I just got this message from Omid Safi:
Put this on your webpage:
You and I are not friends, and we are not friendly. I oppose, challenge, and stand up to the thinly veiled bigotry that you foster. For my part, I will spend my life standing up for women’s rights, for rights of the oppressed and marginalized, opposing both Islamic extremists and western triumphalists. If you had taken a moment to read my essay in the Progressive Muslims book, you would have a sense of what I stand for.
That being said, sir, in polite society (which I assume we are in) we do not call people by their first name until we are given permission to do so. I have not given you permission to call me by “Hi Omid!”, nor by “my man.”
And lastly, I can’t tell you what a great pedagogical tool it is for me to be able to show my students the level of hate that shows up on websites like yours. You can hide behind, “it is an un-moderated list” all you want like a coward. I will use direct quotes like: “Believe it or not, I don’t “hate” muslims, I hate Islam” to make the point about Islamophobia to my students. At the end of the day, I am unconcerned with whether or not you recognize Islamophobia as a real social issue, sir. As a scholar I do care about whether the United Nations does. (it does.)
Substitute Judaism or Christianity in the above quote, and see how most decent human beings would be outraged. I will take my work to those folks, and keep struggling for justice. You do what you think is best.
Oh, and lastly, I only invite credible scholars of Islamic studies to Colgate to speak about Islam. Get a PhD in Islamic studies (which you don’t have), publish a book by a credible university press (which you have not), and then we’ll talk. Academic credentials do mean something, you know.
All the best,
Omid Safi
Have you ever noticed how self-important and humorless these pseudo-academic ideologues can be? My man Safi seems to be the Emily Post of academia — who knew?
He objects to statements not made by me, but by posters here, choosing the statement “Believe it or not, I don’t ‘hate’ muslims, I hate Islam” as an example, and tells me it’s cowardly to tell him it’s an unmoderated board. All right, Omid. You straighten this out for me — you having a Ph.D. and all, it will be easy for you. Tell me exactly how it is that I am responsible for someone who posts that he hates Islam, but presumably not responsible for someone who posts (as someone did here) on the same thread that “blanket-hating Islam is not going to make it any better”? Or am I responsible for both opposing views? By dismissing the idea of unmoderated comments as meaningless, you indicate once again, Omid, that your grasp of the concept of free speech as tenuous at best.
But of course, Safi is reduced to quoting a poster whose identity isn’t even known to me as if his words were mine because he probably knows that if he actually opened one of my books, he wouldn’t find the “bigotry” and “Islamophobia” that he wants to find. And that, of course, would belie his biased and propagandistic characterizations of those writings.
Moreover, about that poster’s statement: Omid seems to think that it is somehow “bigoted” to have an opinion about a belief system. All right, Omid, I’ll play your mutatis mutandis game: I guess it would be wrong to say “I don’t hate Christians; I hate Christianity.” So I guess Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell are taught at Colgate as examples of deplorable and hate-filled Christianophobic bigotry, eh, Omid? And what about this little matter of Omid “opposing both Islamic extremists and western triumphalists”? Omid, my friend, you don’t, uh, hate Western triumphalism, do you? Don’t you stay awake nights wondering if you’re provoking anti-American bigotry? You don’t? Well then, I’m sure you understand how I can oppose the Islamic jihad ideology, Sharia, and dhimmitude, in the name of “standing up for women’s rights, for rights of the oppressed and marginalized,” as a great man once put it, without hating anyone, or engaging in “bigotry” or “racism” — can’t you Omid?
Safi also ignores the increasingly massive evidence of corruption at the UN, and subscribes to its politicized and propagandistic endorsement of “Islamophobia.” I’m sorry, Omid: am I supposed to be impressed that Kofi Annan is wringing his hands about “Islamophobia”? Your faith in the UN is touching, but do you really think it is incorruptible? Have you heard of a little matter — something about oil-for-food? Sex abuse among UN aid workers? Oh, and you might want to request a review copy of my new essay collection, The Myth of Islamic Tolerance. You’ll be interested in a section there entitled “Human Rights and Human Wrongs at the UN,” containing many never-before-published and seldom-seen documents detailing the sorry record of Islamic states on human rights issues at the UN — often acting in the name of Islam. I suppose “Islamophobes” like me made all that data up, eh, Omid?
Finally, I will not book a flight to Colgate, as I have no intention of getting the Ph.D. in Islamic studies that you evidently require of speakers. As I explained before, and as you have not addressed in any way, shape, or form, the field is so politicized these days as to make honest scholarship virtually impossible. It is dominated by pseudo-scholarly hacks who parrot the tired and intellectually laughable politically tendentious lines of the likes of Edward Said — but I don’t need to tell you that, do I, Omid?
It is ironic, Omid, that you sneer at the idea of inviting me to Colgate, when you have already done so. You’re the one who introduced poor dumb uncredentialed folks like me into the debate by adding us to your course’s enemies list of “Islamophobes,” triumphalists, “unrepentant Orientalists,” etc. It appears that you do not wish to allow us to speak for ourselves, but rather, loftily, no doubt waving your diploma all the while, you will explain our works to your hapless charges. You have not allowed them to form their own opinions about our work by calling us these names at the outset, and you are evidently afraid to let them hear us (or at least me) and judge for themselves. I must say, you are the very model of a modern academic.
Finally, you doubtless know that the argument from authority is the weakest of all arguments. People should listen to you and not to me because you have a Ph.D.? I’ll bet you that I could spend five minutes at Colgate and find ten refutations of the idea that a degree confers expertise bumbling around in classrooms. What you have not done, and evidently will not do, is actually confront and attempt to refute the substance of the arguments I have marshalled in my books Islam Unveiled and Onward Muslim Soldiers. It’s a lot easier to hide behind your sheepskin, ain’t it, Omid?
Cordially
Robert Spencer