Report on Robert Spencer and the Boston Anti-Islamic Controversy

Anti-Islamic and anti-Arab talks/propaganda sessions that have been taking place with increasing frequency in the USA since the beginning of February seem to be coordinated (at least in the Boston and the New York/New Jersey area where I spend most of my time). The current increase in defamation of Arab and Muslim spokesmen throughout the USA and the world is probably connected with such indoctrination sessions. Robert Spencer's February 3rd talk, which took place in Newton, Massachusetts, and which is discussed below, is fairly typical. *

Spencer spoke a little about the Roxbury Mosque and tried to identify as jihadists some people, who in the past had some association with the Islamic Society of Boston, but most of the talk was a sort of rambling attack on Islam that cherry-picked verses from the Quran, commentaries, ahadith, historical incidents, cultural practices, Islamic legal theory, fatawa of various degrees of importance, and various historical, philosophical and political works by Muslim intellectuals over the last millennium. If you want to get an idea of the nature of the talk, you could peruse Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith at the library. Please do not buy it. Or if you do so, get it secondhand so that he gets no royalty.

Spencer's approach was similar to the anti-Jewish polemic that was common in Germany and Eastern Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th century. (To be honest, I consider Rohling's Der Talmudjude to have been a good deal more coherent and erudite albeit equally wrong and malicious.**) Spencer made a big deal about taqiyah even though Maimonides gives in the Mishneh Torah exactly the same sort of permission to dissemble in the same way under exactly the same circumstances. Spencer has more or less recreated the anti-Semitic calumny that Jews give themselves permission to lie every year during the kol nidrei prayer at Yom Kippur and transformed it into an anti-Muslim slander.

Spencer does not like the Quranic verse that assigns authority to men over women even though Abraham Geiger correctly pointed out over 100 years ago that the verse is practically identical to traditional Jewish interpretations of the punishment of Eve in Genesis. Spencer also fussed that the Quran characterizes Sabbath-breakers as apes and pigs and that this language creeps into anti-Israel and Zionist polemic. Perhaps, American Jews are sensitive about the issue because 90% of them are Sabbath breakers, but the Hebrew Bible records in Numbers that Moses ordered the summary execution of a Sabbath breaker. Name calling is mild by comparison. I do agree that the terminology is probably inappropriate when attacking Israel and Zionism. Identifying Zionist colonizers as murderous genocidal racist thieves and interlopers corresponds much more closely to my observations of Zionist behavior in Stolen Palestine (pre-1967 Israel) and Occupied Palestine (the lands conquered in 1967).

Spencer ranted for a while about dhimma even though this area of Islamic jurisprudence is quite similar to the canon law and halakhic rules about nonbelievers under Christian or Jewish authority. In any case, the rules for dealing with nonbelievers in all three religions have historically been mostly theoretical because Jews have only rarely been in a situation where they held sovereignty over non-Jews in recent times, and the major Christian and Islamic political entities over the last 500 years have usually used ad hoc systems in place of the specific ordinances of religious law.

He cited out of context a lot of verses that discussed struggle with idolaters or unbelievers and tried to argue that Islam was incompatible with the idea of universal human rights (as if Zionism is). He also cited Kabbani and another Sheikh (probably out of context) in a sort of ipse dixit argument.

Later during questioning he tried to demonize as uniquely evil the desire of ibn Khaldun for the expansion of Sharia throughout the world as if ideas like manifest destiny, mission civilatrice and the white man's burden did not express a similar mentality in the most positive interpretation and a very racist mentality in a more realistic interpretation.

Over all, Spencer seems to have intended to use the talk to rally the troops against the Mosque and Islam or Muslims in general. Many of the Jewish attendees were quite offended by the thrust and the content. Several questioned Spencer's competence in interpreting the texts and asked why he cited questionable Orientalist literature instead of asking Muslim scholars. Two compared Spencer's talk with traditional anti-Jewish polemics. The reaction was to some degree correlated with age. The older people seemed somewhat more anti-Muslim, but on the whole amount of criticism from the audience suggested that anti-Mosque activity is probably on the decline.

