-Muslim bias surrounding the Bary case Geller immediately distorted: “Thomas got nothing right. Not one detail. Further, at no point did he consider Rifqa’s testimony. At no point did he consider the consequences of Rifqa’s testimony. At no point did he consider the risk to Rifqa’s life.”

Actually, Thomas got numerous facts correct — facts Geller would rather not have get out, such as pointing out that Bary’s father is “a middle-class jeweler with no documented history of abuse and no record of radical actions or beliefs” and noting pictures of Bary in a cheerleader outfit: “Somehow I can’t imagine a Muslim extremist allowing his daughter to wear short skirts and shake pompoms in front of a crowd of infidels.”

Geller responded to that last point with the nonsequitur: “Thomas knows nothing of honor killings in the West.”

Geller went on to complain: “The media reported only the parents’ Islamist narrative — giving Rifqa’s story no air time or ink. They repeated the lies over and over again.” But Geller does not know that the parents are lying, or that Rifqa is telling the truth. (Nor do we, for that matter.) Yet Geller has already made up her mind to promote her anti-Islam agenda, which of courses he denies she’s doing, insisting instead that “there was an anti-Christian bias. The mainstream media vilified the good Christians who provided sanctuary to Rifqa, who sought only to escape her father’s threat to kill her.” Again, Geller failed to mention the cult-like tendencies of the “good Christians who provided sanctuary to Rifqa.”

Further contradicting herself, Geller concludes with an anti-Islamic rant:

Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Geert Wilders: these truth tellers live under 24-hour guard because of Islamic death threats, which they received because they spoke the truth about Islam. Rifqa Bary has committed a far worse crime from the Islamic perspective: the crime of apostasy. Her testimony is far more dangerous to the stealth jihadists in America.

Rifqa Bary is the highest value target in America. She should be under 24-hour guard. And she should be given a fair shake in the media.

And she’s accusing other people of distorting the case?

Similarly, Geller’s Sept. 14 Newsmax column is one long screed against Newsweek for doing what Geller won’t — tell both sides of the Rifqa Bary story. Geller complained that the Newsweek stated that “Muslim scholars say that in Islam, there’s no such thing as an honor killing for apostasy,” asserting that “Newsweek was conflating two distinct Islamic practices: honor killing and the killing of apostates.” She didn’t mention that it appears that Bary herself is the one conflating the two, as news reports featuring references to “honor killings” indicate. As Richard Bartholomew noted in August:

The girl gives a rather strange interpretation of what an “honour killing” is for; rather than being the remedy for a perceived dishonour suffered by a family, she tells the journalist that to kill her would be an especially ”great honour” because she is the the first Christian in her family for “150 generations” and it would show her family’s love for Allah (Lorenz concurs with a “yes” at 5:03). This seems to me to be a garbled “Christianized” understanding of the phenomenon, making it into something like a human sacrifice.

Geller went on to complain that Newsweek described a “33-page memorandum that Rifqa’s attorney, John Stemberger, filed about the Noor Islamic Center’s connection with Islamic terrorists and radical elements” as being filled with “innuendo and provocative allegations.” In fact, Newsweek supports its claims:

Among them: that the center is connected to an FBI terror probe (which the FBI denies) and that its CEO has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood (which, along with every other allegation, the Noor Center denies). The mosque is actually regarded as mainstream and regularly hosts interfaith events.

Geller’s sole source for contradicting the Newsweek article is “Jamal Jivanjee, Rifqa’s friend and confidante.” But Geller offered no independent confirmation of these claims; Jivanjee is clearly too close to the situation to be an objective source of information. Yet Geller treated his claims as incontrovertible truth.

Why is Geller so afraid of the other side being told? That she is so intent on trying to discredit an article that commits the apostasy (as far as Geller is concerned) of telling both sides of the story belies a certain insecurity about the side of the story she’s on.

Geller again declares of Rifqa: “As a high-profile apostate, she is Islamists’ highest value target right now.” If she’s “high-profile,” it’s anti-Muslim activists like Geller that made her one. Which means she’s partially culpable for any harm that comes Rifqa’s way.

Geller’s Dec. 2 column purported to be outraged that Bary — who by this time had been returned to Ohio and placed in foster care — is “in imminent danger of being returned to her family” and is being “deprived of access to the phone and Internet as well as “pastoral guidance,” adding, “Convicts, murderers, rapists, and pedophiles all have access to ‘pastoral guidance.’” Given that the pastor to whom Bary fled believes that he receives special personal messages from God about the imminent end of the world, a lack of “pastoral guidance” is probably a good thing. Of course, Geller is silent about the pastor’s beliefs.

Geller also repeated unsupported claims of hostile Muslims, alluding to “powerful and influential Islamic supremacists” and “myriad busts for jihad activity in recent weeks.” She also again treated “close friend and fellow ex-Muslim” Jamal Jivanjee as a credible source, even though he’s clearly too close to the case to be objective. Indeed, Geller quoted Jivanjee aping her: “If you are incarcerated in an American prison today, you have the right to have a visit from a pastor. Rifqa Bary does not have this most basic right that most criminals have today.”

Geller summed up by claiming that Bary is “isolated, alone, and in danger of being returned to Islamic jihadists who believe apostates from Islam should be killed. What has happened to America?”

The facts, however, are different than what Geller suggests. As the Columbus Dispatch has reported, no credible threats to Bary have been found by authorities in either Florida or Ohio, and Ohio officials are attempting to work out a solution between Bary and her family. A caseworker wrote that there are “severe differences between the parents’ and Rifqa’s perceptions of what has occurred.”

Putting fearmongering before the truth, however, is what Geller does. And that — coupled with her hyperbolic attacks — makes Geller the odds-on favorite to be the next Newsmax columnist to write something her publisher will have to walk back or retract.

As many of you may well know, I am writing a rebuttal of Robert Spencer’s book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).  In chapter five of his Islamophobook, Spencer discusses the issue of Sharia and rape.  I have completed part 1 of my rebuttal, which can be found here.  As I was ferociously typing up part 2, it dawned on me that my audience may be unfamiliar with the Quranic verses in question, making it difficult for some of them to properly grasp the issue–or of fully understanding part 2 of my rebuttal.

Hence, I have decided to publish this article as a sort of background piece to part 2 of my rebuttal.  As such, it will not be–like my other articles–a direct refutation of Robert Spencer.  However, I believe that this article will serve a two-fold purpose.  First, it will, as I have discussed, provide the background necessary to properly understand part 2 of my rebuttal.  Second, it will clear up misconceptions about Islam…misconceptions that Islamophobes use as a big stick to whack Muslims over the head with.

Many people erroneously think that all mainstream interpretations of Islam necessarily criminalize zinnah (fornication and adultery)–fornicators are to be lashed and adulterers stoned, no questions asked.  Such a fundamentalist mentality clashes with the Western concept of freedom of choice; it is for this reason that Islamophobes argue that religious Muslims are intrinsically incompatible with Western values.  However, it is important to recognize the multiplicity of Islamic understandings that exist today; I will categorize the various interpretations of the anti-zinnah laws into fundamentalist, conservative, and reformist views.  Clearly, fundamentalist understandings ought not to be tolerated, but I would argue that reformist views (and perhaps conservative ones) are not completely incompatible with Western ideals…at least not any less so than Judaic and Christian views.

Background

According to the Law of Moses, as followed by the early Jewish community, the death penalty was meted out to adulterers; the Old Testament reads:

The adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. (Leviticus, 20:10)

In order to be found guilty of adultery, there had to be two witnesses of good character who testified against the adulterers:

At the testimony of two or three witnesses they must be executed. They cannot be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. (Deuteronomy, 17:6)

Jewish rabbis dealt with this seemingly harsh law by purposefully making it difficult for the “prosecution” to meet the required burden of proof to secure a conviction.  They argued, for instance, that both witnesses must have (1) warned the adulterers of the graveness of their sin prior to the commission of the act, and (2) that they must have witnessed the actual act itself.  Naturally, these restrictions made the enforcement of this penalty a rare event.

Muslims believe in something called “progressive revelation”: accordingly, God revealed the Old Testament to the Jews, then the New Testament to the Christians, and lastly the “Final Testament” (the Quran) to the Muslims.  As such, there is–according to Islamic belief–a divine continuity in religious belief between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; Islamic law (Sharia) is based in the Law of Moses, a continuation and “perfection” of it.

According to Islamic tradition, God–out of mercy for the people–softened the harsh Law: the Sharia al-Islam (Law of Islam) is and ought to be, they argue, an “easy law” that is milder than the Sharia al-Yahud (Law of the Jews). The Islamic texts, for example, narrate that some Jews approached the Prophet Muhammad for rulings, saying: “Let us go to this prophet, for he has been sent with an easy law.” ^[1] (The authenticity of the quote is irrelevant, as it is here being used only to illustrate the Muslim perception of their own law.) Consequently, reason the Muslims, God made the evidentiary requirement for the harsh anti-zinnah laws even more unattainable: the burden of proof was raised from two to four witnesses.  In this manner, the people were saved from severe punishments.

The doubling of the witnesses, from two to four, took place at a time when women were often accused of fornication, adultery, and harlotry.  Even if a woman could not be convicted of this charge, her reputation (and life) would be ruined.  To prevent this occurrence, the Quran stipulated that not only had the burden of proof been raised to four witnesses, but if a man dared accuse a woman of sexual immorality with anything less than that, he would be punished for slander:

And those who accuse chaste women [of fornication or adultery] and then do not produce four witnesses–lash them with eighty lashes and do not accept from them testimony ever after. And those are the defiantly disobedient. (Quran, 24:4-5)

The Prophet Muhammad gave details about this verse, seemingly affirming the restrictions placed by the Jewish rabbis, namely that the four witnesses (1) had to be of good character and (2) had to have actually witnessed the act of penetration; as Imam Mawsili and other jurists worded it, the witnesses must see the penis enter the vagina like the “Kohl needle entering the Kohl bottle.” ^[2]

According to Islamic doctrine, Muslims of good character must not gaze on the private parts of others; as such, the two conditions placed by the Prophet Muhammad seem to negate each other.  If after all the four witnesses had gazed on the private parts, then they could not possibly be considered of good character; why did they not avert their gaze?  Why did they not warn the sinners to cease and desist from their sin?  The burden of proof for zinnah thus became “near impossible” to meet, and in this manner, men were restrained from throwing around accusations of sexual immorality against women, for fear of being lashed for slander.

Fundamentalist Interpretation

Fundamentalist Muslims do not take into consideration mitigating texts.  Instead, they see that a verse in the Quran seems to advocate punishment for zinnah (fornication and adultery), and they rush to judgment, lashing and stoning on whim.  Contrary to popular misconception, fundamentalists usually lack rigorous religious education; at most, they may have attended substandard madrasahs (religious schools), but in general they are ignorant of the vast jurisprudential tradition of Islam.  Most importantly, they do not engage in contextual and inter-textual analytical exegesis of the Quran.  Reformist (and even conservative) Muslims argue that fundamentalists flout the very Quran that they claim to be following: by not assiduously adhering to the high evidentiary requirement prescribed by Islamic law, the fundamentalists have created a persecuting state–where citizens live in mortal fear of the heavy handed government.

Conservative Interpretation

Although on principle they agree that the anti-zinnah laws are Islamic, conservative Muslims follow the traditional Islamic view of what I call “religious obstructionism.”  On the one hand classical jurists affirmed the harsh penalties for lashing and stoning, but on the other hand they set up many roadblocks and obstacles to the enforcement of such penalties, making it “near impossible” to enact them.  This obstructionist approach is not unfamiliar, as it finds prominence in the Jewish rabbinical tradition.  Conservative Muslims today have adopted just such an approach, arguing that the four witnesses requirement is theoretically possible but practically improbable.

Conservative Muslims agree with reformist Muslims that the fundamentalists are incorrect in their haphazard and dangerous interpretation of the law. According to the conservative Muslims, the punishments of stoning and lashing would fall into almost complete (if not complete) disuse.  But it should be understood that they would block the enforcement of such penalties on a case-by-case basis, instead of the top-down approach of reformists.  Furthermore, the stoppage would be based not on a principled indignation but on a micro-technical legalistic level.  Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl writes:

Muslim jurists questioned the morality of the death penalty, and also questioned whether the state should be allowed to execute its own citizens.  The way Muslim jurists responded to these challenges was to seek refuge in the technicalities of the law.  In other words, the juristic response was legalistic and profoundly technical.  Working with the micro-details and technicalities of the law, Muslim jurists challenged the discretion of the state and made it difficult for the state to carry out the death penalty, and also made it difficult for the state to claim that it had complied with all the procedural and evidentiary requirements in its application of this ultimate punishment…

The point is that the juristic response was legalistic, technical, and creative.  In light of the decisive and grave consequences of the death sentence, Muslim jurists were not willing to accept it without qualifications, and they seemed to have struggled with its implications and impact.  As often happens in a legalistic interpretive culture [such as the rabbinical tradition], Muslims jurists did not respond at the conceptualized or broad theory level.  While they accepted the death penalty in principle, at the level of the process and implementation, they made the infliction of the death penalty difficult…The moral paradigm that inspired Muslim jurists to endeavor to avoid the death penalty is well represented in an educational message that teachers of Islamic law in the classical age often repeated and emphasized to their students.  The message provided was this…It is always better to save the life of a thousand guilty persons than to unwittingly murder a single innocent person. ^[3]

Similar interpretations abound in the Jewish rabbinical tradition, resulting in what the Jewish Encyclopedia calls “the practical impossibility of convicting any adulteress” ^[4]–a phrase similar to the Islamic “near impossible.”  Conservative Muslims agree that the conviction of adulterers against their will is theoretically but not practically possible.

Reformist Interpretation

Reformist Muslims go one step further, and approach the issue from a more theoretical standpoint.  They focus more on the higher ethical objectives of the Islamic law (maqasid al-Sharia), from which they derive the Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh).  Reformist Muslims argue that the “near impossible” evidentiary requirement indicates that the anti-zinnah laws are meant not as laws of enforcement but of symbolic deterrence.  They believe that the Sharia was designed in such a way as to promote a more detached government with a very limited scope of powers; accordingly, reformists argue that the personal sexual lives of its citizens do not fall under the jurisdiction of the ideal Islamic state.  What goes on in the privacy of one’s own bedroom between two consenting adults by cover of night is not the business of the state.  As the Prophet Muhammad declared:

All of my community will be fine except for those who commit sin openly. Part of committing sin openly is when a man does something at night and God conceals it, but in the morning he says, “O So-and-so, last night I did such and such.” His Lord had covered his sin all night, but in the morning he removed the cover of God. ^[5]

A similar narration exists from the second Caliph of Islam:

A man came to the Prophet and said: “O Apostle of God! I have mingled with a woman in the outskirts of Medina…So, here am I, judge me according to what you decide.”

Umar bin Khattab replied: “God had kept your secret!  Why then didn’t you?” ^[6]

This indicates that the Islamic government’s role is primarily only in matters of the public square, not in the bedrooms of its citizens.  Meddling in the personal affairs of citizenry is both unnecessary and inappropriate.  Islam values the privacy of citizens, and forbids the government from spying on its citizens; it is for this reason that many Muslim Americans strongly believe in the fourth amendment and other such “privacy laws” enshrined in the American legal system.  Certainly, reason these Muslims, a government ought not to meddle in a citizen’s personal sex life.  According to Islam, the privacy of a person’s home must be respected by all others and is inviolable, such that even peeking through windows to see inside is forbidden, even for the Caliph (leader) of the Muslims:

The secrecy of the private life is untouchable.

The Qur’an decisively prohibits spying into and disclosing the secrets and private lives of people, and orders keeping secret any detect and sinful act which one has seen in a person: O you believe! Avoid much suspicion, for some suspicion is a grave sin (liable to God’s punishment); and do not spy (on one another) (Qur’an 49:12). Neither can a Muslim government spy on people to see whether they are committing a sin or crime unless there is decisive proof that they are committing something against the public peace. Likewise, spying into homes, opening and reading letters that belong to others, and listening to the conversations of other people are all wrong.

The second caliph of Islam, Umar ibn al-Khattab, was once walking on the streets of Medina, the capital, at night. Suddenly he heard noise coming from one of the houses, a noise indicating that somebody was drunk and singing loudly. Umar climbed over the wall, entered the house, and witnessed a very disappointing situation. He complained of the situation to the man inside, and said, “Did you think that God would allow you to hide this fault of yours?” The man replied, “O Caliph of the Muslims, stop and don’t rush. I committed one sin in the eyes of God; however, you have made three mistakes here. First of all, God says, Do not spy on one another (Qur’an 49:12), but you spied on me. Second, God says, Come to dwellings (in the normal way) by their doors (Qur’an 2:189), but you climbed over my wall, and finally God says, O you who believe! Do not enter dwellings other than your own until you have ascertained the permission of their residents and have greeted them with peace (Qur’an 24:27), but you entered my house without getting my permission and you did not greet me with peace.”

Umar was very upset with himself and replied, “If I forgive you, will you forgive me?” The man said, “Yes.” Then Umar said, “I forgive you,” and left the house. ^[7]

While the reformist Muslims affirm the judicial obstructionism of the conservatives, they bolster it by giving it a principled and conceptual basis.  This top-down understanding then is that private sins are between an individual and God; although such sins carry a heavenly punishment, they are generally not punished in this worldly life.  Of course, God’s heavenly punishment is stricter, which is why believers are commanded to cease and desist from their sins, and to repent sincerely.  “And God is Most Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

What’s the Point?

All of this discussion invariably leads a non-believer to ask: what’s the point of a law and a prescribed punishment if its enforcement is “near impossible”?  Wouldn’t it simply have been easier and more intuitive to have no such law to begin with?  Perhaps.  But the faithful believe that God acts in mysterious ways, the true reasons known only to Him.

Nonetheless, contemporary Muslims speculate that God prescribed a punishment that could not realistically be enforced for four reasons: (1) It is a legacy inherited from the Law of Moses, i.e. Sharia al-Yahud (Law of the Jews).  In other words, the punishment for adultery used to be much easier to carry out and was indeed done so.  This was for the people who came before Ummatul Muhammad (nation of Muhammad); it is understood by Muslims that the Law as prescribed to Bani Israel was decidedly much stricter.  Even Moses implored God to have more mercy on the community of Muhammad, fearful that the strict Law would break their backs.  Therefore, the harsh punishment legislated by the Old Law was made impotent by creating such a high evidentiary burden that it became impossible to fulfill.  Such a belief is consistent with the Islamic doctrine of progressive revelation.

To reiterate, the answer to “wouldn’t it be simpler to not have such a law to begin with?” is that the law was inherited from previous nations.  Muslims believe that the Islamic community was honored by inheriting the Abrahamic law and tradition; therefore, although the Law could be tweaked, it ought not to be abandoned or replaced altogether.  Rather, it was–according to an Islamic understanding–modified and “perfected” with mercy.  The anti-zinnah laws are based then in Abrahamic precedence, and are therefore affirmed but in a merciful and lenient way.  This explains why Muslims do not simply do away with the anti-zinnah laws altogether.  They honor the Abrahamic tradition but without the enforcement of harsh penalties for fornication and adultery, which have become symbolic in nature.

(2) The second reason is that the Sharia is making a moral point by associating in the mind of the believer an extremely harsh punishment with fornication and adultery, thereby making clear the gravity of the sin.  In Islamic quarters it is argued that contemporary society has made both fornication and adultery socially acceptable.  The Islamic law, on the other hand, equates these sins with lashing and death, even if these punishments are not generally enforced.

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl writes:

Obviously, in Islamic law the crime of fornication or adultery is hard, if not impossible, to prove. So why have the punishment at all? There are two competing values here.

Illicit sexual relations must be condemned. At the same time, people should mind their own business, and spying or slandering cannot be tolerated. The solution was to make the moral point that fornication and adultery are terrible crimes, and only if they could be proven would they be punished severely. Nevertheless, the issue is generally between a person and God. ^[8]

(3) Furthermore, in the largely illiterate societies of the past, it is likely that only the Islamic jurists were cognizant of the “judicial obstructionism” that saves believers from punishment.  As such, the law served as a deterrence, even if it were not in reality enforced.  This is similar to a parent threatening a child with an extremely harsh punishment simply as a scare tactic, knowing full well that he/she would never actually enforce it.  The threatening of punishment is thus a mercy in a way, as it causes a person to correct his/her conduct which will benefit him/her both in this life and the next.

