National Review is pushing Dinesh D'Souza's silly and misleading book hard, running an ad that proclaims "Let the Debate Begin." This is ironic in light of the fact that I have heard not a word from NR's Kathryn Lopez about my open invitation to debate D'Souza there. I guess what NR is running is really a Henry Ford-style debate invitation: you can have any color car you like as long as it's black, and let the debate begin, as long as there is only one participant.
Anyway, the debate between D'Souza and me really is going to begin, tomorrow night at 7PM PST, 10PM EST, on Lores Rizkalla's radio show. You will be able to listen online here.
Also, D'Souza himself has told me that we are scheduled to debate at CPAC in March, but I have heard nothing from CPAC about this myself and thus cannot consider it confirmed. I'll keep you posted.
You can read my initial responses to D'Souza's book here, here, and here, and Hugh Fitzgerald's here, here, and here. Also, I am just about to start writing a full review of the book.
I look forward to hearing the sound of a boot impacting D'Souza's rear-end----it will be good for all of us.
Time for some popcorn . . .
I wish I could see him sweat! I suspect he will blink his eyes, squirm, and look at his watch ..
..OK D'Souza, You said it, now explain....
In terms of why NR is silent on your invitation, (1) I think at least a couple of writers have a more of a Spencer/Hugh view (Andy McCarthy, Mark Steyn)---so there is not truly a consensus ; (2) they are probably being a bit too loyal to D'Souza. For example, David Frum has posted/linked to a couple of things sharply critical of S'Souza's position while sheepishly saying something like "this makes sense to me."
If a magazine like NR with a proud history of bucking political correctness during the long slog of the Cold War can't eventually be persuaded to come around on Islam, I don't have a lot of confidence in the future.
Will the show be archived at all so it can be listened to at a later date? I hope so for those of us who will not be able to tune in tomorrow.
In our current sociopolitical climate, what makes political analysis "respectable" is its fidelity to the mainstream paradigm of the problem of Islam, by which Islam itself is detached from all bad things certain Muslims do -- i.e., there is no problem of Islam per se.
The flip side of this "respectability" is to maintain a distance from people, publications and programs perceived to be "Islamophobic" as defined, again, by the mainstream paradigm.
The fact that National Review would kowtow to this mainstream paradigm shows how dominant PC is on this particular issue: even when a person, publication or program is politically INcorrect in many other ways, they dare not be so with regard to the problem of Islam. We can therefore say that, with regard to the problem of Islam, we are no longer speaking of mere Political Correctness, but of an Uber-Political-Correctness.
National Review will have to debate Robert some time. He's been on too many conservative talk shows and has had too much exposure. They are becoming "outside the fold" sort of speak with this D'Souza guy. Too many of their following can put together two plus two together correctly.
D'Souza reprsents only a modified version of "it's America's fault." His aspect of it is from the conservative point of view that "it's really Hollywood's pushing the boundaries of western taste"; Or some such approach. This aspect will only play so long with conservatives.
The National Review readers will listen to facts and sources. When Robert starts to use them, D'Souza will slowly find him self out of the lime light. I'm sure that the Review guys like Rich Lowrey will be hesitant to brand Islam as bad because of their conservative stances. (Freedom to worship as you choose type stuff).
OT: The EVIL ONE [hillary] is laboring along on C-Span. Some sort of a Town Hall meeting. Handpicked guests I am sure.
Not a word about jihad. She's peddling her warmed-over healthcare ideas onc again.
This must be somewhere in "The South". She's trying hard as she can to affect a twang. Poor thang.
Lincoln vs. Douglas!
Yea I know its not at that level. D'Souza is no Douglas.
:)
No mercy...the fate of the conservative approach to Islam is in doubt! This fight was needed anyway to focus the truth of what this is all about. Are conservatives going to be brave and name the enemy or are they going to waste time in a food fight with liberals and fake dreams.
As Margert Thatcher said...
"first you win the argument and then you win the vote"
This is a big first step...
