The Leftist/Islamic supremacist defamation machine that is dedicated, as a conscious strategy, to defaming and destroying every opponent of jihad terror, is now turning on Sam Harris. He will find that Aslan, Greenwald, and their ilk will not deal with his points honestly. Their intention henceforth, unless he comes back to the reservation and affirms that Islam is a religion of peace, will be to catch him out in statements they can use, as they are using the one he discusses in this piece, to make him look as bad as possible.
Ironically, the passage comes from Harris’ The End of Faith, which came out in 2005, but Harris and Aslan debated in 2007, and were on friendly terms for years after that. That was, however, before Harris became so publicly identified with criticism of the Islamic texts and teachings that jihadis use to justify violence and supremacism; now that he has, the gloves are off, and Harris will be given no quarter.
This is what people like Aslan and Greenwald, both of whom are allied with Islamic supremacists and jihadists in so many ways (see here and here for some details), and their friends and allies in groups like the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) do to anyone and everyone who speaks the truth about jihad terror. The extensive dossiers of the evil words and deeds of counter-jihadists that groups such as Hamas-linked CAIR, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for American Progress continuously retail are the aggregate of years of their doing to us what Aslan and Greenwald are doing to Harris here. If he keeps telling truths about Islam and jihad, in a few years they will have a dossier on him just as extensive, full of things he has said that they will have deliberately misrepresented, supposedly unsavory associations he allegedly has, and a proud record of statements by event organizers explaining why they canceled his appearance after discovering what a “bigot” he was.
I hope that Sam Harris’ experience here will help expose and destroy this fascist smear machine, which is designed to discredit and marginalize all resistance to jihad terror. So far, Harris himself shows no indication of knowing that this defamation of him by Aslan and Greenwald is anything but a singular occurrence; I hope he will soon realize how typical and predictable what is happening to him really is.
“On the Mechanics of Defamation,” by Sam Harris, October 12, 2014:
…Aslan and Greenwald know that nowhere in my work do I suggest that we kill harmless people for thought crimes. And yet they (along with several of their colleagues) are doing their best to spread this lie about me. Nearly every other comment they’ve made about my work is similarly misleading.
Both Aslan and Greenwald are debasing our public discourse and making honest discussion of important ideas increasingly unpleasant—even personally dangerous. Why are they doing this? Please ask them and those who publish them.