(4) Following the third point, it is understood by contemporary Muslims that the law is one of deterrence, not of enforcement.  As the conservative Islamic scholar Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari writes:

One should always keep in mind the objective and spirit of Shariah concerning the various legal punishments. The idea is not to enforce the punishment and make people suffer; rather the objective is to prevent harm, corruption and immorality in the society. Thus, legal punishments act as deterrents more than actually get people punished…

An example of this which comes to mind is that we see speed cameras being placed on many roads and streets (especially here in the UK!) in order to deter people from speeding in their vehicles. The idea behind these speed cameras is not to catch people speeding, rather to prevent people from speeding and causing accidents. If the aim was to catch people speeding, there would be no warning signs indicating that a camera is present. However, we see that whenever a speed camera is placed, many warnings are given that  beware this road has a speed camera . Many of the times, the camera is not even in operation, hence, the idea is to stop people speeding rather than catch and punish them.

The same is with the various legal punishments prescribed by Shariah, in that they are prescribed to prevent people from committing unlawful actions and corrupting the society, yet the rules and conditions for a legal punishment to be enforced are so stringent that very rarely would an individual be punished. The legal punishment is considered a deterrent, but if an individual did involve him/herself in some unlawful activity, the objective now is not to get the individual punished rather to save him/her from the punishment. ^[9]

The Sharia’s Objective of Averting Corporal Punishments

The punishment of fornicators and adulterers is historically rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition that Muslims follow.  Yet, Muslims believe that the Sharia al-Islam was tweaked in such a way as to lean heavily towards the accused, thereby saving them from corporal punishments.  (This is not unlike the rabbinical tradition, which similarly mitigates the Law.)  In fact, Islamic authorities are commanded to find a “doubt” so that the accused can be acquitted.   Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari quotes the Prophet Muhammad to this effect:

The Imam should try his best to avoid the legal punishment… This (trying to avert a legal punishment) has been explicitly mentioned in one Hadith. Sayyida Aisha narrates that the Messenger of Allah said:

“Keep the Muslims away from punishments as much as possible. If there is any way out for an offender to escape punishment, acquit him. It is better for a judge to make an error in acquittal than in conviction.” (Sunan Tirmidhi, no: 1424) ^[10]

Contemporary Muslims understand the command to find “any way out” to be a duty of the Islamic authorities.

Deterring Witnesses from Coming Forward

When four witnesses come forward, they are warned by the authorities that if their testimonies do not hold up, they will each be lashed eighty times.  This creates a great deterrent to any witnesses coming forward, for they know full well that the authorities will seek to acquit the accused based on any possible doubt.  For example, how is it that they could have gazed on the private parts of two having sexual relations?  Why did they not turn away?  Why did they not warn the sinners?  Why were they spying on the two?  And so on and so forth.

The jurisprudential practice is to “generate” a doubt such that the defendant is acquitted and the accusers punished.  This knowledge deters accusers from stepping forward; rather, they should hide the sin of their fellow believer, as it is of no business of theirs.  The accusers are deterred from coming forward for fear that one of the four of them would rescind his testimony, thereby condemning the rest to lashes.

It is for this reason that there exists in the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad no single case of someone being convicted of fornication or adultery based on the testimony of four witnesses. Reformist (and even conservative) Muslims point to this as a strong proof that the intent of the Sharia was to deter accusers from stepping forward, barring this route to conviction and punishment.

Both reformist and conservative Muslims understand that it is impossible for the witnesses to see the penis clearly inserted into the vagina, because even “if you were among the four thighs you would never be able to give this testimony.”  In other words, not even the thighs of the two who are fornicating can properly witness the vaginal penetration, so how can anyone else do that?  The conservative “Wahhabi” ^[11] cleric Ibn Uthaymeen declared:

[The four witnesses] should describe zina in clear terms, such as saying: “I saw his penis in her vagina”. There is no alternative to that. If they say: “We saw him on top of her and they were naked”, that is not acceptable. Even if they say “We saw him doing with her what a man does with his wife,” that is not sufficient as testimony. They must say “We bear witness that his penis was in her vagina.” And this is very difficult, as the man said who was testified against at the time of ‘Umar: “If you were among the (four) thighs you would never be able to give this testimony.” Hence Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah mentioned that at his time no case of zina was proven by means of testimony from the time of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) until the time of Ibn Taymiyah. If no case was proven from that time until the other, then we do not know of any case that was proven by testimony up till our own times, because it is very difficult. ^[12]

So it is understood amongst both reformist and conservative Muslims that the “near impossible” requirement of four witnesses has never been fulfilled up until this day.  The ultraconservative site, Islam-qa, says:

This strictness with regard to testimony about zina serves only to achieve the purpose aimed at by sharee’ah, which is to conceal people and not spread immorality, and to make societies avoid accusations against people’s honour and aspersions on their lineages.

Al-Qurtubi (may Allaah have mercy on him) said in al-Jaami’ li Ahkaam al-Qur’aan (5/83):

Allaah has stated that testimony in a case of zina must be given by four people, so as to make it hard for those who are testifying to such a thing, and to conceal people. ^[13]

Photographic Images and DNA

It should be noted that conservative and reformist Muslim scholars agree that the four witnesses must have witnessed the actual act itself.  Photographic images or video footage are not admissible, not only because these can be doctored but because such an allowance would eliminate the Sharia’s objective of making the enforcement of these penalties “near impossible.”  This becomes clear by the fact that the jurists of today even forbid DNA proof to convict a person of fornication or adultery; the ultra-conservative Islamic cleric Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid declared that “zinaa…cannot be proven by DNA testing or by use of cameras and videos.” ^[14]

Self-Confession

In place of four witnesses, a person may confess four times to the sin.  Yet this too has many stringent requirements:

The confession must be uncoerced.  From an Islamic legal perspective, confessions under duress are inadmissible.  The authorities are legally obligated to investigate each case and ensure that the confessor was not pressured into coming forward by family or friends.  If there is any doubt whatsoever about this, the confession is to be rejected.

The confessor must be an adult of sane mind who confesses on four different occasions, knowing full well the consequences of such a confession. For example, the fourth Caliph of Islam came upon an insane woman who had confessed to adultery and was about to be stoned; he quickly brought a halt to the punishment and declared:

Do you know that there are three people whose actions are not recorded [against them]: a lunatic till he (or she) is restored to reason, a sleeper until he (or she) awakens, and a boy (or girl) until he (or she) becomes baligh (mature)…Why [then] is it that this woman is being stoned? ^[15]

It should be noted that there is no religious requirement for a Muslim to come forward to confess his/her sin.  In fact, he/she is encouraged to hide it and not reveal it; this is in accordance to the two hadiths which I have already quoted (and other textual proofs as well):

All of my community will be fine except for those who commit sin openly. Part of committing sin openly is when a man does something at night and God conceals it, but in the morning he says, “O So-and-so, last night I did such and such.” His Lord had covered his sin all night, but in the morning he removed the cover of God. ^[16]

And:

A man came to the Prophet and said: “O Apostle of God! I have mingled with a woman in the outskirts of Medina…So, here am I, judge me according to what you decide.”

Umar bin Khattab replied: “God had kept your secret!  Why then didn’t you?” ^[17]

In fact, the Islamic judge is religiously commanded to dissuade the confessor from going through with the confession.  The confessor is encouraged to simply repent from the sin, as “God is Most Forgiving.”  Muslims believe that sins can be expiated simply by prayer and the commission of good deeds. Seeking corporal punishment is not necessary to attain penance; in fact, it is highly discouraged.

In Sahih al-Bukhari (#6439), for example, it is narrated that a man confessed the sin of adultery to the Prophet Muhammad.  However, the latter kept turning his face away from the confessor, wishing not to hear it.  Such was the reluctance of the Prophet Muhammad when it came to enforcing such harsh punishments.  Commenting on this narration, Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari writes:

The above incident shows the importance of trying to avert a legal punishment as much as possible. The man came and confessed to the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him & give him peace) that he had committed unlawful sexual intercourse, yet the Messenger of Allah ignored him, in order that he may change his mind. ^[18]

It is narrated that the Prophet Muhammad would turn away from confessors, not wanting to hear what they had to say:

A man of the tribe of Aslam came to the Prophet and testified four times against himself that he had had illicit intercourse with a woman, while all the time the Prophet was turning away from him. ^[19]

In another instance, a man by the name of Maiz ibn Malik confessed to the Prophet Muhammad that he committed zinnah.  The Prophet replied by saying: “Probably you have only kissed, or touched, or looked at her.”  This was the Prophet’s attempt to save the person from punishment, as only vaginal penetration is punishable; anything less than that–including kissing, fondling, masturbation of oneself or of one’s partner, and even anal and oral sex–is not punishable by the hadud (Islamic corporal punishments).

Based on this, the Islamic judge is instructed to dismiss the confession by saying “probably you have only kissed, or touched, or looked at her.” Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari writes:

This famous incident of Ma’iz ibn Malik also gives the same message, in that the Imam (leader) should try his best to avoid the legal punishment. This is the reason why it is recommended to say to the one who confesses committing fornication that “You may only have touched, you may only have kissed, are you sure you had sex, think again properly of what you are saying and think of the consequences of your confession,” and other such things. ^[20]

Reformist Muslims argue that there is as such no room for the hanging judge in Islam; rather, Islamic judges ought to be merciful, generally leaning towards acquittal, at least in cases where the sin is against God and not a fellow human being.  The confessor is encouraged not to confess, or if he has already done so, to rescind his confession.  Maiz confessed to the sin of zinnah and told the Prophet Muhammad: “Purify me,” by which he meant to carry out corporal punishment and thus attain penance.  Yet, the Prophet Muhammad told Maiz not to seek the punishment but instead to simply pray to God for forgiveness; the Prophet said to Maiz:

Woe to you!  Go back and ask God for forgiveness and repent to Him. ^[21]

In fact, it is highly encouraged (mustahhab) in Islam not to self-confess the sin of fornication and adultery, in order that these harsh punishments not be implemented.  When Maiz insisted that he be punished, the Prophet Muhammad told a third person:

If you had covered him with your garment, it would have been better for you. ^[22]

Muslims believe that God covers up a person’s sins in the same way that clothing covers up a person’s nude and embarrassing parts.  Islam instructs believers to utilize this merciful garment of God, and they are thus encouraged not to “reveal what God has concealed.” Thus, the Prophet’s disciples looked down upon self-confession, even saying about the one who confessed to zinnah:

Look at this man whose fault was concealed by God but who would not leave the matter alone, so that he was stoned like a dog. ^[23]

The Prophet’s disciples had a dislike for self-confession, saying:

We, the Companions of the Apostle of God, used to talk mutually: “Would it have been that al-Ghamidiyyah and Maiz ibn Malik had but withdrawn [their confession] after their confession…[we] would not have pursued them (for punishment).” ^[24]

The ultraconservative Saudi scholar Salih al-Munajjid quotes various classical scholars that confirm the view that repentance is better than confession:

Question:

Will the zaani (fornicator) who repents be forgiven even if the hadd punishment is not carried out on him?

I would like to know if a person commits fornication and he truely repents towards Allah would he be forgiven in the hereafter if the hadd of hundred lashes is not carried out on him in this world. Can only repentance expiate him from this sin or unless and untill the hadd is not carried out on him he can never be forgiven and will be punished in the hereafter. Please answer in accordance with Quran and sunnah. I will be very grateful.

Answer:

Praise be to Allaah.

The carrying out of the hadd punishment for a sin for which that punishment has been prescribed is an expiation for that sin.

Sincere repentance from sin is also an expiation for sin, and “the one who repents from sin is like the one who did not sin.” And Allaah will turn his bad deeds into good deeds.

If he is sincere in his repentance, and prays a great deal for forgiveness, then he does not have to confess so that the hadd punishment may be carried out on him. Rather repentance is sufficient, in sha Allaah.

Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

And those who invoke not any other ilaah (god) along with Allaah, nor kill such person as Allaah has forbidden, except for just cause, nor commit illegal sexual intercourse–and whoever does this shall receive the punishment.

The torment will be doubled to him on the Day of Resurrection, and he will abide therein in disgrace;

Except those who repent and believe…and do righteous deeds; for those, Allaah will change their sins into good deeds, and Allaah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. And whosoever repents and does righteous good deeds; then verily, he repents towards Allaah with true repentance.

[al-Furqaan 25:68-71]

…

In Saheeh Muslim (1695) it says that when Maa’iz came to the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and confessed that he had committed zina and said, “Purify me (i.e., carry out the hadd punishment on me)”, he said to him, “Woe to you, go back and ask Allaah for forgiveness and repent to Him.”

[Imam] Al- Nawawi said:

This hadeeth indicates that the burden of sin is lifted from one who repents from major sins, and this is according to the consensus of the Muslims.

[Imam] Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar said:

From this case – i.e. the case of Maa’iz when he confessed zina – it may be understood that it is mustahabb [highly recommended] for the one whose case is similar to repent to Allaah and to conceal himself and not mention his sin to anyone… This was affirmed by al-Shaafa’i who said: I prefer for the one who has committed a sin and been concealed by Allaah to conceal it himself and to repent.

Fath al-Baari, 12/124, 125

And it was narrated from ‘Abd-Allaah ibn ‘Umar (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Avoid these sins that Allaah has forbidden, but whoever does any of them, let him conceal himself with the concealment of Allaah and repent to Allaah, for whoever tells us of what he has done, we will carry out (the punishment prescribed in) the Book of Allaah on him [and we do not desire that].”

It was also narrated by al-Haakim in al-Mustadrak ‘ala al-Saheehayn (4/425) and by al-Bayhaqi (8/330); classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Jaami’, 149. ^[25]

And he writes elsewhere:

Repentance that is a matter between a person and his Lord is better for him than confessing his sin before a qaadi (judge) so that the hadd punishment may be carried out on him.

In Saheeh Muslim (1695) it is narrated that when Maa’iz came to the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and said, “Purify me,” he said, “Woe to you! Go back and pray to Allaah for forgiveness and repent to Him.”

Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar said:

It may be understood from this case – the case of Maa’iz when he confessed to having committed zina – that it is mustahabb for the one who falls into a similar sin to repent to Allaah and conceal his sin and not mention it to anyone, as Abu Bakr and ‘Umar said to Maa’iz. Whoever discovers anything of that nature should conceal it according to what we have mentioned; he should not expose it or refer the matter to the ruler, as the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said in this story: “If you had concealed it with your garment it would have been better for you.” Hence al-Shaafa’i (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: “If a person commits a sin and Allaah conceals it for him, I prefer for him to conceal it too and to repent,” and he quoted as evidence the story of Maa’iz with Abu Bakr and ‘Umar.

Fath al-Baari, 12/124, 125 ^[26]

The fatwa site SunniPath.com issued the following religious verdict:

Question:

I committed zina … What should I do? …I know that according to the Shariah, I should face lashings…So what should I do in order to make amends with Allah Ta’ala?

Answer:

In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate

Conceal Your Sin

It is recommended for the one who commits zina to conceal his mistake and not tell anyone about it.  Rather, he or she should turn to Allah in sincere repentance.  It is not necessary or recommended to confess at an Islamic court and face the hadd punishment, and if someone did confess, it would be recommended for them to withdraw their confession and not be punished (Tuhfat al-Muhtaj + Hashiyat  Abd al-Hamid, 9.113).

The Shafi’is have many proofs for their position.  Among them is that when Ma’iz came to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and asked him to purify him, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said to him,  “Allah have mercy on you!  Go away and ask Allah’s forgiveness!”   Ma’iz then left but soon returned and asked again to be purified, and the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) repeated what he had said.  The same thing then happened a third time, and it was only after the fourth time that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) asked Ma iz some further Questions and ordered him to be punished (related by Muslim + others).  When the hadd punishment was enforced on him, Ma’iz tried to run away but those stoning him chased him down and forcibly enforced the punishment on him.  When the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) heard about this, he disapproved and said,  “Why didn’t you let him go? Perhaps he would have made repentance and Allah would have accepted his repentance.”  (Abu Dawud)  Ibn Hajar notes in his Tuhfa that all of the offers made by the Messenger of Allah and his subsequent disapproval of his companions actions indicate that it is superior for one not to confess to committing zina, and that even if one did, it is recommended to withdraw one s confession.  Otherwise, the Prophet’s (Allah bless him and give him peace) offers would be meaningless (Tuhfat al-Muhtaj, 9.113).

Another proof is that it is a sign of Allah’s mercy that He has concealed one’s sin from the sight of others, and the Shari’ah does not approve that one cast off this concealment despite Allah s having given it to one.

al-Khatib al-Shirbini explains in his commentary on the Minhaj:

It is sunna for the one who commits zina and anyone else who commits any act of disobedience to conceal his sin from others.  This is because of the hadith,  “Whoever commits any of these awful sins (qadhurat), let him conceal himself with the concealment of Allah, for verily, whoever exposes his action to us (man abda lana safhatahu), we will impose the hadd punishment upon him.”  (related by Hakim and Bayhaqi with a strong (qawiyy) chain of transmission).  Exposing one’s sin, then, in order to be punished by a hadd punishment or a discretionary punishment (tazir) goes against the recommended way…

Allah Loves to Forgive

Allah Most High told us in the Qur an:

“Say,  O my servants who have wronged themselves: despair not of Allah’s mercy; surely Allah forgives all sins; surely, He is Most Merciful and Compassionate.”   (39:53)

Commentators tell us that this verse is the most hope-inspiring verse in the Quran (arja ayatin fi kitabi llah).  Reading this verse should cause every believer to rejoice.

No matter how great the sin, the door of repentance is always open.  Allah loves to forgive.  The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) told us in a famous hadith that if we did not sin, Allah would create other people who would sin so that He could forgive them.  He also told us that the one who repents from a sin is like the one who has no sin.

May Allah envelop us all with His mercy and forgiveness and gather us together in Paradise. ^[27]

In fact, a Muslim is obligated to think good of God, and know that His Mercy overcomes His retribution.  Therefore, a believer should not only repent from such sins, but feel confident that his/her repentance was accepted by God; failure to do so is a sign of disbelief in God and His Mercy, for God has already said: “O My slaves, you commit sin night and day, and I forgive all sins, so ask Me for forgiveness.” ^[28]

Some people erroneously believe that God will not or cannot forgive some sins, or that that they have sinned so much that the doors of repentance have been closed.  The redemptive Islamic faith, however, rejects such notions as being akin to doubting God’s Mercy.  God says in the Quran:

O My slaves who have transgressed against themselves (by sinning)! Despair not of the Mercy of God, for verily God forgives all sins. Truly, He is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. (Quran, 39:53-54)

And God says further:

O son of Adam, so long as you call upon Me and put your hope in Me, I will forgive you for what you have done, and I shall not mind. O son of Adam, if your sins were to reach the clouds of the sky, and were you to ask Me for forgiveness, I will forgive you and I shall not mind. O son of Adam, if you were to come to Me with sins nearly the size of the earth…then I would bring you forgiveness… ^[29]

The Prophet Muhammad declared:

The one who repents from his sin is like the one who did not sin in the first place. ^[30]

Not only is the Islamic authority to dissuade the believer from confessing his sins, but he should also leave the opportunity open for the confessor to withdraw his confession, any time before or even during the enactment of the punishment. As Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari writes:

If the confessor takes back his words before the punishment is enforced or during the punishment, he/she will be released and set free. (See: al-Ikhtiyar li talil al-Mukhtar, 2/311-316 and other major Hanafi Fiqh references) ^[31]

In one narration, a man confesses to adultery and insists upon the punishment for himself.  Yet, when the first stone was thrown at him, he reconsidered his ill-fated decision.  The Prophet Muhammad chastised his disciples for not letting the man go at this point:

While [the man] was being stoned he felt the effect of the stones and could not bear it and fled. But Abdullah ibn Unais [chased] him…and killed him. They then went to the Prophet and reported it to him.  [The Prophet] said: “Why did you not leave him alone? Perhaps he might have repented and been forgiven by God.” ^[32]

It seems then that it is preferable to simply seek repentance and forgiveness instead of justice and punishment. The Prophet Muhammad and his disciples discouraged self-confession, arguing that people ought to hide their sins and seek repentance from God alone.

The Call for a Moratorium on Corporal Punishments

Reformist Muslims argue that there would hardly be people today who would seek the punishment upon themselves, especially when they know that religiously it is preferable not do that. The atmosphere of the ideal Islamic state, they reason, should be one of forgiveness, not of persecution.  If the Prophet Muhammad detested punishing people based on their own self-confession, then how misguided are those fundamentalists who are known to drag unwilling women to be stoned against their will?