Robert,
It is absolutely vital that you annihilate this character Dinesh. (Of course, I mean that I hope you demonish his thesis; I wouldn't want to go Muslim on him.) You're just the person for the job, for I have seldom heard a more effective debater than you.
Not only does DD fail to grasp the nature of the Islamic threat to the Western world's very existence, his assigning blame for their aggression and animus toward the West to the American Left is bound to turn Left against Right & vice-versa to a degree that the erstwhile Soviets could scarcely dream of. The consequences of that internecine fued would surely spell our doom.
Good luck.
OT: Hillary Update. The Evil One just finished her "Town Hall Meeting" in Iowa. This is the VERY FIRST TIME I've ever heard music on C-Span. They're playing: Ain't seen nothing yet.
Words of comfort for us who are looking for strong action against jihad. /sarc off.
PS. The conservatives who go against Rudi should be reminded.. Only Rudi knows firsthand the EVIL of the MoFoes.
Who cares about these things like abortion and gay marriage anymore? We are facing global jihad!!
Can we stop bickering about these trifling issues until AFTER we get rid of pigslam???!!
Would you prefer Hillary or Rudi in office when the next attack hits?
Who do you think would have CAIR in the White House more often than Bush??!! My bet is on Hillary.
The fact that NR, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and others on the right are actually exhibiting signs of being stuck in Uber-Political-Correctness (I like that phrase but the end result of it is terrifying) just shows how much work needs to be done. If you would have said to me 8 months ago, any of those three were politically correct in any way, I would have laughed. Its definitely not a criticism any of the three are currently inclined to accept or treat seriously.
Someone posting a couple of months ago compared awareness on this issue as being "unplugged" in the movie THE MATRIX. I think the analogy is useful for those who have seen the movie. We are talking about such a tremendous change in world view while living in a politically correct world. After reading things on this site, a couple of Robert's books (eventually I will get to all of them), it is easy to feel like an alien when you engage in a "mainstream" discussion of the news of the day.
With all of that being said, even with the PC-on-steroids society that we live in, I don't think many people would have problems calling it a cult if Islam was invented today. At the very least, a discussion of whether it is or is not a cult would be something people could discuss in "polite" company.
The challenge is that the merits to Islam have gone unchallenged for so long, that it seems biggoted to many people to do so now. For example, the Catholic Catechism on this point is so DISAPPOINTING. It doesn't look under the covers of Islam or the Koran at all. At the very least, one would think the Jesus-related provisions in the Koran would be identified and criticized/contrasted. This is a great example of how nobody (not even the Catholic Church) wants to be politically incorrect by looking inside the box that is Islam. Either that, or the Church doesn't want to spark massive violent reprisals. Understandable concerns, but the Catholic Catechism is supposed to be about truth, and shining the light of truth in subtle ways is better than clear capitulation.
How do we break through a barrier that impacts so many different aspects and groups in our society? That is the question we all want answered. If I had any sense of what the answer is, I know I would sleep better at night. In the end, I think ultimately we will be saved from Slow Jihad from the public spectacle of Fast Jihad. Without Fast Jihad, I don't think we have a chance. God can bring good things out of evil circumstances, and that gives some comfort, at least to those of us who believe.
Anyway, I just want to reiterate that I am SO GRATEFUL TO HAVE DISCOVERED THIS WEBSITE. Thanks to everyone out there who makes me feel like I am not an alien living in some artificial world.
Knock 'em dead Robert!
"Also, I am just about to start writing a full review of the book."--Robert
Good. Please do pounce on any and every opportunity to demonstrate, from D'Souza's book, the ignorance, errors, and fiction contained therein.
Sheik yer booty
The consequences of that internecine fued would surely spell our doom.
As a practical matter, I'm not sure this has been proven. A civil war in the West, although very destructive, could leave the victors in a better position to destroy the threat from Islam. "Islam" is at least as big an issue as "slavery", in the long run.
Let's face it, we aren't making much progress without the "internecine feud". It's a matter of which strategic scenario is better for the West. I speak solely as a pragmatist, so if there is a more pragmatic suggestion, I'm open to it.
