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Robert Spencer in FrontPage Mag: Harris Zafar and His Straw Man

Jan 20, 2014 8:52 pm By Robert Spencer

Zafar

In FrontPage today I discuss Harris Zafar, yet another in an apparently endless string of rude, arrogant Islamic supremacist apologists who refuse to engage their foes on the level of ideas, even as they indulge in massive pious posturing about their openness to dialogue and debate.

On January 10, FrontPage Mag published my article, “The Grand Mufti’s Sex Tape and Violence in Islam,” in which I noted, in conjunction with the sex tape scandal of Rakhmatulla-Hajji Egemberdiev, the Grand Mufti of Kyrgyzstan, that he was the sixth Grand Mufti of Kyrgyzstan to be replaced in four years – since, as al Arabiya reported, “recent grand muftis, who are elected to five-year terms, have resigned early amid corruption scandals and been kidnapped and beaten.”

This became my jumping-off point for a series of speculations as to why so much violence – kidnappings, beatings — surrounded the office of Grand Mufti of Kyrgyzstan, which led me to examine the fates of the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs (all murdered) and the violent exhortations of the Muslim holy book, the Qur’an. In the Huffington Post a week later, Ahmadi Muslim spokesman Harris Zafar said this amounted to my blaming Islam for the Grand Mufti’s sexual misconduct, and invoked Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker and Ted Haggart in constructing an elaborate tu-quoque argument: you see? Christian clerics get involved in sex scandals, too, so shut up.

The only problem with Zafar’s article was that I had not actually blamed Islam for the Mufti’s sex scandal at all. My article was an exploration into Islamic texts that might shed light on why so many Grand Muftis of Kyrgyzstan had been kidnapped and beaten, and why so much violence surrounded even some of the founding and most revered figures of Islamic tradition. Zafar’s entire article, with all its pious posturing about fostering mutual understanding instead of indulging hatred and bigotry, was based on a straw man: the false claim that I had attributed the randiness of Kyrgyzstan’s mufti to Islam.

This phenomenon is all too common: Islamic supremacist spokesmen never in my experience engage their opponents honestly, and deal with their arguments with the “maturity, integrity and dialogue” for which Zafar, tongue no doubt firmly planted in cheek, calls in his article. Instead, they (Zafar included), indulge liberally in ad hominem attacks, smear, defamation, and misrepresentation of their foes’ position, in an all-out effort to demonize them and intimidate people of good will into backing away from any association with such forces of “hate.”

That someone like Harris Zafar would engage in such gutter tactics is bitterly ironic, since he is a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community that is violently persecuted today by orthodox Sunni Muslims in Pakistan and Indonesia. Yet Zafar, rather than support those who decry how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence even against his fellow Ahmadis, enthusiastically joins in attempts to marginalize such people, thereby aiding and abetting the program of those who oppress his people back home.

For example, a year ago Zafar wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he offered a manifesto for the destruction of the freedom of speech worthy of a true totalitarian – and emblematic of the Islamic supremacist war on free speech and all criticism of Islam.

“The difference between Islam’s view on free speech and the view promoted by free speech advocates these days,” Zafar asserted, “is the intention and ultimate goal each seeks to promote. Whereas many secularists champion individual privileges, Islam promotes the principle of uniting mankind and cultivating love and understanding among people. Both endorse freedom for people to express themselves, but Islam promotes unity, whereas modern-day free speech advocates promote individualism.”

This glossy Orwellian language, “uniting mankind and cultivating love and understanding among people,” masked the insidious goal of the article, which became clear when Zafar decried “the most vocal proponents of freedom of speech,” who would “call us towards a different path, where people can say anything and everything on their mind. With no restraint on speech at all, every form of provocation would exist, thereby cultivating confrontation and antagonism. They insist this freedom entitles them the legal privilege to insult others. This is neither democracy nor freedom of speech. It fosters animosity, resentment and disorder.”

Note the sleight of hand: “With no restraint on speech at all, every form of provocation would exist, thereby cultivating confrontation and antagonism.” Zafar was implying that the Muslims who have rioted and killed because of perceived affronts to Islam were not responsible for their own actions, but that those who supposedly provoked them were.

This is an increasingly widespread confusion in the West, willfully spread by people like Zafar and his Islamic supremacist allies. In reality, the only person responsible for his actions is the person who is acting, not anyone else. You may provoke me in a hundred ways, but my response is my own, which I choose from a range of possible responses, and only I am responsible for it.

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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Jan 20, 2014 at 9:34 pm

    Harris Zafar is actually defending those who most harshly persecute Ahmadis in Pakistan and elsewhere and deny them the right to even use the name of Islam.
    Ironically, he loses sight of who his real enemies are. He is so intent on defending polygamy, sex slaves, and pedophiliac marriages, that he forgets the violence…what Ahmadis don’t like about Islam. Pitiful.
    Harris Zafar probably defends the incestuous marriage of Zaynab to Mohammed that scandalized many in the community making many lose their faith and requiring Allah to step in with revelations to justify stealing your son’s wife! Does Harris know Mohammed sent this disinherited son into battle carrying the flag so he would be slain by the enemy and vanish? Does Harris defend the betrayer Mohammed who stole his son’s wife, disinherited him and then had him killed? That trumps the mufti and Swaggart combined!

  2. Jan says

    Jan 21, 2014 at 11:32 am

    ”That someone like Harris Zafar would engage in such gutter tactics is bitterly ironic, since he is a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community that is violently persecuted today by orthodox Sunni Muslims in Pakistan and Indonesia. Yet Zafar, rather than support those who decry how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence even against his fellow Ahmadis, enthusiastically joins in attempts to marginalize such people, thereby aiding and abetting the program of those who oppress his people back home”

    Yes. His attitude underlines strongly the attitudes of **all** mohammedans, even those who would be murdered by their ‘bretheren’ for the crime of being ‘insufficiently islamic’; the **only* thing that matters is the advancement of islam.

  3. gravenimage says

    Jan 21, 2014 at 10:50 pm

    This became my jumping-off point for a series of speculations as to why so much violence – kidnappings, beatings — surrounded the office of Grand Mufti of Kyrgyzstan, which led me to examine the fates of the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs (all murdered) and the violent exhortations of the Muslim holy book, the Qur’an.
    ……………………………………………

    This has *everything* to do with Islam—Islam is based on violence. Moreover, they reject settling elections or disagreements based on anything *other* than violence, which they consider “un-Islamic”.

    More:

    “The difference between Islam’s view on free speech and the view promoted by free speech advocates these days,” Zafar asserted, “is the intention and ultimate goal each seeks to promote. Whereas many secularists champion individual privileges, Islam promotes the principle of uniting mankind and cultivating love and understanding among people. Both endorse freedom for people to express themselves, but Islam promotes unity, whereas modern-day free speech advocates promote individualism.”
    ……………………………………………

    What crap. The only “unity” Islam promotes is the prevention of any criticism of Islam—at threat of violence.

    That that violence is so often used against his fellow Ahmadis doesn’t seem to faze those like Harris Zafar—but we find, as so often that removing “obstacles” from the spread of Islam trumps everything.

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