by Garibaldi

Hate group leader, Far-right Catholic fanatic and anti-Muslim Crusader/terrorist-inspirer, Rev. Deacon Robert Spencer of Our Lady of the Cedars Church, a full-time paid shill for racist David Horowitz has been pretty sore that I exposed the fact he is an ordained deacon. The only person that he should be upset at however is himself, he’s the one who irresponsibly left an internet trail that could easily be found by anyone with basic google searching abilities.

It is understandable why Rev. Deacon Spencer, who claims to be an objective “reporter” on so-called “Islamic violence” was so upset, any remaining veneer of “objectivity” and feigned concern for “freedom” was permanently abolished; once again Robert Spencer’s sectarianism was exposed through his own words and deeds.

This point is buttressed in a post yesterday by Rev. Deacon Spencer in FrontPageMagRag, it is the first post by Rev. Spencer on new Pope Francis I. What does the good Deacon have to say? Well, he slams the Second Vatican council’s positive statements regarding Islam as reflecting “the outlook of a vanished age,” equal in its irrelevance as statements by the likes of Pope Benedict XIV of the 18th century and Pope Callixtus III of the 15th century. (By the way, Rev. Spencer is opposed to Vatican II for more reasons than just statements regarding Islam).

Bizarrely, Spencer still cites the two Popes quite approvingly, the hostility they had towards Islam and Muslims is strikingly evident in two quotes Spencer reproduces,

…Pope Benedict XIV, in 1754, reaffirmed an earlier prohibition on Albanian Catholics giving their children “Turkish or Mohammedan names” in baptism by pointing out that not even Protestants or Orthodox were stooping so low: “None of the schismatics and heretics has been rash enough to take a Mohammedan name, and unless your justice abounds more than theirs, you shall not enter the kingdom of God.” Pope Callixtus III, in a somewhat similar spirit, in 1455 vowed to “exalt the true Faith, and to extirpate the diabolical sect of the reprobate and faithless Mahomet in the East.”

Spencer absurdly believes the Vatican II reforms are in parity with quotes about “extirpating” Islam. Look up “Extirpate” in the dictionary, it still means “to root out and destroy completely.”

It appears Rev. Deacon Robert Spencer is setting himself up for a lifetime of disappointment. Pope Francis I will not be the kind of fanatical anti-Islam/Muslims-rolling-back-Vatican-II-type-pope that Spencer wants him to be. After all, the new pope is named after St. Francis of Assisi whose two chief concerns were to convert people to Christianity and to help the poor.

In fact, St. Francis came to oppose the Crusades (read: The Saint and the Sultan by Paul Moses) which Rev. Deacon Robert Spencer falls all over himself to defend, as he loves to remind us of the Crusader slogan, “God wills it!“

The story goes that St. Francis’ parents wanted him to go out on the Crusade so that he could be knighted.

He later set out for the Crusades in Northern Africa, but while on his way to join up with his batallion he heard a voice that asked him where he was going.

Francis responded “to the Crusades” and the voice asked him “why he served the squire instead of the Master.” The voice told him to return to Assisi where he would be told what to do. Later, after much prayer and penance, Francis was praying at a small chapel outside of Assisi, San Damiano and he thought he heard a voice that came from the crucifix. The voice said, “Francis, go repair my Church, can’t you see that it’s falling into ruins.”

The new Pope Francis I will focus on repairing the Catholic Church which is struggling in many ways and will not focus on breeding Crusader-esque civilizational conflict.

Rev. Deacon Spencer thinks I am Aslan Media editor Nathan Lean, I reveal my true identity

Rev. Deacon Robert Spencer’s irrelevance both to Catholicism and scholarship on Islam is only matched by his delusional indulgence in conspiracy theory. Unable and unwilling to respond to numerous Loonwatch rebuttals of his faulty pseudo-scholarship and “police blotter reporting,” and a very long outstanding fear to debate Danios has now given way to Spencer claiming to have uncovered my identity–unbeknownst to me I am actually supposed to be Aslan Media editor Nathan Lean!

