Jihad Watch: Spencer: The D'Souza Follies

January 30, 2007

Spencer: The D'Souza Follies

The featured article at FrontPage this morning is my full review of Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11:

Dinesh D’Souza’s new book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, is not all bad. He is absolutely right that Osama bin Laden’s perception that Bill Clinton was weak in the 1990s led to the stepping-up of global jihad efforts. But the central point of the book is that “the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11,” not only by fostering a view that America was weak, but by spreading around the world “a decadent American culture that angers and repulses traditional societies, especially those in the Islamic world that are being overwhelmed with this culture. In addition, the left is waging an aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family and to promote secular values in non-Western cultures. This campaign has provoked a violent reaction from Muslims who believe that their most cherished beliefs and institutions are under assault.” Therefore, “without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened.”
In response, D’Souza calls for the American right to build a traditional values coalition with what he calls “traditional Muslims,” who abhor both bin Laden and Britney Spears. “Admittedly,” he acknowledges, “some on the right may feel uncomfortable about teaming up with Muslims. Yes, I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I’d have to confess that I’m closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap.” Which core beliefs? D’Souza doesn’t say, but the grand mufti of Egypt has declared sculpture un-Islamic, so perhaps he and D’Souza could get together for a fun evening of statue-smashing. Of course, that is one of the core beliefs of the mufti that no doubt D’Souza does not share. But this is just one example of D’Souza’s propensity to make statements without apparently having examined their implications.

For although his book is focused on the Left, D’Souza has criticism for the Right also. He asserts that in order to cement the necessary alliance with these “traditional” Muslims, “the right must take three critical steps. First, stop attacking Islam. Conservatives have to cease blaming Islam for the behavior of the radical Muslims. Recently the right has produced a spate of Islamophobic tracts with titles like Islam Unveiled, Sword of the Prophet, and The Myth of Islamic Tolerance. There is probably no better way to repel traditional Muslims, and push them into the radical camp, than to attack their religion and their prophet.” He offers no prescription for how his “traditional Muslims” can repel the appeal to violence that jihadists everywhere base on the teachings of “their religion and their prophet,” for presumably in D’Souza’s ideal world even Muslim reformers, since they insult Muslim sensibilities, would be forbidden to discuss the Islamic teachings that jihadists use today to make their case among Muslims. How anyone would in that case counter or repel this jihadist appeal D’Souza does not explain.

Conservatives also must also “stop holding silly seminars on whether Islam is compatible with democracy. In reality, a majority of the world’s Muslims today live under democratic governments – in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Turkey, not to mention Muslims living in Western countries. There is nothing in the Koran or the Islamic tradition that forbids democracy.” And “if they want Sharia, let them have it.” Of course, even if most Muslims today do live under democracies, to assume that this means Islam is compatible with democracy is like saying that most Russians loved Stalin’s reign of terror, since they lived under it regime for so long.

But that is just a small example from one of the most poorly reasoned books I have ever read. There is so much wrong with it that a review that noted it all would be as long as the book itself, and many have already pointed out some of the holes in D’Souza’s thesis: although Kathryn Lopez fawned over D’Souza in National Review, the New York Times, Glenn Beck, and others have given him a hard time. D’Souza’s central contention, that the left has allied with Islamic jihadists and therefore the right should ally with “traditional Muslims” on the basis of shared moral values, is wrong in numerous ways. First, who are these “traditional Muslims”? In his entire book, D’Souza offers not a single name, although his criticism of conservative opposition to the Dubai ports deal last year suggests that he may consider the United Arab Emirates (which he calls “the small country of Dubai”) a “traditional Muslim” state. D’Souza doesn’t mention the fact that the 9/11 hijackers used the Emirates as a base of operations, or that Al-Qaeda has claimed to have infiltrated the Emirati government.

It is not surprising that D’Souza supported this deal, which would have turned over operation of six American ports to a UAE company -- for it manifested the same mistaken belief that D’Souza articulates in his new book: that the Islamic world hates the West because of something we have done, which we can undo with the proper display of good will. Throughout his book D’Souza shows no awareness whatsoever of the jihad ideology, which remains constant while the pretexts and grievances that fuel it shift. In fact, he asserts that “despite the religious enthusiasm of many suicide bombers, Islam has been around for more than a thousand years, and for most of its history it produced neither suicide attackers nor terrorists. It is only contemporary Islam that provides an inspiration for suicide missions and attacks on civilians.”
While comforting, this is false. Today’s jihadist predilection for suicide attacks is a matter of technological progress making possible what had hitherto been impossible; it does not represent a theological divergence from traditional Islam. Suicide attack recruiters today point to Qur’an 9:111, which guarantees Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah. This was not added into the Qur’an by contemporary Muslims, and has been acted upon by Muslims in the past: Andrew Bostom has found that John Paul Jones encountered suicide attacks by Muslim Turks in 1788. Jones described a naval encounter between the Turks and the Russians that took place when Jones served in the Russian Navy: “The Turks,” Jones explained, “had a very large force, and we have been informed by our prisoners that they were resolved to destroy us, even by burning themselves, (in setting fire to their own vessels after having grappled with ours.)” (Emphasis added.)

As for attacks on civilians, they are not forbidden in all cases in Islamic law. The prophet of Islam, Muhammad, himself ordered the assassinations of several poets who had made fun of him in their verses, and rewarded the killers – Muhammad’s first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, records these incidents approvingly. Here, as in all cases, Muhammad’s example became normative for Muslims. The Muslim jurist al-Mawardi in his legal manual al-Akham al-Sultaniyyah (4.2) allows for the killing of women and children who are perceived as in some way aiding the war effort against the Muslims. Other Islamic legal authorities echo this judgment (cf. ‘Umdat al-Salik o9.10).

And in Islamic history, the restriction that civilians were only liable to attack when they were perceived as aiding the war effort against Muslims was at times interpreted quite elastically. As Giles Milton documents in White Gold, the Muslim raiders who from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries kidnapped thousands of British men, women and children and sold them into brutal slavery in North Africa believed they were warriors of Islam engaged in a jihad. Much earlier, in 1148, Muslim commander Nur ed-Din did not hesitate to order the killing of every Christian in Aleppo. In 1268, when the jihad forces of the Mamluk Sultan Baybars took Antioch from the Crusaders, Baybars was annoyed to find that the Crusader ruler, Count Bohemond VI, had already left the city. So he wrote to Bohemond to make sure he knew what his men had done in Antioch: “You would have seen your knights prostrate beneath the horses’ hooves, your houses stormed by pillagers and ransacked by looters, your wealth weighed by the quintal, your women sold four at a time and bought for a dinar of your own money!...You would have seen your Muslim enemy trampling on the place where you celebrate the Mass, cutting the throats of monks, priests and deacons upon the altars, bringing sudden death to the Patriarchs and slavery to the royal princes.”[1]

When jihadists entered Constantinople on May 29, 1453, again the rivers of blood ran, as historian Steven Runciman notes: the Muslim soldiers “slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women, and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn.”[2] Likewise, the Indian historian Sita Ram Goel notes that when the Muslim forces entered India, “the Sunnah [tradition] of the Prophet…required its warriors to fall upon the helpless civil population after a decisive victory had been won on the battlefield. It required them to sack and burn down villages and towns after the defenders had died fighting or had fled. The cows, the Brahmins, and the Bhikshus invited their special attention in mass murders of non-combatants….Those whom they did not kill, they captured and sold as slaves….And they did all this as mujahids (holy warriors) and ghazis (kafir [unbeliever]-killers) in the service of Allah and his Last Prophet.”[3]

Terrorism? If that word is understood to refer to attacks on civilians meant, at least in part, to demoralize an enemy population, then these incidents and many others like them were most assuredly terrorism. Moreover, they were part of an imperialistic pattern that even D’Souza acknowledges: “Inspired by Islam’s call to jihad,” he observes, “Muhammad’s armies conquered Jerusalem and the entire Middle East, then pushed south into Africa, east into Asia, and north into Europe.” Indeed, before Muhammad had been dead ten years (he died in 632), Muslim armies took Syria, Egypt, and Persia. Muslim armies conquered Damascus in 635, only three years after Muhammad’s death; substantial portions of Iraq in 636; Jerusalem in 638; Caesarea in 641; and Armenia in 643. The conquest of Egypt took place in the same period. The Muslims also won decisive victories over the Byzantines at Sufetula in Tunisia in 647, opening up North Africa; and over the Persians at Nihavand in 642. By 709 they had complete control of North Africa; by 711 they had subdued Spain and were moving into France. Sicily fell in 827. By 846 Rome was in danger of being captured by Muslim invaders; repulsed, the Muslims “sacked the cathedrals of St. Peter beside the Vatican and of St. Paul outside the walls, and desecrated the graves of the pontiffs.”[4]

Was this imperialist history motivated by the depravity of Western culture? The more one examines the historical record of jihad conquest, the more risible the question appears. An inventory of jihad wars across the world today achieves the same effect. Are Buddhist schoolteachers in Thailand the exponents of American pop culture? Are Christian schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia on their way to school the vanguard of an invasion by Eve Ensler? Are churches torched in Nigeria because they are showing blue movies during off hours?

