In the truth-challenged American Muslim, Robert Crane says:
Fortunately, the run-of-the mill Islamophobes, like Robert Spencer, shoot themselves in the foot by attempting patently to pervert Islam through the mouths of the worst Muslim extremists in order to prove their superficial and easily demolishable case.
Unfortunately for Crane, he flagrantly lied when attempting to demolish my case in the past, claiming that a Qur’anic passage that quite obviously mandates the killing of enemies as preferable to the taking of hostages (“It is not for any prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land” — Qur’an 8:67) as meaning just the opposite. I had said that it meant that making “slaughter” was preferable to taking hostages. Crane claimed that I was lying, and that this passage meant that “the proposed execution of the prisoners would have constituted an awesome sin and warranted a ‘tremendous chastisement.'”
Unfortunately for Crane, even Muslim translators of the Qur’an say that the “tremendous chastisement” will come because the Muslims took hostages and demanded ransom instead of killing those they took hostage. Abdullah Yusuf Ali translates 8:68 as “Had it not been for a previous ordainment from Allah, a severe penalty would have reached you for the (ransom) that ye took.” Yet despite Ali’s gloss that the “severe penalty” would come because of the “ransom,” which is just what I said, Robert D. Crane has never called Abdullah Yusuf Ali an “Islamophobe.”
Sure, Mr. Crane, it’s easy to “demolish” me when you lie to make your case. But despite your shaky relationship with honesty and truth, I still invite you to demolish me face-to-face. All the time I hear from you and your coreligionists — such as CAIR’s Ahmed Rehab — that my “case” is “easily demolished,” and yet none of you mighty men are willing to meet me in an honest discussion and debate, and prove your assertion.
Now, why is that?