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Fitzgerald: Who will review Spencer’s book?

Sep 7, 2006 8:21 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Robert Spencer’s biography of Muhammad will be available in a few weeks, and galley copies are going out now. It will be fascinating to find out whom The Times and The Post and The Daily Scream will decide to assign the task of reviewing this book on Muhammad. Let’s apotropaically guess: will it be the “brave reformer” Khaled Abou El Fadl? Fawaz Gerges, the hysterical “islamochristian”? The polymath rock star of Beirut and Irvine, California, Mark LaVine? The Shambhala Press star Carl Ernst? Or Michael Sells, who never quite informs his students about the Sira of Muhammad, that Perfect Man, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil? Some “expert” in international relations, the kind who solemnly tells NPR’s Tom Ashbrook that Osama bin Laden is “deranged” (the very adjective I heard recently on “On Point”)?

That, of course, is a most convenient way of rejecting the necessity of actually learning about what is in the Qur’an, Hadith, and figure of Muhammad — if those who so loyally follow the example of Muhammad, who are true to Qur’an and Sunnah, can blithely be dismissed. Don’t expect Tom Ashbrook to know a thing about Islam so that he might be capable of raising an objection — he knows as little today as he knew four years ago, that is to say, nothing at all.
Who will review it? In “The Nation” will it be high-cheekboned Katerina van den Heuvel herself, or earnest Jonathan Schell, or some other well-protected product of the Upper East Side, the ones who hold on to their trust funds very carefully, or even manage, like Wallace Shawn, to find a way to blend so beautifully the theories of Lenin with the cultural practices of Swifty Lazar?

Who will review it in The Sunday Times? The Times has been in the habit of assigning books, without fear but plenty of favor, to the likes of James Bamford. The assigning editor, Sam Tanenhaus, is apparently unaware that James Bamford has a history of making outrageous statements about Israel. He claimed in his book on the National Security Agency that the Israelis deliberately attacked the U.S.S. Liberty, and did so in order to prevent the United States from finding out about Israeli soldiers massacring Egyptian prisoners. This was a total fabrication, and the same viciousness about Israel can be detected in everything he writes. So if not Bamford, who of course knows nothing about Islam, who? Michael Scheuer, on the silly theory that since he was mentioned by Adam Gadahn, he must be someone of substance? Who will it be?

And at The Bandar Beacon, why not the best of the locals? That’s right — why not John Esposito himself? Surely he’s the man to review the book. He’s the head of the Center of Muslim=Christian Understanding at Georgetown. He’s taught there, and taught previously at another Jesuit school, Holy Cross. He wouldn’t fool us, would he? He’s got no reason to defend Muhammad, does he?

At the Boston Globe, will it be H.D.S. Greenway, who has spent the last 30 years (at least) at Morrissey Boulevard instructing us all, smoothly, about the perfidy of Israel and the misunderstood, and quite wonderful Arabs of the PLO, of Egypt, of Jordan, and everywhere in the Middle East that David Greenway chose to go? But Greenway never bothered, not even in all those years of bow-tied and chinese-vased demi-retirement in Needham, to actually begin to find out something about Islam. Why, it was just 2-3 years ago that, in one column, he with surprise noted the fears of the Copts in Egypt, and suggested that this was a “new” development, just as some may thing that the promptings of Jihad are brand-new, without precedent, caused by that famous “conflict with modernity” we keep hearing about, when we are not hearing about “poverty” or “American foreign policy” or “Israeli behavior” as the supposed explanation for the behavior of Muslims from southern Thailand to northern Scandinavia to Cape Town, and on over to Dearborn, and all points in between.

Who will review this book? And who will enjoy dismissing it, without ever coming to grips with the evidence it presents, not from the mouth of Robert Spencer, but from Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa’d and all the other authorities, all of them Muslims, who provide Muslims today with their life of that Perfect Man, Muhammad, an inspiration Now and Forever?

Perhaps you have some ideas about what your local paper will do with this book, what guide to misinformation will be assigned the task of dispatching this book, of preventing readers even from buying it to judge for themselves. Since the evidence presented as to what Muslims are taught about Muhammad comes entirely from the most authoritative Muslim sources, it will be hard to deal with this book, unless the usual litany of pejoratives is used to call the author’s good faith, and sanity, into question.

One wonders if the press realizes how much damage it is inflicting on itself through its palpable inability to deal with the subject of Islam. The vast silence about the doctrines of Islam is breathtaking. Islamic doctrines are never discussed in the Western press, though they are hardly hidden from view. Anyone can, through a few clicks on the computer’s clavichord, or by looking at any of a number of websites, such as the scholarly www.dhimmitude.org, or such websites as www.answering-islam.org or that of ex-Muslims such as Ali Sina at www.faithfreedom.org, find out more in an afternoon than they have been given in the past five years by all the articles round and about the subject that have appeared in The New Duranty Times and The Bandar Beacon combined. And similarly, much can be discovered, on the Internet and by visits to the library, about the practice of Islam over 1350 years — about Jihad-conquest and the subjugation of non-Muslims.

We don’t accept the nonsense of Bush about this, so why should we accept the nonsense of the editorial board of The Times or the Beacon or The Globe or The Post or The Scream?

Go ahead. Make suggestions. Offer us a list of potential reviewers. Don’t be too silly. Don’t suggest Charlie Sheen or Jacques Chirac or Pat Buchanan or Jimmy Carter or Kofi Annan. Be serious.

It is entirely possible, for example, that the portentous Zbigniew Brzezinski will be asked to put in his two cents, by someone indifferent to, or ignorant of, his role in the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And one can imagine all those assorted indyks and rosses chiming in — the people who have made their entire government careers, and even their post-government richly-endowed careers, on the basis of their belief that “negotiations” and “treaties” could have great significance, could bring to a permanent end the Arab Muslim opposition to the Infidel state of Israel. In other words, these people have spent 30 years without understanding Islam, and are prepared to spend the next ten or twenty in such ignorance. They have nothing to tell us, and have no business reviewing Spencer’s book on Muhammad.

There will be no tangible reward for the best entry or entries, but admiration from afar. That should do.

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