Let's take a look at how Robert Spencer chooses to make his points; this is from "Islam 'will never support terror or violence'":

Dubai: The Islamic Personality of the year 2005 said Islam has never and will never be a religion of terror or violence because it preserves the individual's human rights and dignity.

Shaikh presents the Islamic Personality of the Year award during the closing ceremony of the Dubai International Holy Quran Award.

"The message of Islam and Muslims is modesty, fairness, security, stability, sympathy, harmony and kindness," said Dr Shaikh Abdul Rahman Al Sudais, the veteran Quran reader and imam of the Holy Mosque in Makkah.

Whew, that's a relief! I feel better already! Oh, and here's some modesty, fairness, security, stability, sympathy, harmony and kindness from Al-Sudais, via a January 2004 WND story, "WND goes inside 'mainstream' Muslim conference":

Last April, while addressing 2 million followers at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, chief cleric Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais prayed to God to "terminate" the Jews, who he called "the scum of humanity, the rats of the world, prophet killers ... pigs and monkeys."

Al-Sudais also urged Arabs and Muslims to abandon peace initiatives with Israel. His comments were carried worldwide by Reuters and the Associated Press. The racist characterization of Jews was not a singular occurrence, as suggested by some media. Al-Sudais has variously described Jews as "evil," a "continuum of deceit," "tyrannical" and "treacherous."

Outside Opinion: Whom would Jesus hate?

(Commenting on a book authored by Robert Spencer)

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), which, I understand, has not even been released yet*, already is at No. 49 in amazon.com's top 100 as I type this sentence.

This ignorance-and-hate fest is in amazon.com's top 100-selling books. In Islam the pig is considered unclean, so I have to wonder how the pig on the cover is going to go down among Muslims. (Not that the wingnuts who like to endanger all Americans with their anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions give a shit...) The cover's claim that "Muslim persecution of Christians has continued for 13 centures — and still goes on" is kinda funny in light of what we know about what happened to Muslims at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq at the hands of "Christian" U.S. soldiers and how Muslims are still being kept at Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp (gee, I don't know of any American "Christians" who are being kept at Muslim concentration camps...). This book will sell, despite its blatantly obvious distortions and lies, because "Christians" need to feel better about their miserable selves and their miserable lives by hating others — just as Jesus Christ taught them to do.

blogs.salon.com/0001517/2005/07/30.html

 From the FAQ page on Spencer's site (as of late 2005), it seems he has gone on an anti-Muslim crusade of his own, having written "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)," among other books. He received his Master's in "Religious Studies" in a university from the Bible Belt... and I don't think the courses he concentrated on were about Islam, since I don't think the "Religious Studies" major offered that many courses in Islam. It appears he is a fundamentalist Christian; he doesn't like Muslims, just like fundamentalist Muslims don't care for Christians, so he decided to learn as much about the Muslim religion as he could, to cherry-pick the "bad parts" and make other people hate Islam.

In other words, he's kind of like Vahakn Dadrian! (No wonder Prosecutor Dadrian has cozied up with Robert Spencer's Jihadwatch.org.)

Spencer has become a bit of a celebrity, to read his bio... featuring articles and interviews in some general, but mostly conservative publications and programs.

Q: Why should I believe what you say about Islam?
A: Because I draw no conclusions of myself. Pick up any of my books, and you will see that they are made up largely of quotations from Islamic jihadists and the traditional Islamic sources to which they appeal to justify violence and terrorism. I am only shedding light on what these sources say.

He draws no conclusions? What an insincere statement. From the articles that I have read, his lack of balance means only that he is drawing conclusions, and he would like nothing better than for you to draw the same conclusions. And of course if one concentrates on only the agenda-serving "bad" quotations, you are going to steer your hopeful converts in the direction you choose. It's like if only the medieval quotations from the Bible are presented to make Christianity appear to be evil, and to make it seem as though all Christians think the same way. It's like the Armenian "Genocide," only presenting the facts from the anti-Turkish racists and others who have an agenda.