D’Souza takes no notice of the fact that these conquests were inspired by the same theological ideology that fuels today’s global jihad. Yet even Islamic apologist John Esposito acknowledges the reality of this theological ideology: “As Islam penetrated new areas,” Esposito writes, “people were offered three options: (1) conversion, that is, full membership in the Muslim community, with its rights and duties; (2) acceptance of Muslim rule as ‘protected’ people and payment of a poll tax; (3) battle or the sword if neither the first nor the second option was accepted.”[5] This triple choice was based on Muhammad’s words: “Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war…When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them…If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them” (Sahih Muslim 4294).

Is this just a matter of “cherry-picking” negative material? D’Souza would probably say it was. He notes that “Islam is notorious for the harshness of some of its punishments, such as cutting off the arms and legs of thieves, flogging adulterers, and executing drug dealers.” However, “in this respect one may say, with only a hint of irony, that Muslims are in the Old Testament tradition.” He does not explain, however, why, if that were true, no Jews and Christians are cutting off the arms and legs of thieves or flogging adulterers today – in other words, he completely bypasses the interpretative traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in order to make the crudest of moral equivalence arguments. Nor does he inform the reader that in fact the Old Testament says nothing whatsoever about cutting off arms and legs of thieves – in fact, the “eye for an eye” provision had already moved beyond the barbarism of such punishments.

However, in light of the above statements by Muhammad and many others like them that enjoin warfare against unbelievers, D’Souza’s assertion that blaming Muhammad “for the pathologies of radical Islam” is tantamount to blaming Martin Luther King “for the pathologies of inner-city black America” is absurd. For while it is doubtful that drug dealers and pimps ever quote King’s words to justify their actions, jihadists routinely invoke Muhammad’s example to justify theirs. At the beheading of American hostage Nicholas Berg in May 2004, Iraqi jihad leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi declared: “The Prophet, the most merciful, ordered [his army] to strike the necks of some prisoners in [the battle of] Badr and to kill them....And he set a good example for us.”[6] London Muslim leader Hani Al-Sibaai in February 2005 justified the slaughters being perpetrated by Al-Zarqawi’s mujahedin in Iraq: “[T]he Prophet drove nails into and gouged out the eyes of people from the ‘Urayna Tribe. They were merely a group of thieves who stole from sheep herders, and the Prophet drove nails into them and threw them into the Al-Hrara area, and left them there to die. He blinded them and cut off their opposite legs and arms. This is what the Prophet did on a trifling matter – let alone in war.”[7]

Moreover, Muhammad commanded his followers to fight “those who disbelieve in Allah,” not just to those who disbelieve in Allah and are threatening the stability of traditional Islamic culture. Likewise Qur’an 9:29 commands Muslims to fight against “the people of the book” – that is, principally Jews and Christians – “until they pay the jizya [a special tax on non-Muslims] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” The verse does not stipulate that Jews and Christians should be fought if they are immoral and that immorality is threatening the Muslims: it commands war against them simply because they are Jews and Christians. This is a mainstream view in Islamic thought: the great Muslim philosopher Averroes (1126-1198) wrote: “the Muslims are agreed that the aim of warfare against the People of the Book...is twofold: either conversion to Islam, or payment of poll-tax (jizya).”[8] The tenth century Muslim writer Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (922-996), a legal theorist of the Maliki school of jurisprudence (madhhab) wrote in a similar vein: “Jihad is a precept of Divine institution....We Malikis maintain that is preferable not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the latter to embrace the religion of Allah except where the enemy attacks first. They have the alternative of either converting to Islam or paying the poll tax [jizya], short of which war will be declared against them.”[9]

This is the same ideology that motivates today’s jihadists – as Osama bin Laden wrote to the American people, “The first thing we are calling you to is Islam.” Because violent jihad is so deeply rooted in the Qur’an and Islamic theology and tradition, jihadists present themselves among Muslims as the exponents of “pure Islam” – and make recruits on that basis. This recruitment centers on the Qur’an and other key Islamic texts. Take, for example, the case of Sahim Alwan, an American citizen and leader of the Yemeni community in Lackawanna, New York and onetime president of the mosque there. He has the distinction of being the first American to attend an Al-Qaeda training camp. Why did he go? He was convinced to do so by Kamal Derwish, an Al-Qaeda recruiter. Alwan explained that Derwish taught him that the Qur’an “says you have to learn how to prepare. Like, you gotta be prepared just in case you do have to go to war. If there is war, then you would have to be called for jihad.”[10]

Jihadists are pressing forward with jihad activity around the world today, after a long period of relative quiescence, because Saudi oil billions and the Khomeini revolution in Iran have made this reassertion of the jihad ideology possible. Jihadists do use the depravity of American culture as a recruiting tool, but this is more of a pretext than a root cause. In confusing the two, of course, D’Souza is not alone. Others on both the Left and the Right today differ with him on the root cause, but not on his assumption that the jihad is a reaction to American provocation – in other words, it is not something that springs from motivations to be found within Islam. Some point to the invasion of Iraq, or the establishment of Israel in 1948, or the toppling of Iran’s Mossadegh in 1953 — or a more generalized offense such as “American neo-colonialism” or “the lust for oil.” Those who are particularly forgetful of history blame it on newly minted epiphenomena such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandals or the alleged atrocities at Guantanamo.

But the jihadists were fighting long before Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Israel, or even the independence of the United States. Indeed, they have been fighting and imitating their warrior prophet ever since the seventh century – and, incidentally, for most of that time they have played the innocent victim no matter how much violence they themselves perpetrated. During the Crusades, Islamic writers consistently portrayed the Europeans as aggressors who had carried out an unprovoked attack on the Islamic world (as most Europeans and Americans see them today). It never occurred to those writers that the attacks on Christians in the Holy Land, and 450 years of jihadist aggression that had overwhelmed over half of Christendom, might have had something to do with the arrival of the “Franks” – just as it never occurs to D’Souza or most analysts today that Islamic jihad could be anything but a defensive reaction to aggression by others.

What’s more, the immorality of the West has been a feature of Islamic anti-Western writings since long before Britney Spears took to the stage. Jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb was scandalized by the dancing at a church social in Greeley, Colorado in 1948; however, D’Souza errs in attributing his jihadist views to this trip. Before he went to America, Qutb wrote Social Justice In Islam, calling for Islamic Sharia law to rule the world. The immorality he saw in American culture did not itself turn him against America, but illustrated for him why America was unfit to rule the world, and why only Islam was fit for that role. That immorality was never for Qutb the root cause of his opposition to America. And eight centuries before Qutb’s birth, a recurring feature of Muslim polemic against the Crusaders was the sexual immorality of the “Franks.” According to an anonymous poet at the time of the First Crusade, the Europeans completely overturned the moral order: “What is right is null and void and what is forbidden is made licit.”[11]

Have Westerners always been less morally upright than Muslims? According to D’Souza’s thesis, that’s the only possibility that could explain the fact that every century since the advent of Islam has seen jihad warfare. But it should be borne in mind that from the Islamic perspective, Christians are inherently immoral simply by virtue of their – in the Muslim view – exalting Jesus to divine status. The Qur’an has Allah asking Jesus: “Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah?” (5:116). The deification of Christ has earned Christians the curse of Allah: “The Christians call Christ the son of Allah…Allah’s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!” (9:30). In the Muslim view, this “association of partners with Allah” – shirk -- is a more grievous immorality than the most heinous crimes. The apologetic Call to Islaam website explains: “Murder, rape, child molesting and genocide. These are all some of the appalling crimes which occur in our world today. Many would think that these are the worst possible offences which could be committed. But there is something which outweighs all of these crimes put together: It is the crime of shirk.”[12] From that perspective, no matter how upright Christians may be, they are still immoral in the Islamic view.

In any case, despite the fact that D’Souza is aware, as he puts it, that “traditional Muslims are not ‘moderates,’” and that there are no theological differences and few political differences between them and the jihadists, he recommends that conservatives ally with them. He seems to envision this alliance as a counterbalance to the Left’s alliance with the global jihad, which certainly exists. D’Souza spends a great deal of time explaining how a 2004 message from Osama bin Laden is dedicated to convincing “his allies in America to coordinate their actions more closely with his.” However, D’Souza ignores Osama’s 2002 message to the American people, which could be read as an appeal to social conservatives in exactly the same way that D’Souza reads his 2004 message as an appeal to liberals. In the 2002 letter, bin Laden says to Americans: “We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gamblings, and trading with interest….You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.” Was bin Laden angling for an alliance with Pat Robertson, as well as Michael Moore?

In reality, the jihadists will ally with anyone foolish enough to enter into an alliance with them. The unhinged anti-Americanism of the Left has led them already to embark upon this path; now D’Souza is calling conservatives to follow their example with people he acknowledges have no theological differences with the jihadists. And what will this alliance look like? Conservative Americans will agree with D’Souza’s “traditional Muslims” against abortion and pornography. What, then, will they do when their new allies begin agitating for polygamy and the execution of apostates? Will conservatives be put into a position of opposing gay marriage while supporting polygamy? Will they be able to criticize Islam then?

