Spencer on the ‘Cat Stevens affair’
Robert Spencer has written yet another piece for Front Page, this time in response to what he calls the “Cat Stevens affair”. The biggest problem is that “if he is indeed telling the truth, the implications are even worse than if he is lying”, he claims.
As we know, the so-called Department for Homeland Security hasn’t provided any reason for why Yusuf was refused entry. One suggestion is that it was a spelling mistake, with a “Youssouf Islam” on the list for whom Yusuf was mistaken. If this is the case, it must be the most stupid case of “mistaken identity” for a while - Yusuf Islam’s name is never spelt Youssouf! This spelling is most often used by Arabs, not converts who normally use the textbook spellings of Arabic names.
A left-wing blogger claims that the affair is an attempt to portray Yusuf as a Hamas supporter, but Spencer alleges that the DHS wouldn’t have to try hard to do that, because he has previously spoken at conferences organised by what the Canadian government alleges is a Hamas front group. The group is the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services, whose supposed links to Hamas, based on one secret Canadian intelligence report, have been raised once in the Canadian parliament. Do a Google search, and you will find one such reference in the Canadian Hansard (parliamentary transcripts). The other references all refer to this one accusation, and most are in the usual anti-Islamic places.
Spencer then quotes Yusuf Islam as saying, “I want to make sure that people are aware that Iâve never knowingly supported any terrorist groups”, before alleging that this means that even if he’s not a willing supporter of “the global jihad”, he is a dupe. There is actually nothing global about Hamas’ activities - something nobody seems to have noticed is that, whatever we think of their methods, their terrorist attacks have been concentrated on their enemy, Israel. No hijacking planes in Uganda, no killing athletes in Munich, no throwing cripples into the sea.
These types of international terrorist actions were the work of secular socialist Arab nationalists, the best known of which is Yasser Arafat, who is actually widely hated by Arab Muslims. Arafat caused trouble wherever he went - he went to Jordan, and there was a war, then he went to Lebanon, and there was a war. Then he took refuge in Tunisia, one of the most notoriously repressive anti-Islamic secular regimes. It was laughable that this man (along with another ex-terrorist) got the Nobel Peace Prize (although for more background on Nobel prizes and the origins of the prize and the money, see here.
He then alleges,
even if he really didnât intend it to go to Hamas, it did. This is an indication of what Muslims who do not support terrorism face daily: so many Islamic âcharitiesâ have turned out to be terrorist fronts that many whose intentions were quite different have ended up being supporters of terror unwittingly.
What’s his evidence about his money going to Hamas? The Israeli government, no doubt. And his accusation that “so many” Islamic “charities” have turned out to be terrorist fronts is grossly overstated; a few have been alleged to be so. In the UK there are many Islamic charities - Islamic Relief, Muslim Hands, Human Relief, Muslim Aid, and more. Only one group, INTERPAL, has been investigated - twice - for Hamas connections, and been cleared. Furthermore,
There is no separation in mosques and Islamic communities between moderate and radical Muslims, and neither camp has shown any indication of wanting to create one.
And this is another bald statement, with no proof. In the UK at least, people go to the mosque mostly for religious (worship) purposes. A few years ago I looked at the list of where donation monies in my local mosque were going, and overwhelmingly they went “back home” - to south Asia. I remember seeing one major charity on it, but most of them were groups or institutions I didn’t recognise.
Spencer then goes off into the long-dead issue of Yusuf Islam’s support for the Rushdie fatwa:
His statements supporting the Rushdie fatwa are a case in point: now he says he spoke out of new convertâs enthusiasm and based his answer on abstract considerations of Islamic law, not intending actually to support the novelistâs murder - thereby saying something about both Islamic law and converts.
It says nothing about converts. I am a convert and I have met many converts during my time; most were not “radical” as Spencer describes, but they tend to drift to every variety of Islam on offer. Some (particularly from inner-city backgrounds) drift towards Wahhabism (in some cases to radical, jihadi Wahhabism), some to Sufism, some to the Regent’s Park crowd, some even to Shi’ism. “Khomeiniâs fatwa, … was no innovation, but entirely consistent with Islamic law mandating death for blasphemers.” But in fact it wasn’t; there is no history of sending death squads into countries in order to kill their citizens, or to incite Muslims in other countries to break the law there, including to implement the hudood which are enforced in a Muslim country. Incidentally, the fatawa issued by Shi’ite imams have no validity for Sunnis.
He then claims that the likes of J.W. Lindh, José Padilla and Richard Reid didn’t set out to learn ‘radical’ or ‘moderate’ Islam, but just Islam. Well, Padilla has yet to be convicted of anything, so it is a bit premature for Spencer (or anyone else) to call him a “dirty bomb hopeful”, but even the other two are only two of perhaps hundreds of converts who have gone abroad to study Islam. And in fact, the doors for studying mainstream Islam are narrower than they would otherwise be, because of restrictions in at least two countries for “national security” reasons, and in another for theological (i.e. Wahhabi) reasons.
Most western Muslims - converts and others - who go to Muslim countries to study Islamic sciences have no (immediate) intention of participating in any of the jihad efforts which are, or have been recently, in operation, and still less of inciting the Muslims in their home countries to commit acts of terrorism. And his assertion that “terror has intertwined itself with the religion so tightly today that it cannot be separated even by those who claim to abhor all that the terrorists stand for” is his usual arrant nonsense: Muslims, like everyone else, can choose where their money goes (except their tax money, that is), and if monies donated for development projects end up supporting terrorists, this needs to be investigated as theft or fraud as well as terrorism.
But none of this would make any difference to Spencer because his main preoccupation is the possibility of becoming a dhimmi. Well, in the past numerous Christians (such as in Egypt) have apparently preferred to stay put and be a dhimmi than to take the boat to Italy or Greece. The Jews in Morocco were alive enough, after hundreds of years there, to move to Israel after 1948 - how many were left in Spain? There are still Christians in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and other countries today - what happened to the Muslims of Sicily and Spain?
Possibly Related Posts:
- Robert Spencer, Patrick Sookhdeo and me
- KFC and the BNP
- Dentists as moral arbiters
- Fitz says kick Muslims out of Europe
- Spencer, the NDU scholars, the securocrat and his books
