My invitation to debate Islamic scholar Carl Ernst can be found here. He now joins Omid Safi, Ahmed Afzaal, Mark LeVine, and other scholars of Islam in declining my invitation to debate, preferring instead to shy bricks from their ivory tower. (Actually, LeVine and I agreed to debate, but he never got back to me with any concrete details.) As I said in my reply to Ernst below, one would think it would be easy for any of these eminences to wax me and thereby rid the world of my baneful influence, if their characterizations of my work are true. But alas, no one has yet come forth with the required viscera.
Dr. Ernst’s reply:
Dear Mr. Spencer,
I am not interested in having a debate with you, and I stand by my remarks on the biased and nonscholarly nature of your publications and publishers.
Sincerely,
Carl Ernst
And my reply to this message from Dr. Ernst:
Dear Dr. Ernst,
Thank you for your gracious reply. It is interesting that neither you nor anyone else can document any specific inaccuracy in my works, but rather persist in unsubstantiated broad-brush claims to “bias” and such, while pretending that academic publications and presses are free from bias. One would think that it would be easy, if what you say is true, to defeat me handily in a debate and thus discredit me once and for all. But we’ll never know, will we?
Cordially,
Robert Spencer