Is this inconceivable? Why? D’Souza asserts that most Muslims oppose polygamy, but it nonetheless is widely practiced and enjoys the sanction of Muhammad’s example and Islamic law. Will then no “traditional Muslim” ever assert it – and even insist upon it in the face of opposition from mere infidels? On what grounds does D’Souza assume that “traditional Muslims” will happily enter into an alliance with non-Muslim Americans as equal partners? The answer, of course, is that he appears to be unaware of the mainstream character of jihad and Sharia supremacism within Islam; he doesn’t seem to know that Islamic tradition unanimously teaches that “Islam must dominate, and not be dominated.” On what grounds does he believe that “traditional Muslims” will set this principle aside indefinitely? Of course, the “traditional Muslims” upon which D’Souza places so much hope are the ordinary people of the Islamic world, who like ordinary people everywhere simply want to go about making a living and taking care of their families. He portrays them as rejecting polygamy, the execution of apostates, and other unpleasant features of Islamic law and practice. And certainly it’s true that for centuries -- notably, although not universally, in central Asia, Eastern Europe, and West Africa -- jihad supremacism and other elements of Islam for many Muslims lay dormant and even dropped out of the Muslim consciousness. But this is not a strong enough basis for an alliance, since these cultural Muslims do not have a theological foundation within Islamic theology and law -- and now jihadists are using chapter and verse of Qur’an and Sunnah to teach their vision of Islam to cultural Muslims. What will prevent D’Souza’s “traditional Muslims” from being susceptible to such recruitment?

This question becomes even more urgent in light of the fact that D’Souza believes that discussion of the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify their actions will just drive these “traditional Muslims” to become jihadists. He insists that this is so despite the fact that he himself speaks forthrightly about negative aspects of Islamic culture, such as child marriage: “many traditional Muslims,” he says, “look with revulsion at the sight in their countries of young girls attached to men old enough to be their fathers.” Very well, but this practice is rooted in the example of Muhammad, who consummated his marriage with his favorite wife, Aisha, when he was in his early fifties and she was nine. Yet D’Souza would apparently forbid any discussion of how Muhammad’s example is deleterious here.

It is in this connection that he mentions my books Islam Unveiled and The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, along with Serge Trifkovic’s superb Sword of the Prophet. (Trifkovic has ably answered D’Souza here.) D’Souza’s point about such books, however, can again just as easily be used against him by inverting his thesis. While he claims that criticism of Islam breeds jihadists, it is just as easy to say that there is no better way to repel anti-jihad leftists and push them into the arms of the jihadists (with whom so much of the Left is already allied), than to dub them “the enemy at home.”

Even worse, when D’Souza assumes that peaceful Muslims will have a greater sense of solidarity with jihadists than with non-Muslims, he destroys his entire thesis. For if these peaceful Muslims really abhor jihadism, they should have no reason to object to critical presentations of the elements of Islam that foster jihadism. But if a few books will be enough to drive them into the arms of the jihadists, then how committed could they really have been to peace and moderation in the first place? D’Souza is assuming that they regard global jihad terrorism as less damaging to their religion than “Islamophobic tracts,” which in itself completely undermines D’Souza’s assumption that jihad terrorism is a twisting of “traditional” Islam. Shouldn’t violence perpetrated in the name of their cherished religion make them much more indignant than some books that explore the Islamic roots of jihad terrorism – even if those books were offensive (which they aren’t by any rational standard)? Throughout his book D’Souza makes moral equivalence arguments about the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam. At one point he even asserts that the Islamic moral code of stonings and beheadings amounts to Old Testament morality (but doesn’t bother to explain why no Jews and Christians practice stoning or beheading). Yet the equivalence breaks down on the level of behavior: Christians have never embraced violence in reaction to innumerable insults to their faith in recent years. Why should we ask or expect less of Muslims?

And by the way, it is odd that D’Souza, for all his disgust for the Left, would pick up on the Leftist coinage “Islamophobia,” a trumped-up, politically manipulative term intended to stifle debate. I would have thought D’Souza would be ashamed of using it until I read his recommendation that “the right” stop producing books like mine. He has denied that this was a call to silence me and others like me, and I’m sure it wasn’t: if Trifkovic and I begin to retail the prevailing PC fictions about Islam as a religion of peace and join mainstream analysts in declining to hold Muslims accountable for their actions (since they’re just reacting to the depredations of bad old America), I am sure D’Souza will be happy if we flourish.

In a sermon broadcast on official Palestinian Authority television in 2000, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, a member of the Palestinian Authority’s Fatwa Council, anticipated D’Souza’s call to alliance and declared: “Allah the almighty has called upon us not to ally with the Jews or the Christians, not to like them, not to become their partners, not to support them, and not to sign agreements with them. And he who does that is one of them, as Allah said: ‘O you who believe, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies, for they are allies of one another. Who from among you takes them as allies will indeed be one of them.’ . . . Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them.”[13]

In this Abu Halabiya was quoting Qur’an 5:51 (“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them”) and 9:5 (“slay the idolaters wherever ye find them”). His application of these words to the contemporary political situation would thus resonate even with “traditional Muslims,” whose Qur’an is the same as that of the jihadists. And Abu Halabiya intended it to resonate in that way.

If the exportation of American depravity were to end tomorrow, it would not efface these and other words from the Qur’an, or keep preachers from using them to prevent any peaceful accord between Muslims and non-Muslims. That D’Souza suggests that it would manifests an appalling ignorance of Islamic theology, history, and present reality. He writes that “no real understanding of Islamic culture is possible that refuses to take Islam seriously,” yet he ends up doing just that. In the fourteenth century, the Byzantine Emperor John VI Cantacuzenes entered into an alliance with the Ottoman Turks, whom he invited into Europe to help him win a dynastic dispute. In the fifteenth century, the Ottomans seized Constantinople and destroyed the Byzantine Empire, and were greatly aided in doing so by having a base in Europe.

Dinesh D’Souza, no less short-sighted and naïve as John VI Cantacuzenes, is exhorting conservatives today to rush into an alliance that would ultimately bring upon themselves the same disaster.

NOTES:

[1] Thomas Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, pp. 181-182.

[2] Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 145.

[3] Sita Ram Goel, The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India, Voice of India, revised edition 1994, p. 44.

[4] Hitti, p. 205.

[5] John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, Oxford University Press, third edition, 1998. P. 35.

[6] Steven Stalinsky, “Dealing in Death,” National Review Online, May 24, 2004.

[7] “London Islamist Dr. Hani Al-Sibaai Justifies Slaughters in Iraq: The Prophet Muhammad Used to Slaughter As Well,” Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) Clip No. 576, February 22, 2005.

[8] Averroes, Al-Bidaya, excerpted in Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam, Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996. P. 40.

[9] Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996, p. 295.

[10] “Interview Sahim Alwan,” Frontline, October 16, 2003. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sleeper/interviews/alwan.html.

[11] Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, Routledge, 2000, p. 247.

[12] “Shirk: the ultimate crime,” Invitation to Islam Newsletter, Issue 2, July 1997. http://www.al-sunnah.com/call_to_islam/articles/shirk_the_ultimate_crime.html

[13] Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), “PA TV Broadcasts call for Killing Jews and Americans,” MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 138, October 13, 2000. www.memri.org.

Posted by Robert at January 30, 2007 7:19 AM
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""In reality, the jihadists will ally with anyone foolish enough to enter into an alliance with them.""

They do have international crime sundicates on their payroll.

""It is not surprising that D’Souza supported this deal, which would have turned over operation of six American ports to a UAE company""

They even focused to take over the ports in Hamburg too.

In Switzerland, some rich Arab Muslims just bought whole mountain villages.

Posted by: Arnie

at January 30, 2007 7:59 AM

This D'Souza speaks and sounds very much like a muslim.

Posted by: Crows&Cows

at January 30, 2007 8:10 AM

l consider myself a center right on most issues, and perhaps more than most Cdns, but what ever no one in their mind would align themselves with islam! does this character ever compare the Bible to the Koran, or has he even just read the koran? The left has many problems, but put the blame right on those who
do the savage killings and these islamist use these actions as sanctioned by their koran. Dinesh D'Souza's words are those of a leftist, in that he blames the victims and not the aggressor.

Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess

at January 30, 2007 8:18 AM

I wonder if D'Souza has these people in mind when he speaks of "traditional muslims" ?

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24205_Islamic_Blood_Ritual_Season&only

Posted by: Witch-king of Angmar

at January 30, 2007 8:27 AM

"...by spreading around the world “a decadent American culture that angers and repulses traditional societies"

Sorry, Denesh, but you don't seem understand that among those things that "angers and repulses" the Muslem world are all those things that we hold most dear as liberal Democratic socities: Equality of the sexes, freedom of speech, including the freedom to critize the Prophet and Islam, freedom of religion, including the right to change your religion, freedom of the press, among many other things.

These are the things -- not just a little to much flesh on a movie screen -- that angers and repulses those "moderate Muslims" you want to form an alliance with. Are you prepared to give all these repulsive and decadent things up in return for your proposed alliance?

In other words, are you prepared to transform our world into the decadent and repulsive world of Islam in order to assuage their anger at our way of life?

