Fitzgerald: A Tribute to John Esposito

"John Esposito did not start out as anything more than a mild-mannered low-level academic; one suspects he had no strong feelings about Islam, and was not prompted by any of the mental pathologies -- antisemitism, hatred of America -- that can produce the apologist for Islam. But as one crook of the Gilded Age, of the kind of Tammany Hall variety, said in his own defense, Esposito has "seen his opportunities, and he took 'em."

If ever that silly bumpersticker "Question Authority" was appropriate, it is in relation to the likes of Esposito, and Michael Sells, and tutti quanti. Whether on the take, or simply ill-informed, or lazy, or stupid, or some combination, they are guides to nothing and to nowhere. But their books could be given as incentives to those who sign up for Al-Jazeera on cable -- the perfect coffee-table accompaniment to so many of its programs.

Esposito has come a long way, the mediocre producer of nondescript texts and prettified couleur-locale "studies" of Islam, those coffee-table concoctions in which the pictures first overwhelm the reader -- those blue mosques, those Iznik tiles, those colorfully turbaned Turks -- and prevent any sober recognition of just how empty or misleading so many of the texts offered in these anthologies, or by Esposito himself, really are. All those pretty pictures make the reader swoon and overlook the fact that he has learned nothing about the actual contents of Qur'an, hadith, and sira.

No one of sense -- no one -- takes John Esposito seriously anymore. Esposito's loaded title The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? pointed the way to his vacuous conclusion -- of course it is a "myth" and not a "reality." That was the book in which he mentioned the word "Jihad" exactly twice. He has tried to do a little better since, but now it is all about blaming one particular group of Muslims, the "Wahhabis."

Of course it was not a "Wahhabi" Muslim who murdered Theo van Gogh. It was not "Wahhabis" who have been killing Christians and Confucians in Indonesia, by the hundreds of thousands, over the past few decades, and destroying, in 2003 alone, more than 3,000 churches. It is not "Wahhabi" Muslims in Bangladesh who have been murdering Hindus -- 3 million since the 1971 war against West Pakistan. It is not "Wahhabis" who conducted, in Col. Ojukwu's words, the "Jihad" against the Christian Ibos in southern Nigeria who felt compelled to declare the independence of Biafra. It was not "Wahhabis" who have been making war on black Christians and animists in the southern Sudan, or now insufficiently "Arab" Muslims in Darfur. It was not "Wahhabis" but that severe and learned theologian of Shi'a Islam, the Ayatollah Khomeini, who set up the murderous, fanatical Islamic Republic of Iran -- about which, if you can stand it, you can find a great deal from many Iranian exiles, at www.faithfreedom.org.

Nobody needs Esposito’s writings. Margoliouth and Schacht have recently been reprinted. Antoine Fattal's book on the legal status of non-Muslims under Islam never went out of print. K. S. Lal is easily obtained. Tritton, Arthur Jeffery, Armand Abel, Georges Henri Bousquet, Snouck Hurgronje -- they are all about to be reprinted, at least in relevant part. Of course, I don't think for a minute that Esposito, or any of his crew, are familiar with any of these great scholars, and dozens more. I doubt they've even read them. They seem actually to believe that the only person to have written about dhimmitude is Bat Ye'or, whom they like to airily dismiss as "polemical" so that they will not have to confront her meticulous, scrupulous, and irrefutable scholarship.

But what may be most interesting is the reply Esposito gave at a Muslim website some months ago, in which he noted that after 9/11 he -- John Esposito -- was "pleasantly surprised" to see that there had been no diminution in the number of "reverts"(or converts) to Islam.

Now we all know how keenly interested Muslims are in the rate of conversion, how important Da'wa is, how much an instrument of conquest it is believed to be -- for one is swelling the ranks of the recruits into the umma al-islamiyya, the Community of Believers, who owe their loyalty to that Community alone, never to the Infidel nation-state. We recall, do we not, that the very first thing Osama bin Laden inquired about on that first tape filmed after 9/11, and which pleased him mightily to discover, was the rate of conversion of Infidels. He was told, and gave a smile when he heard the news, that "people in Holland were converting at an even faster pace" than before.

