The Detroit News’ guidelines for comments says “The News will not condone personal attacks.” Except against me, that is. This piece contains the usual distortions and smears, but it is still interesting for the comments from Hamas-linked CAIR’s Dawud Walid: “Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations — Michigan, said he supported Spencer’s free speech rights but urged Muslims to avoid the event, saying the man’s views could provoke ‘animosity and enmity.’ ‘That’s not what we should be embracing coming out of Ramadan.'”
Now, Dawud Walid would be among the first to claim that what I say about Islam is false. So here I am going up against two Muslim spokesmen in debate, and he tells Muslims to stay away. Why? Wouldn’t he and other Detroit-area Muslims want to watch the spectacle of a couple of righteous Muslims shining the light of truth upon my manifest falsehoods?
In a similar vein, a Muslim site (granted, one that has never been known for its truth or honesty) brands one of the Muslim spokesmen I am set to debate tomorrow, Shadid Lewis, a “Useful Idiot” and laments: “He will certainly be in over his head, and this ‘featured debate’ will simply be used as an opportunity to humiliate the American Muslim community. Shadid Lewis may mean well, but participating in this very public event without the tools to deal with someone like Robert Spencer is at the very least unwise.” In other words, Lewis is going to lose, and he shouldn’t have agreed to the debate in the first place.
How ironic! On the one hand, these Muslim leaders claim that everything I say about Islam and jihad is false. But then they tell Muslims not to come to an event where I could be refuted and exposed as a purveyor of falsehood, and warn in advance that the Muslim debating me is going to lose. Don’t they have confidence in their own claims? Don’t they think I can be easily refuted?
“Controversial speaker planned at symposium on Islam in Ypsilanti,” by Mark Hicks for The Detroit News, August 7 (thanks to all who sent this in):
The Ann Arbor-based Ave Maria Radio plans to hold the “Is Islam a Religion of Peace?” symposium from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Eastern Michigan University”s Student Center, 900 Oakwood, Ypsilanti.
Featured debaters include Robert Spencer, the controversial director of the Jihad Watch website.
His writing, which has been called anti-Muslim, was quoted in a manifesto by the man accused of the Norway killing spree in 2011, the New York Times and the Anti-Defamation League reported. The British government this year banned Spencer from entering, according to BBC News, and a Southern Poverty Law Center report has listed him as among an “Anti-Muslim Inner Circle.”
Here again, as is typical of mainstream media coverage, nothing positive about me is ever stated. Nothing about my training the FBI, U.S. military, and intelligence community about Islam and jihad. No comments from anyone in my defense. Just Norway again — with the implication that I call for killing, which I do not, and no mention of the fact that the killer quoted me along with many, many other people, and that he called for collaboration with jihad groups, showing that he and I have nothing in common ideologically. Then comes the British ban, with no mention of the fact that the British government banned me from entering for fear that Muslims would become violent if I entered — in other words, because they were kowtowing to violent intimidation. And “anti-Muslim” again — which, again, is like calling a foe of the Nazis “anti-German.”
Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations — Michigan, said he supported Spencer’s free speech rights but urged Muslims to avoid the event, saying the man’s views could provoke “animosity and enmity.”
“That’s not what we should be embracing coming out of Ramadan,” Walid said, referring to the holy month for Muslims.
In a statement Wednesday, Al Kresta, president and CEO of Ave Maria Communications, said the event is “a public debate, not a one-sided propaganda fest.”
“Those attending will better understand each side and will be less willing to hastily prejudge one side or the other,” he said.
Other speakers expected at the event include Shadid Lewis, a regional director of the Muslim Debate Initiative, and Richard Thompson, chief counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, organizers said. A Mass with Diocese of Lansing Bishop Earl Boyea is scheduled to follow.
Registration is $40 and includes a box lunch and parking. Clergy and student rates are available.
To register or for information, go to www.avemariaradio.net or call (734) 930-5201.