I recently received an email that — after the slithery fashion of CAIR and others — tries to hold me responsible for some of the comments here. My responses are interspersed below:
Dear Mr. Spencer — I learned about your site from a friend whose views are quite different from mine. He pointed me to your quarrel with Professor Ernst.
Later I found your statement, which appears based on rational and inarguable principles.
Thank you.
However I do have some concerns that it does not address. For one thing, while you yourself do not appear to be flagrant in spreading hatred, many of those who you publish on your site, whether actively or passively, are not so restrained.
“Flagrant”? “Not so restrained”? I reject the implication that I am spreading hatred at all, actively or passively.
Comments are unmoderated. Many Islamic apologists, and even terror apologists, have posted here. If I am responsible for comments, I am responsible for all, which would mean that I am both pro-jihad and anti-jihad. If I am only responsible for some of them, presumably it would be because the sentiments expressed therein can also be found in my own writings. But no one has documented that, and no one can, because I do not express or hold sentiments of hatred, violence, etc.
The extent of ignorance and violent hatred displayed there, when similarly exhibited by Muslims, would do credit to your opinion of the Muslim world. Thus it seems to me that you dissimulate in your professions of a clear-minded and educated appraisal of Islam. You are providing the stage from which ignorant and irrational hate and fear are spewed and must therefore be appraised by their words as well as your own.
If this is so, please document the “ignorant and irrational hate and fear” from my own books and articles. Since people of all perspectives are free to post here and have done so, I have no responsibility for and will accept no responsibility for any comment on the site that I did not write unless the same sentiments can be established from my own writings. Thank you.
On the basis of these promotions, I would sympathize [with] anyone who found contemplation of sharing a platform with you to be distasteful.
I should note that I have no idea whether or not Carl Ernst has ever seen Jihad Watch. He wrote his initial attack on me after I spoke at the University of North Carolina. I have no evidence that his refusal to debate me has anything to do with unmoderated comments not written by me on my site; if it is, it is even more asinine than it already appears.
In any case, their refusal to debate me is self-defeating for Ernst and his ilk. If I am indeed the danger you represent, he or some like-minded crusader should take me down a peg or two in the eyes of my alleged “followers” by trouncing me in a debate and exposing me for all to see as the ignorant hate-filled fearmonger that I allegedly am. That no one seems willing to do so is something I find exceedingly interesting, and I think it is much more likely to be attributable to the fact that what I say about Islamic theology and law is accurate, and Ernst and Co. know it full well.
Education comes in many forms. I knew little of Islam and one day in a library flipped open a copy of Hodgson’s VENTURE OF ISLAM. Years later, having read a number of books on medieval Jewish history, I picked it up again and read the whole thing. Believe me, understanding comes to those who have a historical context not adequately provided in what I see of your work here.
Historical context is something I would never wish to slight. I have tried to do justice to it in all my books, and I recommend to you above all the indispensable and ground-breaking historical works of Bat Ye’or.
I wonder — how many of your subscribers are aware of a vital native democratic movement in Iran that the US quite deliberately destroyed in 1953? Do you yourself think that affairs in the region would be better now had our leaders restrained themselves then and let Iranian affairs take there own course? Or do you think with JF Dulles that we ourselves would have been utterly destroyed had Mossadegh carried out his program, and that the restoraton of the monarchy was actually a great improvement?
I have no idea how many of my “subscribers” are aware of this. I am, however, and I can only speak for myself. I wonder how aware you are of expansionist and aggressive jihad violence that was perpetrated in many, many historical contexts long before 1953.
Thanks for writing.
Cordially
Robert Spencer