Robert Spencer: Hatemonger
*(This was one of the last items I posted before the old blog went down. It was originally posted on the 4th of September.)*
As the fallout from the horrific Beslan massacre continues, the sun continues to shine on the likes of Robert Spencer and he continues to make hay. Robert Spencer, for the uninitiated, is the author of two anti-Muslim blogs, Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch, and boasts of talking (about Islam presumably) on various American (mostly) right-wing media outlets including Faux Newsand the New York Post (both Murdoch outlets). Of course, he’s able to find one guy (via the egregious “Little Green Footballs”, as one might expect) in an Arab newspaper who supposedly thinks Israel did this. Of course, right now Israel has no business attacking schools in Russia.
In an entry entitled “Tantawi decries school killings”, he muddies the issue by bringing a whole load of non-sequiturs into it. One of these is Colonel Qaddafi and his son, Sayf al-Islam, who claims that there are “no civilians in Israel”, neglecting to mention the fact that nobody in the Muslim world considers them as authorities on Islam – in fact, there are those who call the Colonel a disbeliever. He quotes the Reliance of the Traveller as saying that killing women and children is forbidden unless they are fighting the Muslims and asks, “Let’s see if Tantawi condemns [the source of this ruling] Mawardi?”. Of course, “fighting the Muslims” means just that. What is wrong with killing one’s immediate mortal enemy, especially if that person is also the enemy of one’s people? Why is it so strange that people make a distinction between Palestinian suicide bombings and the delibrate massacre of innocent children in Russia, when as anyone can tell, *the actions, and the circumstances surrounding them, are completely different*?
This dishonest blogger also drew attention to the murder of a woman by some maniac in the street in Manchester, because he was seen reading the Qur’an. The police say this “appears to be a very unusual and untypical incident”, to which Spencer quips: “Hmm. He seems to have forgotten that the 9/11 hijackers, and the Bali bomber, and killers from the Philippines to Nigeria, have been seen reading the Qur’an”. The man, by the way, has been “sectioned” (detained) under the Mental Health Act, so police are clearly not treating this as a terrorist incident, as of course, terrorists just attack any random woman in the street, with a knife.
This is only the most recent example of blatant dishonesty on Spencer’s blog. For example,on August 22nd, he posted a link to an article ostensibly by “MuslimCreed.com” (the site returns a “no such host” error, but it might not have done less than two weeks ago), with an Islamic justification of suicide / martyrdom operations. Of course, the article was probably written by someone who does approve of such operations. This is because opinion is sharply divided on the issue between people who approve of them in certain circumstances, and people who disapprove of them in all circumstances. This does not mean that someone who speaks to the media with the anti position is a liar, because he may have heard this position and may agree with it himself.
On August 10th, he posted a screed against Ahmed Deedat, claiming that he had been funded by the Saudi Bin Laden family (so what – they are a well-known establishment family there), and had been an ardent supporter of Osama and an anti-Semite. Well, Deedat’s best-known book whichinvolves Jews is Arabs and Israel – Conflict or Conciliation, and I can vouch for it not being anti-Semitic; in fact, it clearly points out that not all Jews support Zionism. Spencer also alleges that “Osama was, by funding Deedat, aiding in dawah — which is, of course, theprecursor to jihad”, when in fact, it is a different sort of da’wah which is a precursor to jihad. Deedat’s da’wah was mostly about countering Christian missionary efforts in South Africa, where missionaries harrassed Muslims in their homes. He never threatened military action of any sort.
And it goes on and on. It would take a whole blog, perhaps a book, to refute Spencer’s lies and distortions. The scary thing is that someone whose entire blog consists of such untruthsand half-truths is given airtime in the mainstream media, but perhaps it’s not surprising given that Harry aka Will Cummins was allowed to spout off in the Sunday Telegraph here in the UK for four weeks running. (If Spencer was just some idiot shouting from the sidelines, by the way, I wouldn’t have even mentioned him here, but Ginny’s mentioned on her blog about having to defend Islam to non-Muslims who had heard Spencer’s accusations in the media.)
By the way:
The BBC put up a “Have Your Say” page, as they often do when something out of the ordinary happens or there’s a public debate about something, about the Beslan atrocity. Most of the responses consisted of sadness and horror, a few talked about Russian oppressions and a few said Putin needed to get tough with the terrorists. But there was one entry from “CJ” of California,which begins: “We are told the Muslim faith focuses on peace and serenity. But, each time we are given a glimpse into the Muslim world, all we see is death and murder? To blatantly target children goes directly against the moral fabric that makes us human.” It just so happens that the author of Little Green Footballs, which sneers at any suggestion that Islam is a “religion of peace”, is called Charles Johnson.