"Since childhood I have had an interest in the Muslim world, from which my family comes." Spencer reports later on. Since I don't think his family is Muslim ("Spencer" does not sound very Muslim, for one thing), maybe he means he had a missionary family. He should have elaborated on this important point, his origin and influence. Why didn't he? Perhaps he would then come across as... less objective? (He's actually trying to make it seem as though he were more objective, given that his family came from the Muslim world, and that he was so at one with the Muslims.)

In response to "Q: Why do so many people convert to Islam?" Spencer says many sensible things, including "The global jihad against the West today also helps Islam gather converts in the West from among groups that feel themselves to be oppressed or marginalized." Hey, maybe this fellow isn't so... one-sided after all? Not so fast, Kowalski! Remember, this is the FAQ section of his site where he must come across as "fair."

Q: Do you hate Muslims?
A: Of course not. Islam is not a monolith, and never have I said or written anything that characterizes all Muslims as terrorist or given to violence. I am only calling attention to the roots and goals of jihad violence. Any Muslim who renounces violent jihad and dhimmitude is welcome to join in our anti-jihadist efforts. Any hate in my books comes from Muslim sources I quote, not from me. Cries of "hatred" and "bigotry" are effectively used by American Muslim advocacy groups to try to stifle the debate about the terrorist threat. But there is no substance to them.

To this, I say don't talk the cheap talk but do the more strenuous walk. He's an intelligent man, and hopefully that means he doesn't believe all Muslims are evil. Yet the context of the few articles of his that I've read definitely gives the impression that Islam is a monolith. The example we have from above, "Islam 'will never support terror or violence'," gives nothing short of the idea. It's not a criticism of one two-faced imam. It's meant to show the hypocrisy of Muslims who say Islam is a religion of peace, thus denouncing all Muslims.

For example, take a look at the following:

Because persecution of Jews opposes the view of human beings and the love of one's neighbour which is a consequence of the gospel that the church of Jesus Christ has the task to preach. Christ knows of no respect of persons, and he has taught us to see that every human life is costly to God. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3.28)

This, to me, is what a true Christian would be about. There are counterparts to the above in the Koran, that I've read in articles, similarly highlighting the value of all humanity. (ADDENDUM, 1-07: For example, one was featured in the opening of C. F. Dixon-Johnson's 1916 book, "The Armenians": ""Whosoever does wrong to a Christian or Jew shall find me his accuser on the day of judgment.") Now here is a mild description from the missionary, Clarence Ussher:

"Turks were callous, indifferent to each other’s sufferings, utterly selfish….Very few could be got to do a hand’s turn of work for the common good…They were filthy beyond description."

This kind of thinking was the rule, not the exception, from devout Christians of the period... Arnold Toynbee, James Bryce, Woodrow Wilson, Consul George Horton who thought of all Turks as "The Blight of Asia," and Cardinal Newman (from an earlier period, I believe) who likened the Turks to barbarians and the "great anti-Christ among the races of men."

Are we now to dismiss all Christians as hopeless racists, who certainly believe some humans are more equal than others, which says little about their concern for "human rights and dignity"?

 Spencer continues:

Am I "anti-Muslim"? Some time ago here at Jihad Watch I had an exchange with an English convert to Islam. I said: "I would like nothing better than a flowering, a renaissance, in the Muslim world, including full equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies: freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, equal employment opportunities, etc." Is all that "anti-Muslim"? My correspondent thought so. He responded: "So, you would like to see us ditch much of our religion and, thereby, become non-Muslims."

What does Spencer mean by an "Islamic society"? If he means a society ruled by religion, as with Iran, then we are not going to have those freedoms any more than if we had a medieval Christian society run by fundamentalists. Back in the days of the Byzantine Empire, the ruling Christian class would not grant freedoms even to fellow Christians, like the Armenians.

But if he's talking about a secular country that is predominantly Muslim, then we have all those elements. I hope one day more "Islamic societies" will become secular. But in Turkey, the ideals Spencer refers to exist, for the most part. (Maybe not to the extent we have them in America, but not all democracies are created equally. You can't even say some things in France or Switzerland, without getting hauled into court.)