What is Rev. Spencer’s smoking gun? A cross-post from the hate site Logan’s Warning claiming “evidence” that I, Garibaldi, am Nathan Lean. Recall the only time we’ve mentioned Logan’s Warning, a post titled, Amusing Islamophobia Blog Wars: Logan’s Warning vs. Brigitte Gabriel, in which Christopher Logan attacked Brigitte Gabriel for even hinting that there might be such a thing as a “moderate Muslim.” The heresy! Logan’s website is replete with an abundance of commenters who call for Crusading violence against Muslims and racism against Arabs, as was shown in screenshots in my post.

So it’s no surprise that Spencer would cross-post from Logan’s Warning, as we know “birds of a feather flock together.” It is also unsurprising that Spencer, with a track record for weak scholarship would be so gullibly convinced by Christopher Logan’s “evidence.”

Logan’s “evidence”:

Evidence 1:
Recently in writing about Mr. Spencer, Garibaldi wrote this in a comment on his own article about Spencer’s private life: 

GaribaldiOfLoonwatch Mod Leftwing_Muslim_Alliance • 13 days ago

He is not celibate, he’s married. In the course of digging on the internet, I also learned the name of his wife and children, though that isn’t really germane to the discussion so I won’t advertise it.

Who else has dug on the Internet and found the names of Mr. Spencer’s wife and children? Nathan Lean. Spencer has written of Lean: Nigeria Jihadists threaten country’s top spies by publishing their home addresses and names of family 

Four months after that, he sent Mr. Spencer an email calling him a “dumb fuck” and adding “But, having a look at this, I kind of pity you,” which was followed by a link containing a photo of a woman in the same city. The woman has the same surname Spencer; apparently Lean thought she was his wife.

Spencer apparently thinks this is evidence. Anyone who has access to google can find out the names of Rev. Deacon Spencer’s family, it’s all over the internet. I thought Spencer was supposed to be in mortal fear for his life? If so he’s doing a poor job of covering up the identities of his family and place of residence. The fact is we have had people who’ve wanted to share information regarding his personal life and whereabouts since 2010.

One commenter on Spencerwatch named “Abdullah” wrote on the site in 2010 saying:

Abdullah says:

August 10, 2010 at 7:42 pm

I have all the information on Spencer, his address, real date of birth, and information on his family. I want nothing more than to share it, please e-mail me.

We responded to Abdullah by letting him know that we were not interested in Spencer’s personal information:

admin says:

August 11, 2010 at 12:14 am

Abdullah,

That will be unnecessary. We have no interest in Spencer’s private life. We are only interested in exposing the shallow, deceptive, and bigoted nature of his anti-Muslim work.

- SW Admin

My comment is consistent with our long-held position that our only interest is rebutting and exposing Rev. Deacon Robert Spencer’s faulty arguments, lies, hate, deception and distortions, we can care less about Spencer’s family.

Evidence 2:

Garibaldi wrote of Mr. Spencer in a comment:

But the shaggy walrus beard and so forth indicates its him.

Reza Aslan said to Mr. Spencer: The Incredilbe Reza Aslan automated insult generator

I told you. I’m into women not walruses.

Nathan Lean works for Aslan.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I freely admit here and now that I actually picked up the walrus reference from my interview with Reza Aslan, it still gives me a chuckle!

Evidence 3:
Garibaldi interviewed Aslan for Loonwatch. Most of the interview was made up of nasty ad hominem attacks on Mr. Spencer: http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/11/exclusive-loonwatch-interview-with-reza-aslan/

I’ve also interviewed Haroon Moghul. Does that mean I’am Haroon Moghul as well? And why am I Nathan Lean and not Reza Aslan? Or maybe I am all three-in-one, like a super stealth Islamist-Leftist trinity?