As my screen name suggests, I'm a student of Caesar and the Rome of his time. They came out of a civil war and went on to rule the Mediterranean of their time more effectively than ever.
Thanks for the heads up, I was considering re-subscribing to NR after the dems rolled the ship of state over on its keel, but now I see it would just be a waste of money. But the good news is that Glenn Beck is trying to salvage his reputation by his being a ABC commentator protested by muslim groups for his "intolerance".
"D'Souza himself has told me that we are scheduled to debate at CPAC in March, but I have heard nothing from CPAC about this myself..."
-- from Robert Spencer's commment above
I should imagine that Grover Norquist, and his Muslim wife, and those he has so insidisiously influenced in a certain part -- the part he influences -- of the so-called "conservative movement" -- is moving heaven and earth to prevent Dinesh D'Souza from debating Robert. They're very cunning, those people. They know what can be prepared for with a little debate team, and what cannot be prepared for no matter what, if the texts, anbn 1350-year history, and present observable and observed behavior of Muslims all over the world cohere, are similar, and reflect the clear doctrines of Islam, and clearest of all those doctrines, the division of the world between Believer and Infidel, the inculcated hostility of Believer toward Infidel, whether that Infidel snorts cocaine in the Chateau Marmont or is a God-fearing Amish behind his horse-drawn plow, just outside Intercourse, Pennsylvania.
No, I'm sure Grover Norquist (a bit comical, that name, with echoes of Sesame Street, and yet also sinister withal, a little concolorous with Nixon's Robert Aplanalp) is doing his bit to prevent the D'Souza-Spencer bout from ever happening. Or, to so arrange things, that a Muslim moderator, or some non-Muslim apologist (
is Esposito free? how about Carl Ernst? Michael Sells?) or perhaps some "conservative" who is also deeply, truly, madly anti-Israel. Say, what's Robert Novak or Pat Buchanan doing that night? Surely they are free to make sure the message of "family values" that supposedly unite "traditional Muslims" and god-fearing non-Muslims of every stripe would be willing to lend Grover Norquist a hand in a good cause, wouldn't they?
Just watch and see how they either weasel out, or attempt to stack the goddam deck.
My Weekly Standard is worse on the war, but National Review is worse, generally on Islam. Sole exception: John Derbyshire. Don't bother subscribing to either. Why encourage them?
Robert Spencer, is it really true that National Review is pushing the book hard? All I see at NRO is a paid advertisement by the publisher.
I think the book deserves far more negative attention at NRO than it's gotten, but thank goodness I haven't seen anybody there really defending it. Hopefully they're all embarrassed (and fyi, Jonah Goldberg apparently has written a review for the Claremont Review; apologies if that's old news to you). In any case I look forward to any and all debates you have with D'Souza.
They had him on FOX last night. He is a rather irate man, this D'Souza.
'Familiy values'- yeah, hollow in substance, hollow in the head. Not impressed, sorry...
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/01/27/thai-jihad-continues/
Here is the letter I wrote to National Review on September 1st, 2006:
Letters Editor, NATIONAL REVIEW
215 Lexington Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10016
Gentlemen:
My last issue of National Review arrived in the mail, along with a note requesting an explanation of why I was dropping my subscription. Here is that explanation.
Over the last 35 years, I have subscribed to your publication, off and on, finding there much insight and wisdom for use in evaluating current events. However, five years after 9/11, I find that National Review, like most publications, has become irrelevant. It is irrelevant because it is blind to the mortal threat that our nation is currently facing from Islam. Islam, a fanatical fascist political ideology posing as a “religion,” has declared war on civilization, has declared the United States as its primary target, and is making total war on us, not just through terror, but through deception, propaganda, subversion, litigation, colonization (unassimilated immigration), and demographic warfare.
National Review blithely cruises along on the assumption that the United States will forever continue to exist as a superpower, will be economically strong, and will continue to be a first-world civilized place to live. I don’t think we have more than 50 years left as a nation. And, for the first time in my life (am 56 years old), I fear for the physical safety of my family and the future well-being of my children and grandchildren.
