In “Nothing To Fear: Misreading Muslim immigration in Europe” by John R. Bowen in the Boston Review‘s January/February 2010 edition (thanks to Quasimodo), there appears this paragraph:
Europe’s anti-Islam sentiment may be expressed most visibly in memoirs because Europeans have been reticent to condemn Islam–or religion more generally–outright. Americans, however, seem to prefer a less subtle approach. In the United States, alongside the autobiographies, we find two kinds of direct attack on Islam: as a “gutter religion” (Robert Spencer’s The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran) and as a threat to our fundamental values–a threat that has already overrun Europe and is now heading this way.
Yikes! That’s some bad craziness, eh? A “gutter religion”! Imagine someone using that kind of hateful and incendiary rhetoric! Why, it’s unconscionable! It’s paranoid! It’s…evil!
There’s just one catch: the words “gutter religion,” despite the quotes around them in Bowen’s piece, never actually appear in The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran. In fact, nowhere in any of my nine books, over a thousand articles, and over twenty thousand blog posts have I ever referred to Islam as a “gutter religion.” Bowen is falsely attributing the words to me.
There is, however, someone who has used those words. Louis Farrakhan some years back referred to Judaism as a “gutter religion.”
This is a common practice of the Left and of jihadists as well: they project what they themselves do onto their enemies. They do this so reliably that if you want to know what the Leftists and their jihadist allies are doing, look at what they’re accusing others of doing — that is always a reliable indicator. And the antisemitism that has become so fashionable on the Left these days points back to Farrakhan’s quote, and to the true purveyors of hate paranoia in this scenario.