Andrew Bostom has published a thought-provoking and wide-ranging review of my new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) in The American Thinker:
Robert Spencer, a serious student of Islam for the past quarter century, and a devout Catholic, has revived this highly informative, unapologetic genre of writing in four recent books: Islam Unveiled, Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics, Onward Muslim Soldiers, and The Myth of Islamic Tolerance. His fifth, and latest effort, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) —true to the courageous spirit of the four earlier books—is a didactic, carefully referenced work, written in very accessible language.
Spencer explodes numerous apologetic canards about Islam—both its dogmas, and history—with a witty irreverence that is never mean-spirited, and always well-documented. Recurrent teaching tools the author employs effectively (and humorously) are the “Guess what?” bullets that open each chapter, four variants of text boxes (“Just Like Today”; seminal thinkers on Islam [for eg., John Quincy Adams; see below]; “Muhammad vs. Jesus”; and “A Book You’re Not Supposed to Read”), and the chapter subheading(s), “PC myth(s)”. Spencer’s utilizes these six motifs deftly to educate readers about disturbing, but quintessential truths regarding Islam...
Robert Spencer’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) is a very readable, highly informed critique of living Islamic institutions and historical practices incompatible with modern constructs of human rights, and peaceful international relations. One hopes his trenchant observations will motivate the public to cajole media and policymaking elites into initiating a candid discussion of Islam—a discussion these elites have thus far scrupulously avoided. Such unapologetic analysis would facilitate efforts by willing Muslims to force open the “closed circle of Islam”—K.S. Lal’s bleak, but accurate characterization—and engage in the self-criticism of Islam required to eliminate Islamic doctrines that threaten all of humanity—including Muslims themselves.
Watch for Dr. Bostom's superb collection, The Legacy of Jihad, coming soon.
This is a wonderful review. Andy quite rightly places Robert Spencer among the scholars of an age gone by. Most prominently, he compares Spencer to W.R. Gardner whose writings from early last Century were a common sense, Christian understanding of Islam. Spencer, like Gardner, has that basic common sense combined with a high degree of scholarship.
Bostom also compares Spencer to Antoine Fattal, who wrote straight forward no-nonsense prose about Islam mid twentieth century, before the pc cult of academia destroyed Middle East Studies and every other social science discipline, in the process poisoning the minds of an entire generation for their own ego aggrandizement.
Lay scholars like Spencer, Fitzgerald and Bostom have been summoned by necessity to fill the vacuum.
Thank Heaven pigs can fly - off the shelf that is. If you haven't read Spencer, you don't know Islam.
-Rebecca
*pig = Politically Incorrect Guide
"Thank Heaven pigs can fly - off the shelf that is."
Amazon just e-mailed me and said this about my order:
"Sometimes, unexpected fluctuations in supply can add time to our
original availability estimate. We have learned that "Politically
Incorrect GT Islam & the Crusades" is now back-ordered, and we've
ordered this item from another supplier and hope to be able to
deliver it to you between September 14-30, 2005. I apologize that
you were not notified sooner of this change.
To help compensate you for this unexpected change, I upgraded
the method of shipment for this order to Priority Delivery at no
additional charge."
A little annoying, but worth it if the book is selling so well.
To get Spencer's latest (or any other) book, you don't need to rely on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble to get a timely shipment. You can find it at http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/ . The search provides a list of online booksellers with that title in stock; also additional info on book price, new or used, shipping cost, estimated shipping time, etc...
There are a lot of vendors who would gladly sell to you, often for less, besides the major ones. And you can enjoy doing an end-run around the PC ones that hide books not fitting in with their idea of "correctness."
SCMS in VA-
Buyers interested in Mr. Spencer's work can also try
abebooks; alibris; biblios and half.com
All worth checking for the best, quickest and most available titles.
A fine review, apt, accurate and inviting.
Let's see if this can spur the NY Times to AT LEAST review it?
(And get people to move it to #1 on their list, if not.)
Unabashed self-promotion of the worst kind...amazing.
Apologists are trying to explain the more than 3,000 attacks world wide by Muslims against non-Muslims since 9-11-01 as coming from a largely illiterate Islamic population that is being led by Wahabi based clerics. However this does not explain the recent murders by Muslims of Theo Van Gogh, the London bombings, etc. Islamic apologists are rapidly running out of excuses and it is becoming obvious that the cause of Islamic violence does not stem from a small group of radical clerics but from the Quran, the Hadiths and Islam itself. Mr. Spencer's book does a magnificent job of exposing the truth about Islam that liberals don't want known. PIG is an extremely well written, well documented book that should be in every home, every school, and every public library. It should be required reading in high schools and universities. Mr. Spencer, I salute you for a job well done. Your book is a best seller and deservedly so. God (not Allah) bless you.
