Anyone debating Dinesh D’Souza should be sure to do exactly as Serge Trifkovic did. Simply ask D’Souza a question or two about the most obvious and elementary of matters.
If nothing else, it will force him, after his “four years of studying Islam” to little effect, to actually have to start studying it — if only so as not to play the fool in public. Why, who knows? It may force him to learn something.
I can think of a dozen things right off the bat that Spencer or Trifkovic or others could ask D’Souza — very elementary things, but things I am sure he will not be able to answer.
He now has three choices:
1) Be shown up for an ignoramus, prating about things he knows very little, almost nothing, about.
2) Be forced to study Islam, and in so doing, he may have to modify some of his views.
3) Never appear where anyone can debate or even cross-question him about his knowledge of Islam.
I think Dinesh D’Souza will choose #3.
#1 is something he obscurely realizes he is, but like the mountebank hawking his wares at the County Fair, he has assumed that no one will call him on his hollow claims. But he can no longer assume that.
#2 requires work. It requires study. It requires thought. It requires making sense of many different things, of connecting the thigh-bone to the ankle-bone, in order the Hear the Word of the (Islamic) Lord. D’Souza long ago lost the habit of study, like so many of the pontificators of our day.
#3 it will be.
No more debates, for Dinesh D’Souza, with anyone at all. But what if — for him, a hellish What If — some of those interviewing him started to bone up on Islam, and asked him questions? What if on Talk Shows there were callers who would call up pretending that they were about to ask one thing, and then suddenly asked D’Souza one or more of those questions, the ones he cannot answer, to what should be his own great shame and chagrin? Then where would he be?
And the same can be done at those appearances he solicits for “Corporate Audiences” and “University Audiences.” It is perfectly legitimate, it is hardly harassment, to simply ask him a few questions to see if this self-minted and self-described “expert on Islam” who has “studied it for four years” in fact knows anything.
Why, let’s begin with the isnad-chain, and the work, and relative authority, of the muhaddithin. Or with “naskh.” Or “fiqh” or “tafsir.” Or for that matter, “Jihad” (give support for various definitions), or “dhimmi” or “Ahl al-dhimma.”
And say, just what did happen at the Khaybar Oasis? And who was Asma bint Marwan? And who was little Aisha, and of what contemporary relevance is her story? And who can issue a fatwa, and what is the difference between a fatwa and a rukh? And what is the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, and why does it matter? And who was Abu Bakr? Ali? Hussein? And what does the phrase “al-masjid al-aksa” mean, and who decided what that phrase must refer to?
As I said, let’s keep it very simple — at first. By degrees, the questions can become more difficult.
Don’t worry. I have faith that no matter how hard Dinesh D’Souza starts studying now, he simply won’t be able to figure it all out. Not given the list of his authorities. Not given his mental incapacity.
There is more on the entrepreneur and world-conqueror Dinesh D’Souza, from the best source of information about Dinesh D’Souza: the Dinesh D’Souza website, where the copy is written by — Dinesh D’Souza.
Would you like Dinesh D’Souza to speak to your business convention, or perhaps to enlighten an annual meeting of the stockholders in Phoenix or Boca Raton? Well, you have come to the right place when you go to www.dineshdsouza.com, because according to Dinesh D’Souza at www.dineshdsouza.com:
“Dinesh D’Souza is one of the nation’s most popular and acclaimed speakers for business and university audiences, and has been a featured guest on many popular television programs, including the Today Show, Nightline, O’Reilly Factor, Good Morning America, and The Dennis Miller Show.
He speaks at top universities and business groups across the country, and among his recent engagements are the annual World President’s Organization conference, Forbes CEO Summit, Harvard University, and the University of Virginia.
Mr. D’Souza is available to speak on a variety of subjects relating to contemporary business, politics and culture, including:
THE CULTURAL LEFT AND ITS ROLE IN 9/11
THE LIBERAL-ISLAMIC ALLIANCE
THE WAR AGAINST THE WAR ON TERROR
AMERICA AND ITS ENEMIES
ISLAM AND THE WEST: A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS?
WHAT”S SO GREAT ABOUT AMERICA
WHY AMERICA IS LOVED, WHY AMERICA IS HATED
THE MORAL DEBATE OVER TECHNOLOGY AND CAPITALISM
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION? NO. REPARATIONS? NO.”
Hurry and call now to book Dinesh D’Souza for your next corporate or university event.
Don’t delay. Operators are standing by.
No, sorry, let me correct that:
An Operator Is Standing By.
That operator’s name is on the cover of the latest issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. The issue appears to have been written by the Development Office, hoping to win favor from some rich Muslim alumni — for it is otherwise difficult to explain the special solicitude for the clear tone of apologetics.
The two articles listed on the cover (which has a nice crescent and star) under the main line “Understanding the Muslim World” are:
1) What’s New in Islamic and Arabic Studies, by Andrea Useem ’95.
In this article you can learn all about what students are learning about — and it isn’t the unadorned contents of Qur’an, hadith, and Sira. The words “dhimmi” and “Jizyah” are unlikely to be much in evidence in the Dartmouth classes on offer, but the innocent and impressionable students won’t discover that in most other colleges either — and will just have to pick up a real knowledge of “Islamic and Arabic studies” outside the confines of MESA Nostra (google “MESA Nostra” for more).
2) “Radical Islam: Why We’ve Got it All Wrong,” by Dinesh D’Souza.
In this article you can learn why “we’ve got it all wrong” — all of us: Snouck Hurgronje and Arthur Jeffery, St. Clair Tisdall and Joseph Schacht, David Margoliouth and Edmond Fagnan, Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq and Hans Jansen, everyone who was a student of Islam in the Western world, in the golden, unafraid age, from about 1860 to 1960, when truths were told. Islam didn’t change. The texts and teachings of Islam didn’t change. What changed was the willingness of Western scholars to tell the truth about Islam. Now there is a climate of correctness and desire to blame the West. This attitude grew and grew until it now suffocates even baby truths in their cribs, as they attempt to let out their first squeals.
And “we’ve got it all wrong” if “we” are Ali Sina, and Ibn Warraq, and Irfan Khawaja, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Anwar Shaikh, and Azam Kamguian — “we” who have been born into Islam, pondered it deeply, considered carefully what it is about it that led us, each on his own, to come to conclusions that forced us to jettison Islam. “We’ve” got it as wrong as C. Snouck Hurgronje and Joseph Schacht.
But one person, above all other persons, has it right.
And his name is Dinesh D’Souza.
And he is right about Islam, as about so many things, when all the world has heretofore gotten it wrong.
Dinesh D’Souza, it should not be forgotten, is available for corporate and university speaking engagements.
For more information, simply click on www.dineshdsouza.com and then on “Events” or “Corporate Speaking” or “University Speaking.”
Then you may contact Dinesh D’Souza directly to find out more details — especially about the fees.
Don’t worry. Those fees are really, under the circumstances — what with Dinesh D’Souza getting it at long last right when all of the rest of us have “got it all wrong” — those fees are really very modest.
Don’t delay. Call today.
That Operator Is Still Standing By.