So if Turkey, which Spencer would brand as another Islamic society, has these elements... does Turkey consider itself "anti-Muslim"? If his correspondent thought such matters as equality and freedom of conscience were "anti-Muslim," then wouldn't that have been one Muslim's opinion?

People are people everywhere. All people cherish qualities such as equality and freedom. Only abnormal, extremely religious minds would think differently, with their belief in a higher power. Yet because of this one Muslim's opinion, Spencer is indirectly telling us Muslims must not be that human, because they don't appreciate freedom and equality. More talk like that, and I'm going to start questioning Spencer's assertion that "Islam is not a monolith."

"In other words, he saw a call for equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies, including freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, and equal employment opportunities, as a challenge to his religion," Spencer clarifies. I have news for Spencer: so would Christian and Jewish fundamentalists.

By the way: Spencer appears to do his best to brand Turkey as a Muslim monster, too.

Years ago, the faithful of Algeria voted to have an Islamic government, practicing their own limited democracy. The government realized the running of the country by religious extremists would amount to no good, and chose the lesser of two evils... to not accept the decision. Does everyone remember the outcry of Europe, protesting against the hijacking of a democratic vote? As if the world would have been better off with another religious government.

Q: Are you trying to incite anti-Muslim hatred?
A: Certainly not. I am trying to point out the depth and extent of the hatred that is directed against the United States, because I believe that the efforts to downplay its depth and extent leave us less equipped to defend ourselves.

I am not sure if the way to "defend ourselves" is to incite anti-Muslim hatred, which is what Spencer is doing, whether he is upfront about admitting it, or not. The way for effective defense lies in understanding. Yes, there are Muslims who have come to despise the United States. Did these Muslims suddenly say to themselves, oh, let's hate the USA, that might be fun? Just like with the causes for what happened with the Armenians in 1915, which Robert Spencer similarly chooses to ignore, we must look at the root causes for this hatred. For example, what was the power behind Iran before the ayatollahs took over? Can it be said the USA bears responsibility for the awful society Iran has become, under the control of these corrupt mullahs? If Iraq becomes a more religious society as there are signs at the time of this writing, as horrible as Iraq's previous government was, would that have taken place in a vacuum? When we understand the hatred, and if we have enough courage and integrity, then we can deal with it. The way to stop the hatred is not to create further hatred.

In other words, the "roots of the terrorist threat" do not lie with the more medieval quotations of the Koran, as Spencer deceptively would have us believe. Those medieval quotes were there in 1660, 1760, in 1860 and in 1960... yet there was no terrorist threat from Islamists against the West. (Historically, the Ottoman Empire represented the only threat; after its military power declined, they became the ones threatened.) Those medieval quotes are going to remain, whether we like them or not, just like the medieval quotes of the Bible are not going to be "updated." When a Christian fundamentalist murders an abortion doctor, will Robert Spencer advocate changing the Bible? (Not that he's advocating change; what Spencer is suggesting is "confronting the texts of the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira that are used to justify violence against unbelievers, and decisively rejecting Qur'anic literalism." But you can't reason with a religious fanatic who is going to take any holy book quote literally. Maybe the logical answer would be to go the way of John Lennon, and Imagine there's no religion.)

The answer, my friends, is not blowing in the wind, here. The answer in defusing these problems lies with understanding and friendship, not bullying and domination. That is no easy answer, especially with the deeply established antagonisms, and (perhaps more importantly) the profits at stake.

("Arabic-speaking Christians use 'Allah' for the God of the Bible" That's interesting! One way for Islamophobes to create distance is to make it seem like "Allah" is an altogether different God... although that is just the word for "god" in another language, like "dios" in Spanish. Once again, trying to find ways to tear us apart instead of bringing us together.)

 ''Islamic fundamentalism has very little to do with it."

Why do suicide bombers do it?

By Christopher Shea | July 3, 2005, The Boston Globe

Four years ago, the late Susan Sontag was excoriated for arguing, in a brief New Yorker piece, that the attacks that brought down the World Trade Center were inspired not by hatred of ''civilization" or ''the free world" but rather by opposition to ''specific American alliances and actions." Today that argument--seen by hawks in those dark post-Sept. 11 days as treasonously empathetic--has become a commonplace in the latest political science work on terrorism.

