An article in The Islamic Monthly here (thanks to Ryan) explains at wrist-slitting length how Muslim professor Joseph Lumbard was denied tenure at Brandeis University because of “Islamophobia” among administrators there. I can’t imagine that anyone beyond Lumbard’s mom would care to read in such detail about his academic fortunes, so I’m not including any lengthy excerpts here; this suffices to capture the absurdity of the piece:
Even still, Lumbard’s case of denied tenure raises more questions than answers, and brings to the fore the tenuous relationships other Muslim educators may be having with their own administrations in the current atmosphere of normalized Islamophobia.
The idea that there is an “atmosphere of normalized Islamophobia” in academia today is so wildly ludicrous that it raises the question of whether The Islamic Monthly is a parody site; but of course, the author of the piece, Davide Mastracci, is po-faced, aggrieved, and utterly serious. A Muslim professor was denied tenure; what else could it possibly be but “Islamophobia”?
Well, how about opposition to the freedom speech and freedom of inquiry? Lumbard led the successful effort to intimidate Brandeis into rescinding an honorary degree it had planned to give to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, bringing Brandeis unwelcome international attention as a bastion of political correctness that capitulated to Islamic supremacists.
Or how about arrogant puffery? Lumbard once promised to “dominate” me in debate, and then, after demonstrating an embarrassing lack of knowledge of how to formulate a debate thesis properly, backed out of the debate. Did Brandeis administrators get wind of this incident and wonder why their boastful, chest-thumping professor didn’t just take on the debate and “dominate” the “ignorant Islamophobe” as he had promised to do? Did they wonder why he lost his nerve on what should have been (as no doubt both he and they would have thought) such an easy challenge?
If those two weren’t enough, how about incompetence? Lumbard was General Editor of The Study Quran, a cynical exercise in deception, with half-truths and word-twistings scattered across every page.
For example, The Study Quran translates Qur’an 48:29 as: “Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Those who follow him are harsh against the disbelievers, merciful to one another.” That’s fine as a translation of the Arabic, but the commentary on the verse, after dismissively granting the obvious, offers a particularly preposterous attempt at whitewashing the passage and convincing the hapless reader that it means the opposite of what it says: “That they are harsh against the disbelievers implies that they never relent in their opposition to them and fight them when necessary (IK [Ibn Kathir]). In this context it also reflects an aspect of mercy, for just as the sunlight is most intense on black surfaces and less so on white surfaces, so are the believers harsher or ‘more intense’ with the disbelievers. In this sense, the believers must display the truth to them with a greater intensity of light and insight. Among each other, however, there is less need for such intensity, because the truth is manifest as gentle warmth.”
So you see, this Qur’an passage is really all about tough love. When the Qur’an says be “harsh” with non-Muslims, it really means be merciful to them. It doesn’t mean burn their churches and drive them from their homes and demand from them the jizya or conversion to Islam. No, no: all that would be…harsh. Instead, it just means be “intense” in telling them about Islam. But the believers don’t need this, as they are already Muslim.
The Study Quran, therefore, would have you believe that being harsh equals being merciful, and that one must therefore be merciful to unbelievers when the Qur’an says to be harsh to them. But the passage in question also says that Muslims must be “merciful to one another” — but The Study Quran says that to be merciful equals “display[ing] the truth,” and since Muslims have the truth already, they need not be “intense” in displaying it to one another. So by the time The Study Quran is through, it has rendered the verse that says “Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Those who follow him are harsh against the disbelievers, merciful to one another” as “Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Those who follow him are intense in mercy toward the disbelievers, and less merciful to one another.”
Elsewhere, The Study Quran does so much not deny the ugly reality of violence and hatred in the Muslim holy book as bury it under mountains of irrelevant commentary. Often, The Study Quran hides the ugliness in plain sight by not addressing the obviously problematic content of particular verses.
This deflection begins right at the beginning, with The Study Quran’s treatment of the Fatihah. The Fatihah is the first chapter of the Quran, and is also the most commonly recited prayer in Islam. The translators opted for pseudo-King James Bible archaisms, rendering the last two verses of the Fatihah as follows:
Guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those who incur wrath or those who are astray.