Many reformist Muslims have responded positively to Dr. Tariq Ramadan’s International Call for Moratorium on Corporal Punishment, Stoning and the Death Penalty in the Islamic World, commonly referred to by the less cumbersome name The Call for a Moratorium.  Ramadan, the leading reformist Muslim scholar of the world, argues that the manner in which various fundamentalists are implementing the hadud (corporal punishments) is so radically incorrect that there ought to be a complete moratorium on all such punishments until stringent and up-to-date standards are set.

In the meantime, Ramadan has called for a dialogue in the Islamic world in order to properly understand the matter, and to stop fundamentalist interpretations from spreading.  Whilst some conservative Muslims have reacted cautiously to Ramadan’s wording, they do agree with him that the fundamentalists are implementing the law in an incorrect fashion.

Fundamentalist Interpretations as a Backlash

Dr. Tariq Ramadan notes that the recent resurgence of fundamentalist interpretations can be traced to a reactionary feeling in the post-colonial Islamic world; enforcing such punishments evokes a negative response in the West, and because many in the Muslim world associate the West with colonialism and “neo-colonialism”, this reaction seems to validate their Islamic identity.  In other words, the logic is: the West is bad, the West does not like these punishments, and therefore these punishments are good.  This has more to do with identity politics than religious theology.  Writes Ramadan:

On the question of hudûd [corporal punishments], one sometimes sees popular support hoping or exacting a literal and immediate application because the latter [supposedly] would guarantee henceforth the “Islamic” character of a society…When one studies this phenomenon, two types of reasoning generally motivate these claims:

1. The literal and immediate application of the hudûd legally and socially provides a visible reference to Islam. The legislation, by its harshness, gives the feeling of fidelity to the Qur’anic injunctions that demands rigorous respect of the text…

2. The opposition and condemnations by the West supplies, paradoxically, the popular feeling of fidelity to the Islamic teachings; a reasoning that is antithetical, simple and simplistic. The intense opposition of the West is sufficient proof of the authentic Islamic character of the literal application of hudûd. Some will persuade themselves by asserting that the West has long since lost its moral references and became so permissive that the harshness of the Islamic penal code which punishes behaviors judged immoral, is by antithesis, the true and only alternative “to Western decadence”.

These formalistic and binary reasoning are fundamentally dangerous for they claim and grant an Islamic quality to a legislation, not in what it promotes, protects and applies justice to, but more so because it sanctions harsh and visible punishment to certain behaviors and in stark contrast and opposition to the Western laws, which are perceived as morally permissive and without a reference to religion[3]. One sees today that communities or Muslim people satisfy themselves with this type of legitimacy to back a government or a party that calls for an application of the sharî’a narrowly understood as a literal and immediate application of corporal punishment, stoning and the death penalty. When this type of popular passion takes hold, it is the first sign of a will to respond to various forms of frustration and humiliation by asserting an identity that perceives itself as Islamic (and anti-Western). Such an identity is not based on the comprehension of the objectives of the Islamic teachings (al maqâsid) or the different interpretations and conditions relating to the application of the hudûd…[but rather] a binary reasoning (less West is more Islam). ^[33]

The more the West pushes to remove such laws that are deemed Islamic, the more the people feel threatened by Western domination; they push back harder by calling for even stricter interpretation and implementation.  Such fundamentalist understandings have particular appeal in war-ravaged areas such as Afghanistan and Somalia.  The U.S.’s heavy handed policies in the Islamic world, coupled with a bombardment of traditional Islamic society with Western culture, has created  a reactionary backlash.  Instead of valuing the nuances and richness of Islamic jurisprudence, many Westerners denigrate all of Islam, thereby alienating the very population they are trying to influence.

But there is hope: reformist Muslims are forcing the Islamic world to have the much needed debate.  Even in the ultraconservative country of Saudi Arabia, for example, reformists who challenge the status quo are emerging.  The movement will be gradual in nature, and one cannot simply expect a reformation overnight.  Yet, the process has begun and is gaining momentum.

Pregnancy as a Proof

Pregnancy has been mentioned by some jurists as a proof for fornication in the case of an unmarried woman.  Yet, this requires some elaboration.  The pregnancy alone cannot be used to justify her punishment; the woman can simply deny the act of fornication.  She may for instance have engaged in illicit sexual conduct short of vaginal penetration, which may inadvertently have led to pregnancy. For example, the man could have ejaculated near her thighs and some semen may have entered the vagina that way.  (Remember: the legal punishment only applies to those cases where there is vaginal penetration; if a person confesses to sexual conduct short of vaginal penetration, there is no hadd punishment.)

Furthermore, the woman may have been raped, had sex whilst she was temporarily insane, or been asleep whilst a man ejaculated in her.  These excuses may seem extraordinary, but that’s the point: any doubt whatsoever should be enough to acquit the defendant, which is the goal of the Islamic court.  SunniPath.com, a fatwa site, answers the following question:

Question:

Is pregnancy considered sufficient evidence for the enactment of the hadd punishment for adultery?

Answer:

In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate

No.

The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) commanded us in a famous hadith to ward off the hadd punishments with doubts [shubuhat].  Many punishments prescribed by Islamic Law often seem very harsh, but people forget that these punishments are only applied when certain very stringent conditions are met…

It is mentioned in Bughyat al-Mustarshidin that an unmarried woman who gets pregnant and does not confess to have committed fornication [zina] does not deserve the hadd punishment, since she could have been  accidentally had intercourse with  [wat  ul-shubha], she could have been asleep, she could have been insane (and hence not responsible for her actions) when the intercourse happened, or she could have been coerced, all of which are  doubts  [shubuhat] that make the hadd punishment inapplicable to her.  [Bughyat al-Mustarshidin, 249] ^[34]

Salman al-Oudah, a Saudi cleric, posted the following fatwa on his website:

Question: Can a single woman be accused and convicted of fornication on the strength of her falling pregnant?

Answered by Sheikh Sulaymân al-`Îsâ, professor at al-Imâm University in Riyadh

…The woman will not receive punishment just because of pregnancy. Women can fall pregnant without committing illegal sexual intercourse. A woman could be raped or coerced. In this case, she is a victim and not the perpetrator of a crime.

Therefore, she cannot be punished or even accused of misconduct merely on the strength of her falling pregnant. This opinion is held by many people of knowledge. Ibn Qudâmah said in his book al-Mughnî:

If a woman becomes pregnant without having a husband or a master, she may not be punished and, instead, she should be asked about it, if she claimed that she was coerced into it or that she committed adultery under dubious circumstances, or if she simply does not confess adultery then she will not be punished. This is the saying of Abu Hanîfah and al-Shâfi`î, because she may be pregnant as a result of a forceful intercourse or dubious circumstances. Punishment will be abandoned in case suspicion exists. It is well known that a woman could become pregnant without engaging in true intercourse. The woman may become pregnant if sperm is manually inserted into her vagina. This would explain how a virgin becomes pregnant. ^[35]

Although theoretically the punishment could be implemented based on pregnancy, practically it is never so, because there is always an element of doubt which wards off punishment.

Al-Li’an

The fourth (and last) means of a conviction is through the process of li’an.  After the Prophet Muhammad enacted such stringent laws barring men from accusing women of fornication and adultery, some of the husbands complained, asking what to do if they entered the home to find another man in their bed.  Should a husband who catches his wife red-handed be barred from testifying against her simply because he cannot fulfill the “near impossible” four witnesses requirement?  While it may be true that a stranger has no business meddling in the private affairs of a woman, isn’t the husband a special case because he is directly affected by her infidelity?

These concerns were brought to the Prophet Muhammad, and the verses of Al-Li’an were then revealed.  I discussed this in part 1 of my rebuttal:

Both the Quran and the Bible deal with the case of a husband accusing his wife of adultery.  The Quran declares that if a wife denies the charges, then she is exonerated by the law–her testimony is accepted over that of her husband’s, and any worldly punishment is waived.  The Quran declares:

As for those who accuse their wives but have no witnesses except themselves: let the testimony of one of them be four testimonies, swearing by God that he is of those who speaks the truth; And the fifth oath should be invoking the curse of God on himself if he is of those who lie. But it shall avert the punishment from her if she bears witness/testifies before God four times that the thing he says is indeed false, and if she takes an oath a fifth time that the wrath of God be upon her if he speaks the truth. (Quran, 24:6-9)

This is the Islamic law of Al-Li’an. The Bible, on the other hand, has the Law of Jealousy: if a husband suspects his wife of adultery, then he is to bring her to the priest.  The priest will then dump dust and ink into a container of water, and force her to drink the dirtied water.  If she gets sick from it (or dies), it proves the allegation that she was adulterous; if she does not fall sick, then she is exonerated.  Furthermore, the woman is to drink this water in a state of public humiliation: her head is to be uncovered (a sign of shame back then) and she is forced to stand at the east gate of the temple in sight of the people, so that she might serve as a reminder against lewdness.  (All this even before she drinks the contaminated water.)

The Bible declares:

The Test for an Unfaithful Wife

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him by sleeping with another man, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act, and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure–then he is to take his wife to the priest…

The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the LORD. Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.…Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has slept with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have defiled yourself by sleeping with a man other than your husband”–here the priest is to put the woman under this curse of the oath–”may the LORD cause your people to curse and denounce you when he causes your thigh to waste away and your abdomen to swell. May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells and your thigh wastes away. ” Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”

The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. He shall have the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water will enter her and cause bitter suffering…He is to have the woman drink the water.  If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away, and she will become accursed among her people.

If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children. This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and defiles herself while married to her husband, or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the LORD and is to apply this entire law to her [i.e. death by stoning]. The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’” (Numbers 5:11-31)

Matthew Henry, the eminent seventeenth and eighteenth century commentator on the Bible, explained these verses:

We have here the law concerning the solemn trial of a wife whose husband was jealous of her.

I. What was the case supposed:

1. That a man had some reason to suspect his wife to have committed adultery,

2. It is supposed to be a sin which great care is taken by the sinners to conceal, which there is no witness of…

3. The spirit of jealousy is supposed to come upon the husband…then he may compel her to drink the bitter water.  But the law here does not tie him to that particular method of proving the just cause of his suspicion; it might be otherwise proved. In case it could be proved that she had committed adultery, she was to be put to death (Lev. 20:10); but, if it was uncertain, then this law took place. Hence, (1.) Let all wives be admonished not to give any the least occasion for the suspicion of their chastity; it is not enough that they abstain from the evil of uncleanness, but they must abstain from all appearance of it, from every thing that looks like it, or leads to it, or may give the least umbrage to jealousy; for how great a matter may a little fire kindle! (2.) Let all husbands be admonished not to entertain any causeless or unjust suspicions of their wives…

II. The process of the trial must be thus:

(1.) Her husband must bring her to the priest, with the witnesses that could prove the ground of his suspicion, and desire that she might be put upon her trial. The Jews say that the priest was first to endeavour to persuade her to confess the truth…If she confessed, saying, “I am defiled,” she was not put to death, but was divorced and lost her dowry; if she said, “I am pure,” then they proceeded.

…

(3.) The priest was to prepare the water of jealousy…it must be [in] an earthen vessel, because the coarser and plainer every thing was the more agreeable it was to the occasion. Dust must be put into the water, to signify the reproach she lay under, and the shame she ought to take to herself, putting her mouth in the dust; but dust from the floor of the tabernacle…

(4.) The woman was to be set before the Lord, at the east gate of the temple-court (say the Jews), and her head was to be uncovered, in token of her sorrowful condition; and there she stood for a spectacle to the world, that other women might learn not to do after her lewdness, Eze. 23:48…

(5.) The priest was to adjure her to tell the truth, and to denounce the curse of God against her if she were guilty, and to declare what would be the effect of her drinking the water of jealousy, v. 19-22. He must assure her that, if she were innocent, the water would do her no harm, v. 19. None need fear the curse of the law if they have not broken the commands of the law. But, if she were guilty, this water would be poison to her, it would make her belly to swell and her thigh to rot, and she should be a curse or abomination among her people, v. 21, 22…

(6.) The priest was to write this curse in a scrip or scroll of parchment, verbatim-word for word, as he had expressed it, and then to wipe or scrape out what he had written into the water (v. 23), to signify that it was that curse which impregnated the water, and gave it its strength to effect what was intended. It signified that, if she were innocent, the curse should be blotted out and never appear against her, as it is written, Isa. 43:25, I am he that blotteth out thy transgression, and Ps. 51:9, Blot out my iniquities; but that, if she were guilty, the curse, as it was written, being infused into the water, would enter into her bowels with the water, even like oil into her bones (Ps. 109:18)…

(7.) The woman must then drink the water (v. 24); it is called the bitter water…

…

(9.) …If the suspected woman was really guilty, the water she drank would be poison to her (v. 27), her belly would swell and her thigh rot by a vile disease for vile deserts, and she would mourn at the last when her flesh and body were consumed, Prov. 5:11. Bishop Patrick says, from some of the Jewish writers, that the effect of these waters appeared immediately, she grew pale, and her eyes ready to start out of her head…

A special law for husbands exists in both Christianity and Islam.  Under Islamic law, the woman can avert the punishment simply by swearing to God that her husband is lying.  Even if she herself is lying when she does that, she can repent after that.  The Islamic exegist Ibn Kathir comments on the verses of Al-Li’an:

“But she shall avert the punishment” meaning, the prescribed punishment…Then God mentions His grace and kindness to His creation in that He has prescribed for them a way out of their difficulties. God says: “And had it not been for the grace of God and His mercy on you” meaning, many of your affairs would have been too difficult for you, “And that God is the One Who forgives and accepts repentance,” means, from His servants, even if that comes after they have sworn a confirmed oath. ^[36]

Although it will be counted as a sin against her for lying, she may be able to achieve penance by seeking forgiveness and correcting her ways.  Again, when it comes to convicting people of zinnah, the emphasis is always on acquittal.

The reasons for revelation of these Quranic verses revolved around husbands who walked in on their wives having sex with stranger men. They complained to the Prophet Muhammad, and then a problem arose.  Should these husbands be lashed for claiming that their wives had committed adultery?  After all, they hadn’t fulfilled the “near impossible” requirement of providing four witnesses.  Remember: the purpose of this requirement was to deter men from accusing women of being unchaste, because they should mind their own business; but could anyone doubt the fact that a wife’s disloyalty is a husband’s business?  So the question arose: did a husband have to provide four witnesses if he walked in on his wife having an affair with another man?

One of the Prophet’s disciples, a man by the name of Saad ibn Ubadah, said:

By God, O Messenger of God, I know that it [the verse requiring four witnesses] is true and is from God, but I am surprised. If I found some wicked man lying down with my wife, should I not disturb him until I have brought four witnesses?  By God, he would have finished what he was doing before I could bring them!

And later, a man by the name of Hilal ibn Umayyah walked in on his wife having sex with a stranger man.  He lamented to the Prophet Muhammad:

O Messenger of God, I came to my wife at night and found a man with her, and I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears.

The Prophet wanted to punish Hilal, for accusing a woman of being unchaste. Accusing a woman of fornication or adultery is considered a grave crime in Islam, which is the entire reason behind the four witnesses requirement. The Prophet Muhammad replied:

[Bring forth] evidence or the punishment on your back.

A group of the Muslims commented on the situation, saying:

We were being tested by what Saad bin Ubadah said, and now the Messenger of God will punish Hilal bin Umayyah and declare his testimony before people to be unacceptable.

Hilal responded:

By God, I hope that God will make for me a way out from this problem. O Messenger of God, I see how upset you are by what I have said, but God knows that I am telling the truth.

It was at that point that God revealed the verses of Al-Li’an to the Prophet Muhammad, as follows:

And for those who accuse their wives but have no witnesses except themselves, let the testimony of one of them be four testimonies by God. (Quran, 24:6)

In that way, Hilal was saved from punishment, and the Prophet Muhammad said:

Rejoice, O Hilal, for God has made a way out for you.

The wife denied Hilal’s claim and said:

He is lying.

She swore four times and then a fifth time that she was innocent.  According to the verses of Al-Li’an, the wife’s testimony trumps that of the husband’s.  The Prophet Muhammad declared the two forever divorced, but neither party was to receive any worldly punishment.

The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a child who looked nothing like her husband; in fact, the child looked exactly like the man that Hilal accused of having the affair with his wife.  From this, the Prophet Muhammad knew that the woman was guilty, but he declared:

Were it not for the Book of God, I would deal with her. ^[37]

In other words, the Quran constrained the people from punishing an adulterous woman, even when there was ample proof against her.  (This is also the reason that jurists today reject photographic evidence or DNA proof.)  Reformist Muslims criticize fundamentalists for convicting women based on spurious evidence, whereas the Prophet Muhammad didn’t do that even when he had rock solid proof.

Non-Muslims

It should be noted that the hadud (corporal punishments) of the Sharia are only applicable to Muslims.  In the classical era, the Islamic state did not enforce such laws upon non-Muslims.  Rather, the non-Muslims were free to rule themselves according to their own religious scriptures, in accordance to the practice of the Prophet Muhammad.  I discussed this in more detail here.

As for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands, it is understood by Islamic jurisprudence that there is no hadud applicable there, even upon Muslims.  The hadud is to be enforced only in the lands of Islam, under the auspices of the Imam or Caliph of the Muslims.  The fatwa site SunniPath.com says:

Hadd punishments are the province of the Imam of the Muslims, and are irrelevant for Muslims living in the West. ^[38]

Conclusion

There are four ways to secure a conviction for fornication and adultery: (1) four witnesses, (2) self-confession, (3) pregnancy, and (4) Al-Li’an.  Yet, Muslims believe that all four routes have been virtually closed off by the Mercy of God.  (1) The requirement of four witnesses is “near impossible” to fulfill: according to Islamic clerics, not a single case exists in the entire history of Islam in which it was fulfilled.  (2) As for self-confession, the Islamic tradition strongly recommends believers not to confess their sins or seek legal punishments; rather, they should repent to God in private and bask in His Mercy.  (3) As for pregnancy, it is not sufficient proof in and of itself; if an unmarried pregnant woman denies that she committed fornication, this is enough to save her from punishment.  (4) As for Al-Li’an, the wife’s testimony trumps the husband’s, and saves her from any punishment, even if she is really guilty.

The general rule, argue reformist Muslims, is that the government should mind its own business and not interfere in the private lives of its citizens.  As for the sexual escapades of its citizens, this does not fall under the jurisdiction of the Islamic state.  Rather, argue these Muslims, the authorities ought to educate the citizenry about the sinful nature of fornication and adultery, its ill effects on society, and the benefits of chastity.  Ultimately, it is better for people to abstain from sins based on their own moral compass than from the heavy hand of government.  It is for this reason that sexual sins remain unpunished in this world, according to reformist (and even conservative) Muslims.

When it comes to consensual sex between two consenting adults, there is no Islamic legal punishment that is enforced.  Robert Spencer has used this fact to claim that the Sharia takes a similar stance towards rape.  His argument is that the Islamic law requires four witnesses to prove rape, a “near impossible” requirement.  I shall refute his claim in my next article.

Footnotes

refer back to article 1. Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 38, #4435

refer back to article 2. al-Ikhtiyar li talil al-Mukhtar, 2/312-313

refer back to article 3. Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Death Penalty, Mercy, and Islam: A Call for Retrospection

refer back to article 4. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=865&letter=A

refer back to article 5. Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Muslim

refer back to article 6. Sahih al-Muslim

refer back to article 7. http://www.fountainmagazine.com/article.php?ARTICLEID=1039

refer back to article 8. http://www.scholarofthehouse.org/islamicsexlaws.html

refer back to article 9. http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=4208&CATE=42

refer back to article 10. Ibid.

refer back to article 11. I have used the term “Wahhabi” here simply because the readers may be unfamiliar with the proper term “Salafi”.

refer back to article 12. al-Sharh al-Mumti’ (6/157)

refer back to article 13. http://islamqa.com/en/ref/88051/pregnancy%20proof

refer back to article 14. http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/6926

refer back to article 15. Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 38, #4387

refer back to article 16. Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Muslim

refer back to article 17. Sahih al-Muslim

refer back to article 18. http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=4208&CATE=42

refer back to article 19. Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 38, #4414

refer back to article 20. http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=4208&CATE=42

refer back to article 21. Sahih Muslim, #1695

refer back to article 22. Sunan Abu Dawud

refer back to article 23. Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 38, #4414

refer back to article 24. Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 38, #4420

refer back to article 25. http://www.islamqa.com/en/ref/27113/confession

refer back to article 26. http://www.islamqa.com/en/ref/23485

refer back to article 27. http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=3&ID=1549&CATE=389

refer back to article 28. Sahih Muslim, #2577

refer back to article 29. Sahih al-Jami, #4338

refer back to article 30. Sahih al-Jami, #3008

refer back to article 31. http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=4208&CATE=42

refer back to article 32. Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 38, #4405

refer back to article 33. http://www.tariqramadan.com/spip.php?article264

refer back to article 34. http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=3&ID=1550&CATE=389

refer back to article 35. http://islamtoday.com/show_detail_section.cfm?q_id=158&main_cat_id=6

refer back to article 36. Tafsir ibn Kathir, commentary on chapter 24

refer back to article 37. Ibid.; all quotes from the above story are taken from Tafsir ibn Kathir

refer back to article 38. http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=3&ID=1550&CATE=389

I am a little apprehensive in writing this piece because I don’t want to give more credence or traffic to some back water unknown Islamophobe then he deserves. However, I do think it is instructional considering the persistent affection and repetition with which they hold one particularly morbid fantasy: bombing Mecca.