Now here is John Esposito, now of Georgetown, formerly of Holy Cross. One might expect that he would be a student of Islam, but not an enthusiast, not someone delighted to receive news of the swelling of Muslim ranks. But this is what he said at this website:
"I was pleasantly surprised" to discover that the numbers of conversions [to Islam] have not gone down, but increased."

"Surprised" -- sure.

But "pleasantly" surprised? Why? Why would a certain John Esposito of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (or whatever it is called) be "pleasantly surprised" that there had been no diminishment, because of 9/11, in the number of converts to Islam?

In other words, why did John Esposito express precisely the same reaction as -- Osama bin Laden?

Were I the president of Georgetown, or an alumnus, or a parent, or a Congressman, or a journalist who had been told to "interview John Esposito," that is the question that I would first wish to have answered.

He's got a good thing going. $20 million for his "Georgetown" Center, which means a lot more for lean, mean, jogging John Esposito, and John Voll, and Yvonne Haddad.. And of course John Esposito is hardly alone in having earned, on some future gravestone, that epitaph which so many in the Western world over the past thirty years have earned, in Washington and London and Paris, in their own ways, as they did nothing to prevent Muslim immigration, nothing serious to limit OPEC revenues, and thought only of how to obtain some of those revenues for themselves, their friends, their relatives, their companies:

Shilling for Islam, undoing the West,
Radix malorum cupiditas est.

[Posted by Hugh at March 8, 2006]

Posted by: Hugh at February 15, 2008

Posted by: Hugh at October 3, 2008 10:13 PM

Fitzgerald: Esposito, Georgetown, and the DHS

Possibly the scandal of Esposito can be brought to the attention of the Vatican. Possibly the Vatican can persuade the administration at Georgetown to sever all ties with the "Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding." Esposito would still have his Saudi money and his lecture fees. He would still be lean, mean, jogging about, the man who seldom even puts in an appearance any more at the office. But at least the Georgetown prestige would no longer rub, wrongly, off onto him. He would simply be alone, with his "Center."

Surely someone on the Georgetown faculty, or in the Catholic hierarchy, or among powerful lay Catholics, can get the ball rolling on this.

As to the shoddiness of his scholarship -- well, forget about it. Margoliouth and Schacht have recently been reprinted. Antoine Fattal's book on the legal status of non-Muslims under Islam never went out of print. K. S. Lal is easily obtained. Tritton, Arthur Jeffery, Armand Abel, Charles-Emmanuel Bousquet, Snouck Hurgronje -- they are all about to be reprinted, at least in relevant part. Of course, don't think for a minute that Esposito, or any of his crew, are familiar with any of these great scholars, and dozens more. They've probably never read them. They seem actually to believe that the only person to have written about dhimmitude (though her work is profound, she recognizes that it also makes use of the previous work of dozens of other scholars) is Bat Ye'or, whom they like to airily dismiss as "polemical" so that they will not have to confront her meticulous, scrupulous, and irrefutable scholarship.

If ever that silly bumpersticker "Question Authority" was appropriate, it is in relation to the likes of Esposito, and Michael Sells, and tutti quanti. Whether on the take, or simply ill-informed, or lazy, or stupid, or some combination, they are guides to nothing and to nowhere. But their books could be given as incentives to those who sign up for Al-Jazeera on cable -- the perfect coffee-table accompaniment to so many of its programs.

Here is what I put up January 10, 2005:

That the Administration at Georgetown, that the Georgetown alumni, have not yet realized what damage an institutional connection between Esposito's "Center" and Georgetown is doing to the image, and name, of the latter, is a pity. When the Administration, and other faculty, perhaps prompted by expressions of alumni displeasure, do come to their senses, one hopes that all institutional ties between Georgetown and Esposito's Center, which benefits so much from the legitimacy conferred by the name "Georgetown," will be severed.
Perhaps a good place to begin is for the President and Trustees and alumni of Georgetown to educate themselves by reading, and assimilating, the articles on Islam by a real scholar at Georgetown -- Professor James V. Schall, S. J.