Evidence 4:
Jonathan Schanzer wrote a scathing review of Lean’s book for the Wall Street Journal. Loonwatch published a petulant and defensive response piece viciously attacking Schanzer. Who wrote it? Garibaldi.
http://www.loonwatch.com/2013/01/bush-era-neo-con-schmuck-jonathan-schanzer-shills-for-nasty-islamophobia-movement/

Yes, Schanzer did get the vicious Garibaldi treatment, but that was more so because he’s a Bush era, warmongering neo-Con schmuck who wrote an Islamophobia-denial piece in the mainstream Wall Street Journal that sought to exonerate war criminals like his former boss George W. Bush and Islamophobe pals such as Daniel Pipes and the useful idiot Zuhdi Jasser. I fail to see how this can be described as evidence and not more appropriately as “worthless conjecture 4.”

Evidence 5:
Nathan Lean has frequently called for opponents of jihad terror to be denied free speech rights:

Editor-in-Chief of moderate Aslan media endorses cyber terrorism

Nathan Lean is a Thug

Garibaldi wrote a piece at Loonwatch celebrating the vandalism of AFDI’s anti-jihad ads:
http://www.loonwatch.com/2012/09/mona-el-tahawy-and-spray-painting-pamela-gellers-hate-ads/

Reza Aslan also called for that vandalism: Reza Aslan Calls for fascist vandalism of AFDI pro-freedom ads 

Loonwatch is actually consistent in its opposition to hacking, we ourselves have been victim to vile hatemongering “counterjihad” hackers. As for my article it actually did not celebrate Mona Eltahawy’s protest of the racist AFDI/SIOA hate ads. In fact I was critical of her, writing,

Mona’s method of protest was therefore ineffective, aesthetically unappealing and not the best expression of street art. It is unclear if Mona was going to spraypaint a message before her confrontation with Hall, but using a hot pink spraypaint can to completely erase or cover the hate ad, which is what she was doing, is a bad way to register such a protest. It is poorly planned, poorly executed and at the end of the day strays from the goal of highlighting the most important aspect of such a protest: the message.

I happily admit however that I am not really moved to condemn any protest against the racist AFDI/SIOA hate ads. Just as I wouldn’t condemn protests against ads describing Native Americans as “savages,” or Blacks as “N—–s.”

Interestingly, this most recent foray into conspiracy theory by Rev. Deacon Spencer wasn’t even convincing to Spencer’s most ardent fans. Kinana of Khaybar, in what could be the most understated comment on JihadWatch ever wrote,

This is entertaining, but to me does not add up to sufficient evidence that Nathan Lean is Garibaldi.

One also has to wonder if Logan and Spencer even thought about asking themselves why Nathan Lean, who has been speaking, writing and publishing publicly for quite some time would decide he needed to be anonymous? He is already calling out Spencer, Geller and other Islamophobes under his own name.

As for my real identity…

I am actually….

<drum roll>….

the second love child of Malcolm X and Stanley Ann Dunham, and my name is Barack Hasan Shabazz!

There you go, the secret is finally out! Thanks a lot Spencer!

The “Glazov gangbangers”

by Garibaldi

Eric Allen Bell (aka Eric Edborg), who has been mostly silent over the past few months, (no doubt taking a “sabbatical” from his self-proclaimed “jihad against jihad” again), returned to the looniverse of hatemongering and kooky conspiracy theories.

This time Bell is relishing in antisemitism and putting forward ideas picked straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Bell got into it with some of his assumedly now “former” Facebook followers. Bell tells “Clark Banner” that he is just speaking truth to power, exposing the social taboo surrounding “Jewish control of banking and media,”

Bell clearly doesn’t know what conspiracy theories are either, they are not simply “theories without evidence.” What he is referring to is just one category of the obvious phony and fake conspiracies that exist. Usually conspiracy theories are based on some evidence, though such evidence varies in degree of reliability, factualness and the way it is framed and contextualized to create a narrative.