I could go into a historical analysis of what we call the Nuclear Card, charting how various belligerents starting from the Crusader Raynald of Chatillon all the way to Tom Trancredo in the present day have employed the threat of destroying Mecca and Medina for their cause but I will leave that for another day.

In this case we have Bob Beers writing for the Canada Free Press which surprisingly gets a lot of traffic while peddling in some of the most hate filled and racist commentary on the internet but more on that later.

How About We Bomb Mecca?

By Bob Beers Friday, November 6, 2009

Major Malik Hassan, after being transferred from Walter Reed Hospital to Fort Hood decided to celebrate his promotion and transfer by shouting “God is great” in Arabic while gunning down a dozen of his fellow soldiers.

The mainstream media is falling all over itself today in an attempt to somehow paint this domestic Islamic terrorist as the victim rather than the perpetrator. Muslim-friendly to the point of being Muslim-centric, the news networks are even trying to do their reporting without mentioning the killer’s name.

It has been grudgingly revealed that Hassan had months before posted the glorification of suicide bombers on his own web site. There is information trickling out of Walter Reed that his promotion and transfer were not so much a reward but a way for the hospital to get rid of him. Can you imagine what the reporting would be like if his last name had been Smith and he was a Southern Baptist? How about if the web site had glorified the pro-life agenda? No, the news wouldn’t be at all politically correct, it would be screaming for the death penalty.

How many more innocents must be killed by islamofascists before that glorified cult is recognized for what it is? Adherents of the world’s most violent and intolerant religion flew terrified passengers into the World Trade Center’s towers screaming the same line Hassan yelled out as the coward machine-gunned down his fellow soldiers. Nearly every day we read about some innocent young girl being killed by her own relatives because she “dishonored” her family by doing something non-Islamic. I have come to believe that a devout Muslim is incapable of anything close to real love. A loving father would die to save his daughter’s life, not the honor of a phony religion. In reality they more closely resemble trained beasts rather than people. People simply do not act in that fashion on a regular basis. People have aberrations and in some cases will act stupidly or violently, but unless there is a real problem with their mental/emotional makeup they do not act as an Islamist does.

Before you come out of the woodwork to accuse me of not knowing what I’m writing about, let me assure you that I do. I spent a number of years studying comparative religion, including the one started by an Arab thief/con man/thug/pedophile named Muhammad. The worship of the Babylonian Moon God Allah was at one time a minor religion among hundreds in the Babylonian Empire. The followers of that religion had to make a pilgrimage to the temple each year and touch the idol of Allah in order to keep their ticket to heaven active. When Muhammad fanatically decided to revitalize his fading religion, the remnant of the idol was placed in Mecca where it still rests as the so-called “black rock”. Followers of Islam still must pay homage to that idol in order to fulfill their religious duty. If that duty is unfulfilled, they are out. So, what if the rock no longer exists? Hmmm? An interesting thought.

Some have posited that if something happened to the idol, the world’s Muslims would riot, throwing the world into gory chaos. They may be partially right, but not all would do this and if the world’s armies were diligent, it would be a good way of clearing out the villains. Even with that, I think the world would be better off because the Islamofascists would no longer have any hope of making it to their 72 virgins, regardless of how many school children they slaughtered. You cannot sacrifice to an idol that doesn’t exist.

If I were President this is what I would tell the Saudis, If one more terrorist incident happens in the US by any sect of your religion, even if you didn’t order it, say goodbye to your temple. Do you think there would be a few orders sent out to the training camps?

Well, at least I can dream.

Bob Beers no doubt is a sick puppy with sick dreams of apocalyptic chaos and destruction, he is not as sophisticated as a Robert Spencer who doesn’t condemn the idea of bombing Mecca but only thinks it’s a bad idea on practical grounds. What never fails to surprise me is the utter stupidity and lack of logic of die hard anti-Muslim Islamophobes like Beers. In their warped rationale threatening to bomb Mecca would some how deter terrorists instead of emboldening them. The fact is that if the US government or any government for that fact were crazy enough to follow up on the dreams of Bob Beers it would practically set the whole Muslim world, all 1.5 billion against the West.

We can rest assured at night that at the helm of our governments at the moment we have rational players who won’t succumb to such nightmarish fantasies, but who is to say that will always be the case? God forbid that a Sarah Palin type of politician were to become president, if that were to happen it would be cause enough to move the hand on the Nuclear Clock closer to doomsday.

Yet, why do so many take the Canada Free Press seriously? Their social networking editor is a ninth grader by the name of Chase Clift who in his spare time likes to volunteer for the Southern Secessionist Movement and also works for the Confederate Liberation Society which extols the virtues of the Confederacy and revisits history to condemn Abraham Lincoln. The Society’s goal is “an official Peace Treaty signed with the United States of America and a swift transfer of all powers to the government of the Confederate States of America.”

So much for their ramblings about being patriotic Americans, and one has to ask the seminal question of Robert Spencer here, “why are you listed as one of the columnists on Canada Free Press?”

The Moral Contortionist

On November 25th, we wrote about a wacky article that the failed academic and full time Likud apologist, Daniel Pipes wrote for the Jerusalem Post, in which he argued that US Congressman Keith Ellison, intellectual Tariq Ramadan and President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan were a greater threat to Western Civilization than Al-Qaeda.

We wrote at the time,

According to the illogic of Pipes the greatest threat doesn’t come from Al-Qaeda, Ayatollah Khomeini or Nidal Hasan but rather from people like Dr. Tariq Ramadan and Congressman Keith Ellison. He accuses the two of being part of something he terms “Islamism 2.0.” This ridiculous term translates essentially into what Islamophobe Robert Spencer calls “Stealth Jihad,” or the subtle takeover of the West by peaceful, law-abiding Muslims who have a secret, sinister (stealth) goal to takeover the West and replace Democracy with Shariah law: in other words it’s a conspiracy theory.

Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, and Nidal Hasan represent Islamism 1.0, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (the prime minister of Turkey), Tariq Ramadan (a Swiss intellectual), and Keith Ellison (a US congressman) represent Islamism 2.0. The former kill more people but the latter pose a greater threat to Western civilization. (emphasis mine)

That Erdogan, Ramadan and Ellison can even be mentioned in the same sentence as equivalent to, or even more dangerous and threatening to the West than Bin Laden speaks volumes about Pipes’ preposterous agenda. Would Bin Laden have Turkey make peace with Armenia as Erdogan did? Would Bin Laden affirm Democracy as the way forward to better governance and equal rights as all three do? Would Bin Laden pledge to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America on Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an as Keith Ellison did?

We never imagined Daniel Pipes would offer a response, as he usually isn’t too keen to get into a debate with anyone who challenges his weak and biased arguments. However, it seems this time Pipes couldn’t hold himself back. Prompted by a reader of his website, Aliya, who alerted Pipes to our rebuttal of his article, he responded by bringing the all too familiar response of those who have no arguments: comparing your subject to Hitler.

The questioner sounds like another loon that we know, Pamela Geller who surmised that Loonwatch was a George Soros funded website, but she takes it a step further and includes all the possible conspiracy theories she can think of, not only are we George Soros funded but we are an, “Islamist Jewish/Eurabian (apparently George Soros and Saudi funded) website.” I love these loons, if half of what they said were true (Alas, my meager pockets) we would be rolling in the dough!!  Soros and company we are still waiting on our checks!

Notice that Daniel Pipes really didn’t answer any of the arguments or questions in our article, my guess is he probably didn’t even read it. He looked at the way Aliya framed the question and answered it by equating Keith Ellison, Tariq Ramadan and Recep Erodogan, all fierce proponents of Democracy to the greatest mass-murderer of the 20th century. Quite despicable, and it seems to have become Daniel Pipes’ forte to side on the side of the despicable.

The real question however is, if Pipes is truly interested in “protecting Western Civilization,” why is he as silent as a mouse on the real threat: the new little Hitler’s springing up all over Europe? Why does Pipes ignore neo-fascist Geert Wilders who calls for the deportation of Mooslims, banning of the Quran, taxing the hijab, etc? Why does he not speak out against the fascist Northern League, why does he give his tacit approval of the minaret ban in Switzerland which he charachterizes as a vote against “Islamization?”

The new amendment also validates and potentially encourages resistance to Islamization throughout the continent.

The reality is ever clearer, Mr.Pipes doesn’t give two hoots about Democracy, for him Democracy is convenient when it fits his agenda but should be discarded the moment it is no longer of use.

Robert Spencer, the author of the Islamophobook The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)

This is a rebuttal of chapter five of Robert Spencer’s book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), which is entitled “Islam oppresses women.” On pp.74-76, Spencer claims that the Sharia rejects a rape victim’s testimony.

Robert Spencer’s Claims

Says Spencer in his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades):

Rape: Four witnesses needed

Most threatening of all to women may be the Muslim understanding of rape as it plays out in conjunction with Islamic restrictions on the validity of a woman’s testimony. In court, a woman’s testimony is worth half as much as that of a man. (Quran 2:282)

Islamic legal theorists have restricted the validity of a woman’s testimony even further by limiting it to, in the words of one Muslim legal manual, “cases involving property, or transactions dealing with property, such as sales.”  Otherwise only men can testify. And in cases of sexual misbehavior, four male witnesses are required…

Consequently, it is almost impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia.  Men can commit rape with impunity: As long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they will get off scot-free, because the victim’s testimony is inadmissible.  Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself.  If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery. ^[1]

Spencer also says the exact same thing on his website:

Consequently, it is even today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself. If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery.

Let us analyze Spencer’s claims one point at a time:

Women as Witnesses under Sharia

Robert Spencer writes:

In court, a woman’s testimony is worth half as much as that of a man. (Quran 2:282)

Islamic legal theorists have restricted the validity of a woman’s testimony even further by limiting it to, in the words of one Muslim legal manual, “cases involving property, or transactions dealing with property, such as sales.”  Otherwise only men can testify.

There are two claims made here: (1) a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s;  (2) a woman’s testimony is accepted only in financial transactions (even then only by half), and rejected altogether in other cases, including rape.

Of course the reality is that Spencer has spoken a half-truth, which is what he normally does.  Spencer’s modus operandi is simple: he presents the absolutely most conservative view as if it is not only the most authoritative one but also the only one.  He then compares this ultraconservative Islamic opinion with the most liberal Judeo-Christian view, and then says aha!

The issue revolves around the following Quranic verse:

O you who believe! When you deal with each other in contracting a debt for a fixed time, then write it down; and let a scribe write it down between you with fairness…and call from among your men two witnesses; but if there are not two men, then one man and two women from among those whom you choose to be witnesses, so that if one of the two errs, the second of the two may remind the other. (Quran, 2:282)

Some Islamic jurists opined that the Quranic verse only permitted a woman’s testimony in cases related to financial transactions.  Therefore, they reasoned, it ought to be excluded in all other cases.  This opinion was prominent in the writings of medieval jurists, and is clung onto by some ultraconservative Muslims.

However, Spencer neglected to inform his readers of less stringent views that abound today.  Contemporary Muslims argue that the Quranic verse 2:282 has nothing to do with the courts or legal system in general:

…There is no verse anywhere in the Qur’an, which directs a court of law to consider a woman’s witness to be half reliable as that of a man. As for the verse 282 of Al-Baqarah, which is presented to substantiate the viewpoint in question, it has quite a different meaning and implication than what is construed from it…

Actually this verse addresses the common man. It does not relate to the law and thus gives no directive regarding judicial matters. In other words, it does not call upon the state, the legislative council or the legal authorities. This verse just invokes the common man’s attention for taking precautionary measures in case of a particular situation of conflict…

The verse states that when two or more individuals enter into an agreement for a loan for a fixed period of time, they should write it down thereby avoiding any misunderstanding or dispute. As a further safeguard to avoid such misunderstanding, they should make two men witnesses to the agreement. In case they are not able to find two men, then they may take two women instead of a man…Obviously, if this were a directive pertaining to judicial matters, it would have addressed the state or legal authorities. ^[2]

In other words, these Muslims argue that the Quranic verse cannot be generalized to all court cases; instead, it simply pertains to financial matters, and contracts of debt in specific.  It is argued that the women of pre-Islamic Arabia were generally unaware of the intricacies of the business world.  Tahir Haddad, an Islamic thinker of the early twentieth century, writes:

The fact that woman lagged behind man in all aspects of life [in the pre-Islamic times] made her less proficient in intellectual and mathematical tasks, especially since at that time she did not get her share of education and culture to prepare her for that…[which was taken into] account when it was decided that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man…[in] issue[s]…such as debts. ^[3]

The lack of business acumen that women of that particular time generally possessed was the reason that a woman’s singular testimony about a contract of debt might be rejected by the common man, resulting in conflicts.  The intent of the Quranic verse was after all to prevent infighting between Muslims, as was often the case between creditors and debtors.  Therefore, argue these contemporary Muslims, witnesses had to be produced who would be accepted by the common man as being authoritative.

Some contemporary Muslims even argue that such a restriction (i.e. the requirement of two women as witnesses instead of one) would not be applicable if the cause for the restriction (i.e. the lack of business acumen on the part of the woman) was not present.  The Islamic cleric Muzammil Siddiqi ^[4] issued the following fatwa (religious edict):

Question:

Does Islam regard the testimony of women as half of a man’s just in cases of transactions or in every case? Who are the scholars that maintain the first view? What is the evidence of those scholars saying that her testimony is not accepted in cases of murder and adultery?

Answer:

The word shahadah [testimony] in its various forms has occurred in the Qur’an about 156 times. There is only one case (Al-Baqarah 2:282) where there is a reference to gender. Apart from this one reference, there is no other place where the issue of gender is brought in the context of testimony. According to the Qur’an, it does not make any difference whether the person testifying is a male or female; the only objective is to ascertain accuracy and to establish justice and fairness. In one place in the Qur’an, there is an explicit reference that equates the testimonies of the male and female (See Surat An-Nur 24:6-9).

Only in the context of business transactions and loan contracts, it is mentioned that if two men are not available for testimony, then one man and two women are to be provided for that particular purpose (See Surat Al-Baqarah 2:282). The reason is not because of gender; it is given in the Qur’anic verse: If one errs, the other may remind her. Some scholars have suggested that this was due to the fact that most women in the past and even now were not involved in the intricate business dealings. So the Qur’an accepted their testimony, but to insure justice indicated that there should be two.

It is also important to note that the Shari`ah emphasizes that we follow the law exactly in the matters of worship; in economic dealings, however, the issue of justice is the main factor. If a judge sees that there is a woman who is very qualified and has good understanding of business transactions, the judge may consider her testimony equal to the testimony of a man. This will not be against the teachings of the Qur’an. ^[5]

Jamal Badawi, ^[6] another Islamic cleric (who Spencer himself quotes as an authority from time to time), comments:

The context of this passage (verse, or ayah) [verse 2:282] relates to testimony on financial transactions, which are often complex and laden with business jargon. The passage does not make blanket generalization [against the testimony of women]…In numerous societies, past and present, women generally may not be heavily involved with and experienced in business transactions. As such, they may not be completely cognizant of what is involved…

It must be added that unlike pure acts of worship, which must be observed exactly as taught by the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, testimony is a means to an end, ascertaining justice as a major objective of Islamic law. Therefore, it is the duty of a fair judge to be guided by this objective when assessing the worth and credibility of a given testimony, regardless of the gender of the witness. A witness of a female graduate of a business school is certainly far more worthy than the witness of an illiterate person with no business education or experience. ^[7]

Robert Spencer claims that the Sharia itself excludes a woman’s testimony in cases of rape; yet, this is not the interpretation of Sharia that many Muslims follow:

The simple point is that this verse peculiarly relates to bearing witness on documentary evidence i.e. sale deeds, leasing agreements, loan agreements, guarantee cards and trust deeds etc. In the above related cases, one is free to choose the witnesses. But, in cases of accidents, theft, murder, robbery, rape, and hijacking etc the witnesses are not a matter of choice. Whosoever is present at the scene should and can be taken as a witness. Thus we cannot say that the witness of a woman in cases other than documentary evidence, as explained above, will be affected by this verse. ^[8]

Jalal Abualrub ^[9], a “Wahhabi” ^[10] cleric, writes:

The Quran states that we need two women [as] witnesses in cases of financial transactions in place of one man.  There is no proof whatsoever that this is also the case in any other dispute, including criminal cases such as rape.  In fact, a woman’s testimony is accepted in the most important aspect of Islam: the religion itself.  Did anyone ask Aishah to bring another witness or a man to support her narrations of the Prophet’s practices and sayings? ^[11]

What Spencer will do is simple: he will cite various Islamic clerics, mostly classical medieval ones, as a proof that the Sharia itself says such-and-such.  Yet, the reality is that even though most Muslims believe that the Sharia is divinely one, they also acknowledge that there are multiple interpretations of it.  If some Islamic scholars argued that a woman’s testimony ought to be excluded, others argued that it should be considered equal to that of a man’s.  Spencer attempts to portray the ultraconservative interpretation of the Sharia as the only one–and to him it is the only authoritative one, with all other understandings deemed as either “taqiyya based” or simply unorthodox and therefore unrepresentative (as if Spencer is the pope of Islam!).

Yet, contemporary Muslims point out that the opinions of Islamic jurists (including the classical ones) are just that: opinions.  Unlike papal decrees in Catholicism, the rulings of Islamic clerics are neither infallible or binding. Imam Abu Hanifa, the eminent jurist who founded the Hanafi school of thought, decreed:

What comes from the Messenger of God, we accept with our mind and heart, by my father and mother, we cannot oppose it. What comes from the Companions, we choose from. As for what comes from other sources, well, they are human beings as we are. ^[12]

So while the Muslims find the Quran and authentic hadiths/sunna to be infallible and binding, they do not view the interpretations of them to be such.  Along this line, Jalal Abualrub wrote:

We should avoid thinking of the opinions of the scholars as infallible.  What is infallible is the Quran and Sunnah alone.  Scholars of all schools have their own opinions and fatawa that may either be correct or wrong.  For instance, a Maliki scholar can claim whatever opinion his madhhab says, but we are not bound by and certainly the religion is not bound by it.

So when Allah states in Surat al-Baqarah that in regards to financial transactions the testimony of two women can be used with the testimony of one man, no one has the right to make this specific ruling apply in other cases.  Let me remind you again: the female Companions [of the Prophet] have narrated and testified on countless occasions about aspects of creed, fiqh and other Islamic topics.  Have you heard any of the [male] Companions ever say that their testimony cannot be accepted unless they bring another woman and man to agree?  I mentioned this because money issues and criminal issues are certainly far less important than religious issues that establish a ruling for all times.

It must be remembered that the scholars  are not infallible, and their efforts are only explanatory–they are not the final authority.  We respect the scholars, but we agree that they are human and make mistakes. ^[13]

Abualrub brings up the point that the testimony of women was accepted on aspects of religion and creed, which are more important than crime and punishment.  This is one proof that contemporary Muslims use, namely that the female Companions bore witness to the actions of the Prophet Muhammad; there is no rule in Islam that the testimony of a woman in this regard be considered half of a man’s.