Shukri,
Self-promotion?
In a word, yes. Were this book accorded any attention at all -- positive or negative -- by the mainstream press -- liberal or conservative -- I might not feel it necessary to post here such reviews as do come. But I do think that if anyone would be interested in such reviews, it is the people who are interested in the books' subject matter, i.e., the readers of Jihad Watch.
However, in the interests of fairness, here is a negative review of my book that I just snagged from this site:
http://www.wndbookservice.com/products/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6805
"MY PERSPECTIVE: It is funny how a self-professed 'expert' comes along with all of the trappings of a Islamic subject-matter-expert and all of the right-wing 'blind-followers' come out and praise his immature work of revisionist history. Adolph Hitler hacked out a 'book' once too. How many people today say 'Mien Kampf' (My Struggles) was a wonderful piece of work?
Mr. Spencer is no more an expert on Southwest Asia (AKA 'middle-east' – an ignorant British geography inaccuracy), and it's primary religion, than George W. Bush is! As a matter of fact I wonder how much indirect involvement Mr. Spencer has with DUBYA and Herr Rove."
As any self-respecting crypto-Nazi should know, it's MEIN, not MIEN, Kampf. But let that pass. Herr Rove? If you're reading this, call me. You and I and Dubya need to have a little chat. As far as I'm concerned, it's long overdue.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Shukri, Shirk, 1a, Saladin:
Just what are you trying to sell?
The 'Mahdi?'
or Mohammed and the Koran?
The accusation of "shameless self-promotion" is of course true. Thank God. We live in a country where, alas, even the most shy and retiring of us soon learns that he must indulge in a little self-promotion. And how unfortunate it would be if, in indulging in that self-promotion, we were to wince in embarrassment. No, to make sense, to be cost effective and easy on the emotions, all self-promotion should ideally be shameless.
Go ahead, please, Robert, and give us more of that shameless self-promotion. Lay it on thick here at Jihad Watch. We want that book, now that it has entered the lists, to defeat others at the tournament sponsored by The New Duranty Times. And that New Duranty Times will have to swallow hard, and in the same begrudging or even hostile spirit as a certain Choucroute or Cabbage-Patch Kid above -- award the palm, the oak, the bays, to a book that it most devoutly wishes would go away.
Mr. Spencer, I do not think that self-promotion is going to help your cause. A good, reliable and accurate book will be judged and recommended on it's own merits.
But let me go read your book before I comment.
Thank you.
i hope you are going to pay for your copy or return it to the library in good order once you have finished it
It is RS's weblog, he can post what he pleases. If you want to promote something, can you think of a better place?
Authors promote their books all the time. It's an accepted practice in the publishing world. A book cannot be judged and recommended until people hear about the book.
RS's book, along with The American Thinker review, is also listed @
www.TheTruthProject.blogspot.com
Frankly, Robert. When are you going to get yourself some letters to go at the end of your name so you can be a bonafide 'expert?' I'd suggest 'PBUH' but I think that's taken.
Here in Broward County Florida, CAIR is rallying the troops to defend their use of the Broward County Main Library to hold their "Explore Islam Lectures" which are meant to compliment the CAIR library project.. which for those of you who don't know is a project to give a package of Islamist friendly books to public libraries... under the guise of "educating" the ignorant American masses as to what the "is" is in Islam.. at least their take on it... I say the "is" stands for "insufferable submission"
I propose the anti-CAIR, anti-Jihad, non-apologists, pro-democracy forces put together our own "library project".. ask the dear appeasing Broward County staff and commissioners to grant us permission to give the public rebuttal time... and perhaps we should put our own packet of books together... I would vote to include Robert's collective works in the package...
Ft. Lauderdale.. Emi
The success of Robert's latest book attests to the thirst so many have for any treatment whatsoever of the subject of islam that does not violate one's innate sense of reason, logic, right and wrong. Who knows, maybe in another year or two, it will become unfashionable and "unhip" to go about flaunting one's stupidity about Islam and the ME on America's prestigious university campuses. (Please indulge my wishful thinking.)
Name me the person who does not self promote and I will give you a cheap fifty cent cigar. Or half a 'Big Mac", if you dont smoke...