By now, our President should have SEALED our borders, stopped all Muslim immigration, cut off all foreign aid and technology transfer to Islamic countries, kicked the U.N. out of New York City, used our fantastic military to knock out a dozen state sponsors of terror, seized Iraqi oil fields as war reparations, and launched a dozen parallel crash projects to make us energy independent. He should have de-certified Islam as a religion, closed all the mosques (Islamic forts behind enemy lines), and deported all Islamic non-citizen residents.
Instead, today we have between 3 and 10 thousand illegal immigrants streaming across the border EVERY DAY; our regular immigration policies have been RELAXED to facilitate even more Muslim immigration (colonization, for the eventual stated purpose of destroying our Constitution and our very way of life); Muslim moles are being hired into our police, military, academia, our security services, and the State Department; our treasury is being bled (and it is arterial bleeding) in Wilsonian nation-building exercises in Iraq and Afghanistan even before we have won the shooting war there; and our military is being squandered, now employed as feckless gendarmes trying to tame barbaric Muslim societies that have never been civilized in over a thousand years. In short, our nation is being subverted, bankrupted, and wrecked.
All the while, National Review is arguing about who will win this or that Senate race, or whether we should have 10,000 more troops in Iraq (when, in the gendarme role, probably 500,000 would be needed to make any difference at all), or whatever tactical minutia are the topic of the moment.
To lead our country right now we need a Churchill—someone who will name the enemy and mobilize the nation to make total war against him. But can you identify even one political figure, in any party, even approaching that caliber? I can’t. And nothing in National Review would inform such a person, if he exists somewhere, in any useful way that would enable him to rally the country to save itself from extinction.
In short, I don’t think you understand how grave the situation is. I find that your articles are focused either on tactical political trivia, or on abstract issues that have meaning only if the nation actually survives mid-century, an outcome which I believe is less and less sure every day.
Therefore, I have decided to let all subscriptions lapse, and to direct all future subscription money, as well as donation money, to Jihad Watch. The patriots there are working to alert our leaders and the populace at large to the exact nature and scope of the mortal threat we face from Islam, and to explain how to understand and defend against the perverted mindset that governs the Muslims’ every word and deed. In my view, no source of information about Islam is more relevant, complete, or accurate. And no task is more important right now that spreading the unabridged and unadulterated truth about that hideous ideology that seeks to snuff out freedom for all of us within the next two generations.
Yours truly,
etc. etc.
credit man writes:
D'Souza is simply making a fundamental logical error: The fact that two parties may agree on one or two specific issues does not necessarily make them natural allies.
In this case, the fact that American conservatives are pro-life (opposed to abortion) and fundamentalist Muslims are too, doesn't make them natural allies--because there are a whole host of other issues that keep them apart.
Interestingly, I think the converse may not be true: It may take only one top-priority "litmus test" issue for you to consider someone your opponent, if you feel so strongly about that issue. In other words, disagreement on any one "litmus test" is a sufficient but not necessary condition for being an opponent.
Thus, for many social conservatives, they may end up considering both fundamentalist Muslims and feminists to be "enemies"--though for different reasons. A dyed-in-the-wool social conservative may choose to keep both CAIR and Hirsi Ali (or Tammy Bruce) at arm's length; even though Hirsi Ali's stand (or Tammy Bruce's stand) on fighting Islamic radicalism might appeal to conservatives, their feminist or pro-gay stance would not. That would be appropriate for a social conservative who claims to be for "traditional Americanism"; he can claim that neither feminism nor Islam are part of "traditional Americanism."
Steven:
You are right. This is exactly D'Souza'a motivation. Hes been fighting liberals for so long that hes trying to recruit "traditional" Muslims to join him in the fight and use the 9/11 attack to bolster his case. After his previous books, I would never have guessed him to become a dhimmi.
I also don't think he was quite prepared to be primarily attacked from the right(not that Spencer identifies himself as right, but there isn't exactly a large anti-jihadist movement on the left). I think D'Souza was expecting to be debating leftists who think U.S. foreign policy is evil. But as anyone who follows Spencer's work knows, when the left sees a book that is doesn't like, it just ignores it and dismisses its author as a hater. So as usual the rational debate is isolated to the right and now hes' forced to defend Islam and attack judeo/christian texts.