Another proof that contemporary Muslims use–to prove that a woman’s testimony is equal to that of a man’s–is the Quranic passage 24:6-9 (just two verses down from the verses that Spencer has quoted).  In these verses, the husband may testify against the wife that she has committed adultery, but if the wife gives her own testimony declaring this to be a lie, then the wife’s testimony trumps that of her husband’s.  Muzammil Siddiqi writes:

In one place in the Qur’an, there is an explicit reference that equates the testimonies of the male and female (See Surat An-Nur 24:6-9). ^[14]

Jamal Badawi comments:

Most Qur’anic references to testimony (witness) do not make any reference to gender. Some references fully equate the testimony of males and females…

[Verse 2:282] cannot be used as an argument that there is a general rule in the Qur’an that the worth of a female’s witness is only half the male’s. This presumed “rule” is voided by the above reference (24:6-9), which explicitly equates the testimony of both genders on the issue at hand. ^[15]

Contemporary Muslims point out that many classical scholars permitted female judges; how could it be then that a woman would be permitted to serve as a judge but not as a witness, the former of which is in charge of the latter?  The judge uses his wisdom to give judgment, whereas a witness simply retells what he/she witnessed.  Therefore, if a woman is allowed to be a judge, she ought to be permitted to be a witness as well.  Tahir Haddad wryly comments:

The assertion [that women ought to be barred from serving as witnesses]…is even stranger in view of the fact that according to the jurisprudence of the four orthodox Islamic law schools a woman is allowed to act as a judge to rule on differences between people in a role similar to that of a man.  Abu-Hanifa al-Nu’man [Imam Abu Hanifa] who was a contemporary of some of the Prophet’s Companions, confirmed that it is acceptable in Islam [for her to be a judge]…So, do we deduce from this that Islam…[bars her as] a witness…and at the same time elevates her by conferring her the responsibilities of a judge? ^[16]

Jalal Abualrub notes that the words of some of the fallible scholars contradicts the infallible authentic hadiths; Abualrub quotes the following narration in the Islamic texts:

When a woman went out in the time of the Prophet for prayer, a man attacked her and raped her. She shouted and he went off, and when a man came by, she said: “That man did such and such to me.” And when a company of the emigrants came by, she said: “That man did such and such to me.” They went and seized the man whom they thought had had intercourse with her and brought him to her.

She said: “Yes, this is he.” Then they brought him to the Apostle of God.  When [the Prophet] was about to pass sentence, the man who had [actually] assaulted her stood up and said: “Apostle of God, I am the man who did it to her.”

[The Prophet] said to her: “Go away, for God has forgiven you.” But he told the [innocent] man some good words, and to the [guilty] man who had had raped her, he said: “Stone him to death.” (Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 38, #4366)

Abualrub points out that contrary to Robert Spencer’s claim that a woman’s testimony is not accepted in cases of rape, the Prophet Muhammad convicted a man based solely on one woman’s testimony.  Abualrub comments:

As for the woman mentioned in the narration, it is clear that no one asked her for four witnesses nor did anyone suspect her character, and her testimony alone was used as proof, and the innocent man who was wrongly accused was set free, while she was not punished even though she identified the wrong man, so how can the critics of Islam today claim that the Shari’ah itself says a woman is to be lashed for failing to bring forth four witnesses, when this woman in the narration not only did not do that but also identified the wrong man!? ^[17]

Abualrub mentions a number of salient points here, which we shall discuss in greater detail in the next part of this article.  But for now, the bolded part is most relevant to our discussion, as it shows that contemporary Muslims have a very strong proof that in their religion a woman’s testimony is to be accepted in cases of rape, contrary to what Robert Spencer–the self-proclaimed pope of Islam–insists.

Women as Witnesses under the Judeo-Christian Laws

What we have thus far concluded is that yes it is true that some Muslims (such as those living in the medieval times and some ultraconservatives today) believe that a woman’s testimony is rejected in most legal proceedings.  On the other hand, many contemporary Muslims feel otherwise, a fact that Robert Spencer conveniently ignores.

But Spencer’s half-truth does not end there.  He also purposefully neglects to mention that a woman’s testimony is rejected in traditional Halakha (Jewish law) and Biblical law (of the Christians). The Jewish Virtual Library declares that there has been a longstanding “rabbinic rule that a woman is ineligible to testify as a witness.” ^[18] Rabbi Aaron Mackler writes:

The vast majority of Orthodox rabbis, and some Conservative rabbis, do not accept the legitimacy of women serving as witnesses. ^[19]

The Talmud forbade Jewish courts from accepting women as witnesses:

The Talmudic interpretation of the law held that women or slaves were not admitted as witnesses; nor could one such testify on the basis of testimony heard form an eye-witness. ^[20]

It is for this reason that the testimony of a woman is not accepted in the Orthodox rabbinical courts up until this day.  However, like the Muslims, there is a difference of opinion amongst Jewry; Reform Jews and some Conservative rabbis accept women as witnesses.

We see then that the situation of the Muslims and the Jews with regard to this issue is very similar if not identical; why is it then that Robert Spencer arrives at dramatically different conclusions about Islam/Muslims/Quran/Sharia than he does about Judaism/Jews/Talmud/Halakha?  Why does Spencer entitle the chapter of his book as “Islam oppresses women,” but not say “Judaism oppresses women?”  If one criticizes the Quran for one thing, should not such a person criticize the Talmud for the exact same thing?  It seems there is one standard for Islam and another for Judaism and Christianity.  This is indeed the modus operandi for the Islamophobic movement in general; I have already in a previous article detailed Daniel Pipes’ fantastic double standards towards Sharia and Halakha.

The traditional Biblical law also excluded women from serving as witnesses. The Bible says:

One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses…The two men involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the LORD before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. (Deuteronomy 19:15-17)

Notice that Robert Spencer argues that the four witnesses in the Quranic verse 24:4 ought to be males, since the word “witnesses” appears in the masculine.  Yet, this was the exact same logic that Christian scholars used: the Bible uses the word “men” when it refers to witnesses.  John Gill, a well-renowned Biblical scholar of the eighteenth century, commented on this verse that it

teaches that there is no witness by women; and so it is elsewhere said, an oath of witness is made by men, and not by women; on which it is observed that a woman is not fit to bear witness, as it is written “then both the men,” [meaning] men and not women. ^[21]

Medieval Islamic and Christian scholars opined that witnesses ought to be male, based on the fact that both holy books (the Quran and Bible respectively) used masculine words for “witnesses.”  Yet, for some reason Robert Spencer argues that the Quran specifically requires male witnesses, whereas the Bible does not!  Again, this exposes Spencer’s  bias.

The Testimony of Women in Cases of Adultery

Robert Spencer, likes to contrast the Quran with the Bible; his book is full of such side-by-side comparisons.  Let us play his game then.  Both the Quran and the Bible deal with the case of a husband accusing his wife of adultery.  The Quran declares that if a wife denies the charges, then she is exonerated by the law–her testimony is accepted over that of her husband’s, and any worldly punishment is waived.  The Quran declares:

As for those who accuse their wives but have no witnesses except themselves: let the testimony of one of them be four testimonies, swearing by God that he is of those who speaks the truth; And the fifth oath should be invoking the curse of God on himself if he is of those who lie. But it shall avert the punishment from her if she bears witness/testifies before God four times that the thing he says is indeed false, and if she takes an oath a fifth time that the wrath of God be upon her if he speaks the truth. (Quran, 24:6-9)

This is the Islamic law of Al-Li’an. The Bible, on the other hand, has the Law of Jealousy: if a husband suspects his wife of adultery, then he is to bring her to the priest.  The priest will then dump dust and ink into a container of water, and force her to drink the dirtied water.  If she gets sick from it (or dies), it proves the allegation that she was adulterous; if she does not fall sick, then she is exonerated.  Furthermore, the woman is to drink this water in a state of public humiliation: her head is to be uncovered (a sign of shame back then) and she is forced to stand at the east gate of the temple in sight of the people, so that she might serve as a reminder against lewdness.  (All this even before she drinks the contaminated water.)

The Bible declares:

The Test for an Unfaithful Wife

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him by sleeping with another man, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act, and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure–then he is to take his wife to the priest…

The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the LORD. Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.…Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has slept with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have defiled yourself by sleeping with a man other than your husband”–here the priest is to put the woman under this curse of the oath–”may the LORD cause your people to curse and denounce you when he causes your thigh to waste away and your abdomen to swell. May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells and your thigh wastes away. ” Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”

The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. He shall have the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water will enter her and cause bitter suffering…He is to have the woman drink the water.  If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away, and she will become accursed among her people.

If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children. This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and defiles herself while married to her husband, or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the LORD and is to apply this entire law to her [i.e. death by stoning]. The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’” (Numbers 5:11-31)

Matthew Henry, the eminent seventeenth and eighteenth century commentator on the Bible, explained these verses:

We have here the law concerning the solemn trial of a wife whose husband was jealous of her.

I. What was the case supposed:

1. That a man had some reason to suspect his wife to have committed adultery,

2. It is supposed to be a sin which great care is taken by the sinners to conceal, which there is no witness of…

3. The spirit of jealousy is supposed to come upon the husband…then he may compel her to drink the bitter water.  But the law here does not tie him to that particular method of proving the just cause of his suspicion; it might be otherwise proved. In case it could be proved that she had committed adultery, she was to be put to death (Lev. 20:10); but, if it was uncertain, then this law took place. Hence, (1.) Let all wives be admonished not to give any the least occasion for the suspicion of their chastity; it is not enough that they abstain from the evil of uncleanness, but they must abstain from all appearance of it, from every thing that looks like it, or leads to it, or may give the least umbrage to jealousy; for how great a matter may a little fire kindle! (2.) Let all husbands be admonished not to entertain any causeless or unjust suspicions of their wives…

II. The process of the trial must be thus:

(1.) Her husband must bring her to the priest, with the witnesses that could prove the ground of his suspicion, and desire that she might be put upon her trial. The Jews say that the priest was first to endeavour to persuade her to confess the truth…If she confessed, saying, “I am defiled,” she was not put to death, but was divorced and lost her dowry; if she said, “I am pure,” then they proceeded.

…

(3.) The priest was to prepare the water of jealousy…it must be [in] an earthen vessel, because the coarser and plainer every thing was the more agreeable it was to the occasion. Dust must be put into the water, to signify the reproach she lay under, and the shame she ought to take to herself, putting her mouth in the dust; but dust from the floor of the tabernacle…

(4.) The woman was to be set before the Lord, at the east gate of the temple-court (say the Jews), and her head was to be uncovered, in token of her sorrowful condition; and there she stood for a spectacle to the world, that other women might learn not to do after her lewdness, Eze. 23:48…

(5.) The priest was to adjure her to tell the truth, and to denounce the curse of God against her if she were guilty, and to declare what would be the effect of her drinking the water of jealousy, v. 19-22. He must assure her that, if she were innocent, the water would do her no harm, v. 19. None need fear the curse of the law if they have not broken the commands of the law. But, if she were guilty, this water would be poison to her, it would make her belly to swell and her thigh to rot, and she should be a curse or abomination among her people, v. 21, 22…

(6.) The priest was to write this curse in a scrip or scroll of parchment, verbatim-word for word, as he had expressed it, and then to wipe or scrape out what he had written into the water (v. 23), to signify that it was that curse which impregnated the water, and gave it its strength to effect what was intended. It signified that, if she were innocent, the curse should be blotted out and never appear against her, as it is written, Isa. 43:25, I am he that blotteth out thy transgression, and Ps. 51:9, Blot out my iniquities; but that, if she were guilty, the curse, as it was written, being infused into the water, would enter into her bowels with the water, even like oil into her bones (Ps. 109:18)…

(7.) The woman must then drink the water (v. 24); it is called the bitter water…

…

(9.) …If the suspected woman was really guilty, the water she drank would be poison to her (v. 27), her belly would swell and her thigh rot by a vile disease for vile deserts, and she would mourn at the last when her flesh and body were consumed, Prov. 5:11. Bishop Patrick says, from some of the Jewish writers, that the effect of these waters appeared immediately, she grew pale, and her eyes ready to start out of her head… ^[22]

The husband could not only accuse the woman of adultery during the marriage, but of fornication before the wedding.  His testimony was accepted without question unless her father could provide physical proof saying otherwise; the wife’s testimony on the other hand was not considered at all.  The Bible says:

If a man takes a wife and, after lying with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” then the girl’s father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin to the town elders at the gate. The girl’s father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, and the elders shall take the man and punish him. They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the girl’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.

If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you. (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)

Imagine if this was in the Quran: Spencer would have a field day!  He would wax and wane about how the only way the wife in this case could avert stoning to death would be by her parents somehow producing a blood stained cloth–blood from a broken hymen…evidence which seems mighty hard to come by.  And even if she is found innocent by this physical evidence, in that case the husband pays the wife’s father, not her.  Furthermore, the wife stays married to such a husband “as long as he lives.”  But if no proof can be found, which seems the most probable outcome, then she was to be publicly stoned to death by the men of the town.  Again: imagine Spencer’s rantings and ravings if this all were in the Quran!

To be clear: I am not trying here to demonize Christianity.  Obviously the Christians of today do not enforce the Law of Jealousy or demand virgins to show proof of their virginity.  Yet, what is apparent here is the double standard with which Spencer approaches the religious texts. Many Islamophobes pride themselves as being the protectors of the Judeo-Christian tradition, yet squirm when we apply the same standards to Judaism or Christianity.

Conclusion

Robert Spencer relies on half-truths: he only mentions the most conservative opinion amongst Muslims, as if it is somehow the only one.  In reality, contemporary Muslims believe that women can testify in trials, including cases of rape.  They interpret the Quranic verse 2:282 to be limited in scope.

Furthermore, Spencer conveniently neglects to mention that Orthodox rabbinical courts to this day refuse to accept women as witnesses, based on Talmudic teachings.  (And such understandings abounded in Christianity as well.)  Spencer ought to be as critical of the Halakha as the Sharia, but his double standard in this regard is reminiscent of Daniel Pipes’ double standards, as I documented  in a previous article.  This biased methodology underlies the Islamophobic mentality in general.

In part 2 of “Robert Spencer Rapes the Truth,” we’ll discuss the rest of Spencer’s spurious claims on the same topic, focusing specifically on his allegation that a rape victim is lashed if she fails to produce four witnesses.

Footnotes

refer back to article 1. Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), 74-76. ISBN 0-89526-013-1

refer back to article 2. http://www.renaissance.com.pk/Julrefl12y4.html#1.

refer back to article 3. al-Tahir al-Haddad, Muslim Women in Law and Society: Annotated Translation of al-Tahir al-Haddad, 38. ISBN 0415418879, 9780415418874

refer back to article 4. Muzammil H. Siddiqi is the President of the Fiqh Council of North America

refer back to article 5. http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1203515453417&pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar%2FFatwaE%2FFatwaEAskTheScholar

refer back to article 6. Jamal Badawi is a member of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Fiqh Council.

refer back to article 7. http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar%2FFatwaE%2FFatwaEAskTheScholar&cid=1119503544348

refer back to article 8. http://www.renaissance.com.pk/Julrefl12y4.html#1.

refer back to article 9. Jalal Abualrub is a prolific Islamic author and translator

refer back to article 10. The proper term is “Salafi”. “Wahhabi” is considered offensive; it has been used here only because readers may be unfamiliar with “Salafi”.

refer back to article 11. Jalal Abualrub, http://islamlife.com/religion2/

refer back to article 12. as quoted in Tariq Ramadan’s Radical Reform, 53.

refer back to article 13. Jalal Abualrub, http://islamlife.com/religion2/

refer back to article 14. http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1203515453417&pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar%2FFatwaE%2FFatwaEAskTheScholar

refer back to article 15. http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1119503544348&pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar%2FFatwaE%2FFatwaEAskTheScholar

refer back to article 16. al-Tahir al-Haddad, Muslim Women in Law and Society: Annotated Translation of al-Tahir al-Haddad, 38.

refer back to article 17. Jalal Abualrub, http://islamlife.com/religion2/

refer back to article 18. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/agunot1.html

refer back to article 19. http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/teshuvot/docs/20052010/mackler_women_witnesses.pdf

refer back to article 20. Jacob Nuesner, Understanding Rabbinic Judaism, 67. ISBN 0870682385, 9780870682384

refer back to article 21. John Gill’s Exposition to the Bible, Commentary on Deuteronomy 19:17, http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/gills-exposition-of-the-bible/deuteronomy-19-17.html

refer back to article 22. Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary, http://biblebrowser.com/numbers/5-29.htm

Temple University Rejects Geert Wilders

Contrary to what those at the ironically named David Horowitz Freedom Center have been claiming, Geert Wilders was not planning to travel to Philadelphia from the Netherlands solely for the purpose of informing Americans about terrorism.  The notion that a politician from the Netherlands needed to travel to a city less than two hours away from Ground Zero to inform us about the nature of terrorism or the challenges we face from it in the future would be laughable if it were not such a grim indicator of the state of the world today.

So, we must wonder, what then was the real motive for the Dutch politician’s planned visit?  Based on Wilders’ record, it is clear that the purpose behind the speech was to convince Americans that Islam as a religion is the root cause of terror and that the United States must seriously consider curtailing the civil liberties of its Muslim population if it wishes to survive as a free nation.  We need only to look at some of the many previous comments Wilders has made to come to this conclusion.

“It is not a coincidence that every terroristic act, almost every terroristic act, aimed and based on this fascist book, the Koran, and this wrong ideology, Islam, unfortunately has been done by people from Islamic [background]“

“I don’t believe in a moderate Islam.  I don’t believe in what some people call a European Islam. I don’t think there will be [a moderate Islam] and if there will be, in time, it will be in two or three thousand years.”

“Madam Chairman, this country has an excise tax on petrol and diesel, it has parking permits and a dog tax, it has an airline ticket tax and has a packaging tax, so why not tax the headscarf? A Head Rag Tax.”

We were fortunate this time around that students and the administration at Temple University were informed of Wilders’ nefarious agenda by the commendable efforts of the Muslim Students Association on campus and his slanderous speech (which is not protected by the First Amendment) was canceled before it could take place.  Rumor has it though that Columbia University has decided to hold the speech instead.  One can only hope that they too come to the realization that slander is not a right acknowledged by the First Amendment nor is it a form of speech worthy of being granted a position at the podium of an institution of higher learning.

To understand why Wilders’ words should be considered as slanderous, we have to take a few steps back and look at the big picture.  Slander involves the speaking of false words that damage the recipient’s reputation (luckily for Wilders, one can not be sued for slandering a religion or ideology).  Wilders’ claim is that there are elements intrinsic to Islam itself that promote acts of terror against civilians.  To support his position he has crafted a youtube-sized video that cleverly juxtaposes carefully selected passages from the Quran and speeches by terrorist leaders with acts of terror.  Ignoring the fact that anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of the Quran could show that the passages Wilders [and his intellectual brethren in Al Qaeda] chose are taken out of context, Wilders has forgotten the very basic of all rules of statistics.  Correlation does not imply causation. The significant number of Muslims involved in terrorist actions does not mean that Islam is the cause, nor do most Americans follow that crass logic.

How can Islam as a religion be culpable for causing terror if terror itself has had such a long history of being practiced by people of varying faiths and no faith?  When Native Americans attacked and killed all of the inhabitants of Jamestown, what was it but terrorism?  When President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz, what was it but terrorism?  When the Zionist group, Irgun, bombed unarmed Palestinian and British civilians, what was it but terrorism?  Any argument that attempts to assert that Native American beliefs, or anarchist beliefs, or the Zionist movement, intrinsically promote terror against civilians is absurd and patently false.  Similarly, any argument that claims that Islamic scripture promotes terror simply because Islam is the religion practiced by most terrorist today is just as absurd and just as patently false.

There are more than one and a half billion Muslims in the world today.  If Wilders’ assertions about Islam were correct, one in four people would be attempting to kill the other 3 people.  Were this to happen, global civilization would quickly disintegrate as we faced a level of warfare that would make World War II look like nothing more than a rough game of beach volleyball.  Since this is clearly not the case, we are left with the possibility that the vast majority of Muslims who have condemned terrorism have misunderstood their religion and that Geert Wilders, great scholar of Islam that he is, has uncovered Islam’s true message.  Once again, this would be a laughable notion if it were not such a grim indicator of the current realities of political thought.