That's what they'll demand in return for your unholy alliance.

Posted by: rational

at January 30, 2007 8:28 AM

In response, D’Souza calls for the American right to build a traditional values coalition with what he calls “traditional Muslims,” who abhor both bin Laden and Britney Spears. “Admittedly,” he acknowledges, “some on the right may feel uncomfortable about teaming up with Muslims. Yes, I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I’d have to confess that I’m closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap.”

How much better to build a "traditional values coalition" with people who have values worth valuing. like the Hindus, Buddhists, and Chinese traditionalists. Islam seems to have too many traditions that aren't very valuable, like killing apostates, killing or enslaving non-believers, beating wives, stoning rape victims, and destroying pre-islamic cultures, to name a few.

Posted by: ebonystone

at January 30, 2007 8:29 AM

O.T. Wow, I had no idea there was a death cult training camp in a suburb near where I grew up. Well, here's how I was alerted to this fact...

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,21143105-948,00.html

"islamic values" at work. There's no sign of terrorism links though, yet.
And what kind of college has a newsletter entitled " Wake Up Call- Action, Organisation, Unity" What the hell does that have to do with learning to be a plumber or a...oh wait, I know.

Posted by: savitch

at January 30, 2007 8:31 AM

Well done. You might have even included that this new book seems to contradict earlier work he has done. In articles and Whats so great about America, he basically said that even with pornography etc. the west is still more virtuous because of freedom. He said how forced virtue is really not virtue at all. That westerners are free to be immoral, yet still choose virtue makes the west more virtuous than the Islamic world.

Posted by: Charles the Hammer

at January 30, 2007 8:39 AM

There is a powerful propensity in the Muslim mind (as a by-product of their beliefs) to projection. In many ways these charges that the West is decadent are projection. Islam is a culture that is embracing death at this point in history by the abandonment of reason.

Life in nature is about competition-conflict and reproduction. Each species survives or becomes extinct in nature based on its ability to use those qualities which foster the survival of the species. The mind-Reason is the primary means by which humans survive. Give me one smart human and a brown bear in conflict and the human will find some way to use his brains to kill the bear. Islam, at this point in the history of the earth, is a danger to the survival of the species and for that reason it will either reform or it will be destroyed. Humans can no longer tolerate the treatment of belief-systems as if they are scientific fact.

Islam must dominate, and must not be dominated. War is deception. Jews are apes and pigs, etc. There is no equality of rights between believers and non-believers in Islam (Saudi Arabia, e.g.). This mind-set is incompatible with the absolute need to address many issues (climate issues, energy issues, etc.)that are essential to the survival of the human species.

The bumper-sticker Islamophobia nonsense is the precisely the abandonment of reason and logical analysis and argument that is necessary at this point in history for the human species to survive. Islam is decadent to reason. This is the future of Islam...

http://www.jtf.org/israel/aaa.israel.plo.suicide.bomber.fingerprints.crop.jpg

Posted by: Frank

at January 30, 2007 8:56 AM

I listened to the radio debate yesterday. I was struck by how many times Robert would pin Dinesh down and Dinesh - instead of trying to refute the specifics of Robert's arguments - would simply re-package his own argument from an entirely different angle.

No kidding, it happened over and over...Robert would pin him down and instead of saying 'no Robert, this assertion of yours is wrong because...,' he would come back with: 'what I'm trying to say here'....and end up taking a completely different tack.

Nice job Robert.

My only criticism: try to be more attenuated to the intervention of the program host in the future. The hostess repeatedly tried to get control of the debate but you would just talk on and on. I assumed you simply couldn't hear her.

Posted by: Cornelius

at January 30, 2007 8:57 AM

I find nothing virtuous in islam. Read the following.

http://newstodaynet.com/2007sud/jan07/300107.htm

A plethora of such killings go unreported, lulling brainwashed Hindus into protracted somnolence. Muslims in the midst of non muslims are the most lethal.

Posted by: Crows&Cows

at January 30, 2007 8:57 AM

As an admirer of Britney Spears, I must count myself amount the decadent depraved. This Dinesh guy sounds like a stiff.

Posted by: jewdog

at January 30, 2007 9:02 AM

Current Islam is incompatible with human species survival. We need more Stephen Hawking, more reason-science in order to survive, and not clowns who rant that "Islam must dominate". Islam must adapt to the reason-mind survival tools that are so necessary to our species at this point in history. Stephen Hawking and others like him would be killed by the Psychotic-In-Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood. These Muslims are decadent. They embrace death and that which is now a very serious danger to the survival of the human species.

We do not need bumper-sticker minds ranting Islamophobia. We need logical analysis and reasoning for the survival of the human species.

Posted by: Frank

at January 30, 2007 9:09 AM

D'Souza's central theme seems to me, to be:

That the cultural Right should fight to destroy the cultural Left. By identifying and agitating the obvious ideological differences between the two, he uses this to rationalize the Islamic jihad that led to 9/11. His intent is to further divide liberals and conservatives and to bring about an irreversible, non-compromising rift between them, as is currently seen in the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam.

Once the Left, the supposed cause of all that ills us in regards to its ability to "radicalize" Muslims, is destroyed, there is only the Right to deal with. Furthermore, if the Right subsequently embraces Islam, it's "values" and works with the "traditional" Muslims, through open-ended capitulation, we will have no further problems with Muslims in general.

This manifest lunacy is a divide and conquer strategy, attempting to encourage the US to destroy itself from within. It is actually quite clever, if you can just convince people to blatantly ignore nearly all historical fact and all the violent, intolerant mandates contained within the "holy" Islamic texts.

D'Souza sounds exactly like your standard Islamist to me, with his penchant for panache aside, obviously.

Posted by: awake

at January 30, 2007 9:18 AM

D'Souza seems to miss his own circularity.

The left made errors, which caused a problem, which the right needs solve by... making the same errors...

"But when it comes to core beliefs, I’d have to confess that I’m closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap"

Didn't Dhimmi Carter say something like that about the Ayatollah?

Awake,

I have not read the book, but from what I've heard of him speak, I agree with you. The left has tried to ride the tiger to defeat the right, and it only injured both left and right, now D'Souza wants the right to do the same.

Posted by: Concerned Citizen

at January 30, 2007 10:05 AM

"Didn't Dhimmi Carter say something like that about the Ayatollah"?-concerned

That's a brilliant observation. D'Souza is making the same argument re "people of faith" as Dhimmi Carter. However, the differences in the belief-systems are profound.

Faith in what? needs to be addressed. We must first define our terms before we assume we are both saying the same thing on anything. D'Souza tends to generalize, somewhat like Carter. Folks like Robert want any terms used rigorously defined. Robert is right.

Posted by: Frank

at January 30, 2007 10:26 AM

Claiming that no one – even particularly informed courageous subject experts like Robert Spencer -should not criticize Islam because it might make some Muslims mad enough to join the fanatics has got to be the most disgustingly reprehensible cravenness I have ever heard from a reputed pundit. Frankly, the current level of constraint amazes me – e.g., I’m surprised Muhammad cartoons haven’t been popping up nearly everywhere in counter protest since last year's Muslim violent protests. It’s bad enough that Muslims have the intellectuals of the entire World intimidated, but to have someone like De Souza advise all not to speak or write of the violence and extreme intolerance and menace of such a dangerous fascist ideology is beneath contempt.

Posted by: FM

at January 30, 2007 10:36 AM

How bitterly ironic it is that Moslems, who observe sacred texts filled with immoderation and extremism, are routinely declared reasonable and moderate, and to be capable of the highest capacity of interpretative flexibility to let them temporize the scriptures even though they memorize these texts verbatim and are commanded by God to take them literally and without interpretation.

Dinesh, are you aware of this salient and overriding fact about Islam?

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer

at January 30, 2007 10:40 AM

"Kathryn Lopez fawned over D’Souza in National Review... D’Souza’s central contention, that the left has allied with Islamic jihadists and therefore the right should ally with “traditional Muslims” on the basis of shared moral values, is wrong in numerous ways."

The National Review is totally out of touch with conservatism and reality.

In NR's alternate reality, the American people and the Left are opposed to the Iraq War because they support Osama Bin Laden and the "extremist muslims." (Apparently conflating the War on Terror with the Iraq War isn't just a tactic; they really believe that nonsense.) Thus, conservatives need to side with the "traditional muslims" to stop Osama.

In the real world, the Left (and the American people) are strongly opposed to the muslim extremists. They both support the war in Afghanistan, with few exceptions. But the muslims have nothing to do with the Iraq War, and Bush has never satisfactorily explained why we went there.

Allying with the "traditional muslims" makes no sense. A radical muslim is one who just set off a bomb. A traditional muslim is one who will set off a bomb tomorrow. No theological differences between the two groups. And the moderate muslims teach their children to believe the Quran and Hadith, so their children inevitably turn into terrorists (see 7/7). You can't oppose fruit by planting more fruit trees.

I liked NR when it was a conservative Catholic magazine. Now it's an Islamic (or Dhimmi fellow-traveling) Republican magazine.

