Backing the strong horse: the supine response of American officials to the prospect of the burning of the Qur’an — in which no one in power anywhere stood up for the freedom of expression — and the rush to accommodate the pro-Sharia, Islamic supremacist Rauf and his Ground Zero mega-mosque convey nothing more than a sense of weakness, confusion, and defeat. This Arabic-language article at Al-Arabiya, “180 converted to Islam in Greater Washington during the crisis,” attributes the claim to Mohammed Al-Nasser, director of the Islamic Center of Washington. My rough translation:
Mohamed Al-Nasser, director of the Islamic Center of the Washington metropolitan area, which includes five regions of Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC, said that about 180 Americans, men and women of varying ages, converted to Islam at the time of the threats to burn copies of the Qur’an and the protests against the Cordoba House mosque at Ground Zero in New York….
Incidentally, quoted in the article and apparently among those converts was “a U.S. citizen, Robert Spencer, from the safest northeast area of Washington, DC, who is now called ‘Abdul Rahman,'” who asserted that over 100 mosques a year have been built in the U.S. in the last 12 years. I am not he, of course, but I couldn’t help but notice that Al-Arabiya rendered “Robert Spencer” in Arabic letters as روبرت سبنسر, which is exactly how I wrote it here a few years ago, only to be charged with having made a ridiculously inept and incorrect rendering of the name by Islamic apologists and bloggers Aziz Poonawalla and Ali Eteraz. In reality, as this Al-Arabiya piece again shows, I rendered the name “Robert Spencer” in Arabic in the common, ordinary way it is done by all Arabic news services.
The incident demonstrated the inveterate dishonesty that characterizes so many of the Islamic spokesmen who claim to reveal my “errors.” Usually, they’ve found no errors at all, and are just clever liars looking to dazzle the unwary and ignorant.