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CAIR rep Omer Subhani exposes Robert Spencer! Part III

May 16, 2008 10:55 am By Robert Spencer

Books.jpg
In my office, January 2007

If you’re just tuning in, Omer Subhani is a CAIR operative in Florida who has penned a massive, if not weighty, eleven-part “exposé” of my work. Since many advance the claim that what I say is inaccurate, but Subhani is among the few who ever actually explain just where and what way they think what I am saying is false, I thought it would be a useful exercise to go through these eleven parts and respond to them. Part I is here and Part II is here.

They are illuminating in many ways: they show yet again that, for all too many Muslim spokesmen in the West, personal invective takes the place of rational debate. They do all they can to portray their opponents as evil and stupid, which may impress the credulous, but it also has the unfortunate effect of poisoning the discourse and making rational discussion of the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism impossible — which is of course most likely exactly what they want to do.

One of the most common features of this personal invective is the charge of “ignorance”: the Islamorealistic critic doesn’t really know anything about Islam, you see, and so he can’t be trusted as an analyst. Omer Subhani eagerly plays this game in the third part of his series, which is entitled — with his characteristically careful eye — “Exposing Robert Spencer Part II.” (Really, I’m not making this up: if you go to the right-hand side of his front page and click on Part III of his “Exposing Robert Spencer Series,” you get this — a post labeled Part II, even though at the link that is actually labeled Part II he has a different post.)

But Subhani shows that he isn’t quite ready for Prime Time on the CAIR Gull the Infidels Circuit, as he overreaches, and claims to know the contents of my personal library. Now, certainly if Omer Subhani showed up here at the Jihad Watch offices in Secure Undisclosed Locationville, I would welcome him in, show him around, offer him a cup of tea. But he has never been here, and he doesn’t know what books I have and don’t have. Even worse, he says specifically that I don’t have certain books that I do have (and have read) — and not only do I have them, but they’re clearly visible on the shelf in a video I made here in the office in January 2007. I’ve taken a picture from that video (which is a bit crushed but you can watch it here) and posted it above, with arrows pointing to the books Subhani says I don’t have.

So here’s Subhani:

One would imagine that if someone was claiming to be an expert on Islam they would know Arabic, have many primary source materials at their disposal, would have an immense knowledge of secondary literature on their area of expertise at the very least. Robert Spencer, advocate of dhimmis everywhere, likes to blog about the Qur’an. Mind you, he doesn’t understand Arabic and he relies on other people’s translations of Qur’anic commentary because he can’t access the thousands of commentaries out there because he… yea… doesn’t know Arabic.

Repeating it three times in two sentences, Mr. Subhani, will do nothing to explain posts like this, this or this.

But in any case, this whole “you have to know Arabic” thing is just a dodge. The idea that you can’t understand what the Qur’an or other Islamic texts say except in Arabic is undercut by the fact that Muslims themselves make translations of those texts. Also, we are evidently supposed to believe that “beat her” (Qur’an 4:34) in Arabic will somehow turn into “give her a hug.” Arabic is a human language that can be translated like any other — translation is always imperfect, but not so much as to render the meaning unintelligible. Imagine also if I worked from my own translations of Islamic texts: Subhani and Co. would be saying that I was translating them all wrong. So I use approved Islamic translations exclusively — will he say that these translations are inaccurate?

One would also figure that if he was such a great scholar on Islam then Spencer would not have to rely on web translations of Qur’an commentaries, but he would simply flip open his primary sources at home – because he would own a copy of the Jalalalayn, the tafsir of Qurtubi, or at the very least, the Saudi tampered tafsir of ibn Kathir. Alas, he doesn’t have any of that so he can only blog on the Surahs that Bewley has offered commentaries for.

Wrong: I am offering commentaries on all the suras of the Qur’an: suras 1-24 so far, and the series continues, whereas Bewley, as far as I know, has available on the web only commentary on sura 9. I did use that, as well as other sources on and off the web, because in the Blogging the Qur’an series, as in all my writings, I never ask readers to take my word for anything. I invite them to see for themselves. Bewley’s web commentaries on sura 9 were useful when I went through that chapter, as I could link to them to allow readers to see for themselves that what I was saying was accurate.

Anyway, Subhani says at this point that if I really knew what I was talking about, I would own, among other things, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn (which he calls “Jalalalayn,” la la la) and “the Saudi tampered tafsir of ibn Kathir.” (The Saudi translation of Ibn Kathir is actually fine, but that’s another matter.) Unfortunately for him, they’re clearly visible in the January 2007 video, and I’ve pointed them out in the image above. In case you have trouble seeing exactly what they are in that picture, I’ve put them together and taken another picture this morning:

IbnKathirJalalayn.jpg

Yes, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn is in (gasp!) Arabic. Subhani continues by saying, “Pathetic, to say the least,” and I agree: it is pathetic that a guy who gets what he knows about Islam from Wikipedia would play games like this, but there it is.

Subhani then goes on at great length to show that what I say about Qur’an 9:29 (Part I here and Part II here), which commands Muslims to make war against Jews and Christians until they “feel themselves subdued,” doesn’t mean what the Islamic commentators whom I quote say that it means. And he ends up with this:

In any case, my point here is that there are other interpretations that allow for peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians and Jews under Islam.

Of course, this entirely begs the question, because I never denied that Islamic law allows for “peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians and Jews under Islam.” It most assuredly does, as long as the Jews and Christians are indeed under Islam, feeling themselves subdued, and obeying the discriminatory regulations of dhimmitude. But he denies this also, concluding:

In reference to dhimmis, one of Spencer’s favorite subjects, and I’m sure he has his copy of the Reliance of the Traveler readily at his side, the great scholar, Imam ibn an-Naqib, said that dhimmis should pay the tax… and that’s it. No mention of them being “subdued.” That’s the orthodox Shafi’i view right there.

In the first place, note Subhani’s endorsement of a religion-based tax. What would he say if some pol in the U.S. suggested taxing Muslims to pay for the War On Terror? Anyway, he claims there’s no mention in Reliance of the Traveller of the dhimmis being “subdued.” Oops, Omer! You missed a spot! Here’s section o11.5 of Reliance of the Traveller:

Such non-Muslim subjects are obliged to comply with Islamic rules that pertain to the safety and indemnity of life, reputation and property. In addition, they:

(1) are penalized for committing adultery or theft, though not for drunkenness;
(2) are distinguished from Muslims in dress, wearing a wide cloth belt (zunnar);
(3) are not greeted with “as-Salamu ‘alaykum”;
(4) must keep to the side of the street;
(5) may not build higher or as high as the Muslims’ buildings, though if they acquire a tall house, it is not razed;
(6) are forbidden to openly display wine or pork (A: to ring church bells or display crosses,) recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals and feastdays;
(7) and are forbidden to build new churches.

But oh no, they’re not subdued!

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