Posted by: Menetheos

at January 30, 2007 10:44 AM

jewdog writes:
"As an admirer of Britney Spears, I must count myself amount the decadent depraved. "

No, simply someone with very bad taste, and that
can be cured without a beheading.

"This Dinesh guy sounds like a stiff."

Actually, this whole thing seems a a bit sinister
to me. I don't want to join the muslims and moon
bats in the fever swamps of conspiracy-land, but
I think with Grover Al-Norquist and Dinesh
Dhimmisuza that National Review looks like its been
compromised. I wonder what Bill Buckley thinks of
all this.

Posted by: root_cause

at January 30, 2007 11:22 AM

"Yes, I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I’d have to confess that I’m closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap."

But, Mr. D'Souza, the enjoyment of baseball games and beer are part of my "core beliefs." It's practically a cliche by now that traditional Americanism is "baseball and apple pie," not "long robes and prayer beads."

This is truly a great thought-experiment for all conservatives (such as myself):

If you had to choose, whom would you rather have dinner with at a nice restaurant: Dinner with an American Leftist, or dinner with a fundamentalist Muslim?

Your answer tells a lot about what your ultimate conservative values and priorities really are.

Mr. D'Souza seems to be one of those social conservatives who feels a kinship with fundamentalist Muslims because of their trying to suppress the so-called "pleasures of the flesh," particularly recreational sex. Dr. Laura Schlessinger ("Dr. Laura"), the well-known conservative radio talk show host and author, is another. She used to rail constantly against Britney Spears and against young American women who wear short miniskirts and bare midriffs.

With the collapse of Soviet Communism, there are very few Leftists in North America anymore who openly call for less personal freedom--the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" is dead.

On this one, I side with the Leftists. The best part of having dinner with Michael Moore is that we could start off with a couple of cocktails and then split a bottle of wine over dinner. I couldn't do that with a fundamentalist Muslim. And that has some much deeper philosophical and political implications than just Muslims being teetotalers.

Posted by: Steven L.

at January 30, 2007 11:40 AM

2 perfect specimen of 'traditional muslims' here:

http://sheikyermami.com/2007/01/29/tiny-minority-of-extremists-is-growing-sharia-now-from-london-to-sydney/

Posted by: sheik yer'mami

at January 30, 2007 12:03 PM

s_sgt7 asks:

"What kind of an excuse does D'Souza use when the muslims kill Hindus? Does he say they are too liberal?"

I don't know what Mr. D'Souza would say about the Hindus, but I do know that the Islamists have criticized Hindu women for exposing their midriffs in public--the traditional sari often leaves a woman's waist exposed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Choli_saree.jpg

Posted by: Steven L.

at January 30, 2007 12:06 PM

Not that I have any sympathy for the Ideology of the left in America. The argument being put forward that they represent the cause of 9-11 is outrageous at best. Let us come up to 20th century period, even though Jihadism has its roots, and history clearly planted throughout the Middle East and North Africa only a very few years after the death of Mohammed. How does D'Sousa ignore the 48' and the 67' wars against what Islam perceives as the sword that hangs over their domain (Israel)? Would he call Israel a product of the depraved left? Where and how did he come up with such a narrow focus on who is to blame for 9-11? For me he is almsot parroting the line of the left who chooses to blame the American Culture on the right for the causations of 9-11. Yes in both cases it is the blame America first crowd; never mind that jihadism is clearly driven by the surahs, and Hadiths of the Islamic religion and has never made the decadence or left wing thinking their specific enemy - It is and has always been that no other religion is for the most part intolerable on the face of the Planet other than the Islamic religion.

Posted by: Mackie

at January 30, 2007 12:25 PM

"Yes, I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt." - Dinesh D'Souza

Have a drink... with the grand mufti of Egypt?

Well, I never.

Isn't that the sort of sentiment that drives "traditional Muslims" into the arms of jihadists and makes them want to kill us all?

Posted by: MarisolJW

at January 30, 2007 12:25 PM

For conservatives to ally with "moderate, traditional" Muslims against the "radical" Muslims, we would have to be able to distinguish between the two. Aye, there's the rub. It's put up or shut up time, folks: Exactly what distinguishes the views of a "moderate" Muslim from a "radical" Muslim?

At the very least, at least 98% of even "moderate" Muslims despise Israel, a nation I strongly support; so we would just have to punt on that one. But on how many other issues would we have to punt? How many "moderate" Muslims supported our military intervention in Afghanistan after 9-11? (From the polls I saw, not very many.) How do "moderate" Muslims feel when their religion is mocked in jest, as with those Mohammed cartoons last year? And what will "moderate" Muslims think of me personally, when they find out that I enjoy wine with my dinner and my girlfriend wears a bikini when we go to the beach?

If Muslims are so "moderate" that they have no problem with any of this, then they cannot even be considered devout Muslims at all, it seems to me.

Posted by: Steven L.

at January 30, 2007 12:32 PM

root_cause suggests:

"I think with Grover Al-Norquist and Dinesh
Dhimmisuza that National Review looks like its been compromised."

Well, so has the Wall Street Journal, along with Republican free-market economist Larry Kudlow. The Wall Street Journal strongly supported the Dubai ports deal and called those of us like Jihad Watch who opposed it, "Islamophobic."

And the reason is the same in both cases: Oil, baby!

This is the part of the Republican Party whose top priorities are economic globalization and free trade, and big business. And the $10 trillion in petrodollars possessed by the Middle East Muslim oil shieks is just too juicy to ignore.

The CEO of ExxonMobil has a pro-Muslim, anti-Israel outlook too. He has to, given whom his company has to deal with. His Muslim business contacts wouldn't tolerate a CEO of ExxonMobil who agreed with us here on Jihad Watch.

Heck, the Saudis could easily buy off Robert Spencer just by gifting him $100 million in a Swiss bank account--for them that's just another business expense.

Posted by: Steven L.

at January 30, 2007 12:59 PM

D`Souza has one piece of truth in his muddle:

In order to get along with our Mohamadean bretheren, a thinking Westerner must turn a blind eye to Islam as it is, as it was and as it has been observed throught the centuries by every other group in every other time.

Posted by: tokyobk

at January 30, 2007 1:29 PM

I don't know - sometimes all this is so depressing that I don't know whether to:

(a) cut my own throat to save the Jihadists the bother

(b) cut off my own foreskin and recite the "Five Pillars of Islam"

but I still stick around - and you know why?

.. I will not submit ..

Posted by: drk

at January 30, 2007 1:29 PM

"Heck, the Saudis could easily buy off Robert Spencer just by gifting him $100 million in a Swiss bank account--for them that's just another business expense."
Posted by: Steven L. at January 30, 2007 12:59 PM

Careful now, Steven.

"For conservatives to ally with "moderate, traditional" Muslims against the "radical" Muslims, we would have to be able to distinguish between the two."
Posted by: Steven L. at January 30, 2007 12:32 PM

That's a much better argument, echoed by Robert constantly. We need clear definitions of "moderates" as opposed to "radicals", the differences in their beliefs.

The sad reality is it seems that no one can actually define a "moderate" muslim, for it grows more apparent each day that they do not really exist. Non-practicing Muslims, comparative to non-practicing Catholics, for example, is about the best you can do.

The difference is that practicing and non-practicing Catholics alike pose the same threat to Western civilization relatively. The same can not be said of those within the Camp of Islam.

Posted by: awake

at January 30, 2007 1:37 PM

Robert said

D’Souza believes that discussion of the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify their actions will just drive these “traditional Muslims” to become jihadists.

Much of what D'Souza said was difficult to find common ground with, but his supposed counter-example of criticism of a fictional Christian terrorist group causing Christians to join the terrorists was the most jaw-dropping inanity of the bunch. I think its obvious un-truthiness made it a counter-counter-example. It just pointed out even more clearly the difference between how Christians and Muslims would react (and the same is assuredly true for Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, etc.). Only Muslims react to perceived criticism with violence as their first and only response. Maybe D'Souza has some examples of Christians, Jews, Hindus, or Buddhists who responded to criticism of their respective founder with murder? There are many, many examples of Muslims doing this, and Muslims are at most 1/5 of the world's population. So, by D'Souza's logic, we should be seeing 4 "infidel jihad" inspired murders for each Islamic jihad inspired murder. Obviously, we don't.

And by the way, it is odd that D’Souza, for all his disgust for the Left, would pick up on the Leftist coinage “Islamophobia,” a trumped-up, politically manipulative term intended to stifle debate. I would have thought D’Souza would be ashamed of using it until I read his recommendation that “the right” stop producing books like mine.

D'Souza blames the left for causing the jihad, but then blames the right for criticising the jihad. D'Souza claims that jihadists are attacking us because of our liberal values, and his proposed solution is for us to follow the conservative values of the jihadists in the hope that then they will not be offended. If we enforce dhimmitude on ourselves, then the jihadists will not impose it on us. Does that make any sense?

I cannot agree with anyone who looks at the 1,350 years of jihad in almost every continent of the world, and comes to the conclusion that the problem is the infidels.

Posted by: special_guest

at January 30, 2007 2:03 PM

Steven L. said

Heck, the Saudis could easily buy off Robert Spencer just by gifting him $100 million in a Swiss bank account--for them that's just another business expense.