The unfortunate truth is that terrorism is simply a tool used by peoples who have exhausted all others means of resistance. Fanaticism and terrorism by a people who have had their lives and liberties attacked from every possible direction is a deplorable yet predictable phenomena that is independent from any particular set of religious or ideological beliefs.  In the last century alone, those living in the the “Muslim World” have had to face challenges stemming from the decline of formal religious institutions, the abrupt end of colonialism, the imposition of forced dictatorships, the creation and failure of arbitrary nation-states, and the existence of occupying foreign armies on their land.  The combined effect of these forces has unfortunately resulted in a rise in the number of people who see acts of terror as the only means by which they can establish a system of social justice that they believe will give them the freedoms they desire.  Islamic scripture is used as a way to rationalize the approach these individuals have chosen to achieve their goal, similar to the way Christian scripture was used to rationalize the political and financial ambitions of the papacy during the Crusades.

Until Geert Wilders is able to demonstrate that Islam, and not the numerous other factors that have historically played a role in cultivating terror, is the actual cause for terrorism today–a task as unachievable as it is absurd– his claims amount to slander and defamation and should be treated as such.  Temple University was right to rescind their offer to have Wilders speak and Columbia should follow suit.  Slander has no place in a free and just society; especially slander that utilizes hate speech to promote discrimination.

Editor’s Update: Temple University has decided, under pressure it seems to allow the Temple University Purpose to go ahead with the Geert Wilders speech. After initially signalling that it would not be permitted they are going ahead with it in the name of “free speech,” an argument we addressed above. However, aside from leading administrators it seems the whole University, consisting of the student body and the faculty have indeed “rejected” Wilders.

Temple U. Uneasy as anti-Islam Figure is Set to Speak

The Student Senate has joined ranks with several organizations decrying a student group’s invitation to Dutch politician Geert Wilders, known for anti-Islamic and anti-immigration beliefs, to speak on campus.

In an overwhelming vote yesterday, the governing body passed a resolution denouncing Wilders for “intolerable, disgraceful and prejudiced slandering of the Islamic faith.”

Student Senate President Jeff Dempsey said he couldn’t support the decision to invite Wilders and hoped that the university would pull the plug on the program at the last minute.

“I’ve never been ashamed to be a Temple student,” Dempsey said, adding that university-sponsored dollars were not used to fund the event. “Our proud embrace of diversity and inclusion is tarnished by this man’s provocation of hate.”

Wilders was invited to speak by a new group on campus called Temple University Purpose.

Before the meeting, about a dozen students held signs with phrases including “Temple U. Does Not Condone Hate” and “Hate Speech [does not equal] Free Speech.”

Among the demonstrators was Megan Chialastri, vice president of All Sides, an organization that seeks to promote peace between Israel and Palestine.

“We feel student groups should not bring people on campus that jeopardize the safety, or just the way people feel on this campus,” she said.

In a letter issued last week, Monira Gamal-Eldin, president of the Muslim Students Association, criticized the university for being the first in the United States to allow Wilders to address students.

“The Muslim population at Temple feels attacked, threatened and ultimately unsafe that Mr. Wilders has been invited to voice his hate-driven opinions,” she wrote.

“The decision to allow Mr. Wilders to share his viewpoints is a danger not only for the public safety of Muslims and the honor of the core principle of Islam, but also for academic integrity and objectivity on campus.”

Nonetheless, the event will go on as planned, said university spokesman Ray Betzner. “We respect the right of our student organizations to invite people who express a wide variety of views and ideas,” he wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

David Horowitz, of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which funded the event, issued a letter asking university officials to disregard the concerns of the Muslim students.

“The Temple community should reject the call by the MSA to censor free speech on the Temple campus, and should recognize it for what it is - an assault on the right of all Americans to have a democracy that is inclusive, tolerant and respectful of the rights of others,” he wrote.

The event is not intended to offend any group, but to provide a forum for students to discuss sensitive subjects, said Brittany Walsh, president of Purpose, a social and political group that organized the event. She added that her group does not share Wilders’ views.

“I respect their opposition to it,” she said of the Muslim students. “The purpose of TU Purpose is to hash out unconventional views . . . to promote freedom of speech and give students an education opportunity of a lifetime to raise concerns and issues with a prominent international figure.”

But Barry Scatton, whose College Republicans organization had co-sponsored the event but now condemns it, said that discussion shouldn’t come at the expense of others.

“It’s caused so much personal trauma to a lot of students,” he said. “That is not the goal for me or my organization.”

As a precaution, Temple officials will dispatch university police for crowd control, a security official said. The event is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in Room 17 of Anderson Hall, on Berks Street between 11th and 12th.

Wilders, a leader of the Party for Freedom, in the Netherlands, has made headlines for a string of controversial actions.

In 2008, Wilders escaped prosecution in England for allegedly inciting hatred of Muslims after releasing his short film “Fitna,” in which Quran verses are shown alongside images from terrorist attacks.

Before that, Wilders had called for bans on the Quran - likening it to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf - and the burka, the Muslim women’s garment that covers most of the body.

Muslim Women Protest for their Right to Wear Hijab

In Austria, two girls from the city of Graz have been expelled for setting one of their classmates’ Hijab (headscarf) on fire. (hat tip: Devon Moore)

The Croatian Times reports,

Two schoolgirls are to be expelled after setting a Muslim girl’s hijab headscarf on fire during a school trip.

The 15-year-old girls, from Graz, Austria, escaped race hate charges by claiming the attack was a prank and not related to the victim’s religion.

The Austria News website reports that this is one incident in a growing trend of attacks on Muslims and Muslim women in particular. In a somewhat sloppy translation from the German to English we read,

Austrias Broadcasting Corporation reports that girls and women with a religious preference to the Islam have massive problems in Austria. Few days ago a muslim schoolgirl was attacked by two schoolmates, which tried to set her on fire with a lighter.

Now Muslim associations in Austria claim that such kind of encroachments are no individual cases. Muslim women have to suffer sneer and discriminations day in, day out. Roswitha Al Hussein is the spokeswoman of the female Muslim club called “SOMM”. She said that the case of the Muslim schoolgirl in Styria is extraordinary savage, but also psychological violations, which Muslim women in Austria has to accept day by day, are also quite bad.

“Teachers think that such things are just a dalliance but it’s bullying”, said Mrs Al Hussein. The spokeswoman claims that there is not enough support for Muslim schoogirls from teachers. “Sometimes nasty boys pull on the headscarfs of the girls, and tell them that they should remove it”, said Al Hussein.

Especially in times of election campaigns the situation is becoming worser. People think that it’s socially acceptable to criticize Muslims in public, explains Roswitha Al Hussein. She hopes that there is more support for Muslims in the future.

The two girls who wanted to set their Muslim classmate on fire were sent off from school. They did not wanted to apologize for their offence.

Incidents such as these prove that the climate of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment is not abating, instead it verifies the findings of the Pew Global Studies Survey that Islamophobia is on the rise in Europe.  A worrying trend given the recent successes of far right and fascist parties in different European nations. How long until we see discriminatory and anti-Democratic laws being passed in most of the European parliaments?

The reactions of the anti-Muslim blogosphere to a story such as this has been one of support and happiness, with the crazy wing-nut Shekyermami proclaiming it as an instance of “Hijab Resistance,” while the curiously named Infidels United blamed the victim for her plight saying it was a reaction to the “Muslim Invasion of Austria.”

Walid Shoebat

ThinkProgress, (hat tip:Ustadh) has an article on a recent conference that was titled “How to Take Back America.” It is pretty much a conference centered around the continuing effort to delegitimize President Obama. In this conference we had a convergence of some of the wackiest and conspiratorial figures in the right-wing. In a made for Hollywood train-wreck, the stars aligned to bring Frank Gaffney, Walid Shoebat and Bill Federer (!) together on the question of what religion is Obama.  As you well know that is a recipe for loonieness!

At the How to Take Back America conference last weekend, attended by several Republican lawmakers, former Reagan official and prominent neoconservative Frank Gaffney, right-wing historian Bill Federer, and Christian activist Walid Shoebat hosted a panel on “How to understand Islam.” An attendee of the panel asked the three speakers if they would consider President Obama a Christian or a Muslim, given his “roots.” While Gaffney gave a now familiar response linking Obama to the Muslim Brotherhood, Federer and Shoebat provided new theories, which elicited praise from the crowd:

GAFFNEY: If Bill Clinton, on the basis of special interest pandering and identity politics, was properly called the first Black American President, on that same basis, Barack Obama should be called the first Muslim American President. […] But there is evidence that a lot of Muslims think he is Muslim. But whether he is or whether he isn’t, the key to me, is is he pursuing that is indistinguishable in important respects from that of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose mission ladies and gentlemen, we know from a trial in Dallas last year, is to quote to destroy Western civilization from within by its own miserable hand. That’s what we need to keep our eye on.

FEDERER: In Islam, if your father is a Muslim, you’re automatically a Muslim. Since Barack’s father, stepfather, and grandfather were all Muslim, the Muslim world views him as Muslim. Mohammad allowed his warriors to say they’re not Muslim to gain advantage and um, but he’s uh, Islam permits you to lie to advance Islam, Saul Alinsky allows you to lie to advance your communist agenda, you can put them together.

SHOEBAT: I came from an American mother, Obama came from an American mother. I came from a Muslim father, Obama came from a Muslim father. […] Did you know that your President knows how to do the call to the prayer in eloquent classical Arabic? […] No one can do this in classical Arabic language unless he grew up and was raised as a Muslim.

Watch it:

During the panel, Shoebat advocated entering Arab countries and converting Muslims to Christianity. He also went on a rant about how Muslims in meat packaging plants are contaminating America’s food supply because their hands are unclean.

Gaffney has a record of comparing Obama to Hitler — a major theme of the conference — and spreading other absurd reasons for why he thinks Obama is Muslim. As Matt Duss has noted, although it may be difficult to take Gaffney as a serious analyst, his “transparently bigoted” attacks are given a platform on major media outlets. This reason alone is why Gaffney’s smears shouldn’t be ignored.

In the past week alone, Gaffney has appeared as a pundit on Fox News and MSNBC, has been featured in an article in NewsMax, and wrote an opinion column for the Washington Times.

Fathima Rifqa Bary

This case gets stranger by the day as more and more is revealed about the facts surrounding what actually happened.

Fathima Rifqa Bary claimed under the arm of an Evangelical pastor that her father wanted to kill her; according to new reports, it is now clear that she also secretly fancied herself as a prophet a la Esther in the Bible. Now as kooky as this seems to most of us, in this country we have religious freedom as well as freedom of expression. Rifqa is welcome to join the long line of self-declared prophets that routinely pop up in this country, and we have a right to dismiss her as a brainwashed zealot. But when as a consequence of her new found zeal, she accuses, or is manipulated into accusing, another person of physically harming her and threatening her life then it becomes a  matter of public concern and a matter for the realm of law and order. As has been pointed out before, in both of those realms, Rifqa’s claims have  been not been found to hold water.

Interestingly, all the bloggers who have been in a frenzy over this case, attempting to prove Islam evil, and her family as medieval monsters by manipulating Rifqa into their coveted poster girl for “victim of Islam” have been discredited as they have had to turn to blatant lies to cover up their shameful attempt to destroy a family, but more on that later. Now, they have the extra egg on their face having to explain their enlightened convert’s outrageous claims of prophethood.

(We at LW think that Rifqa should not be demonized, glorified, apostasized, or prophecized — we think she is just another deeply troubled teen in sore need of professional help and hope she gets it. Shame on the Florida wackos and the Spencers and the Gellers who are exploiting her predicament for their own apocalyptic gutter causes.)

Fathima Rifqa Bary: Rifqa’s Personal Writings Indicate She Wants to be a Prophet

By Rene Stutzman and Amy L. Edwards

A Muslim girl who gave her heart to Jesus and then ran away to Christian evangelists in Orlando is not just any Christian. She is driven to save souls and prays that God will make her a prophet.

That’s according to writings she left behind when she fled.

“Lord is preparing me and He has me hidden … until the time is right,” Fathima Rifqa Bary wrote in a computer entry obtained by the Orlando Sentinel. “I am called to the nations. Send me to the deepest darkest places into the pagan land.”

Rifqa, 17, lives with a foster family in the Orlando area. She fled here, she insists, because her father threatened to kill her for abandoning Islam.

There’s no evidence of that, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and child-welfare officials in Columbus, but her claim and her wrenching, tearful YouTube video have prompted a firestorm of response. Thousands of people have weighed in, most insisting that if Florida officials send her back to Ohio, she’ll face certain death.

After Rifqa disappeared July 19, family members searched for clues about why she left. They found a computer flash drive and were stunned by what they read.

Contents of the flash drive were given by her father, Mohamed Bary, to the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Columbus, which shared parts of it with the Sentinel. Bary authorized publication.

Facebook preaching

The writings reveal a young woman who has embraced fundamentalist Christianity, who has stood outside an abortion clinic, duct tape across her mouth, alongside other protesters, and who has dreamed about Armageddon.

She must convert her family to Christianity, she wrote, including her older brother, Rilvan, 18, who worships “demonic music.” She must approach strangers and talk about Jesus. She saved a list of tips on how to do that:

“Do NOT be sneaky,” she wrote. “Sit down … get to know them … [Ask] would you mind for 5min if I share the gospel with you.”

She compared herself to the Old Testament heroine Esther and wrote out or saved religious pep talks.

“What does it take to be a prophet?” she wrote. “If I am a friend of God I can be prophetic. … You have to want it. Everyday pray for prophesy.”

Also on the flash drive are 250 pages of Facebook preaching and blogging by a young Columbus evangelist, Brian Michael Williams, 23, a former Ohio State University sociology student and Rifqa’s religious mentor, according to Bary.

Those are the writings Bary said troubled him most.

Williams prays with people by “laying my hands on the [computer] monitor and prophesying,” Williams wrote. He calls Planned Parenthood’s founder a racist Nazi, does not believe in evolution, speaks in tongues and criticizes mainstream Christians as following a “demonic doctrine” for being spiritually lethargic and failing to evangelize.

Williams baptized Rifqa in a creek near her home in June, he said, and helped her run away — unwittingly, he insists — by driving her to the Greyhound bus station in downtown Columbus.

To Rifqa’s father, Williams is a Christian extremist who turned Rifqa against her family and put lies in her head.

‘An inspiration to me’

Williams said that’s not true. Rifqa, he said, is the one who convinced him that because her father was a Muslim, Bary must kill her to preserve the family’s honor.

“I really appreciate Rifqa’s courage, and she’s been an inspiration to me,” Williams said in a phone interview.

Rifqa’s attorney, John Stemberger, and her guardian ad litem, Krista Bartholomew, were prohibited from commenting on the writings because of a gag order issued by Orange Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson.

In the past week, Rifqa’s parents have launched a new strategy to get their daughter returned to Ohio and placed in its foster-care system. There are now two juvenile-court cases pending in Columbus. Last week, her father filed one, asking a judge to declare his daughter incorrigible for repeatedly being disobedient.

Someone else on Monday filed a separate petition naming Rifqa, something that could give a Franklin County judge the authority to determine where and with whom she lives. The Franklin County, Ohio, Clerk of Courts Office would not identify the petitioner.

Amy L. Edwards of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Rene Stutzman can be reached at 407-650-6394 or rstutzman

@orlandosentinel.com.

Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel

Andrew Bostom and Robert Spencer

Andrew Bostom (well over due for a LoonWatch piece), a close friend of Robert Spencer’s, and another self-proclaimed “Islamic scholar” is lauded on JihadWatch as having “taken on and crushed” Mchael Kruse, the St.Petersburg Times reporter who has been covering the Fathima Rifqa Bary case.

It’s a popular tactic amongst Islamophobes, especially Robert Spencer to try and twist what is clearly a negative outcome for themselves into a self-declared victory with a peppering of congratulatory self-adulation. This was the case with Spencer in his confrontation with Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni, when his alter-ego Hugh Fitzgerald proclaimed “victory” for Spencer and “defeat” for Bassiouni.

The truth is Spencer and company are ever more becoming isolated on the fringes of an increasingly radicalized segment of the Right-Wing, the company he keeps consists of neo-fascists, birthers, conspiracy theorists, Glenn Beck types, etc.

Michael Kruse

In this recent episode Bostom says that Kruse was wrong for stating that Spencer believes that “Muslims are in America to take over,” which from the body of Spencer’s work and the company he keeps is more than likely an accurate presumption, in context it is also the impression that he was trying to give at the press conference outside the courtroom of the Fathima Rifqa Bary case.

A case which is proving to be very embarrassing for Spencer, as evidence after evidence keeps coming out that the charges made by bloggers such as him and Pamela Geller that Rifqa’s life was/had to be in danger and that she was abused by her parents turn out to be bogus. Spencer’s reputation has taken a big hit and he is doing everything in his power to try to salvage some face.

Let’s look at an interesting part of the exchange between Bostom and Kruse:

Kruse to Bostom:

It’s my job to listen to everybody. It’s not my job to assign everybody equal credibility. When it comes to Robert Spencer scholars of Islamic studies outright dismiss him and his body of work. They call him an unreliable ideologue at best and a divisive bigot at worst. I can’t do that, though, can’t just ignore him like that, because he, and Pam Geller, too, are so much a part of this story, and certainly reasons it’s turned into what it’s turned into. Judging from his e-mails and how he talks in person, Rob strikes me as a pretty smart guy, but he’s a pretty smart guy with a very specific worldview. Everything he writes or says gets filtered through that static narrowness. Here is a relatively new dynamic: The other day in Orlando, Rob and Pam were speakers at a news conference, advocates for one “side” of this whole thing, and THEN they covered it as members of the press. They’re covering a story they’ve helped create, or at the very least stoke. The front row of the courtroom was for media, and there was the AP, some newspaper reporters, some TV reporters, some radio reporters, and there was Pam, a woman who last fall wrote a story on her blog saying Barack Obama was the illegitimate son of Malcom X. All of it is an interesting piece of the sprawling Rifqa Bary story, worth watching and considering now, and during the next story like it, and the next one after that.

Here Kruse devastates Bostom and Spencer by pretty much objectively telling it like it is, or as Dave Chapelle used to say Keepin’ it real. This is incomprehensible to polemicists and subjective ideologues such as Bostom and Spencer. It is incontrovertibly true that Spencer (and Bostom for that matter) is completely and thoroughly rejected by academics, we have noted that before here.

Yet, Kruse makes the point that he as a reporter cannot reject Spencer and Pamela Geller out of hand because THEY ARE PART OF THIS STORY. In fact, he points out they have in many ways CREATED this story or at the very least stoked it.

That is absolutely true, ever since the story broke Spencer and Pam have been on a crusade, whipping up their supporters in the blog world to “save Fathima Bary” from a sure “honor killing.” They knew nothing about the family or the context, they cared nothing for this little girl or her future, but eager to make Muslims and Islam look barbarous they attempted to castigate this family in front of the public thereby destroying any chance in those early days of reconciliation.

When fact after fact came out confirming the family’s story, supported by the Ohio police and Children Services, Pamela Geller resorted to making accusations which she claimed she heard from “anonymous sources” that Rifqa Bary was abused throughout her whole life, and that she was even sexually abused by her uncle.

Spencer applauded her in all this, extolling that the mainstream media was ignoring this “mountain of evidence” secured by Pamela Geller that showed that Rifqa Bary’s family was fundamentalist crazy and had abused her. For some reason the police were unable to unearth any evidence of these libelous accusations? Probably because they are made up whole-cloth.

Kruse, highlights how incongruous it is for a woman such as Pamela Geller,  who claims Obama is a Mooslim, anti-Semite, Socialist son of Malcolm X to be in the press area covering a story that she is actively creating. Bostom responds with more polemic,

Bostom to Kruse:

I deal with your non-sequiturs about Robert and Pamela, below. But first, you deliberately and grossly misrepresented what Robert said and the very specific context in which he made his statement–despite standing right next to him, as one can see in the videotape. That reflects very poorly on your own credibility and your ability to judge anyone else’s for that matter.

Do you not see that? Do you not see your own transparent–certainly to me– “static narrowness?”

As for scholarship, who are you to judge? What do you know about Islamic doctrine and history??

I asked you to contact Ibn Warraq via e-mail–He says he never heard from you, and judging from your responses to my repeated questioning you never obtained his definitive scholarly assessment of apostasy, “Leaving Islam”–so clearly real scholarship on the subject matter at hand—apostasy from Islam–does not even appeal to you.

Have you attempted to contact another high profile apostate from Islam, Nonie Darwish, who recently published “Cruel and Usual Punishment,” and wrote about a high profile apostasy case ongoing NOW in her native Egypt, in early August??

