This is a guest post the centrist (Lucy Lips’ boyfriend)
For someone who spends the majority of his time blogging, Robert Spencer is remarkably thin skinned. Ever since One Law for All published its report about how the far-Right has hijacked the anti-Islamist debate, Spencer has been howling with his characteristic sense of righteous indignation and victimhood. Dissent and disagreement is not allowed in Spencer’s world. Detractors are immediately branded ‘Marxists’, ‘anti-Semities’, ‘Dhimmis’, ‘stooges’ or practitioners of Spencer’s favourite slur ‘Taqiyyah’.
Spencer might claim not to hate all Muslims, but his work belies that vacuous claim. Jihad Watch essentalises Muslims on a daily basis, as if they were a monolithic whole acting in unison for the pursuit of an unspoken grand agenda. Every action performed by a Muslim, no matter what their actual motivation, is immediately ascribed to Islam. It is as if no Muslim ever acts without reference to their Islamic identity.
Consider this wild theory posted on Spencer’s website. An article posted by ‘The Anti-Jihadist’ claims that allegations of rape made against Dominique Strauss-Kahn are actually part of a ‘stealth jihad’. What matters, long before any real facts have been established in that case, is that Strauss-Kahn’s accuser is a Guinean Muslim immigrant.
It also so happens that Mr. Strauss-Kahn is Jewish. Coincidence?…Why would a Muslim, and a ‘pious, devout’ one at that, be so adept and experienced at lying? Surely Islam has nothing to do with this woman’s pathological lying, and nothing to do with her criminal attempts to extort money from a powerful, rich Jew. Of course.
Perhaps Strauss-Kahn’s accuser was trying to extort a rich and powerful man. The facts are far from settled. But if she were, why is Spencer not content to think of her as simply a crook? Rather, what is singled out and stressed is that she is Muslim. Indeed, the article is quite explicit in arguing that Muslims are inspired to become ‘pathological liars’ by Islam.
That is the modus operandi of Jihad Watch. Elsewhere on his site, Spencer posts a picture of an unknown Muslim woman wearing a headscarf while working for the TSA (Transportation Security Administration). After offering an insincere caveat, “I am sure the TSA employee pictured here is as loyal and patriotic as the day is long”, Spencer gets to the nub of the matter. He objects to seeing a Muslim TSA worker because:
we are forced tacitly to acknowledge either that that belief-system [Islam] had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks — even though the attackers themselves invoked it and only it as their motivation — and that therefore we must do nothing to oppose its spread in the West, or that even if that belief-system did motivate the 9/11 jihad attacks, it is continuing to advance in the West and we can do nothing about it.
The two goals may coalesce: in other words, Islamic jihadists who wished to infiltrate the TSA may decide that a hijabbed TSA worker would be preferable to one in secular dress, as a gesture of Islamic supremacist assertiveness as well as the placement of an agent who could weaken security at the right moment.
So any Muslim woman wearing the hijab is making ‘a gesture of Islamic supremacist assertiveness’? Remember that Spencer claims not to hate all Muslims or be immediately suspicious of them, yet he ascribes such conspiratorial motives to women who simply cover their hair.
Back to Spencer’s bizarre logic:
A hijabbed TSA worker is the personification of a dare: Islamic supremacists are daring the TSA to question her about her belief-system, thereby acknowledging that that belief-system has something to do with terror and violence.
Again, the hijab is linked to a ‘supremacist’ plot, this time as part of an ‘Islamist dare’. Spencer’s claims not to hold all Muslims in disdain and under suspicion is palpably false as demonstrated by articles like that, and literally hundreds of others on his website.
Spencer and supporters of his essentialist view automatically ascribe the beliefs of Islamist political parties, terrorist organisations, and the most regressive, literalist interpretations of Islam to all Muslims. Suspicion and distrust naturally follow, creating the climate in which the delusions that consumed Anders Breivik are formed.
Spencer has howled wildly that Breivik has nothing to do with him. Yet, it is not that simple. Spencer may not advocate actual violence but that is his only difference with Breivik – one of style rather than substance. They share a general diagnosis of ‘the problem’: the supposed ‘colonisation’ of Western societies by Muslims and the hysterical claim that there will be a ‘Muslim takeover’.
This is no different to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb ut Tahrir which condemned 9/11 and 7/7. They might oppose those attacks, but do so over issues of style only. They share al-Qaeda’s overall diagnosis and worldview: that Islam is under attack by a belligerent West and that the only solution is the revival of puritanical Islamic societies.
In any event, Spencer’s claims about being opposed to violence require serious examination. When the Egyptian revolution began one might have expected Spencer to support a group of people fighting for their freedom. Instead, an article on Jihad Watch by ‘Roland Shirk’ could only imagine the worst.
What Muslims want, around the world, is to impose political Islam…For us to be prattling on about the virtues of self-government in this context is suicidal, like Russian aristocrats hosting Bolsheviks in their salons.
So much for all the pieties about not hating Muslims and always suspecting the worst about them. Shirk then offered a very unique solution to avoid the ‘suicidal’ situation he saw arising in Egypt, arguing:
If I could have Mubarak’s ear, I would whisper just two words of wisdom: Tiananmen Square.
That sentence was later removed, presumably after its inexpediency was realised, but you can see a screenshot of the original below.
This is a very serious charge which Spencer must answer. Yes, the offending line has been removed but who uploaded the original article – Spencer or someone else? If not Spencer, then who? And, perhaps most damning of all, why has Roland Shirk continued to post articles on Jihad Watch since calling for the massacre of countless Egyptians as they demonstrated against one of the Middle East’s most brutal regimes?
Rather than descending into wild name calling, it would be good for Spencer to engage with the issues at hand if he is sincere.