Don't forget $100 million to Hugh, too. And several tens of millions for Anne and Marisol. And a few hundred thousand for each poster.

That still leaves them several trillion for enslaving us.

Posted by: special_guest

at January 30, 2007 2:13 PM

While as a right winger I believe The Left has made a substantial contribution to the weakness the West has in facing Islam, it's absurd to blame them, culturally or otherwise, for what happened on September, 11, 2001. The real culprit is Islam's ingrained intolerance for any non-Muslims and it's holy writting's repeated calls for their subjugation and conversion. The fact we exist is enough to justify Jihad in their minds.

D'Souza is a dangerously naive and uninformed individual.

Posted by: Proud Infidel

at January 30, 2007 2:28 PM

Is Barack Obama Ideologically Muslim?

Posted by: Foehammer

at January 30, 2007 2:32 PM

They seem to be coming out of the woodwork. There was Esmay, D'Souza, David "9/11 wasn't so bad" Bell, and today I heard Barry M. Lando weighing in on the jihad on the radio, and guess what, he thinks it's our fault too. Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Kennedy, they caused the jihad, according to Lando's book "Web of Deceit".

I don't know Lando's political leanings, but it doesn't matter. He is very evenhanded, he blames both conservative infidels and liberal infidels. How open minded of him. Robert and Hugh still seem to be the only ones willing to blame the jihad on .... the jihadists.

Once again, an author has started from an obviously true premise ("We have made mistakes in our dealing with the Middle East and Islam"), and takes it to the illogical extremes.

Posted by: special_guest

at January 30, 2007 2:38 PM

Once again, an author has started from an obviously true premise ("We have made mistakes in our dealing with the Middle East and Islam"), and takes it to the illogical extremes.

Exactly!

Posted by: Razdan

at January 30, 2007 3:37 PM

Professor Spencer!

An excellent review!

Very few will agree with my thesis that the only way to fight this intolerance is with our own intolerance. On the morning of 9/11/2001, I was roundly criticized for advocating internment camps. One thing history shows is that pacifism breeds war.

"If you want peace, prepare for war." Ulysses S. Grant, "Memoirs"

Jesus said, "I did not come to bring peace but a sword." Matthew 10:34. It is my opinion that he meant this on all levels.

In His Name!

Posted by: Crusader

at January 30, 2007 4:14 PM

"Yes, I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt." - Dinesh D'Souza

By drinking alcohol at the end of the day, D'Souza is just confirming what traditional Muslims already think and see of America - too much booze.... He should ponder before driving these traditional Muslims into the arms of the Jihadists.

And I'd pick Britney over any Muslim(ah) anyday, Carmen bin Laden included. Oops, am I now driving more traditional Muslims into the arms of the Jihadists?

Can't wait until all billion of them are against us. Might make it more visible.

Posted by: Infidel Pride

at January 30, 2007 4:38 PM

Maybe I'm missing something here, but when did this Indian guy become an expert at what it means to be an American, leftist or otherwise?

Posted by: george_rem

at January 30, 2007 4:40 PM

Quoting D'Souza -- “in this respect one may say, with only a hint of irony, that Muslims are in the Old Testament tradition” -- Robert goes on to say: He does not explain, however, why, if that were true, no Jews and Christians are cutting off the arms and legs of thieves or flogging adulterers today – in other words, he completely bypasses the interpretative traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in order to make the crudest of moral equivalence arguments.

I would add that D'Souza also does not integrate the massive historical fact of the ongoing evolution of the modern West on its adventure of secularism, by which the rough edges of Christians and Jews of former epochs have become polished by increasing civility, maturity and tolerance on the part of Jews and Christians themselves (and anyway, for the rough edges of Jews one would have to go back much further -- roughly two millennia -- than one would have to do for Christians -- roughly four centuries).

Integrating this historical fact would put D'Souza in another paradoxical bind, for the very modern secularism he is decrying is also the same secularism that reflects the fact that 99.999% of all Jews and Christians in our era do not pursue the rough edges of yore, nor show any desire to do so, and never behave like Muslims do when their religions are criticized, mocked or offended.

And now a little jab at the modern secularist anti-religious atheists: Modern Western secularism is itself an organic development out of Christendom and its Judaeo-Christian virtues (a paradoxically organic development, insofar as it occurred with a bit of kicking and screaming and pulling teeth along the way -- but nevertheless it was an intrinsic growth, not an extraneous imposition).

Posted by: remote_control

at January 30, 2007 4:49 PM

In my estimation, this one observation of Spencer's is the superlatively point-blank kill shot:

D’Souza is assuming that they regard global jihad terrorism as less damaging to their religion than “Islamophobic tracts,” which in itself completely undermines D’Souza’s assumption that jihad terrorism is a twisting of “traditional” Islam.

Posted by: remote_control

at January 30, 2007 4:51 PM

D'Souza, through his writing, has proven to be a thoroughly reckless, dangerously incompetant, and morally irresponsible individual. He needs to be exposed, raked over the coals, with his claims utterly demolished. His credibility in the eyes of the general public should have been--and could have been--totally destroyed. While Robert's review shows D'Souza to be a misguided bungler, and provides some factual information about the brutality of Islamic history, it does not go far enough in demolishing D'Souza's specific claims and credibility.

D'Souza states:

[D'Souza says]“Yes, I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I’d have to confess that I’m closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap.” [To which Robert replies] Which core beliefs? D’Souza doesn’t say, but the grand mufti of Egypt has declared sculpture un-Islamic, so perhaps he and D’Souza could get together for a fun evening of statue-smashing.”

While banning, or calling for the destruction, of sculpture is certainly objectionable, what we need here by way of rejoinder is a list documenting what D'Souza has wittingly or unwittingly agreed to by saying he shares this mufti's core beliefs. I don't think a ban on sculpture is enough to drive the point home with the general public. What we should see is a list indicating that Ali Gomaa, as a follower of Shafi'i jurisprudence, most likely supports the murder of apostates, aggressive jihad against all non-Muslims in the name of spreading Islamic rule, Arab supremacism in requiring that the Caliph must be Arab, and many other objectionable elements of that school of Islamic law.

Ali Gomaa has also stated that Bahais should not be recognized:

“The Supreme Administrative Court has unfortunately refused to force the Ministry of Interior to recognize Bahais, echoing the opinion of the Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa that Bahais do not deserve recognition — this from a supposedly more open-minded cleric.”
http://arabist.net/archives/2006/12/16/court-denies-bahais-legal-recognition/

Ali Gomaa expressed support for Hizballah:

http://talismangate.blogspot.com/2006/08/new-column-quietly-smiling-update.html
The New York Times

"August 4, 2006 Friday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Foreign Desk; HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDEAST: THE MUSLIM WORLD; Pg. 8

HEADLINE: Hezbollah's Prominence Has Many Arabs Worried

BYLINE: By NEIL MacFARQUHAR; Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo for this article, and Jad Mouawad from Mukhtara, Lebanon.
Egypt's grand mufti, Sheik Ali Gomaa, the country's highest religious authority, issued a statement supporting Hezbollah, while Sheik Youssef Qaradawi, whose program on Al Jazeera makes him one of the Arab world's most influential clerics, defined supporting the guerrillas as a ''religious duty.''"

Ali Gomaa along with Tantawi has demanded that international blasphemy laws be imposed:

http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/Arts&Culture/Crisis/Denounce/072204000000000004.htm
“The delegation, which arrived on Thursday, will hold talks with Egyptian Mufti Ali Gomaa, the Orthodox Bishop of Cairo, the Bishop of the Anglican Church in Cairo as well as Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa.
Sheikh Tantawi called on clerics and scholars from all the world over to join forces and press for the enactment of an international law criminalizing blasphemy.”
----

“Egyptian Mufti Ali Gomaa, at the same press conference, urged the West to revise its curricula and remove any materials demonizing Islam.
Strongly denouncing the blasphemous caricatures, he called on Muslims to make capital of what happened.
"We ask the international community to activate or issue laws banning blasphemy, and the European Union to reverse opposition to issue similar laws," Goma said.”
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2006-02/18/article05.shtml

This blogger http://youssefassad.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-am-not-only-stupid-i-am-also-nazi.html claims Ali Gomaa, after the Muhammad cartoon controversy, called all Danes stupid Nazis. (Sorry, translation of the original article was not provided). “In an interview with Politiken, another Danish newspaper, he was quoted as saying that Danes must all be stupid and that they are behaving like the Nazi regime in World War II.”

Next item:

D’Souza: “In reality, a majority of the world’s Muslims today live under democratic governments – in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Turkey, not to mention Muslims living in Western countries. There is nothing in the Koran or the Islamic tradition that forbids democracy.”

Here some concrete examples of present-day violations of religious freedom in these so-called democratic countries (i.e., such as we see on JW/DW daily) would be most helpful. The fact is that non-Muslims are persecuted in all of those countries, persecution that is often in line with government policies and national (and sharia or sharia-adapted) laws.

[D'Souza states]“Islam is notorious for the harshness of some of its punishments, such as cutting off the arms and legs of thieves, flogging adulterers, and executing drug dealers.”... “in this respect one may say, with only a hint of irony, that Muslims are in the Old Testament tradition.”