There was a suggestion that there should be an open debate or discussion between Spencer and a Muslim scholar. The proposal is questionable. Spencer can pack an amazing number of lies and misrepresentations into 10 seconds, and the answer to each point would probably require several minutes.

The idea that Muslims must somehow prove themselves worthy to Jews, Zionists or their panderers is simply offensive, and part of the required proof seems to include an affirmation of the legitimacy of Israel even though I can cite hundreds of prominent Rabbinical and Karaite scholars as well as eminent Jewish intellectuals of various ethnicities, who will state unequivocally that Zionism is a vile idea that is either racist or runs counter to the last 1000 years of Rabbinic and Karaite Jewish thought.

If this idea of an open discussion goes forward, the format should provide equality. If Spencer is going to interrogate a Muslim scholar about various religious, cultural, communal, historical, social and political aspects of Islam or about the behavior of Muslims from various ethnic groups or states, the Muslim scholar should be able to pose similar queries to Spencer about various aspects of Judaica, for ethnic Ashkenazi Zionist Neocons have done a tremendous amount of damage to the USA in manipulating the government to make war on Iraq for the sake of Israel. Why does Spencer focus on Arab and Muslim Americans, who have proven time again to be one of the most patriotic Americans, while he ignores the obvious disloyalty of the wealthy and influention Ashkenazi American ethnic group, whose members identify far more with Zionist colonizers than with their fellow Americans?

Spencer seems to fixate on certain aspects of the Quranic text, a few specific commentaries, a very narrow portion of Islamic law, certain cultural practices, and the opinions of representatives of political or fundamentalist Islam. Identifying exactly comparable areas in which to question Spencer would be tricky.

Modern Rabbinic Judaism is historically more the religion of the Talmud than the religion of the Hebrew Bible, but today for most American Jews Jewish religion seems primarily a combination of Holocaust fixation, worship of the State of Israel and ethnic narcissism.

While ethnic Muslim identity exists in Eastern Europe among Polish-Lithuanian Tatar Muslims and among Bosnians, Muslims constitute much more a community of faith than do American Jews or Zionist colonizers. When Muslims use the term Jew, they mean a community that follows the tawrat musa. Before Zionism became the dominant ideology among ethnic Ashkenazim, Ashkenazim typically used Jew (Yid in Yiddish) to mean a member of the Ashkenazi ethnic group, which represents something like 98% of American Jews. In order to legitimize the theft of Palestine from the native population Zionists reinterpreted the Ashkenazi ethnic group as the pan-Judaic ethnonational group of anyone whose ancestors practiced some form of Judaic religion. As a consequence political Islamism is probably much more comparable to Zionism, which Nordau, one of the founding Zionist leaders, called Muskeljudentum (Muscle Judaism).

If Spencer wants to question the role that Saudis play in spreading specifically Saudi forms of Islam, his Muslim counterpart might want to discuss the role that Jewish Hollywood executives play in spreading ideas about male-female relations that seem to have developed in the specifically Eastern European Ashkenazi social context (including the Frankist Jewish heresy that encouraged adultery and promiscuity).

To be frank, Spencer really did not seem to have much in the way of qualifications to write or to discuss Islam, and I do not know of any Muslim scholar that would have sufficient command of Judaica to provide a reasonable counterpoint. A discussion or debate between Spencer and a Muslim scholar would probably generate more heat than light and might even give extra life to the anti-Mosque campaign, which seems to be dying.

* Announcing the event: Thursday, February 3, 2005 8:00 PM The Boston Mosque: Does Tolerance and Diversity Go Both Ways? Robert Spencer, Director of Jihad Watch will discuss the Boston Mosque controversy and why it should be a matter of concern for every defender of Israel and believer in universal human rights. Sponsored by the Temple Emanuel Israel Action Forum. Contact: Denise Telio, 617-558-8100. Free and open to the public.

** Even the titles of books that belong to the modern American anti-Islamic/anti-Muslim polemic are similar to the titles of books that belong to the historic Central and Eastern European anti-Jewish polemic. Robert Spencer's Islam Unveiled is a clear echo of Eisenmenger's Entdecktes Judentum (Judaism/Jewry Unmasked). Sphere: Related Content