Bell also believes the Oscars are part of a Jewish supremacist conspiracy,

“Erick Morgan” used to “look up to” the old bigot Eric Allen Bell when he railed against Muslims being intellectually and genetically inferior and called for the nuking of Muslim holy places but now he finds Bell repulsive:

This protege of Rev. Deacon Robert Spencer has exposed himself to have some very kooky and racist beliefs not only about people of Muslim background and the religion of Islam but also about Jews and Judaism. Will we hear swift condemnations from Rev. Deacon Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller who hailed Bell as a former “liberal” who saw the light of “Counterjihad?” Aren’t they embarrassed and ashamed of supporting and allying with someone who supports this vile antisemitic nonsense?

Don’t hold your breathe. They will likely continue their strategy of pretending such views aren’t held by their friend.

Related:

-Eric Allen Bell discovers that ‘Jewish supremacists’ control the media and the banks

Mohammad Al-Arifi

I want to hat tip Rookie who first alerted us to the story about a fabricated fatwa that allegedly gave Syrian rebels permission to engage in “intercourse marriage/gang rape,” the fabricated fatwa was attributed to a Saudi preacher by the name of Mohammad Al-Arifi.

Robert Spencer was pushing the false story on his JihadWatch and made a grudging update to the story quite some time after it was revealed to be fabricated in which he couldn’t help but take a dig at Shi’a Muslims.

Daniel Greenfield, premiere Genocide-inciter at David Horowitz’s FrontPageRag also published an article on the fabricated fatwa that attempts to paint it as real. Greenfield’s article has no update and in fact was headed with an incendiary picture from an older hoax being pushed by Islamophobes regarding a supposed “mass pedophilia wedding” in Gaza in 2009.

Greenfield titled this picture: “Hamas Muslim Child Brides“:

I debunked this absurd hoax back in August of 2009 in the article, Anti-Muslim Blogosphere Runs Amuck: Forced to Eat Crow. Clearly, Greenfield wasn’t phased and continues to push this lie despite it being debunked  over three years ago.

AlterNet, which it self was fooled but had the decency to apologize for its mistake has the full story on the fabricated fatwa:

Exhibit A in How an Islamophobic Meme Can Spread Like Wildfire Across the Internet

On January 2nd, the story of a Saudi Sheikh issuing a fatwa that condoned ‘intercourse marriage’ or gang rape in Syria exploded over the internet.

According to various sources, Sheikh Mohammad Al-Arifi had stated that foreign fighters in Syria had the right to engage in short term marriages to satisfy their sexual desires and boost their determination to fight against the Assad regime. Syrian girls and women from age 14 upwards were considered fair game and apparently secured their own place in heaven if they participated in these ‘intercourse marriages’.

By the evening a simple Google search of the words, ‘Saudi Sheikh’ , Syrian, and ‘women’ brought up some 5 million references and at least 3 pages of links to articles spreading the news. Not surprisingly there was immediate online uproar too, though as one commentator put it, much of the discussion was about whether these arranged temporary marriages technically constituted ‘rape’. This in itself is worrying.

There was also skepticism from many quarters about the veracity of the report, particularly among savvy Mideast experts.  Rightly so. The story, much like the one a few months ago about Egyptian Islamist MPs proposing laws that permitted sex with a deceased spouse up to 6 hours after his/her death, turned out to be a gross lie.  Sheikh Al-Arifi has issued a denial via his Facebook page. Over the next few days, the various websites and media outlets that spread the story will no doubt issue their retractions. But the story also raises many questions.  For starters, where did it come from? AlterNet inadvertently picked it up from the overtly anti-Islamic Clarion Fund site. Others pointed to the Iranian regime backed Press TV as the primary source on December 31 2012.  But the earliest English language reporting comes on December 29 from an obscure YouTube news site called Eretz Zen, tagged as a YouTube channel by a “secular Syrian opposed to having [his] country turned into a Taliban-like state.”

What’s extraordinary and depressing is that a slew of websites picked up the story and ran with it, some claiming legitimacy because the other had posted it and clearly no one bothered to do some basic fact checking. Arguably this is just the nature of the net and minute by minute news updates. The story was too sensational to give up. But one would imagine that if a similar story emerged about a Christian cleric or a Rabbi, someone, somewhere would have paused before posting it. Sadly, in the case of stories about Muslim clerics or Islamists the same red flags don’t seem to apply.