D'Souza describes the least harsh of the harsh punishments. The penalty for adultery (for a married person who commits it) is death by stoning. Those who "spread corruption"--a phrase that is open to a wide variety of interpretations--may be crucified in accordance with Koran 5:33

Here it would be worthwhile to raise the question of what D'Souza actually supports from the Old Testament, given that he doesn't seem to be troubled by it. Does he specifically reject the death penalty for apostasy, blasphemy, adultery, homosexuality, disobedient children, etc., all of which the Old Testament orders? Sure, most Christians and Jews don't follow those rules today, but what about D'Souza? Does he support milder forms of legal penalty for these sin-crimes?

Robert writes:

The apologetic Call to Islaam website explains: “Murder, rape, child molesting and genocide. These are all some of the appalling crimes which occur in our world today. Many would think that these are the worst possible offences which could be committed. But there is something which outweighs all of these crimes put together: It is the crime of shirk.”[12]

It is worth adding that this sentiment is consistent with the Koran itself, which states that fitnah is worse than killing (2:217, 2:191; where fitnah is widely interpreted to include, among other things, disbelief in Islam; Ibn Kathir interprets this as "shirk is worse than killing"); and that disbelief in Islam is the worst crime (6:21, 6:144, 6:157, 7:37, 10:17, 11:18-19, 18:15, 18:57, 29:68, 32:22, 39:32, 61:7). That shows that the opinion is not merely some twisted group's interpretation but comes directly from the Koran itself.

Indeed, it would be worth adding that the Koran and Hadith permit what non-Muslims would regard as "murder, rape, child-molesting, and genocide."

Robert:

"D’Souza asserts that most Muslims oppose polygamy,"

Does he cite polls to support his claim? Actually, polls show that even in Britain about half of Muslims do support polygamy. (That study was quoted yesterday on JW). It was not reported what the male-female differences were, but one might expect that the males favour it more than the females, and in a male-dominated culture such as Islam, it's the males' opinions that tend to be followed. The support for polygamy is likely to be even higher in Islamic countries.

Robert:

"He portrays them as rejecting polygamy, the execution of apostates, and other unpleasant features of Islamic law and practice."

Some facts from the original report referenced yesterday, viz U.K. Muslims' opinions, including in regard to polygamy:
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/libimages/246.pdf

From Table 1 on page 47.
“The following is a list of laws that are defined in most scholarly interpretations of sharia law. Please say if you personally agree or disagree with the law mentioned”

“That a Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim.” 51% Agree, 43% disagree, 5% don’t know/refused.

“That a Muslim woman may not marry without the consent of her guardian.” 43% Agree, 51% disagree, 5% don’t know/ refused.

“That a Muslim male may have up to 4 wives, and a Muslim female is allowed only one husband.” 46% Agree, 48% disagree, 6% don’t know/ refused.

“That Muslim conversion is forbidden and punishable by death.” Agree 31%, disagree 57%, don’t know/ refused 12%. (Note. Agree 36-37% among 16-34 year-olds; Agree 19% for those aged 45+)

“That homosexuality is wrong and should be illegal.” 61% agree, 30% disagree, 9% don’t know/ refused.

Posted by: Kab bin Ashraf

at January 30, 2007 5:43 PM

"incompetant" oops, meant to write "incompetent". Now if only D'Souza could acknowledge and correct his much more significant errors.

Posted by: Kab bin Ashraf

at January 30, 2007 5:52 PM

Dinesh D'Souza's problem is that he hasn't taken Islamic scripture and theology seriously--the same mistake the liberal American foreign policy establishment has been making since 1979, if not earlier.

But, as a Christian conservative, I ask myself what I would do if the cultural left woke up and smelled the coffee?

In the runup to our unwinnable invasion of Talibanistan (especially since our ally, Pathologicalstan, is playing both sides in this conflict), exiled Afghan feminists visited sympathetic college campuses in the Midwest to recount the horrors of Taliban rule. Fair enough. We all know that Muslim family values include truly cruel misogyny, polygamy, and pedophelia--all of which outrage my Christian conscience. But I also understand that a few Muslim Arab countries lead the world in the number of battered husbands. So, do Muslim feminists really need our help?

But, how will I react when the [hypothetical] awakened cultural left gears up its incredible roaring engine of a propaganda machine (you know, the kind that presented famine-ridden China under Mao as the hope of the Third World) to get the nation fired up to spread the blessings of abortion on demand and homosexual marriage all the way to Mecca?

HELL NO, WE WON'T GO! I will not sacrifice my son to make the world safe for those who would put me in prison for "hate speech" when I affirm the existence of Hell [even if I'm in no hurry to send anyone there] and hold that certain behaviors are abominable to God.

Even if the left leads us to commit the genocides needed to win (the leftist conscience is good at justifying such things; as the not-too-distant history of Eurasia has shown); Leftist values will put us back into the situation in which the ageing heroes of the future sack of Mecca will have to let the vengeance-hungry surviving Muslims back in to push their wheelchairs forty years later.

The Afghan Muslim man who moons over a boy's peach-shaped moons at least can admit himself to be a hypocrite and feel some shame over it. But, will the cultural left feel the same way once the novelty of its crusade for man-on-man (rather than man-on-boy) homosexuality is won, and it seeks other forms of sexual depravity to normalize?

But, perhaps I need not worry. The enemy of the cultural left is the West's own Christian tradition. Hence, as long as Muslims hate Christians, the cultural left won't wake up and smell the coffee. It will know where its real ally is. it will also fool itself into thinking that time is on its side when it "converts" at swordpoint.

No, it is best to leave the Islamic world to stew in its own highly corrosive juices for a couple of generations. If we pulled out of Talibanistan and Sects-r-aq tomorrow, there'd sure be a lot of ululating and guns being fired into the air for about a month or so--but then things would go back to the usual round of paranoid tyranny and conspiracy that keeps the world of Islam a series of slums surrounded by deserts.

D'Souza is wrong to think that traditionalist Muslims can be allies of traditional Christians beyond a very limited number of issues. But if I cheer his dislike of the cultural left, it's only because I'd like to see my civilization rebuilt--and I know what has corroded it from within.

Posted by: Kepha

at January 30, 2007 6:02 PM

Dinesh D’Souza has never impressed me. But he is some kind of "scholar" at Stanford so he gets kissed up to. Vacuous books will not do, is he having staff co-write them? I hope he has the intellectual courage to learn more about Islam. He is rightly being slagged here by Robert and the incomparable Andrew Bostom. I'm sure Hugh has blasted him too

Posted by: dennisw

at January 30, 2007 6:02 PM

More info those core values which D'Souza says he shares with the Egyption mufti (Ali Gomaa says wife beating is okay in Egypt).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb6D9G4gpW8&eurl=

Posted by: Kab bin Ashraf

at January 30, 2007 6:19 PM

Oriana Fallaci who was an atheist and not a conservative said it right while the conservative D'Souza says it wrong. We conservatives, moderates, and liberals....women and men of the west and civilization must find common ground against our age old enemy. The Fallaci letter to the Pope is a good example and framework on how we should and why we must find this ground....

"Naturally, I understand that the philosophy of the Catholic Church is based on ecumenism and on the commandment “Love-your-enemy-as-yourself.“ That one of its fundamental principles (at least theoretically) is forgiveness, sacrifice, turning the other cheek. (A sacrifice I refuse not only for pride; that is, for my way of maintaining my dignity, but also because I believe there is a motive of Evil on the part of those who do evil.) But there also exists the principle of self-defense or, instead, legitimate defense and, if I’m not mistaken, the Catholic Church has made use of this principle more than once. Charles Martel turned back the Muslim invaders lifting up the crucifix. Isabel of Spain tossed them out of Spain while doing the same. And at Lepanto there were even Papal troops. In order to defend Vienna, the last bulwark of Christianity, in order to break the siege of Kara Mustafa, there was also, and above all, the Pole Jan Sobienski with the image of the Virgin of Chestochowa. And if those Catholics had not applied the principle of self-defense--of legitimate defense--we, too, would be wearing the burka or the calabash. We, too, would be calling the few survivors infidel dogs. We, too, We, too, would be cutting off their heads with the halal knife. And Saint Peter’s Basilica would be a mosque, like the Church of Saint Sofia in Istanbul. Worse: the Vatican would be Bin Laden and Zarqawi."

"Thus, three days after the latest massacre, when Pope Ratzinger renewed the theme of dialogue, I was astonished. Your Holiness, I speak to you as a person who admires you very much. Who loves you, because you are right about so many things. Who, because of this, is mocked along with those nicknamed “devout atheist,“ “sanctimonious layperson,“ “clerical liberal.“ A person, above all, who understands politics and its necessities. Who understands the drama of leadership and its compromises. Who admires the stubbornness of faith and respects the renouncements and generosity that it demands. But I must pose the following question all the same: do you really believe that the Muslims would accept a dialogue with Christians, or with other religions, or with atheists like me? Do you really believe that they can change, reform, quit planting bombs? You are a very erudite man, Your Holiness. Very cultured. And you know them well. Much better than I. Explain to me then: When ever, in the course of their history--a history that has lasted for 1400 years--have they changed and reformed?"

