Happier times, Andrew Bostom and Robert Spencer

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

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

Spencer wrote on his blog yesterday in reference to Bostom,

Department of Corrections: No plagiarism

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

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

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

The Little King

This fine morning, what did I see?

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

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

Update: The Little King Doth Protest My Original Posting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meeker

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

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

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

Cordially
Robert Spencer

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

Frank Hesp:

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

Cordially
Robert Spencer

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

Frank Hesp — one other thing:

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

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

Cordially
Robert Spencer

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

Meeker:

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

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

Cordially
Robert Spencer

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

Debbie Schlussel

This is what we expected all along, for the ravenous loons to eat each other up. There may still be a salvageable relationship between Debbie Schlussel and Pamela Geller, they might bury the hatchet to continue with the profitable business of Islamophobia but it does not seem likely.

Of course we couldn’t care less if they remain buddies or not, in fact we hope that we can sit back with a bag of popcorn and watch the preceding blog brawl escalate. Again the starter of this fire is Debbie Schlussel who writes that she regrettably has to call out Pamela Geller who unlike her is not a true warrior but a “pseudo-warrior.” All we can do is laugh.

Some choice cuts from the most recent oeuvre served by Schlussel (hat tip: enaater):

How do you go from–less than two months ago–rightfully condemning a mother for sending her daughters to what she knew would be their murder by their Muslim father  . . . to making her a featured speaker at your anti-honor killing rally?! That’s a question you’ll have to ask Pamela Geller, who–as is her recent SOP with me–ignored my e-mails to her, including two asking her why she invited Patricia Said…

This is all over ignored emails. Ha. Priceless.

It boggles the mind that any sane, principled person truly against honor killings would invite this woman, Patricia Said, to speak at such a rally.  If she was Rifqa Bary’s mother, the Bary teen would be dead by now, with her help.

Schlussel, herself an insane loon pretty much calls her old friend Pam insane here as well.

Instead of answering my question, Pamela ignored it and covered her ass–choosing to deceive readers of her Atlas Shrugs website with creative editing and removing Patricia Said’s name and changing it to “honor killing victims’ family members.” (It should have read “co-conspirators in honor killings.) But Said will be there, courtesy of Pamela, who organized the rally and paid for Tissie Said’s travel to and lodging for the event.

Tsk, tsk. Schlussel is really bringing the hammer out now. Shocking revelations: Pam Geller is paying people to come out for the anti-Muslim “rally.”

Pamela preferred symbolism over substance, and this isn’t the first time.

Ouch.

It pains me to write this because I’ve done much to help Pamela–some of it at her request and much of it because it was the right thing to do–over the years.

We hear your anguish Debbie, you helped Pam be a bigot and now she screws it up by not answering her email.

Some people say “not on my watch,” but not only don’t they really mean it, they enable the perpetrators.  There are warriors, and then there are pseudo-warriors, who casually throw principle to the wind whenever it’s convenient.

This is the cherry on top, Debbie pretty much calls out Pam’s credentials (if there ever were any) and labels her what we all know her to be: “an opportunist.” Also notice the vanity and self-adulation, Debbie proclaiming herself a “warrior.” If you’re drinking milk, I sure hope it didn’t start gushing from your nose due to an obscene amount of laughter.

All I can imagine now is the precarious position that this puts Robert Spencer in, who dubbed Debbie Schlussel and Pamela Geller “freedom fighters.” He will have to choose sides or attempt to reconcile these “warriors” as he increasingly stands a top a pile of crumbling Islamophobic alliances. An alliance undone by the very hatred that fuels it.