Perhaps western journalists are so ignorant of Islam and the cultures in the Middle East that they are willing to believe anything. It’s nothing new — after all Western notions of the East were always immured in sexual decadence and the allure of harems. That was a trademark of the patronizing Orientalism of the past. Today we have a phobic version of Orientalism — expecting and only seeing and reporting the bad and the ugly.

Read the rest…

Pamela Geller is using and abusing the symbolism of the Twin Towers and coupling it with verses from the Quran again, she says,

“I refuse to abridge my free speech so as to appease savages.”

Of course for the racist Geller, anyone, especially a Muslim who criticizes her and exposes her loonieness is a savage. She just goes out of her way to display hate. I’m thinking this campaign will be another dud with various interfaith organizations and representatives of mainstream religious groups condemning her and the wider populace ignoring her crazy rantings.

Geller’s new anti-Islam ad to debut in New York – with disclaimer

Pamela Geller is at it again.

The outspoken blogger and Executive Director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative has just purchased a slew of advertising space in several subway stations and on numerous Metro-North platforms in order to display her newest anti-Islam message.

Her latest ads, shared exclusively with The Observer, will feature a panorama of the sky the moment the World Trade Center burst into flames in 2001, accompanied by a quote from the Quran that reads “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers.”

However, an MTA disclaimer taking up 25% of the ad space will be presented in conjunction with Ms. Geller’s message for the first time. “This is a paid advertisement sponsored by American Freedom Defense Initiative. The display of this advertisement does not imply MTA’s endorsement of any views expressed,” it reads.

The MTA’s new disclaimer policy came in September of this year following an incident in which protestor Mona Eltahawy, 45, was filmed spray-painting another AFDI advertisement, which equated Muslims with savages.

Following the September incident, Ms. Geller has been busy crafting new advertisements for her campaign beginning December 17. The new ads will be plastered across at least 50 different locations, the MTA confirmed, the result of an ad buy worth more than $10,000.

“I refuse to abridge my free speech so as to appease savages,” Ms. Geller told The Observer.

New York Observer, 7 December 2012

Let the loony Islamophobic conspiracies about a war on Halloween begin. (h/t: CriticalDragon)

Robert Spencer discovers Halloween Jihad

by Sheila Musaji

Robert Spencer finds it noteworthy enough to note on Jihad Watch that Seattle elementary school bans Halloween costumes: they could offend students from “other cultures”.

He engages in his typical snarky innuendo:

Gee, I wonder which culture would have students in the Seattle elementary schools who would be offended by Halloween costumes. Still, there is no indication that any Islamic supremacist group demanded this ban; the school officials are just playing the dhimmi on their own initiative. Please write them, politely and respectfully, and ask them why American culture always takes a back seat to others, and why they’re pandering to an imaginary offense.

And, of course, his partner Pamela Geller also posted an article on this non-story, sayingDismantling America, piece by cultural piece, law by American law …… the parents ought to protest en masse – in costume.

The article Spencer and Geller refer to says only that a Seattle school has banned students from dressing up in costume for Halloween this year at school.  One district representative said that costumes “could offend and upset students who come from other cultures”.  The principal of the school said that “This decision was made by the entire staff after two deep and detailed discussions. The initial conversation was initiated by staff members who suggested that since Halloween falls this year on a half day of school, we not allow costumes. It takes students a while to change into their costumes, and students are distracted taking away from the already limited instructional time.

That’s it, the whole story that is known from this.  We don’t know whether or not any parent made any request or complaint to the district or to the school.  We don’t know what is the demographic of the community where this school is located.  Blaming this decision on some sort of Muslim plot, or a self-imposed fear of a possible Muslim reaction, to take away an American holiday is absolute nonsense.

To jump to the conclusion that Spencer does from this very limited information is a clear sign of his deeply held Islamophobia.  We know that Spencer is blaming Muslims for this school decision because he says the school officials are “playing dhimmi” on their own initiative.  Is it only some Muslims who don’t celebrate Halloween?