"Oh, neither have we been, nor are we, angels. Agreed. Inquisitions, defenestrations, executions, wars, infamies of every kind; as well as Guelphs and Ghibellines without end. And if we want to judge ourselves severely, it’s enough to think about what we did sixty years ago with the Holocaust. But afterwards, we applied a little wisdom, of course. We thought about what we had done and if for no other reason than in the name of decency, we bettered ourselves a little. They have not. The Catholic Church experienced epochal changes, Your Holiness. And again, you know this better than I. At a certain point, it is remembered that the Church was preaching reason; thus choice; thus the Good, thus Liberty, and she ceased to tyrannize. To kill people. Or constrain them to paint only Christs and Madonnas. She understood laicism. Thanks to men of the first order, a long list of which You are a part, she leant a hand to democracy. And today, she speaks to people like me. She accepts them and, far from burning them alive (I never forget that up until four hundred years ago the Holy Office would have sent me to the stake), she respects their ideas. They do not. Therefore, there can be no dialogue with them. And this does not signify that I want to promote a war of religion, a Crusade, a witch hunt, as imbeciles and frauds. (Religious wars, Crusades--me?!? A non-religious person? Go figure. Like I’d want to incite a religious war or a Crusade. A witch hunt--me?!? Being considered a witch and a heretic by the same laypeople and the same liberals, go figure. Like I’d want to start a witch hunt. It simply signifies that to delude one’s self about them is against reason. Against Life, against one’s own survival. And woe unto those who take them into their confidence."

This is why D'Souza is wrong and yes dangerous. Just as dangerous as those extream left wing nut jobs. This is a woman he would attack for not being moral. If the non-religious Oriana Fallaci could extend her hand in friendship to the very religious Pope then we too can do the same. We must or all is lost. You are either anti-jihad or not...

No middle ground in the fight that is coming.

Posted by: greatcometof1577

at January 30, 2007 6:43 PM

Superb review, Robert; it's game, set, match against D'Souza. After all your examples and concise logic (with footnotes nonetheless), this quote from the article summarises it nicely:

[Dinesh D’Souza]...manifests an appalling ignorance of Islamic theology, history, and present reality.

Posted by: Xero G

at January 30, 2007 6:46 PM

Dinesh D'Souza is not all "bad." Not in his defense--for "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11," which is indefensible--but to show that he has socially redeeming features, the following appears to be an exhibit:

[quote from Dinesh D'Souza]

The millions of Americans living decent, praiseworthy lives deserve our highest admiration: They opt for good when good is not the only choice, giving their virtue a special luster. A free society doesn't guarantee virtue any more than it guarantees happiness. But it allows the pursuit of both, a pursuit more meaningful because success is uncertain; it requires personal effort.

Force undermines morality

By contrast, the authoritarian society that Islamic fundamentalists advocate undermines the possibility of virtue. If the supply of virtue is insufficient in free societies, it is almost non-existent in Islamic societies, because coerced virtues are not virtues at all.

Consider a woman required to wear a veil. There is no virtue here, for she is being forced. Compulsion only produces the outward semblance of virtue.

* * *
In theocratic societies such as Iran, the absence of freedom signals the absence of virtue. This is the argument Americans should make to the Islamic world.

Muslims would be receptive to it. Islam respects the autonomy of the individual soul. Salvation, for Muslims no less than for Jews and Christians, is based on the soul freely choosing to follow God. We can make the case to Muslims that freedom is a gift from God, not simply a secular invention. And because freedom is the necessary pre-condition for virtue, we can assert that our free society is not simply richer, more varied and more tolerant; it is also morally superior to fundamentalists' version of Islamic society.

[close quote]

from
Sell USA's virtue to Muslim world, By Dinesh D'Souza

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002/05/02/ncguest2.htm

Am I wrong?

Any comments contra?

Posted by: unicorns62000

at January 30, 2007 6:59 PM

unicorns,

Apparently, then, since 2002 when those quotes were written, D'Souza has had a change of heart and mind -- in the disastrously and diametrically wrong direction. He's a Pod Person now. He's part of the Problem.

Posted by: remote_control

at January 30, 2007 8:17 PM

Let's subject D'Souza's premise to a test. What if the USA and Europe was not a liberal, libertine cess-pool of depravity? Would it make a difference in the Jihadist mind-set? Well, history provides us with such a period. In Europe, during the Middle Ages, one either followed the dictums of the Church (of which there was only one), or else. That would be the Roman Catholic version in the West or the Orthodox version in the East. So, what did the followers of Mohammid do? Oops! Why there was no difference! They swept across North Africa and into Iberia, then crossed into France until they were stopped at Tours. About 800 years later, they were attacking Vienna until some Poles stopped them. So, there is no difference in the attitude of the Islamo-fascist whether the opponent is Conservative or Liberal. But, as history also teaches us, there is a huge difference if said Islamic nut case gets his butt kicked and that made the difference in Europe and in Tripoli when our Marines paid them a visit.

Posted by: JeromeFromLayton

at January 31, 2007 1:11 AM

That's a brilliant observation. D'Souza is making the same argument re "people of faith" as Dhimmi Carter. However, the differences in the belief-systems are profound. From a post above

Our own president is guilty of the same flawed reasoning, naively venerating an evil ideology masquerading as a religion. Just because a billion or so brainwashed zombies submit to the demonic deity allah does not accord incontrovertible legitimacy to islam.

I have my doubts about GWB's devout Christian faith but if he is deeply religious, he should have learned at some point during his Christian development that islam is the antithesis of Christianity. To bestow legitimacy and respect on something you know absolutely nothing about is the epitome of ignorance and irresponsiblity. To assume that because islam is an Abrahamic "religion" and all Abrahamic religions believe in God, that makes it "noble" and "peaceful", is pure stupidity. There is no excuse for a president to be that ignorant of our most deadly enemy.

Posted by: Susanp

at January 31, 2007 1:19 AM

Even worse, when D’Souza assumes that peaceful Muslims will have a greater sense of solidarity with jihadists than with non-Muslims, he destroys his entire thesis.

And there's that. D'Souza may want to revisit the old drawing board. Posted by: Beagle

at January 31, 2007 3:27 AM

henry,

You said:

"Evidently unicorns62000 doesn't believe that all Muslims are strongly encouraged to be liars when speaking to a fully civilized person who is holding fast onto his or her Free Will."

Of course Moslems are encouraged to lie, deceive and do whatever it takes to put us on the defensive.

My point was to show that Dinesh D'Souza made an abrupt change in his position since 2002. Why he changed is unclear. He might have found that "too much" freedom is not to his liking or he caved in to Moslems by separating them into "redeemable" and "unredeemable" ones.

To me, all Moslems are unredeemable until they say goodbye to Islam.

Posted by: unicorns62000

at January 31, 2007 4:05 AM

Life's amazing with all these religious beliefs ?

In rural parts of China, they believe in giving you lighters will bring them good luck, so don't refuse a lighter. I must've had forty lighters coming back home to America !

When will people wake-up and see the brain is just another fuk-ed up organ ?

Posted by: Jeff

at January 31, 2007 7:02 AM

Heard the debate online in full last night, and I Robert did well, but it was hard with the phone problems.

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106

at January 31, 2007 7:34 AM

"...or he [D'Souza] caved in to Moslems by separating them into "redeemable" and "unredeemable" ones."

That's not a caving in to Moslems -- it's a caving into Political Correctness, which invented the distinction between a blameless Islam and an extremist minority trying to "hijack" that Islam.

Posted by: remote_control

at January 31, 2007 11:04 AM

D'Souza is a duffiss! Of course secular values will be spread into the non-western world. It is such values that will divert the human population from endless war fare driven by religious fanatism.

The BIG CHEESE or spiritual inspiration of Al Queda comes from the blind cleric Rocman of Egypt. President Clinton threw his ass behind bars for life. That is more than I can say Bush has done to Osama Bin Laden or Doctor Z. We did not get attack of 9/11 because Clinton was "weak".

What D'Souza is really talking about is a political alliance with the Muslims to advance the conservative agenda. And that is the real threat of Jihad overwhelming America.

Conservatives will team up with the Islamic agenda and impose it on the population from the top. Already we got the Bush Boy who has taken it upon himself to praise Islam as a " great religion of peace " every chance he gets. Somehow he views promoting Islam as a new presidential responsibility.

Look at the illegal alien situation , that too is being imposed on the American population from the very top levels of government. They will do the same thing with Islam. It is the threat not so much as over seas but the threat from above.

----Nossy

Posted by: Nostrodamus

at January 31, 2007 11:58 PM

He said that the "right" must stop the attack on islam. That event is somthing I missed, I really have not seen anything like a effort to direct the focus on islam ,it has mostly been the "religion of peace" talk.

If the "left" is with the terrorists, and the "right" should grasp for the moderates, islamic law is close behind to grab the controls.

He needs to read and study islam.

Posted by: Islofob IS-1

at February 1, 2007 2:00 AM

Another really usefull idiot

Posted by: kta2001

at February 1, 2007 11:42 AM

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