No one, for example, is hurling charges of crypto-treason at Robert A. Pape, an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago known for hard-nosed studies of air power in wartime. But Pape's new book, ''Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" (Random House), which grew out of a much-cited 2003 article in the American Political Science Review, is prime example of the mainstreaming of Sontag's once-taboo view. ''Suicide terrorism is a response to occupation," Pape says in a phone interview. ''Islamic fundamentalism has very little to do with it."

''Dying to Win" draws on a thorough database of all suicide attacks recorded since the contemporary practice was born during the Lebanese civil war in the early 1980s: a total of 315 incidents through 2003, involving 462 suicidal attackers. Of the 384 attackers for whom Pape has data, who committed their deeds in such danger zones as Sri Lanka (where the decidedly non-fundamentalist, quasi-Marxist Tamil Tigers have used suicide attacks since 1987 in their fight for a Tamil homeland), Israel, Chechnya, Iraq, and New York, only 43 percent came from religiously affiliated groups. The balance, 57 percent, came from secular groups. Strikingly, during the Lebanese civil war, he says, some 70 percent of suicide attackers were Christians (though members of secular groups).

The thrust of his argument is that suicide terrorism is an eminently rational strategy. Everywhere it has been used, the countries that face it make concessions: The United States left Lebanon; Israel withdrew from Lebanon and now (much of) the West Bank; and Sri Lanka gave the Tamils a semiautonomous state.

Since occupation spurs terrorism, Pape concludes that America should ''expeditiously" (but not recklessly) withdraw troops from Iraq... (The rest is here. A 2002 article by Ha'aretz looks into what an Israeli official came up with, in regards to the motivations of suicide bombers.)

 

Vahakn Dadrian

Spencer: "Radical Islam does not believe in the equality, dignity, and rights of all people." He is right. But is there a partisan ideology on a radical level which does? It seems Spencer is sugarcoating with the word "radical," but it's not really radical Islam that he's criticizing; he is criticizing Islam as a whole. (With these sneaky tactics, no wonder Vahakn Dadrian likes this guy!)

Spencer and his interviewer discuss the impossibility of a woman's proving she has been raped. The victim becomes even more victimized by getting imprisoned for adultery or even stoned to death. A site in Germany, International Society for Human Rights, writes: "alongside the revival and re-politisation of Islam, a tendency of introducing shari'ah law has been recorded in recent decades. This mainly concerns countries such as Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh."

The one act of my country that I'm very thankful for, even if they did it for other post 9/11 reasons, is the kicking out of the Taliban in Afghanistan. I hated those worms for their abuse of women. And this described activity, similar to the genital mutilation of women we often hear about, is horrifying. Definitely a case where "Radical Islam does not believe in the equality, dignity, and rights of all people."

Robert Spencer wrote in Frontpage.com's "Jesus' Jihad?":

 In the New York Times last Saturday, Nicholas Kristof discovers what he considers to be a disturbing counterpoint to calls by Islamic radicals to wage war against Christians and Jews: the Left Behind books, the runaway bestselling series of novels that depict the Christian fundamentalist notion of the “Rapture.” This is the moment at the end of the world when good Christians are taken into heaven, and the rest are left on earth to suffer the judgment of God. Quoting some lurid passages from the latest book in the series, The Glorious Appearing, he sees a dark implication of the fact that these books are bestsellers: “ordinary Americans joined in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in part because of a lack of empathy for the prisoners. It’s harder to feel empathy for such people if we regard them as infidels and expect Jesus to dissolve their tongues and eyes any day now.”

He evidently missed what Christianity says about empathy.

Holdwater: It's more than evident Spencer misses that there is a big difference between what Christianity teaches and how some Christians go about practicing Christianity.

Note how the above serves as a parallel to how "Mein Kampf" became a bestseller in Turkey, which Spencer brought to light (below). Because a book hits it off with a certain element of society does not mean this certain element would be representative of the whole society.