I have compiled, edited, and introduced two critically acclaimed scholarly compendia–one on the jihad, the other on Islamic Antisemitism. I have also read and on several occasions reviewed Robert’s books, and they easily exceed most of what passes for “scholarship” on Islam in today’s academy–despite targeting, deliberately, the larger lay audience. Regardless, they are solid works in their own right that are meticulously documented. Have you read them and found identifiable flaws in any of them??

As for Pamela, excuse me, but from my where I sit, she is doing the basic shoe leather investigative reporting those like yourself have thus far refused to do.

How many of Rifqa’s friends have you interviewed, starting for example with the now publicly identified Jamal Jivangee? What sort of of financial investigation of Mr. and Mrs. Bary’s businesses have you conducted??

I think you are being very disingenuous, and your pretense of “objectivity” is simply ludicrous.

As we mentioned Kruse did not misrepresent Spencer, Spencer just spoke very badly and it is not a stretch for Kruse to say that Spencer believes “Muslims are in America to take over” because that is exactly what he was insinuating at that right-wing blogger “press conference.” Then Bostom attempts to accuse Kruse of being ill-informed and not knowing anything about Islam (ironic) and then lists himself (in a bit of shameless self-promotion) and another Islamophobic writer, Ibn Warraq as “experts” that Kruse should have contacted.

This is a highly rich and whiny statement at the same time, what part of discredited do Bostom and Spencer not get? People don’t choose you guys as experts in the field of Islam because you are a pair of polemicists with deep hatred for Islam and Muslims. You can’t blame people for not considering you suitable candidates. He also trots out Nonie Darwish who believes there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim, she dumps all Muslims in the radical camp, she also compares Islam to Nazism amongst other interesting Islamophobic anecdotes.

By this time Kruse is almost done, knowing by now where Andrew Bostom comes from, i.e. the far right lunatic camp and says,

Kruse to Bostom:

I should stop, I know this, but I just have to ask: We’ve talked on the phone, we’ve e-mailed, and you seem like an intelligent person, so how can you possibly take Pam Geller seriously?

Bostom to Kruse:

Excuse me, but just as you have calumniated Spencer–with a live video record to debunk you and prove your deliberate misrepresentation—you’ve now done the same with Geller.

From here:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/10/how-could-stanl.html

“The ‘Atlas says that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child’ charge has gone viral among leftards and lizards. The only problem with it is that it is false. I am not the author of this post, and I posted it because the writer did a spectacular job documenting Obama’s many connections with the Far Left. The Malcolm X claim is one minor part of this story, and was of interest to me principally as part of the writer’s documentation that Stanley Ann Dunham could not have been where the Obama camp says she was at various times. I do not believe that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child, and never did — but there remain many, many unanswered questions about his early life and upbringing.”

As a scrupulously honest, painstakingly objective journalist you must know that Pamela has written “I do not believe that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child, and never did”? Would you even care if you did know?

We know the answer to that, as your calumny against Spencer makes plain.

As we demonstrated Kruse didn’t calumny against Spencer or Geller but Bostom does by trying to defend Pamela. Pamela is thoroughly discredited for more then her posting of the Malcolm-X-is-the-father-of-Barack-Obama-conspiracy, which she attempts to half-heartedly disavow now, but also for her other conspiracies that Barack Obama is a Muslim, that he was indoctrinated into Jihad in Pakistan, that he hates Jews and is an anti-Semite, that he is not an American citizen and was not born in America; all that doesn’t even touch a bit of what she says about Palestinians, Arabs, and real Muslims.

On her post about Barack Obama being the illegitimate son of Malcolm X, which she now claims she doesn’t support, there are some troubling questions that it seems Bostom doesn’t want to raise or answer. Like the obvious as day and night, why did she post that crazy article in the first place? Is that any way to prove that there was “no way that Obama’s mother could have been in America when Obama was born?” The fact is that Pam posted the piece with out any qualifiers, she posted it in her name without attributing it to anyone else. That brings her story of never having supported it into high doubt, the attempt to cover it up now and sweep it under the rug is not going to work especially when her track record has been loonier than the loons.

"The Islamic State of Eurabia"

We all have them: crazy uncles or senile grandparents raving about one conspiracy theory or the other on the dinner table. “Man landing on the moon was a big hoax,” or something about Kennedy’s assassination.  We’d smile and continue eating our leftover mashed potatoes smothered in gravy, then politely ask to be excused on account of work early the next morning, the car ride back home full of mirthful post-dinner analysis of the crazy dinner table conspiracy talk.

So when we first read about Bat Ye’or, a lady with no educational qualifications to speak of, who came up with the crazy conspiracy theory entitled “Eurabia,” we here at LoonWatch barely reacted. If a zany lady comes up with some insane theory, we’re certainly not going to take her seriously, at least not any more than the crazy old McCain lady.

The sad reality, however, is that Bat Ye’or is now being used by leading Islamophobes as a primary source for their research and subsequent analysis.  So who is Bat Ye’or?  Well, first of all, her name is not Bat Ye’or.  That’s just her “screen-name.”  For many years, she kept her real identity a secret, and only wrote under this moniker, which is Hebrew for “daughter of the Nile.”  She also had another screen-name, which was Yahudiya Masriya, Arabic for “Egyptian Jewess.”  Her real name is Gisele Littman, and she’s vitriolically anti-Muslim and anti-Islam.

She has written a handful of articles and books–with the basic theme that Muslims have savagely oppressed Non-Muslims (”dhimmis”) throughout history.  These resources written by her are used as reference sources by famous Islamophobes like Robert Spencer (the face behind the xenophobic websites Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch). Spencer hailed Bat Ye’or as “the pioneering scholar of dhimmitude, of the institutionalized discrimination and harassment of non-Muslims under Islamic law.”  Daniel Pipes, an Islamophobic professor, cites her work numerous times. She has emerged from relative obscurity to fame, her work being the backbone of Islamophobic (mis)characterization of Islamic history.

Pamela Geller, admin of the anti-Muslim site Atlas Shrugs, declares: “Bat Ye’or is the world’s foremost leading scholar on Islam.” Amazing how the “world’s foremost leading scholar on Islam” has no educational background and absolutely no credentials at all from a recognized university; truly amazing that anyone can become the world’s leading scholar on Islam with just a library card, a keyboard and internet connection, and of course the key ingredient of all–an all encompassing hatred of Islam.  Can one imagine the world’s leading scholar on Judaism being an Anti-Semite?  This just in: the world’s foremost leading scholar on Judaism is an Anti-Semitic Hamas member. Absurd!

Bat Ye’or is Not a Scholar

Bat Ye’or is not a scholar; she does not have the credentials of a historian from any recognized university.  She is referred to as an “independent researcher,” a euphemism for a random person who goes to the library, opens up some books, and starts writing. Adi Shwartz, a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, rightfully points out Bat Ye’or’s lack of credentials:

Europe allowed the immigration of millions of Muslims to its territories…and will ultimately…transform Europe into a continent under the thumb of the Arab and Muslim world. Europe is dead, and in its stead “Eurabia” has arisen.

This controversial thesis belongs to Bat Ye’or, the pen name of a self-taught Jewish intellectual who was born in Egypt and who currently lives in Switzerland. She refuses to reveal her real name for security reasons, she says, but her thesis is just the prologue to far-reaching conclusions and extreme statements…While her ideas were once almost completely ignored, nowadays, because of the prevailing consternation in Europe regarding its complex relations with the Muslim world, she is receiving more attention, though she is still quite far from entering the European mainstream…

Bat Ye’or’s opinions have made her a controversial figure, as has the fact that she is not an academic and has never taught at any university. She conducts her research independently.

Professor Robert Wistrich, head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, says of her:

Up until the 1980s, she was not accepted at all. In academic circles they scorned her publications…A real change toward her emerged in the 1990s, and especially in recent years.

In other words, Bat Ye’or was never taken seriously by academics; it was only recently due to the political climate of Islamophobia that her works have become oft-cited by certain elements of society.  Interestingly enough, Bat Ye’or herself admits this:

They didn’t even mention my name in publications. In the United States, I am certain that the September 11 attacks woke people up, including the Jewish community that had previously ignored me…

It truly calls to question the legitimacy of the Islamophobes that they use as their main source a woman who has no credentials and whose work was scorned and ignored by academics and only became popular due to a wave of xenophobia:

[Professor Wistrich said:] “In a survey conducted in Germany recently 83 percent gave the answer ‘fanaticism’ to the question ‘What is Islam?’ Sixty percent said there was a clash of civilizations. This is why Bat Ye’or is getting more attention these days.”

Her opinions on the integration of the Muslims and Europe’s bleak future are acquiring many supporters for her in Europe’s extreme right-wing circles.

Those numbers are staggering, and frightening.  An overwhelming majority (83%) of Germans believe that Islam is fanaticism. (One can imagine what a similar poll conducted in the early 1930’s or 40’s-during the reign of the Nazis-would have shown had it asked what their view of Judaism was.)  It is such a climate that leads to pogroms, and it seems that Bat Ye’or wishes to tap into this potential.  She admits that her works are embraced by “the extreme right and in racist movements.” She gives them the wink and nod, with the usual half-hearted disclaimer that “attacking Muslims, sometimes even physically, is stupid.” Any bigotry short of that, of course, is fine and dandy.  Wistrich, who invited her to speak at a conference in Jerusalem, cracked a crass joke:

At the conference I said half-joking that it was possible to call this [her book] ‘the protocols of the elders of Brussels.’

It is interesting that Wistrich could be so mirthful about such a serious topic, as if it is somehow comical for a person to write a document that would result in ethnic strife.  Again, a frightening idea.  Adi Schwartz, the Israeli journalist who questioned her credentials, aptly titled his article on her “The Protocols of the Elders of Brussels.”

Bat Ye’or: Neutral Academic or Biased Ideologue?

Bat Ye'or: a crazy old lady

Bat Ye’or has an axe to grind; there could be no one more biased than her.  Her antipathy towards Islam stems from her stormy past: in 1957, she was expelled from Egypt during the Israeli invasion of Sinai.  Although one can and should most definitely sympathize with her plight, it seems that she has–like so many racists before her–reacted to bigotry by becoming a bigot.  She was wronged by Muslims, and now she wants to take vengeance, which has blinded her.  Bat Ye’or said in an interview:

I wrote these books because I had witnessed the destruction, in a few short years, of a vibrant Jewish community living in Egypt for over 2,600 years and which had existed from the time of Jeremiah the Prophet. I saw the disintegration and flight of families, dispossessed and humiliated, the destruction of their synagogues, the bombing of the Jewish quarters and the terrorizing of a peaceful population. I have personally experienced the hardships of exile, the misery of statelessness-and I wanted to get to the root cause of all this. I wanted to understand why the Jews from Arab countries, nearly a million, had shared my experience.

This is not unbiased and dispassionate academic study; for Bat Ye’or, this is personal.  From the above quote alone, one can see the inconsistency in Bat Ye’or’s views.  During the Israeli occupation of Sinai, anti-Semitism surged in Egypt and within “a few short years” an end was brought to “a vibrant Jewish community living in Egypt for over 2,600 years.”  Does she not see the inconsistency here?  Over one thousand of those 2,600 years were during Muslim rule of Egypt, which began in 639 AD.  During that time period, there was a Jewish community which thrived, or as Bat Ye’or words it, was “vibrant.”  Surely then it makes no sense to generalize the “few short years” to all of Islamic history.

Conspiracy Theory: Palestinians Don’t Exist; Europeans Created Them

It is an irony that Bat Ye’or laments about “the hardships of exile, [and the] misery of statelessness,” which is exactly what the Palestinian people have suffered from.  Yet, Bat Ye’or, a fervent supporter of Israel goes even further than some of the most extreme Right-Wing Israelis and even denies the existence of a Palestinian people, arguing that “the Palestinian cause was created mainly in Europe.”   To put her quote into context, she says:

The Kurds, the Berbers, the Basques (Spain) and the Corsicans (France) have nationalist characteristics, but not the Palestinians.  The Palestinian cause was created mainly in Europe…

So Kurds, Berbers, Basques, and Corsicans are all peoples, but not the Palestinians, who are an imaginary peoples invented by Europe.  So why exactly did Europe create the Palestinian people?  She explains:

The Palestinian cause was created mainly in Europe, with the purpose to transfer onto the Palestinians the Jewish history in order to delegitimize Israel and to absolve Europe from the Holocaust by throwing onto Israel its own European history of Nazism, apartheid and colonialism.

Let us allow the reader to properly understand her conspiracy theory: she is arguing that the Palestinian people were created by Europe in order to paint Israel as being guilty of Nazism, apartheid, and colonialism–in order to absolve themselves of blame for the Holocaust which created the state of Israel.  One can imagine the European leaders convening in some secret lair–shoddy lighting and a room full of cigar smoke–contemplating how to absolve themselves of blame for the Holocaust.  “I got it!” exclaims one especially wily European intellectual.  “We’ll invent a people–let’s call them ‘Palestinians’–and say that they existed in the land of Israel!”  They passed it to a vote, and voila!  The Europeans then made a few calls and engineered the Palestinian race.  As Jon Stewart said mockingly about the Obama-being-a-stealth-Jihadist-from-Yemen theory: “It was just too easy.”

Bat Ye’or’s conspiracy theory is creative no doubt, but ludicrous.  This is the woman whom Islamophobes like Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, and Pamela Geller cite as a primary source for their views on Islam, thus highlighting that they have absolutely no academic integrity or credibility.

Conspiracy Theory: Europe Will Become a Vassal State to the Arab World

Bat Ye’or is a fringe conspiracy theorist who argues that “Europe will become a vassal [state], a satellite of the Arab world.” Such alarmist drivel that no sane person could take her seriously.  The irony is that the reality is the exact opposite: it is the Arab world that plays second fiddle compared to the West.  Tell us, Bat Ye’or, how will the Arabs make a vassal state out of Europe?  Them and which army?  The combined Arab might pales in front of Israel; how can the Arab world then vanquish all of Europe?  Such senseless fear mongering.

Conspiracy Theory: European Universities are Controlled by Palestinians

As part of her global conspiracy theory, Bat Ye’or argues that “[European] universities, for example, are controlled by the Palestinians.” Oh why of course!  In fact, the deans of the European universities are all “stealth Palestinians;” every year they travel to the Gaza Strip for an annual ceremony, where Hamas leaders dictate what the curriculum will be for the year, and indoctrinate them in all things jihad.  It is in fact funding from Palestine that is keeping the European universities afloat.  (deadpan face)

Can one imagine the reaction of Islamophobes if some Moozlim-looking person said that the Western universities were controlled by “the Jews?”  They would call such a person not only a crazy conspiracy theorist but a racist, and rightfully so, but the issue here is the profound double standard.  You want to say something outlandish about Jews or any other minority?  Not acceptable  (Rightfully so).  But say the same thing about Muslims?  Then you get your own show on Fox News, and your books will become best-sellers (of the “What’s Wrong with Islam” or “Why I’m Not a Muslim” variety).

Conspiracy Theory: The Rise of Eurabia

The culmination of Bat Ye’or’s theories is what she coins as “Eurabia,” a (not so) clever combination of the words “Europe” and “Arabia.”  Basically, the theory is that Arab and Muslim immigration (of “stealth jihadists”) will soon overwhelm Europe, destroy Western culture and civilization forever, and replace the democratic governments with Taliban style theocracies.   While that does sound like an interesting plot for a fictional movie, it is pure insanity to take this seriously.  Bat Ye’or is simply delusional.  David Aaronovitch, a journalist for The Times, labels Bat Ye’or as a conspiracy theorist:

Pinch me a third time while we get to grips with “Eurabia”. This is a concept created by a writer called Bat Ye’or who, according to the publicity for her most recent book, “chronicles Arab determination to subdue Europe as a cultural appendage to the Muslim world-and Europe’s willingness to be so subjugated”. This, as students of conspiracy theories will recognise, is the addition of the Sad Dupes thesis to the Enemy Within idea.

Aaronovitch would know; he wrote the book entitled Voodoo Histories: the role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History.  (Aaronovitch is no “dhimmi” as the Islamophobes would say; he produced a pro-Israeli documentary titled Blaming the Jews.)

Conspiracy Theory: The Churches of Europe are Colluding with Muslims

Bat Ye’or’s lunacy can be ascertained by some of her even more outlandish claims.  For example, she accuses the churches in Europe of being in a state of “collusion with the Muslims,” which she says have of their own volition become “Christian slave militias” that will “spearhead…the Islamic war against Christianity.”  According to her, the churches of Europe “reject…the Bible, which they read with a Koranic understanding.”  She goes on to say that European Christians “are more inclined to follow the Koranic Muslim Jesus, called Isa, than the Jewish Jesus.” Can any sober academic–or even sensible layman–take such drivel seriously?  But perhaps the reader thinks that we have taken her words out of context (after all, who could say something so crazy!), so let us reproduce her entire nonsensical answer verbatim so that her madness can be firmly established in the eyes of the reader:

JW: You’re accusing churches of collusion with the Muslims?

BY [Bat Ye'or]: Yes. Those churches know perfectly well the dire condition of Christians in Muslim lands. But instead of denouncing it, they adopt the militancy of the Janissaries, those Christian slave militias that were the spearhead of the Islamic war against Christianity. They forbid Christians to reveal the iniquities of modern dhimmitude in Arab countries, the enslavement of Christians in Sudan, the abductions and jihadic terror against innocent population. Those churches follow an arcionist theological line which separates the Gospels from the Hebrew Bible. They reject the historical legitimacy of Israel in its own land and, therefore, reject also the Bible, which they read with a Koranic understanding. They are more inclined to follow the Koranic Muslim Jesus, called Isa, than the Jewish Jesus. In my book, I call them the Islamized churches because their rejection of Israel’s history implies their refusal of the Bible and their acceptance of the Koranic version of the Bible that considers Christianity as a deformation of Islam.

This lunacy has been affirmed by another well-known loon–Daniel Pipes–who writes:

The historian Bat Ye’or, the first person to comprehend the gradual process of Europe accepting the dhimmi status, observes that this fundamental shift began with the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, when the continent began moving “into the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence, thus breaking the traditional trans-Atlantic solidarity.”

Translation: not only has Europe fallen under the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence–and not only has it become a subservient “dhimmi” to the Arab world–it is doing so willingly and of its own volition.  Riiiight, riiiight.  So Pipes is not far behind Bat Ye’or in looniness, which explains his reliance on her work.

Voice of Reason

Adam Keller, a well-known Israeli peace activist and cofounder of Gush Shalom, wrote a letter of protest to the Israeli publisher of Bat Ye’or’s book:

In 1886 the French antisemite Edouard Drumont published ‘La France Juive’ (Jewish France), creating the false nightmarish image of a France dominated by Jews, and sowing the poisonous seeds which came to fruit when Vichi French officials collaborated in the mass murder of French Jewry…

Bat Yeor’, [is] a British inflammatory writer who presumes to be a historian and who, I regret to note, is Jewish.  In this book - which, like the other works of this writer, is little more than a rabid anti-Muslim tract - ‘Bat Yeor’ follows in notorious footsteps indeed by creating the false nightmarish image of a Europe dominated by Arabs and Muslims. As Edouard Drumont sought to arouse the French people to persecute and kill their Jewish neighbours, so does Ms. Littman intend to drive Europeans into a continent-wide orgy of hatred and violence against the Muslim immigrants who are now a significant ethnic minority throughout the continent, and the great majority of whom seek nothing but to live useful and fruitful lives in their new homelands.

Ms. Littman’s reasons for writing her racist and inflammatory book are all too obvious. The reasons why you, a respectable publishing house, have chosen to present it to the Israeli public are far more obscure. Whatever these reasons might be, surely - now that you already taken this step - it would be appropriate to complete your task and produce also a companion volume, i.e. a Hebrew translation of ‘La France Juive’? After all, the informed Israeli reading public deserves to be given the chance of comparing the classical work of a master racist demagogue with that of his loyal present-day disciple and successor.

Craigh Smith of The New York Times refers to Bat Ye’or as one “of the most extreme voices” of the right:

A curious thing is happening in Belgium these days: a small but vocal number of Jews are supporting a far-right party whose founders were Nazi collaborators. The xenophobic party, Vlaams Belang, plays on fears of Arab immigrants and, unlike the prewar parties from which it is descended, courts Jewish votes…

Those fears shape some of the most extreme voices on the new Jewish right. Giselle Littman, who was expelled from Egypt in 1957 and now publishes under the pseudonym Bat Yeor, argues in her latest book, ”Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis,” that Europe has consciously allied itself with the Arab world at the expense of Jews and the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Johann Hari of The Independent writes of Bat Ye’or:

There are intellectuals on the British right who are propagating a conspiracy theory about Muslims that teeters very close to being a 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Mecca. Meet Bat Ye’or, a “scholar” who argues that Europe is on the brink of being transformed into a conquered continent called “Eurabia”.