Professor Schall is neither an Arab hireling, nor an apologist for Islam, nor a sycophantic supporter of Muslim causes, nor a recipient of Arab Muslim support, and lionizing. For James V. Schall, S. J. answers to a Higher Authority, and has no truck with an Arab tycoon in Beirut, a Hamas-supporter in London, or a gaggle of Saudi princelings, all daggers-and-dishdashas, with their sneers of cold command, performing some celebratory dance in Riyadh and Jeddah.

I hope that James V. Schall, S.J. is thinking about this, and that John Allen is thinking about this, and Sandro Magister, and others who can get, somehow, to the upper regions of the Vatican, to call attention to this agent of Islam -- for what else should we call him? -- who is battening on the Georgetown name.

In World War II, anyone who had the kind of connections and "friends" among Nazis or Nazi sympathizers that Esposito does among the supporters of terrorist groups would have lost his job.

John Esposito, however, has not been stripped of his Saudi-supplied wealth; nor has he lost his job. No, instead he has been invited by the Department of Homeland Security to address one of the meetings it has organized in New Jersey. One's worst suspicions about the DHS, and about who is doing what in our government, appear to be justified. Those suspicions not allayed by reports from within the Pentagon about Muslim officers and aides swaggering about, or Pentagon officials who continue to be taken for "briefings" on Islam with John Esposito. We will have to find those who are just as alarmed, but are capable -- in Congress or the Executive branch -- of doing something about it. The Saudi lobby is very powerful; there is nothing else like it.

[Posted by Hugh at September 30, 2007]

Posted by: Hugh at October 3, 2008 10:14 PM

"the devils Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, and Martin Kramer."

Why isn't John Esposito "tormented by such devils" who have offered withering criticism of his kind of apologetics for Islam, such as a member of the Georgetown faculty, James V. Schall, S. J., or Pope Benedict XVI, or a thousand others, such as Ibn Warraq who, ordinarily preternaturally calm, becomes enraged, and outraged, at even mention of the name "John Esposito" (a response that every apostate from Islam I have met appears to share). Of course, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ali Sina, Ibn Warraq, James V. Schall, S. J., and Pope Benedict XVI, and Magdi Cristiano Allam, do not fall into the implied category created by the slyly vicious Esposito, grading into territory that we all have come to recognize from the walts and mearsheimers and fisks of this great world, with his transparent list of "Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, and Martin Kramer." Now what do you think the people on that list have in common, that would cause Esposito to list them, but to carefully refrain from listing, say, James V. Schall, S.J. or Pope Benedict, or Magdi Cristiano Allam, or Ibn Warraq? What could it be?

Posted by: Hugh at October 3, 2008 10:23 PM

Spooky!

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at October 3, 2008 10:29 PM

At first glance I thought that Burt Reynolds was among the little devils, but then I realized that it's Daniel Pipes. Burt, how funny, LOL!

Posted by: champ at October 3, 2008 11:15 PM

"John Esposito, and John Voll, and Yvonne Haddad"

Dhimmis, All.

"Muslim-Christian Understanding?" Right - I understand that the Qur'an says to either subjugate me or kill me if I don't convert to Islam.

Mohamet - the first Islamic Terrorist. I understand that, too.

So, did I pass the Qur'an quiz, Professor Dhimmi, and do I get an "A"?

In which of Dante's circles does Esposito reside?

Posted by: darcy at October 3, 2008 11:29 PM

Hugh, have you ever contacted DoH and informed them of these things? Are there any people at all in government trying to undo the damage our academics are doing to our police agencies and the like, or do they turn away and reply with "Lalalalalala! I can't HEAR you!"?

Posted by: Jewel Atkins at October 4, 2008 1:15 AM

Ah, the beauty of love your neighbor as you love yourself versus love yourself at the expense of your neighbor = extant even as we breath.

Lolololo

Posted by: jmbennettusa at October 4, 2008 3:47 AM

"John Esposito, and John Voll, and Yvonne Haddad"

Dhimmis, All.