I'm not sure the book is as "damaging" as Spencer says it is. I think any call for a reexamination of 9/11's root causes will inevitably lead some to the real truth about Islam.
Surely the main thing about D. D'S. is that he is
1) a careerist with his eye on the main chance, among the first of those Bright Young Conservative Things -- thing of William Kristol -- who have managed to make lavish livings for themselves, with those lecture fees, those quasi-instant books on matters of perceived moment, and for a few, a little aupres-de-ma-blonde stuff to make the whole thing more entertaining and endurable.
2) unused to having to meet standards of research or study that might, in other contexts, naturally be asked of him, D"Souza is surprised and chagrinned. He asked quite a few people to blurb the book, and was disturbed to discover that some, who had made it a point to find out much more about Islam, were horrified by his thesis and refused.
D'Souza tells us that he "read Bernard Lewis." That's it? That's all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know, about Islam? Apparently he felt no need to read widely. But there are so many others, many dozens of others, he ought to have read, re-read, assimilated, made his own. There is Joseph Schacht. There is David Margoliouth. There is Snouck Hurgronje. There is Ignaz Goldziher. There is Theodor Noldeke. There is Samuel Zwemer. There is St. Clair Tisdall. There is Armand Abel. There is K. S. Lal. There is Georges Vajda (whom Lewis consulted, but apparently not enough, for his book on Jews in Islam). There is S. D. Goitein. There is Bat Ye'or, the great pioneer in scholarship devoted expressly to the fate of non-Muslims under Muslim rule - the dhimmi -- a subject Lewis hardly touches, for in the 400 pages of his book for a mass audience ("The Middle East -- a History of the Last 2000 Years") he mentions the dhimmi in three paragraphs, two of them slyly exculpatory. Many have rightly been outraged that Le Pen called the murder of the Jews "a mere detail of World War II." For Lewis, it would seem from that book that the fate of hundreds of millions of non-Muslims, who over the past 1350 years had to endure Muslim rule, is merely a "detail" in the history of Islam and Islamic conquest. O no it isn't.
The Romans worried about The Man of One Book: homo unius libri. D'Souza appears, by his own admission, to be someone who has written a book about a subject he admittedly knew nothing about at the time of 9/11/2001, but has been "studying it for four years" largely by consulting, it seems, not One Book but close to that: One
Selected Authority.
But even that One Selected Authority, Lewis, would be horrified by how D'Souza understood him and what D'Souza took away from his reading of Lewis. For Bernard Lewis does not share a bit of D'Souza's interest in minimizing the menace of Islam, and his promoting this truly insane idea of a natural commonality of interest between "traditional Muslims" (does D'Souza know what "traditional Muslims" think of Infidels? Think of the Amish? Think of him, Dinesh D'Souza?) and "conservatives." "Conservatives" are, of course, those who are willing to overlook the Muslim view of the world in which there is a state of permanent war, not necessarily fighting but permanent war, between Believer and Infidel, all in order to get "traditional Muslims" to be for the same "family values." And how can D. D'S. conceivably think that Muslim "family values" -- beginning with the treatment and status of women in "traditional Islam" -- or the hostility toward freedom of conscience and freedom of speech -- could possibly allow for such a naive and dangerous alliance (naive and dangerous for Infidels, perfectly swell for Muslims, who are always seeking out those upon whose naivete and ignorance of Islam and goodwill they can take advantage of -- just go to one of those phony "Muslim-Christian" or "Muslim-Jewish" Groups for "Understanding," especially if it is Open House Night for Infidels at the mosque, where you will be treated to a smooth-tongued liquid-brown-eyed orator, well-practiced in taqiyya-and-tu-quoque, who will however become quickly alarmed, even confused, even discombobulated, if you begin to talk, during the question period, about the Haidth and the Sira, and if you are to mention the Banu Qurayza, the Khaybar Oasis attack, the murders of Asma bint Marwan and Abu Akaf, or a few dozen other atrocities, and let's not forget little Aisha -- well, a good time will not be had by all, and you will, singlehandedly, have destroyed the evening's propagandistic (as in propaganda fide) purpose.