In this new land, Christians and Jews will be reduced by the new Muslim majority to the status of “dhimmis” - second-class citizens forced to “walk in the gutter”. This will not happen by accident. It is part of a deliberate and “occult” plan, concocted between the Arab League and leading European politicians like Jacques Chirac and Mary Robinson, who secretly love Islam and are deliberately flooding the continent with Muslim immigrants. As Orianna Fallacci - one of the best-selling writers in Italy - has summarised the thesis in her hymns of praise to Ye’or, “Muslims have been told to come here and breed like rats.”

Rather than dismissing her preposterous assertions, high-profile writers like Melanie Phillips, Daniel Pipes and Niall Ferguson laud Ye’or as a suppressed hero, silenced by (you guessed it) “political correctness”. Her name is brandished as a gold standard in right-wing Tory circles. It’s interesting that writers so alert to anti-Semitism have lent their names to an ideology that is so startlingly similar. In this theory, the Star of David has simply been replaced by the Islamic crescent. If the term has any meaning, this is authentic Islamophobia, treating virtually all Muslims as verminous sharia-carriers. So why are these people still treated as serious and sane by the BBC and its editors?

Selective and Shoddy “Scholarship”

Bat Ye’or’s idea of history is nothing short of propaganda.  She said in one interview:

The Arab invaders arrived in [Jerusalem in] the 7th century, devastated the country, massacred and enslaved the population and expropriated the Jewish and Christian indigenous populations, as is related by contemporaneous sources.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

As for her actual work on dhimmis (Non-Muslims under Muslim rule) is concerned, it is selective and shoddy “scholarship.”  Professor Robert Brenton Betts, a well-renowned American historian who worked for the Library of Congress and the Department of State, criticizes Bet Ye’or’s book:

The general tone of the book is strident and anti-Muslim. This is coupled with selective scholarship designed to pick out the worst examples of anti-Christian behavior by Muslim governments, usually in time of war and threats to their own destruction (as in the case of the deplorable Armenian genocide of 1915). Add to this the attempt to demonize the so-called Islamic threat to Western civilization and the end-product is generally unedifying and frequently irritating.

(source: Robert Brenton Betts, “The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude” Middle East Policy 5-3 ; September 1997, pp. 200-2003)

Professor Michael Sells of the University of Chicago writes:

By obscuring the existence of pre-Christian and other old, non-Christian communities in Europe as well as the reason for their disappearance in other areas of Europe [due to Christian persecution], Bat Ye’or constructs an invidious comparison between the allegedly humane Europe of Christian and Enlightenment values and the ever present persecution within Islam. Whenever the possibility is raised of actually comparing circumstances of non-Christians in Europe to non-Muslims under Islamic governance in a careful, thoughtful manner, Bat Ye’or forecloses such comparison.

(source: The New Crusades: Construction the Muslim Enemy, by Professor Michael Sells, p.364)

In other words, the comparison that Bat Ye’or–and Islamophobes in general–flee from is the one between the Muslim lands in the pre-modern era with the contemporaneous Christian Europe.  Instead, they choose to compare medieval Islamdom with post-enlightenment and postmodern standards, a most unequal and unusually obtuse comparison.  Jan Platvoet sums it up best with a very nuanced answer (emphasis is mine):

Arab scholars praise the tolerance of Islam towards the ‘protected population’.  The Egyptian Qasim ‘Abduh Qasim, for instance, who has published several works on the dhimmis in Muslim lands in general, and Egypt in particular, emphasizes the positive attitude of Muslims towards non-Muslims, even under the regime of the eleventh-century Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, known for his persecution of minorities, especially the Christians.

The opposite point of view is represented by a number of researchers, notably a writer who [uses] the pseudonym Bat Ye’or, i.e. Daughter of the Nile.  She has managed to select from the body of historiographical evidence, chronicles and documents, only that material which portrays the negative aspects.  Some such materials can occasionally be found, relating to various episodes, periods, and areas; it is therefore no wonder that she has succeeded in filling a complete volume, now published in several languages, on the maltreatment of the dhimmis by Muslims.  Bat Ye’or has recently published a new book dedicated exclusively to the long history of Christians under Muslim rule; this book is characterized by the same spirit as her previous book on the dhimmis.

…It seems that the truth lies somewhere in between [Qasim and Bat Ye'or's version]…The life of the dhimmis in the shade of Islam was certainly not easy, but at least their physical security (aman) and the safety of their property was assured, almost without exception.

(Pluralism and Identity, by Jan Platvoet, p.169)

Nazi propaganda showing Jewish octopus taking over the world, not unlike image up top of Islamic crescent taking over Europe

In other words, Bat Ye’or scours historical texts to find all the negative points she possibly can, and then she compiles them into a book.  Naturally, the span of Islamic history was over a thousand years, so she can easily fill up hundreds of pages, giving the credulous reader the false impression that Islamic history was incredibly dastardly.  To give a suitable analogy, let’s say Rodney King were to scour all the reports throughout the country for the last fifty years for all acts of police brutality–and then compiled them into a book–he could easily fill hundreds of pages.  A person who relied on his book would get the false impression that the police were–and are–always brutal, or at least more so than not.  One gets a skewed picture from such a selective analysis.

The Islamophobe Robert Spencer argues that Bat Ye’or’s book is convincing because it is “full…[of] almost half primary source documents so that one can see the voracity of what she is saying from very ancient texts.” Yet it is convincing only because it is selective and biased; Bat Ye’or simply sifted throughout Islamic history to selectively find all the instances of anti-Jewish and anti-Christian persecution, ignoring the overwhelming majority of Islamic history which was characterized according to the overwhelming number of scholars by relative tolerance (for the times, and certainly compared to Christendom); if Bat Ye’or could fill a book with her quotes, it would only be a slight exaggeration to say that we could fill an entire anthology with quotes highlighting the relative tolerance of Muslims.  Taken selectively, Bat Ye’or’s choice of quotes seem damning, but diluted within the proper context, they would be less convincing of an argument.  One can easily carry out such a hatchet job on Christian (and even Jewish) history in a similar fashion.

World renowned Jewish-Israeli historian Nissim Rejwan warns:

By way of conclusion, a word of caution is in order…It must be pointed out that the picture has not been uniformly so rosy and that instances of religious intolerance toward and discriminatory treatment of Jews under Islam are by no means difficult to find. This point is of special relevance at a time in which, following a reawakening of interest in the history of Arab-Jewish relations among Jewish writers and intellectuals, certain interested circles have been trying to…[question the] Judeo-Arabic tradition or symbiosis by digging up scattered pieces of evidence to show that Islam is essentially intolerant…and that Muslims’ contempt for Jews was even greater and more deep-seated than that manifested by Christians…

Such caricatures of the history of Jews under Islam continue to be disseminated by scholars as well as by interested publicists and ideologues. Indeed, all discussion of relations between Jews and Muslims…is beset by the most burning emotions and by highly charged sensitivities. In their eagerness to repudiate the generally accepted version of these relations (a version which, it is worthwhile pointing out, originates not in Muslim books of history but with Jewish historians and Orientalists in nineteenth-century Europe), certain partisan students of the Middle East conflict today seem to go out of their way to show that, far from being the record of harmonious coexistence it is often claimed to be, the story of Jewish-Muslim relations since the time of Muhammad was “a sorry array of conquest, massacre, subjection, spoilation in goods and women and children, contempt, expulsion-[and] even the yellow badge…”

Informed by a fervor seldom encountered in scholarly discourse, some of these latter-day historians have gone so far as to question even the motives of those European-Jewish scholars of the past century who virtually founded modern Oriental and Arabic studies and managed to unearth the impressive legacy of Judeo-Arabic culture, a culture that was undeniably an outcome of a long and symbiotic encounter between Muslims and Jews.

…[But] by the standards then prevailing-and they are plainly the only ones by which a historian is entitled to pass judgment-Spanish Islamic tolerance was no myth but a reality of which present-day Muslim Arabs are fully justified in reminding their contemporaries…Tolerance, then, is a highly relative concept, and the only sensible way of gauging the extent of tolerance in a given society or culture in a given age is to compare it with that prevailing in other societies and cultures in the same period…

The only plausible conclusion one could draw from the whole debate is that, while Jewish life in Muslim Spain-and under Islam generally-was not exactly the idyllic paradise some would want us to believe, it was far from the veritable hell that was the Jews’ consistent lot under Christendom.

Bat Ye’or: The Pioneer of “Dhimmitude”

The Usual Suspects: Bat Ye'or and Robert Spencer

It should be noted that the Islamophobe Robert Spencer refers to Bat Ye’or as “the pioneering scholar of dhimmitude” (emphasis is ours).  The word “pioneer” indicates that she is the first to voice such views.  In other words, the traditional and long-established understanding of academics and historians is at variance with Bat Ye’or’s assessment: Muslim history was characterized by relative lenience and tolerance towards dhimmis.  (Again, all things are relative; while certainly it wouldn’t be considered tolerant to today’s standards and norms, back then it certainly was, evidenced by historical statements from the “dhimmis” themselves.)

The fact that Bat Ye’or is the first to challenge traditional and established opinion is evidenced by what J.G. Jansen, an outspoken Dutch critic of militant Islam, says:

In 1985, Bat Ye’or offered Islamic studies a surprise with her book, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, a convincing demonstration that the notion of a traditional, lenient, liberal, and tolerant Muslim treatment of the Jewish and Christian minorities is more myth than reality.

While Jansen’s view that Bat Ye’or’s book is “convincing” is certainly questionable coming from him, his quote is significant in that it shows that up until Bat Ye’or’s book the traditional and predominant scholarly opinion was that Islamic history was characterized by relative tolerance, certainly in comparison to contemporaneous Christendom. Bat Ye’or is after all the one who coined the term “dhimmitude,” which Islamophobes–including Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes–make recurrent use of.

The Usual Suspects: Bat Ye'or and Pamela Geller

The fact that Bat Ye’or is the first to counter traditional opinion does not mean that the predominant view of scholars has changed, as Bat Ye’or “is still quite far from entering the European mainstream,” according to Shwartz.  But–according to Wistrich–”a real change toward her emerged in the 1990s, and especially in recent years,” as she became accepted in “extreme right-wing circles.”  It is this motley group which is trying through sheer force and fear to influence academia, and push pseudo-intellectuals like Bat Ye’or into the arena of historical discourse.  The fact that the leading Islamophobes reference her (including Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, and Pamela Geller) indicates the weakness of their sources, and calls to question their own credibility.

Spencer argues that it is only “political correctness” that prevents people from taking Bat Ye’or seriously; no, my Islamophobic friend, it is not political correctness, but academic integrity.  When you consider an Islamophobe to be the leading scholar of Islam in the world, then something is profoundly wrong.  Simply substitute the word “Jews” for “Muslims” in the following sentence and the matter becomes clear: “Muslims will take over Europe.”  Anyone who said that about Jews would be branded an Anti-Semite and academically ostracized, yet hey, it’s open season for Muslim-bashing!

The Bottom Line

Even if we were to accept the fallacious argument that Muslim history was characterized by profound and incessant intolerance, then what does that mean for us today?  The Mongols were historically known to be intolerant, at least the Genghis Khan variety; how should that affect our opinion of Mongolians today?  Do we discriminate against them based on their historical record?  What do the present day Mongolians have to do with those of the past?  Do people inherit sins?

The relevance of Islamic history to today’s popular discourse is questionable.  It is in fact designed to demonize Muslims, but the reality is that the question shouldn’t even arise.  Why is it that Muslims of today are on trial for what their ancestors supposedly did?  Should all nations now demand their pound of flesh from all who wronged their people in ancient times?  Maybe we should create a system of reparations…?

Then what is the end goal for Islamophobes like Bat Ye’or?  Why does she spend so much time pontificating about the historical record?  It all boils down to one thing: immigration. She has highlighted the negative aspects of Islamic history in order to push the argument for a tight control (or rather, full cessation) of Arab and Muslim immigration to Europe.  Indeed, Islamophobia is simply another flavor of xenophobia.

In every generation, there have been xenophobes, who have this irrational fear of the other.  In American history, it started with the Irish and Italian immigrants who were both heavily discriminated against due to their religion and skin color.  Then it was against the Chinese who were brought to build railroads, the Japanese in World War II, and so on.  What history has born out consistently however is that the xenophobes always end up with egg on their faces.  They are on the wrong side; tolerance and multiculturalism always win out over intolerance and bigotry.  The question is: which side are you on?

UPDATE: A related article on dhimmitude can be found here.

Islamophobes purposefully mistook these girls as child brides

The Loon world was whipped into a frenzy based on, as usual, the reinforcing winds of ignorance and hate. In what was meant to be an unremarkable story, Tim Marshall a reporter for Sky News blogged on a mass wedding celebration in the Gaza Strip officiated by  Hamas. Marshall reports in his excellent blog Islamophobia. Ignorance or Propaganda?,

The party is for 450 grooms, the brides are elsewhere, some among the 5,000 or so guests. It’s the way things are done here, Personally I’m for the mixing of the sexes, but I’m not about to argue, I’m outnumbered.

Up on the stage there’s music and dancing. Everyone’s having a good time, even me, although the Hamas robocops are making me a little nervous. Sure Hamas have cold blooded killers among them, sure they support the murder of children in Israel, sure they are cracking down on women’s rights, but many of their supporters are just ordinary people. And they need a break…Then the fireworks explode, the cheering begins, and in march the Hamas scouts, bashing drums, looking every inch the future Hamas fighters many will be. Then the grooms, aged about 18 to about 28. They are holding hands with their young nieces and cousins, little girls aged from about 3 to 8, made up to the nines, wearing white wedding dresses.

So what has gotten the Loon world completely riled up? Well it seems that many of the anti-Muslims misconstrued the occasion and thought the grooms were actually marrying the little girls who were their nieces or cousins! Tim Marshall explains,

Our report on this put it into context saying that it took place just a mile from the Israeli border and was a message from Hamas about its strength confidence and future fighters. Oh and that the brides were elsewhere. Pretty straightforward.

It never struck me for a moment that the little girls might later be described in the bloggersphere as the brides! How naive I am.

Dozens, and I mean dozens, of websites took the video of the event and wrote lurid stories about Hamas mass paedophilia with headlines about ‘450 child brides’, and endless copy about how disgusting this was, how it showed how depraved Islam is, et al, ad infinitum. Site after site jumped on the story, linking from one totally wrong load of rubbish to the next. I’ll give credit to Tundra Tabloids who at least took down the video, but most sites just ploughed on regardless.

So which sites are these, and what have the various reactions been? Bartholomew gives us a hint,

The many websites that picked this up have responded in various ways: some issuing corrections, some quickly deleting their postings, and some insisting that it’s all true and that Marshall is trying to cover up the fact: “Why”, demands one site “would Tim Marshall defend the Gaza pedophiles?” One of the sites that decided to scrub was Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, which is worth noting as Spencer claims some sort of academic expertise on Islam.

Where does this collective hallucination and fixation on fiction originate from? The simple, straight forward answer is that it comes from the collective hysterical hatred shared by those who despise Islam and Muslims. It is a manifestation of Islamophobia, “ie. an irrational fear of Islam.” It springs from the idea that Islam is evil, inherently backwards, oppressive to women. The talking point goes, “Muhammad was a pedophile who married 9 year old A’isha and these vile Mooslims must be doing it now on this massive scale!” George Readings puts this into some context in a recent post on The Spitoons (via Bartholemew),

The “argument” goes that Muslims believe Muhammad to be a perfect model for behaviour and therefore the fact of Muhammad’s marriage to A’isha somehow proves Islam to be a depraved religion…This attempt to aggressively apply a modern British definition of paedophilia to seventh century Arabia strikes me as a sign of severe anthropological illiteracy…

…Marriage to a pre-pubescant child with whom consummation occurs upon reaching puberty is not a model most people would be happy with in the modern world (although Bolivia sets the age of consent at puberty).

Which is probably why nearly all Muslim countries have reformed these rules beyond recognition. The age of consent in Algeria and Malaysia is 16, in Indonesia it is 19 for males and 16 for females. In Egypt it’s 18 for both and Tunisia 20. Reform has not, however, come to Saudi Arabia. Back in April the world followed the case of a mother trying to obtain a divorce for her eight-year-old daughter who had been married off by her father to a friend he owed a debt. In the end she succeeded and now there is even talk of Saudi Arabia preventing marriage before the age of 18.

Poor Tim Marshall scoured the net in an attempt to let the Islamophobes know that they had gotten it wrong but what was the result?

I spent a few hours visiting websites and leaving comments where I could. To little avail. Instead I received a steady stream of vitriol. The best response was on a site run by a Debbie Schlussel . The guy who posted it said he wasn’t interested in the detail. The detail being the fact that the girls weren’t the brides.

It showed how much some people want to believe nonsense like this, as it re-inforces their prejudices, always a comfortably fun thing to do. But Hamas, and the jihadists do enough terrible things without having to make things up about them. Most of the stuff I read was outright, unthinking, gleeful, Islamophobia from people who clearly knew nothing about Arab popular culture. It’s as is they really beleive that because there are examples of child brides, it means all weddings are with child brides.

Debbie Schlussel is not new to LoonWatch readers, her doozy looniness is par for the course, so Tim shouldn’t worry, but he hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “It showed how much some people want to believe nonsense like this, as it re-inforces their prejudices, always a comfortably fun thing to do.” This is exactly the case — loaded with a bagful of prejudice and preconceived notions the Islamophobes took the wedding to be an affirmation of their pre-set conjectures.

When they were presented with the fact that they had stupendously erred some corrected themselves  while others went into denial. It almost reminds you of some Biblical literalists who believe the world is 6,000 years old, you can present them with all the overwhelming evidence that point to the fact that the world is many millions of times older but they will stubbornly hold on to their literal interepretation of the Bible. This is not much different, and serves as a sweeping manifestation of the kind of irrationality that ignorance coupled with hate can produce.

Jerome Corsi, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer

WorldNetDaily is for some strange reason one of the most popular right-wing sites and is frequently sited by Conservative pundits and their underlings. It has given space to a range of strange conspiracy theories and “discredited” ideas such as,

‘9/11 was caused by the immorality of America, promoting the cause of radical Israeli settlers, KGB defector Alexo Litvinenko  was a terrorist, Anglo-Saxon identity and White only immigration, Barack Obama is a secret Muslim and not really an American (the Birther hullabaloo), and on and on.

Jerome Corsi, is a staff writer for WND and his inclusion on the site and its popularity is quite mind boggling. You might remember him for his infamous book Unfit for Command which attacked John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign.  It rode a wave of popularity and was credited as contributing to sabotaging (or better yet swift-boating) Kerry’s election.

His inclusion on the site begs the question are people this naive, ignorant or just plain hateful? Any veneer of credibility that WND and these other internet “news” sites such as the NRO are shattered when they hire and have as members and contributors people like Jerome Corsi. Media Matters, the news watch dog group has done a detailed examination of these sites and their propagation of morbid hate speech.

Amongst other things Corsi is on the record stating,

• Corsi on Islam: “a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion”

• Corsi on Catholicism: “Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press”

• Corsi on Muslims: “RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters — it all goes together”

• Corsi on “John F*ing Commie Kerry”: “After he married TerRAHsa, didn’t John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm [sic]? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?”

• Corsi on Senator “FAT HOG” Clinton: “Anybody ask why HELLary couldn’t keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?”

This is just a sampling of a wider oeuvre from Corsi that goes back decades and includes many strange ideas and theories, including that: John McCain was associating with groups linked to Al-Qaeda, 9/11 Truther’s, Birther’s, etc.

In an interesting aside, that queen of plagiarism accusations and the harbinger of the internecine Civil Blog Wars, Debbie Schlussel has accused Corsi of plagiarism. Is there any end to the destructiveness of the loons, motivated by different agendas, some that over lap (such as money) — they are always ready to throw one another under the bus.

Regarding the photo, one has to ask in all sincerity what is Robert Spencer, a self proclaimed “objective” scholar of Islam doing stretching those smiling muscles from ear to ear with Corsi and the odious Pam Geller who is holding up a picture of Geert Wilders? What is it about Spencer that he ends up supporting, being supported by and taking pictures with some of the most radical anti-Muslims and Islamophobes on the scene?