Having debated Robert Spencer at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington D.C. a few days ago, and Serge Trifkovic on a radio show just yesterday, I have gotten a full and repulsive dose of the anti-Muslim hatred masquerading as scholarship that these guys represent. Authors of books with titles like Islam Unveiled and Sword of the Prophet, Spencer and Trifkovic contend that radical Islam is the true and only Islam. They deny that there is such a thing as a traditional Muslim--at one point Spencer challenged me to name a single traditional Muslim. Trifkovic compares Islam to Nazism and Bolshevism, and he'd like to see the earth rid of this menace. For them Islam is the problem and the only good Muslim is a Muslim who has renounced Islam.
This foolish doctrine that would make enemies of 1.2 billion Muslims--one in five people on the planet--is advanced in the name of an interpretation of Islamic theology that only a radical Muslim like Bin Laden would endorse. Bin Laden thinks that because the Koran says "slay the infidels," therefore Muslims are obliged to kill everyone who is not a Muslim. Bin Laden's doctrine is emphatically rejected by all the classical schools of Islamic teaching, and no Muslim empire from the Umayyads to the Abassid dynasty to the Mughals to the Ottomans, actually enforced a policy of slaying all the non-Muslims. Two thirds of Muslims in the world today live in democratic societies, and they certainly aren't wiping out the infidels around them, yet Spencer and Trifkovic have found their Koranic reference, and they are sticking with it all textual and empirical evidence to the contrary.
I'm Catholic and not Muslim, yet I have lots of first-hand knowledge of traditional Muslims--I grew up with many of these folks in India--and my mind reels from the one-sidedness and distortions of ideologues like Spencer and Trifkovic. Sometimes I wonder if Spencer and Trifkovic know any practicing Muslims. At one point in our CPAC debate Spencer referred by name to a Muslim "friend," giving people the impression that this fellow was on his side, but after the debate the very same man came up to me and said, "I agree with you completely. I don't know why Spencer mentioned my name in public. I think what he is saying is wrong and counterproductive."
I know that some conservatives have drunk deeply in the wells of anti-Islamic polemic, and recovery may take some time. For starters I'd recommend the detoxifying works of historian Bernard Lewis, who knows the Muslim world and speaks the local languages and exhibits in his work a judiciousness and balance utterly lacking among the rabble-rousers. Here, for example, is Lewis in a passage from his book Islam and the West. While firmly outlining the problems with Islamic toleration, Lewis shows that Muslims have throughout history coexisted with non-Muslims and he goes on to make the startling point that historically speaking Islam was more tolerant than Christianity.
"The level of willingness (of Muslims) to tolerate and live peaceably with those who believe otherwise and worship otherwise was, at most times and in most places, high enough for tolerable coexistence to be possible...The character and extent of traditional Muslim tolerance should not be misunderstood. If by tolerance we mean the absence of discrimination, then the traditional Muslim state was not tolerant, and indeed a tolerance thus defined would have been seen not as a merit but as a dereliction of duty. No equality was conceded, in practice or even less in theory, between those who accepted and obeyed God's word and those who willfully and by their own choice rejected it. Discrimination was structural and universal, imposed by doctrine and law and endorced by popular consent. Persecution, on the other hand, though not unknown, was rare and atypical, and there are few if any equivalents in Muslim history to the massacres, the forced conversions, the expulsions, and the burnings that are so common in the history of Christendom..."
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 2)
1. People like Robert Spencer will deny it all day long, but the logical conclusion one MUST draw from their arguments is that all Muslims must either leave Islam altogether or be killed. He doesn't see that he has become essentially the polar opposite of bin laden and the people who follow his way
Tariq Nelson at 6:32AM on Mar 6th 2007
2. How are the Quranic verses ordered D'Souza?
Do have a answer now?
Ian Jones at 9:33PM on Mar 6th 2007
3. Times have indeed changed when we have to look to Lewis as the paragon of Islamic scholarship. He was quite fair, I concur, but only from a conservative perspective. Then again, one almost misses paleo-cons given the state that neo-cons have left conservatism in.
Ali Eteraz at 11:03PM on Mar 6th 2007
4. What does it matter???
You claimed to have studied Islam for 4 years did you not? You claim Mr. Spencer is a Islamophobe have you not? How can make that claim if you cannot answer a simple question this is important!
Why are the verses ordered the way they are? It is important can you tell me why?
Ian Jones at 11:06PM on Mar 6th 2007
5. Hello Dinesh,
I consider myself a traditional muslim. I also don't know how to resolve the conundrum here whereby critics of Islam are essentially validating the bin Laden fatwas. My attempts at dialouge have come up frustratingly empty; there's some deeper current of either fear or hatred that essentially renders dialoge moot. I don't think that dialouge is the answer. Perhaps the only answers are long term. We certainly do need to articulate a new political identity that can bring people who recognize the problem together; you are a conservative, I am a liberal, but I think we are allies here.
Aziz Poonawalla at 11:08PM on Mar 6th 2007
6. D'Souza oversimplifies and mangles both Spencer's and Trifkovic's positions. How could D'Souza (two of whose earlier books I enjoyed) be so bogglingly ignorant?
