“Robert Spencer has his right to speech. But someday he will slip up, he will visit a place that doesn’t honor such infidel ‘rights.’ And what a day they will have with him. You’ve heard of head cheese and blood pudding? See, modern hip Muslims like me like to be look different than everybody else in Western society. And we don’t like to believe Islam has any real enemies left. But Robert Spencer, well, he will see the sacred text come to life…’fuel the fires of hell…’ only when they are done with him. Peace and Love.” — September 29, 2010
“Robert Spencer the Second, born on February 27, 1962, is a hairy man who…currently lives on [specific street] in [specific city] with [specific relatives]…” — July 28, 2010, from Greenbelt, Maryland
“Killing of this man is a model… SPENCER-Model..Spencer himself deserves the same? he should be sloughtered like that man. Silencing the EVIL.” — April 4, 2010
“THIS IS AN OPEN THREAT TO YOU AND YOUR ORGANIZATION TO STAY AWAY FROM MUSLIMS AND ISLAM IF YOU KNOW WHAT IS GOOD FOR YOU. YOU SON OF A BITCH . YOUR MOTHER WAS A C**K-SUCKING WHORE . IF YOU GOT THE GUTS AND BALLS PRINT THIS ON YOUR WEB SITE AND TELL PEOPLE THAT YOU ARE BEING THREATENED. U FILTHY C**K-SUCKER HAVE A NICE DAY” — December 8, 2009
“Yes. Yes..We finally reached out him. Ka’ab Binu Ashraf has been traced. He will be soon found. Will this be like VAN-Goooordhd. I am not sure. Allah Knows.. But Spencer you will pay the price…Just wait to pay the price.” — September 28, 2009
“Robert….It was really good I found you in a local supermarket. and I followed you.. so i know your address now..tell you fool followers you are going to be deceased very soon… any one taking your seat and getting killed? I am sure most of your followers are cheeky cowards.” — September 28, 2009
“Do me a favor Spencer and put this as a blog post like you do to all those threatening mails. Be careful, I am very near to you. I located you and I know you have little security around you. I am coming to slit your throat with a bland knife.. and it will pain a lot.. since you misled a lot of people and became a fitnah on earth.. it is a duty of a good muslim to kill you! go report this to FBI or CIA..And don’t worry, I won’t attack you unguarded.. but i will surely kill you in the most easy manner possible because I don’t like to slaughter human beings.. Die and go to hell.. for sure..and yea I have a new name for you…Robert ‘hawknoseinhell’ spencer.” — September 28, 2009
These are just a few of the death threats I’ve received over the past year (yes, I did get those last three all in one day). So what? Everyone who stands up against the jihadists and Islamic supremacists gets death threats. They are not noteworthy or newsworthy; they’re just an occupational nuisance (and a clue as to the perpetrator — whether he turns out to be the fellow in Maryland or someone else — if one of these idiots follows through one day). The FBI has them. No big deal.
But when Daisy Khan, wife of the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero, announced on Christiane Amanpour’s Sunday morning ABC News whitewash of Islamic jihad that she had been threatened, it was front page news all over the country — see the New York Post and the New York Daily News for particularly egregious examples of the breathless, fawning coverage this alleged threat received.
Daisy Khan’s statement was very strange. She said on Amanpour’s show: “For the record, my life is under threat. Check with the Police Department. My husband’s life is under threat. We do not walk around with bodyguards because we love this country.” What does loving the country have to do with having bodyguards? The only sense one can make of her statement is if one realizes that she is referring to bodyguards paid for by the taxpayers, which she has foregone so as to save good honest Americans money. Indeed, earlier reports of death threats her husband received suggested that the NYPD was supplying him protection. No law enforcement agency, in contrast, has ever offered me or any other anti-jihadist ongoing protection at taxpayer expense.
But the main question, and principal double standard, here is this: why is Daisy Khan’s claim to have received a death threat headline news, while death threats to cartoonist Molly Norris, which have driven her into hiding and led her to go so far as to assume a new identity, are not noted anywhere? Why are death threats to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders, Wafa Sultan and others taken so much as a matter of course that the twenty-four hour guard under which the former two live is barely even noted by the media?
The answer is that this is yet another example of the Left’s paternalism and ethnocentrism. The multiculturalist Left, allied with and aiding the global jihad, consistently holds those jihadis, and Muslims in general, to a lower moral standard than it demands of the West. So death threats to Daisy Khan and Feisal Abdul Rauf, if any have actually been made to them, are a kind of man-bites-dog story: even as the Left professes to love non-Western cultures, especially Islam, and to respect Muslims, it expects Muslims to threaten people like me, but is surprised when they themselves are threatened.
I say we should take a consistent stand against ethnocentrism everywhere. A death threat is a death threat. Daisy Khan’s should be no more noteworthy than Molly Norris’s. If the Left started holding Islamic supremacists to the same moral standard to which they hold the Westerners they despise, we might not be in the fix we’re in.
See also Pamela Geller, “All Death Threats Are Not Created Equal,” for more information and a different take on this matter.