Anti-America whores, more like it. People who lack principles and have no regard for that which is valuable are the sickest of all, and the scariest part is that the majority aren't lining their pockets with Saudi petro-dollars. They're just trying to get somewhere in academia, which is not a difficult thing to do in the area of Middle Eastern studies, where the bar is so ridiculously low, any evil drivel passes as scholarship, and the only requirement for receiving a PhD is not scholarship, but rather being from a Muslim hellhole country and lacking the equivalent of a free-world kindergarten education, or convincingly pandering to these students and 'professors' like them but a few years older. CampusWatch should have a spin-off in which they document, not the truly sick, evil academics, but rather the patently mediocre-to-pathetic ones. Academia is chock-full of whores with no principles who would sell their own grandmas down the river just to get ahead. They make trial lawyers look like Winston Churchill.

Are there any people at all in government trying to undo the damage our academics are doing to our police agencies and the like...

No. This is the norm in academia. If you love America and Israel, value freedom and democracy, have any regard for the Golden Rule and equality, aren't a politically-correct backstabber who speaks to women's and gay rights and then turns around and supports wholeheartedly all the forces which seek to destroy them, or if you have principles but don't do your best to conceal them, thereby supporting evil through silence, dhimmitude, and double-talk, you're like me: a 'fascist.' I would be a 'Nazi' if I weren't Jewish. It's Mike Adams, Jamie Glazov, and me alone at the end of the world. And besides, if it weren't for professors like Esposito - and it's always the Espositos who chair the departments - then admissions policies would actually have to be upheld in academia so that nobody from the Muslim 3rd World could be admitted without obtaining the equivalent of a free-world high school diploma. That would mean many, many lawsuits from those whose came here on illegitimate student visas when they get booted out. It's always evident just how inferior their educational experience has been prior to (and after) coming to the States because they invariably claim to have 'taught English in my country' but they never speak English at anything beyond a second-semester-L2-learner level. My department is full of students like this, and the chair of my department is only an adjunct professor in the Saudi Agenda Department. These students are almost invariably computational linguists, which is fitting, since illegitimate admits belong in an illegitimate area of study (they believe that people are robots who process all information identically, so that I would think the same thing and in the same way when presented with a victrola as would someone 100 years ago in Papua New Guinea), or in second language studies, the last bastion for those who not only can't do, but can't even teach, so they study the pedagogy of a pointless non-area of study.

On the upside, a speaking engagement at IPFW does signal to me that Esposito's career is going downhill. I've lived in Indiana for 25 of my 29 years and hadn't even heard of IPFW until last year.

Posted by: jdamn at October 4, 2008 7:15 AM

Esposito must be getting desperate to go to the heartland of the US to get his message out. wonder how far the sowdi puppet will go?

Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at October 4, 2008 8:35 AM

And just what is his message anyway?

Posted by: duh_swami at October 4, 2008 8:54 AM

What's his message?

No message. He's telling you to go back to sleep.

Esposito is a whore. He provides his services to the Arabs.

That's all he does.

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at October 4, 2008 9:30 AM

Hmmmm, could these four gents have appeared in or been directly involved in the production of Obsession?

It appears that Esposito's puppet masters in Sausi Arabia are pulling his strings yet again.

Posted by: awake at October 4, 2008 9:43 AM

To answer my own question, Esposito would be in the Eighth circle, the "Sowers of Discord," along with his role model, Mohammed.

http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/dantes_inferno/

Posted by: darcy at October 4, 2008 11:12 AM

"Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself."

Posted by: tanstaafl at October 4, 2008 11:34 AM

Let's set the stage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCCnethxOs&feature=related

Posted by: Hugh at October 4, 2008 12:13 PM

Snouck Hurgronje can be downloaded as an e-book from here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10163

Posted by: Jewel Atkins at October 4, 2008 1:00 PM

Thank you Hugh, for reminding me why I got a BA in Italian. I hadn't seen that Benigni performance since last December when my professor - a 72-year-old, old-school academic wth principles and soul - threw a party at his house and showed the performance in its entirety the night after it had been broacast by satellite on some channel that I don't get.

