Last Wednesday evening I debated Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies on Crane Durham’s Nothing But Truth show. The debate topic was “Is Islam a religion of peace,” and the debate centered upon the nature and existence of moderate Islam.
You can find a podcast of the debate here. It was a civil debate, albeit characterized by some sharp disagreements, and I note its civility with surprise and gratitude to Daveed and Crane.
I say that the civility came as a surprise to me because I’m so used to the Leftist/Islamic supremacist tactic of demonizing their opposition. Just the previous night, at an event in Washington, D.C., where Pamela Geller and I discussed our book The Post-American Presidency, during the question-and-answer period a man angrily demanded to know why I was lying about Islam, and persistently tried to shout me down as I explained, with copious specific references to the Qur’an and Hadith, as well as to numerous Islamic scholars, that I wasn’t lying at all.
This is what they do — and the recent and relentless media campaign against both Pamela and me is an example of it. There is no more discussion, no more give-and-take of ideas — instead, Leftists and Islamic supremacists resort time and time again to their time-tested weapons of defamation, ridicule, and libel. It only manifests their utter intellectual bankruptcy, and if they think they’re going to intimidate me into stopping what I’m doing (since they know that their demonization could inspire their more bloody-minded coreligionists to action), they’re in for a surprise. However, they should be on notice: I am not going to give sanction in any way to their lies and smears. The truth will continue to come out here, as long as I am breathing.