Here is a quote from one such “dhimmi” who refuses to participate in American culture:

“I think we ought to close Halloween down. Do you want your children to dress up as witches? The Druids used to dress up like this when they were doing human sacrifice…[The children] are acting out Satanic rituals and participating in it, and don’t even realize it.”—Pat Robertson, “The 700 Club,” 1982-OCT-29

Robertson is not exactly known for his fondness for Islam or Muslims.  I wonder is Spencer will ask his followers to write letters to The 700 Club to complain about Robertson’s attempts to “dismantle America”.

If any parents did say something to the school or district administration, they might have been parents from just about any religious or cultural background.

Yes, there are some Muslims who are opposed to celebrating Halloween, for a variety of reasons.  The reasons given are pretty much identical with the reasons that many Christians and Jews are opposed to celebrating the holiday.  There is a wide range of opinion within all of these communities about the holiday, what it means, and why it should not be celebrated, or can be celebrated as simply a cultural event.

Read the rest…

The increasingly unstable Eric Allen Bell (aka Eric Edborg) isn’t backing down from his calls to destroy Mecca. His genocidal predilections are endless. Last week I covered his cutesy attempt at fanning the flames of his Islamophobic followers fanatical anti-Muslim hate.

Now Bell is at it again, the chicken hawk wants the US military to hover over the Ka’ba and remove it.

Bell, having taken notice of the fact that his deluded hate-mongering is well known, gives his followers an empty warning, telling them to be careful of what hate they say because evil Obama-Mooslim-Brotherhood-Hamas-AlQaeda-linked-CAIR is watching:

Clearly Bell doesn’t know the meaning of “contradiction.”

As hollow a disclaimer as you will ever read, Bell who is extra-vigilante to ban those who oppose his hate goes ahead and leaves comments such as these up from Kim Bruce:

or James Garner:

You can check the thread out yourself and see all the other calls for nuking and killing, it would take a long time for us to load all of the screenshots.

Every now and then an anti-Muslim Islamophobe wonders about the exigency of nuking Mecca and or Medina when he really means to want to destroy the sacred cities. To destroy Mecca and Medina has been an ardent desire of Islamophobes for centuries, harking back to at least the Crusades, if not earlier.

In a recent manifestation of such desire we have Jihadwatch zombie Eric Allen Bell (aka Eric Edborg) masking a call to nuke Mecca in a “question.” Who actually wonders about the “pros” and “cons” of “nuking Mecca” except someone who actually wants to do it?

Notice the lovely responses from those in Bell’s little echo chamber of hate. Bell didn’t repudiate any of these gung-ho nuke Mecca advocates. Most people responded by either saying such a move would not be practical or in fact coming to realize that Bell had gone “too far this time.” Many of these comments were deleted by Bell.

A significant chunk of comments actually looked something like the following however:

It seems clear to me that Bell has always had some sort of deep seated hatred and antipathy towards the “other.” One doesn’t wake up suddenly and ponder the merits of nuking the holy city of one of the oldest and largest religions in the world unless there is something deeply wrong with you.

Robert Spencer is lost

Robert Spencer, PJ Media’s most recent Islamophobic blogger says Bloomberg may not be a Muslim but he’s acting like one. Spencer you will recall has in the past speculated on Barack Obama being a Muslim, though then he said that the President may, in fact be a Muslim (h/t:Critical Dragon).

PJ Media Comments for Robert Spencer: ‘All Muslims Are Terrorists and Must Die!’

by Charles Johnson (Little Green Footballs)

Today at PJ Media, hate group leader Robert Spencer turns in another exercise in blatant bigotry: PJ Media » Is Michael Bloomberg Secretly a Muslim?

He’s only “kidding,” of course. He doesn’t really think Michael Bloomberg is a secret Muslim.

He just thinks Bloomberg is acting like a Muslim, and we know what that means to Robert Spencer. The point of his article is to argue again that America urgently needs laws to protect us from imminent shariah takeover by the real secret Muslims.