Read Spencer's response at http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015537.php
and also see http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015527.php
check spencer's response at 12:54AM on Mar 7th 2007
7. Based on my study of Islam and its history; while brief compared to yours, Spencer's and Trifkovic's; I am inclined to accept their interpretations and characterizations of Islam as more accurate than yours. I have not read any of the books you gentlemen have written but I have read other related books and researched several web sites. My conclusion is that Islam condones and encourages violence as a means of intimidation for extortion.
JohnL at 5:40AM on Mar 7th 2007
8. "I have gotten a full and repulsive dose of the anti-Muslim hatred masquerading as scholarship that these guys represent"
That's a pretty personal attack, but as someone who REALLY loves "What's so great about america?" ..I'd like to see you rebut the arguments made by these guys on the facts, as you argued many times in that book (on other issues, obviously)
This would have far more force than calling them names. It would also be edifying to me, and many others I am sure.
epaminondas at 9:28AM on Mar 7th 2007
9. "Bin Laden's doctrine is emphatically rejected by all the classical schools of Islamic teaching, and no Muslim empire from the Umayyads to the Abassid dynasty to the Mughals to the Ottomans, actually enforced a policy of slaying all the non-Muslims."
This is sheerest nonsense and a dangerous whitewash of Islam. Not one of the four main schools of Islamic jurisprudence TODAY rejects violent jihad (including the killing of infidels).
The other issue is that neither of the authors maligned by Mr. D'Souza suggests that Muslim conquest can mean only the slaughter of all infidels. There are, however, only four choices for unbelievers following Islamic conquest: conversion, life as a dhimmi, emigration (assuming there's some place to which to emigrate), or death.
It is sad to see a once stalwart commentator like Mr. D'Souza so thouroughly misconstrue an issue and fall prey to the PC nonsense he's publishing.
Peter at 5:57PM on Mar 7th 2007
10. Dinesh, this is beginning to look like a slap fight.
You have made it to a great height. But if you give up honesty and yield to envy, you're going to have an incident like the Persian infantry had when the Spartans pushed them off the cliff.
We Americans, for all our faults, are not as dumb as we look. We won't follow you everywhere forever no matter how much we liked your previous books.
Rishika at 6:15PM on Mar 7th 2007
11. Dinesh's portrayal of everything in India being hunky-dory between the muslims and everyone else is a complete myth. It is estimated that anywhere between 60 to 80 million Hindus have been killed as a result of the Islamic invasion to the Indian subcontinent (between the 1400s to the 1900s). This cleansing continues to this day with Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh almost completely wiped out (though they made a sizable portion of the population before the 1947 partitioning). Hindus continue to be driven out of the only muslim majority region in India, i.e. Kashmir (from where I come).
Rajender Razdan at 3:12PM on Mar 8th 2007
12. It is amazing that Dinesh D'Souza has studied so little about Islam. Dinesh's claim that questioning or criticizing Islam gives rise to muslim anger is hogwash, as is his claim that the Hollywood liberalism is one of the factors that drive muslims towards the jehadists. No progress can be made in reforming Islam without a complete shakedown of the basics of Islamic theology; a theology based on the complete subjugation of humankind. I would like to direct folks to a very well written article that IMHO helps to explain the problem with trying to create an artificial dichotomy between the so-called moderate Islam and radical Islam. There is ONLY one Islam, that which has been laid out in the Koran and the variuous Hadiths. The article is, 'The Search for Moderate Islam', by Lawrence Auster. See:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16798
Rajender Razdan at 3:27PM on Mar 8th 2007
13. It has been rather astounding to watch pseudoscholars like Spencer rise to the New York Times bestseller list, and construct a major industry around demonizing Muslims, and to watch once-principled conservatives stand up to this utter insanity.
These folks claim they are standing up for "politically incorrect truths," but in fact the ignorance they wallow in is very difficult to plumb the full depths of. I knew a lot about Islam for years before 9/11, and learned more after 9/11. For a long time I was in denial that my fellow hawks were Islamophobic, but now I know the full depth of it: these people incessantly seek "debate" because they take it as a given that their points are correct, and they seek no genuine discussion or dialogue at all.
I'm glad to have you on board, Dinesh. It's a serious problem. The right needs to cleanse its soul of this ugliness, just as they purged themselves of the lunatic fringe John Birch Society.
I'm not much of a conservative, but I am damn well a hawk, and what these Islamophobic profiteers are doing is shameful--genuinely shameful.
Dean Esmay at 6:56PM on Mar 12th 2007
14. By the way, it is not that debate is all by itself a bad thing. But if it does not come from the proper spirit--including the idea that truth is being sought, and that we are seeking a better world--then in a case like this it is disingenuous all by itself.
Almost no Muslims will agree that people like Trifkovic or Spencer are right in their nutjob descriptions of their faith. They sits and create their own special version of Islam, then DEMAND that actual Muslims deny that these are the things they actually believe--and, most convenient of all, when they do deny it, accuse them of lying!
This isn't "debate" in the classic sense of the word. It is like asking a Jew to "debate" whether or not they are moneygrubbing christ-killers who secretly control world events due to the secret teachings of their Zionist. That is not something you "debate."
Dean Esmay at 6:58PM on Mar 12th 2007
15. [sigh]
"...the secret teachings of their Zionist" should read "...the secret teachings of their Zionist Elders."
I should stop while I'm ahead.
Dean Esmay at 7:00PM on Mar 12th 2007