Gia` veggia, per mezzul perdere o lulla,
com'io vidi un, cosi` non si pertugia,
rotto dal mento infin dove si trulla.
Tra le gambe pendevan le minugia;
la corata pareva e 'l tristo sacco
che merda fa di quel si trangugia.
Mentre che tutto in lui veder m'attacco,
guardommi e con le man s'aperse il petto,
dicendo: "Or vedi com'io mi dilacco!
vedi come storpiato e` Maometto!"
Dinanzi a me sen va piangendo Ali`,
fesso nel volto dal mento al ciufetto.
E tutti li altri che tu vedi qui,
seminator di scandalo e di scisma
fuor vivi, e pero` son fessi cosi`.

No barrel, even though it's lost a hoop
or end-piece, ever gapes as one whom I
saw ripped from chin to where one farts.
His bowels hung between his legs, one saw
his vitals and the miserable sack
that makes of nourishment excrement.
While I was intent on watching him,
he looked at me, and with his hands he spread
his chest and said: "See how I split myself!
See how maimed Mohammed is!" And he
who walks and weeps before me is Ali,
whose face is opened wide form chin to hairline.
And all the others here whom you can see
were, when alive, the sowers of dissension
and scandal, and for this they are now split.

Posted by: jdamn at October 4, 2008 1:09 PM

If I were you, Robert, I'd take offense at merely being reduced to a nameless number among Legion, indwelling swine. Why, surely, you must be reckoned a formidable and fearsome Dark Prince of Hell!

Posted by: John C at October 4, 2008 2:38 PM

Curses, Mother of All Blasphemies! Slighted again!

Posted by: John C at October 4, 2008 2:42 PM

An insult to Devilish Pride.

Posted by: John C at October 4, 2008 2:48 PM

The illustration by "Stogie" is great! This is in the tradition of images of "the Temptation of St. Anthony" (really, more "the torment of St. Anthony", as he is usually depicted beset by weird devils). Here is a classic image from engraver Martin Schongauer:

http://www.spamula.net/blog/i08/schongauer-thumb.jpeg

Posted by: gravenimage at October 4, 2008 8:35 PM

I detest Esposito and his ilk. He's a Traitor and a Coward and a big fat jerk. Can't fathom someone who loves being in bed with the enemy.

(really, more "the torment of St. Anthony", as he is usually depicted beset by weird devils). --gravenimage

Yes, poor St. Anthony is certainly afflicted in that illustration. Say - is that Esposito in there doing the afflicting?

Posted by: darcy at October 4, 2008 10:20 PM

You surely mean Saint Anthony of the Desert (c. 251 - 356)--not to be confused with the better known Saint Anthony of Padua (1195 - 1231).

Posted by: John C at October 4, 2008 10:30 PM

John C wrote:

You surely mean Saint Anthony of the Desert (c. 251 - 356)--not to be confused with the better known Saint Anthony of Padua (1195 - 1231).
...........................

Quite so. Artists had quite the field day with St. Anthony--it was after a period of wandering in the desert that he underwent his almost hallucinogenic torments. I'm not sure what Esposito's excuse is.

Posted by: gravenimage at October 4, 2008 11:52 PM

This is hilarious! The picture reminds me of my student days at Arizona State University, home of the Sun Devils. The central figure on the etching had an uncanny resemblence to Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall.

Will John E. get there first, or will he get to bunk in with Adam the Traitor? They would deserve each other.

Posted by: JeromeFromLayton at October 5, 2008 4:55 PM

Hugh -

I see you have had to revise your initial assessment of Esposito as expressed in the first of your postings above, originally from March 8 2000:

"John Esposito did not start out as anything more than a mild-mannered low-level academic; one suspects he had no strong feelings about Islam, and was not prompted by any of the mental pathologies -- antisemitism, hatred of America -- that can produce the apologist for Islam".

But now it appears that, after all, at least one of those mental pathologies was either present from the beginning or has developed over time (perhaps it can be 'caught' through close and uncritical association with Muslims?).

For *I* can certainly see what it is that "Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, and Martin Kramer" have in common, that other Resisters of Islam - for example, as you pointed out, James V. Schall, S.J. or Pope Benedict, or Magdi Cristiano Allam, or Ibn Warraq - do not. They are all Jewish.

And thus John Esposito exposes himself as a common-or-garden Jew-hater.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at October 6, 2008 9:17 PM