The real question, then, is not so much whether Bloomberg is secretly a Muslim — of course he isn’t — but whether Islamic law is inherently totalitarian and inimical to the spirit of respect for individual rights upon which this nation was founded. And despite all the increasingly frantic mainstream media attempts to obscure Sharia’s true contents and nature from the American people, it is increasingly clear that it is. Sharia legislates for every aspect of human life, such that the pious Muslim faces no ethical difficulties, no moral dilemmas, no hard choices, no tough judgment calls: everything is set out for him to the last detail, and all he need do is obey. This results in a stunting of the moral character that leads not only to the atrophy of the individual’s abilities of ethical discernment, but also to a diminishment of both the value of the individual and the power of the individual in society. Human beings are not individual moral actors, but only subjects of the authoritarian power, who directs them in every detail of how to behave. The human will is cheapened, and human life itself is cheapened.

This is a key reason why anti-Sharia laws in the U.S. are so urgently needed. The United States at its founding accorded an extraordinary and largely unprecedented respect for the individual; the struggle against Sharia is yet another episode in the never-ending war of the bullying authority against the individual will. What played out in National Socialist Germany, as well as in the Soviet Union and other Communist states, will play out again in America as we decide in the coming months and years how much Islamic law we’re going to accommodate, and when (if ever) we’re going to resist the imposition of more: the struggle between the individual and the collective.

And the comments for Spencer’s nasty little screed are just as hateful and sickening as you might expect, advocating mass deportations and genocide.

Well,if you want to stick your unclean,midieval,barbarian ass in the air like some kind of punk wanting to be mounted by an alpha male by bowing down to a meteorite in the middle of the Arabian desert so you can honor an illiterate mass murdering pedophile who claimed to be the messenger for some obscure Arabian moon ‘god’,then who am I to judge?….personally,I use a page from the koran every time I have to take a mohammed….it’s just sooo much softer than Charmin

[…]

Simply put WE DONT TRUST Muslims – end of story, if we were smart in USA we would deport ALL NON-Resident Muslims including those i univesity. YOUR history of slavery, torture of women & children has not changed since 1700′s

[…]

If you want to practice this abomination go back to any of the 7th century hellholes you already have and stay there!

[…]

May all who worship the false prophet Muhammad (a thousand curses be unto his pig name) be slaughtered like the sub-human scum they are. I spit on your false prophet. The bottom of my feet are prettier than his ugly face. All muslims are terrorists and must die!

by Garibaldi

The idea that it was not until 19th century European Imperialism arrived on the shores of Muslim majority countries that Saladin was remembered is a novel concept. It is also one that is being taken up in a distorted manner by the anti-Muslim movement.

Let’s take a sample from an article posted on JihadWatch on June 8, 2012. The self-declared ex-Muslim turned anti-Islam polemicist and Western supremacist who goes by the pseudonym “Ibn Warraq” continues his well-worn, unoriginal, selective-copy-and-paste usage of Orientalist scholarship.

According to “Warraq,” Muslims in Saladin’s own homeland had “largely forgotten” about him until novelist Sir Walter Scott and German Emperor Wilhelm II reintroduced him to the benighted, forgetful Mooslims. In fact, in Warraq’s world the supreme “irony” is that they not only forgot Saladin but remembered Richard the Lionheart:

It is ironic that while Richard the Lionheart [1157-1199], the King of England and leading Christian commander during The Third Crusade [1189–1192], is remembered in the Islamic world right up to the nineteenth century, his main rival in the latter conflict, the Muslim Kurd known in the West as Saladin [c.1138-1193], was largely forgotten in his homeland. Forgotten until he was made known again to the Muslim world largely thanks to the German Emperor Wilhelm II’s visit to Saladin’s tomb, to pay his respects in 1898, and above all the novel, The Talisman [1825] by Sir Walter Scott [1771-1832].

Warraq’s claim appears in a series of short JihadWatch blog posts titled, Walter Scott, The Talisman, the Crusades, Richard I of England and Saladin: Myths, Legends and History.