In his zeal to paint Turkey as another barbarian Muslim nation, Spencer displayed his historic ignorance by pooh-poohing the tolerance of the Turks. This is the kind of article where he reveals his true stripes, rather than the objective and fair judge he tries to come across as, within his site's FAQ page. Anything that shows Muslims as good people? Not allowed.

(It was on this page where he added the Ottoman Jew massacre claim as an "Addendum" [That's the word I use for my site's updates, as well!]. Just because some other biased person made a claim, it was good enough for the agenda-ridden Robert Spencer.)

In an article entitled, "Turkey: prove it," General Brent Scowcroft (chairman of the American-Turkish Council) is skewered as a Turkish hack. (This one might have been written not by Spencer, but "Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald.") The writer is horrified that Turkey might become a member of the European Union because the "Turks can, by the rules of the E.U., move freely anywhere within that same E.U, and set up doner kebab shops, and mosques, and swell the ranks still further of those ever-swelling ranks of Muslims who, almost without exception, have everywhere they have settled within Europe made life more unpleasant, more expensive, and more physically insecure for the indigenous Infidels (and for other non-Muslim immigrant groups who, unlike the Muslims, settle in Europe without making life more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for everyone else)?"

It's a good thing Robert Spencer, under the "Do you hate Muslims?" question of his FAQ section, told us he was not anti-Muslim.

The article, after the rant above, actually goes on to say: "the charge that the E.U. is a 'Christian club' is nonsense."

Two of the three conditions required before Turkey can become a member of the E.U.:

1) Recognizing not only the genocide of Armenians in 1915-1920, but the "mass murder" of Armenians in 1894-96.

2) "Removal of the green flag of Islam from Hagia Sophia, allowing Western (and Turkish) artisans to restore, as much as possible, the building, and permitting the holding, in Hagia Sophia, of church services."

(I wonder if a requirement was made of Greece and Spain to restore mosques and the permitting of mosque services, before Greece and Spain were permitted to join the E.U. Assuming there were any mosques or Muslims left in Greece and Spain, after the Greeks and Spaniards performed their own "jihads" many years ago.)

One of Jihad Watch's forum writers, Chris, enthusiastically agrees: "Do not forget that turks/muslims are occupators,it is not their land!!!" I don't know. Around a thousand years of ownership must be good for some squatters' rights.

It's usually the left-wingers who don't like the Turks for reasons a right-leaning publication explained so well.  But when the right-wingers have their own bones to pick, they sure can lay it on thick. The latter group is influenced mostly by religious and racial reasons. Any way you look at it, the animosity all boils down to hatred.

 "The error with regard to the common view regarding Islam arises from misapprehension of the meaning of the word ‘Jihad’, a word which in the hands of the C.I.D. reporters has caused much groundless fear to the British in India.

Marmaduke Pickthall

In English "Jihad" is commonly translated "holy war", with a meaning like crusade. It properly denotes the whole effort, individual and collective, of the true believer against evil, beginning with the conquest of a man's own passions and ending possibly, but not necessarily, in persecution and exile or upon the battlefield. Every prophet made Jihad in his own way. That of Moses took the form of emigration to escape from evil. That of Jesus was of a non-violent and passive kind. That of Muhammad shows three stages: first a non-violent endurance of hostility and persecution while fulfilling his own mission, like that of Jesus; second, when the persecution threatened to exterminate his people, emigration, the Jihad of Moses; and third, when he and his followers formed an independent State, however small and weak, and when the persecutors still persisted in attacking them, then and not till then he was enjoined to fight.

The term "Jihad" applies to all those stages, but in the minds of Europeans it is restricted to the third. That is the reason for the whole mistake. The sort of Jihad prescribed for peoples in a subject state differs from that prescribed for the same people in a state of independence. And the Jihad for subject peoples who are persecuted is the Jihad of Jesus, which was followed by Muhammad during thirteen years at Mecca."

Marmaduke Pickthall, as quoted in his biography, "Loyal Enemy," by Anne Fremantle, Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., London 1938, pp. 323-324.

Pickthall became a genuine "Islamic scholar," a foreign notion to pretenders such as Robert Spencer. Here's a good background on this exceptional man.

After the writing of the above, a page on TAT was prepared on Marmaduke Pickthall