Unlike Dinesh D'Souza, Bernard Lewis himself has for the past year or two been going around warning about the islamization of Europe and the horror that would be. Apparently Lewis's study of Islam did not lead him, Lewis, to the conclusions reached by his great admirer and self-directed student, Dinesh D'Souza. For Lewis does not see any great alliance, any alliance at all, between Muslims and non-Muslims. But then, perhaps he's been studying Islam a bit longer than Dinesh D'Souza, and knows the real meaning, sometimes expressed in language sibylline or even Aesopic, of his words. Lewis has for too long tried to write for two distinct audiences: Muslims, including those Turks who so admire him, and he tends to admire those who admire him back, and Infidels. In pulling his punches, or perhaps not quite seeing or allowing himself to see the full danger of Islam and of Muslmis other than those suave, plausible, highly unrepresentative figures he meets, he knows, he receives hostpitality from, in Amman or Istanbul, Lewis has ill-served his mostly non-Muslim readership: for it is they who are being menaced, they who need to be enlightened.
It would be wonderful if, at this stage, Lewis were to write something akin to Goitein's expression, in the introduction to his masterwork, "A Mediterranean Society," of his change of opinion about the treatment of non-Muslims, once he came to realize, through his study of the material found in the Cairo Geniza, of how burdensome and grueling it really was. At the end of his life Goitein was preparing an enthusiastic review of Bat Ye'or's "The Dhimmi." Lewis owes his readers, and his acolyte-graduate students, and those to whom he so enthusiastically endorsed the Oslo Accords, and then the fiasco of Iraq (he's always being fooled, Lewis, for all of his book-learning, he's always, when it comes to policy, underestimating the impossibility of expecting anything good -- rational negotiations, treaties signed that will be honored, or for that matter the ability of different sectarian and ethnic groups to get along in societies suffused with Islam.
But Lewis would never endorse D'Souza. If he finds out about this book, written by someone who, in explaining the extent of his preparation for this jejune book he "read Bernard Lewis," it would certainly appall him. And he should be disturbed. He should begin to recognize how he has helped, in part, to set people straight on many things and how he has helped, in part, to set people astray. And some of us think that he has led more astray, in minimizing certain unpleasant and permanent features of Muslim teachings and attitudes and behavior, than he has set straight.
Stendec has my vote for President! I can't believe anyone would put abortion and the stupid gay marriage issue ahead of this problem, even if conservatives (to a much lesser degree of penalty) and muslims are against the same things. "A man can never compromise with evil." If the conservatives are going to try joining forces against the left, they are no better than the left is for already having done so. I have sent material on our constitution and founding fathers to contacts in former USSR satellite nations in the hope democracy and freedom will floursih there even as it seems to teeter on the brink of extinction here, countries that know all too well the "tolerance" of muslim rule. It never entered my mind I might have to relocate there in order to continue to enjoy freedom, but one has to wonder how long we will enjoy the freedom to express ourselves online before the liberals start dictating to us what opinions we are allowed to have.
Robert said
Maybe CPAC has a "debate" in mind like the one they gave you on public television, where the "debate" consists of D'Souza responding live to selective video clips of you talking at previous speeches and selective quotations from your books. With proper editing, they can have video of you saying almost anything.
And as Hugh suggests, it will not be just D'Souza; he will have a large research team backing him. And if they know that they cannot win on the facts, expect them to take the debate in other (mis)directions. Ad hominem, tu quoque, whatever it takes.
Good luck Robert. I'm sure D'Souza will be outclassed, by your superior knowledge and debating skills. I almost feel sorry for him. I'm setting my stopwatch to see how long before he resorts to ad hominem arguments and/or calls you a bigot.
The link isn't taking me to radio debate!!! Please help, can someone re-send?
7pm PACIFIC time. Duh . . .