Again this is not an original “Ibn Warraq” observation. The claim that Saladin was “forgotten” can also be found on the Wikipedia page for Saladin (exposing the hazards of relying on the online community encyclopedia), with a citation credited to Johnathan R. Smith‘s book, The Crusades, Christianity and Islam.

Smith’s works on the Crusades have been generally well received and this is not the article to discuss them; however, the main thrust of Smith’s book is quite simple and straight forward,

Crusading features prominently in today’s religio-political hostilities, yet the perceptions of these wars held by Arab nationalists, pan-Islamists, and many in the West have been deeply distorted by the language and imagery of nineteenth-century European imperialism.

This is an intricate topic, but let us confine ourselves to Warraq’s rehashing of Smith’s claim that Saladin was “forgotten.”

The reality is Saladin was not “forgotten.” Diana Abouali, professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literature at Dartmouth wrote an interesting article titled, “Saladin’s Legacy in the Middle East before the Nineteenth Century,” published in the 10th volume of Crusades. In it she recounts his memory up to that point in Ottoman Jerusalem.

I also solicited a comment from professor As’ad Abukhalil, who in the past eviscerated Warraq’s shoddy work (see Abukhalil’s 2004 article in the Middle East Journal: “‘The Islam Industry’ and Scholarship: Review Article”). Prof. Abukhalil is not at all impressed with Warraq’s claim, telling LoonWatch,

I normally would not engage with people who are not trained in Middle East and Islamic studies.  The person in question has regularly revealed his ignorance of matters Islamic and he insults the person (a free thinker) after which he named himself (very undeservedly).  The notion that Saladin was discovered by Arabs/Muslims after some contact with Westerners is too ridiculous to respond to.  In reality, it is the other way round: Westerners took note of Saladin because of the significance that he occupies in Arab/Islamic history and imagination.  Saladin has been immortalized and lauded in many Arabic books and references, from Kitab An-Nawadir As-Sultaniyyah wal-mahasin Al-Yusufiyyah, which is a biography of Saladin from the 13th century.  Ancient Arab historians like Ibn Khallikan and Abu Shamah and Ibn Wasil all appreciated the significance of Saladin.  A history of Arab publications in the 19th century and 20th century is full of books and articles dealing with him.  To be sure, the Arab-Israeli conflict did inspire a revival of attention to Saladin among Arabs and Muslims.  But then again: this is not the first time when the natives are told that only the White Man can inspire them and influence them. (emphasis added)

In the hands of Islamophobes like Warraq claims about Saladin and the Crusades are easily weaponized and used as one more instrument to bludgeon Muslims and Islamic civilization. Indeed the whole premise of Warraq’s series found its genesis in the polemical attempt to rebut Edward Said’s famed work Orientalism. Edward Said, of course is the object of much “scorn” in the anti-Muslim movement.

If some Muslims, Arabs and Westerners stand accused of “romanticizing” Saladin, we can easily see its antecedent, with the Crusades and Richard the Lionheart being  “romanticized,” serving as twin symbols for today’s wannabe “Crusaders.” Hate-groups across Europe and the USA are engaged in exactly this type of ahistorical methodology, tying the romanticized image of the Crusades with their bigoted political agenda (just take a look at the rhetoric, images and symbols employed by members of Stop the Islamization of America). At the forefront of such “romanticization” of Crusaders are the likes of Robert Spencer. So it is fitting that Warraq would publish his posts on Robert Spencer’s JihadWatch.

After all, it is not for no reason that “Knights Templar” terrorist Anders Behring Breivik chose to initiate the so-called “counter-Jihad” to “reclaim” the West from the “evil-Mooslim” hordes by citing Spencer, and other neo-Crusaders hundreds of times in his manifesto.

In the end, it is safe to say that Saladin was never forgotten by Muslims and Arabs. His memory still shone over the centuries, he was “immortalized,” even as his image, his importance and story has been reshaped due to encounters between East and West, and today, between Israel and Palestine.