John Derbyshire, an Islamophobophobe in both senses of the word, thinks my new book is the same as my old books. He says so in his “August Diary,” published today in National Review:
Robert Spencer has a new book coming out, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran. Spencer belongs to that enviable class of writers who (a) write fluently and well, and (b) have mastered the art of writing the same book over and over in a slightly different form. This works best with fiction — think of Agatha Christie or Patrick O’Brian — but as Spencer illustrates, it can be done with nonfiction too, most easily with polemic. All Spencer’s books really have the same title, the one I gave to my review of Religion of Peace?
For those who may not click on that link, his review is entitled “Christianity Good, Islam Bad.” John Derbyshire is a charming fellow, but not, evidently, a careful reader — if indeed he has even yet received an advance copy of The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, much less read it. If he had, he would know it is nothing at all like my 2007 book Religion of Peace? — you know, John, publishers don’t actually take kindly to writers who turn in the same book more than once. And the new book isn’t about Christianity at all (aside from a few Biblical comparisons which are included for the reference of American readers who are likely to be at least passingly familiar with the Biblical text), any more than Stealth Jihad or The Truth About Muhammad or Onward Muslim Soldiers or Islam Unveiled or The Myth of Islamic Tolerance was.
Evidently, like a bored high school girl who doesn’t want to read another book about “History,” John thinks that if one has one book about “Islam” and then another book about “Islam” — why, they must be the same book in different covers!
But the more important point here is whether his contention that resisting jihad and Islamic supremacism is something that only devout religious believers of another brand will be interested in doing:
I must say, though, I’ve never been able to summon up any strong negative feelings towards Islam itself, even after reading a couple of Robert Spencer’s books. It is possible to nurse strong negative feelings towards all religions — ref. Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. — but to hate one particular religion, I think you need to be strongly committed to some other one — a sort of Yankees/Red Sox principle.
Is it really “hate” to oppose stoning as punishment for adultery, amputation as punishment for theft, the denial of the freedom of speech, the denial of the freedom of conscience, the denial of the equality of rights of women with men and of non-Muslims with Muslims? One would think that even John Derbyshire would then wish to be among the “haters,” but apparently not.
In any case, the idea that opposing all this is something only a believer in another religion would care to do is simply and obviously wrong. I am indeed a Christian believer, but as any daily reader of this site knows, I’m not a religious apologist, and even the book Religion of Peace? was not a religious polemic, but a response to the popular and — I believe — dangerously misleading idea that “radical Christianity is just as much of a threat as radical Islam.” There is nothing in it that an atheist or Buddhist or Hindu or Jew could not have written, as it is simply an assessment of various elements of the texts, teachings, and histories of the two religions, not written from the standpoint of belief in either.
But above all, John Derbyshire is apparently unaware of atheists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Pim Fortuyn, our own Hugh Fitzgerald, and many, many others who are deeply concerned about Islamic supremacism and jihad, and ready to resist them in the name of human rights. And I am proud and honored to stand with them.