Sounds reasonable. But virtually all mainstream and authoritative commentators on the Quran identify “those who incur wrath” as the Jews.
Similarly, “those who are astray” are overwhelmingly accepted to be the Christians.
The Study Quran doesn’t deny this; in fact, it acknowledges it … but only after seven windy paragraphs about what it means to be blessed and other related matters. Anyone who is still reading after all that chloroform in print, to borrow Mark Twain’s phrase, will come to this:
Based upon a saying attributed to the Prophet, though not considered to be of the highest degree of authenticity, one interpretation given by a number of commentators is that those who incur wrath and those who are astray refer to Jews and Christians, respectively (IK, JJ, Q, T, Z).
(“IK, JJ, Q, T, Z” are shorthands for Muslim commentators on the Qur’an: Ibn Kathir; Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli and Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, “the two Jalals,” authors of the Tafsir al-Jalalayn; al-Qurtubi; al-Tabari; and al-Zamakhshari.)
The Study Quran doesn’t offer a single alternative interpretation of this verse (the editors could have invoked al-Nisaburi, to whose commentary they do refer on occasion. He says that “those who have incurred Allah’s wrath are the people of negligence, and those who have gone astray are the people of immoderation”). By introducing the interpretation by claiming it was based on a doubtful statement of Muhammad, and by only mentioning it at all after lengthy commentary about matters of slight import, the authors reveal an agenda of hiding the causes and justifications of “extremism”; of keeping readers from learning the reality of the verse’s historical and present significance.
This pattern continues on throughout The Study Quran. For example, Qur’an 98:6 reads:
Truly the disbelievers among the People of the Book and the idolaters are in the Fire of Hell, abiding therein; it is they who are the worst of creation.
The “disbelievers among the People of the Book” refers to Jews and Christians who do not become Muslims. (For an example, you can find this near-unanimously accepted description in the Tanwir al-Miqbas min Tafsir Ibn Abbas.)
The Study Quran, however, doesn’t want the reader to learn of that.
Instead, it offers a lengthy disquisition into mankind’s “unique place in the cosmos.” It never gets around to pointing out that the Qur’an just called Jews and Christians the “worst of creation,” or explaining the implications of that declaration throughout history, including the current purges and slaughter of Jews and Christians happening today.
Do Brandeis administrators know what a ridiculous farrago The Study Quran really is? Were they annoyed at Lumbard for trying to pass off a work of Islamic apologetics as an academic exercise?
Perhaps if Lumbard had wanted tenure, he could have published an honest commentary on the Qur’an, and not revealed himself so nakedly to be the arrogant pseudo-academic puffball he is.

Champ says
“Find out what you DON’T KNOW about what you believe.
The truth will SHOCK YOU! Muslims…you’ll never be the same again if you are honest!
The Great Deceiver Allah from Quran is the SAME PERSON with Satan (Lucifer) The Great Deceiver from Bible!”
https://youtu.be/TLoUq8vybzY
Jay Boo says
Thanks for the video link, Champ.
Slaves to Allah
Their hearts are so full of wickedness and false assumptions that even the most educated of Muslim scholars of comparative religion haven’t a clue and overlook even the most obvious verses of the Bible just like Muhammad.
Sin, Satan, Islam
Allah is merely a Muslim’s stage prop.
Muslims put all their focus on sin and flaunting their alleged mastery of sin.
Of course, whatever one thinks about constantly its what controls them.
Champ says
You’re welcome, Jay Boo! 🙂
Wholly agree, great comment.
linnte says
Wow! This video gave me goosebumps! Thanks from me too Champ!
Champ says
You’re welcome, Linnte & Dr. Divinity!
Great comments! 🙂
linnte says
Amazing! I knew it, but only knew one Quranic verse that proved it. Wow!
Champ says
I know–seeing all of those quranic verses together is very powerful!
Idania says
Champ, will you please send me the link to that video?
Fraginalsi@gmail.com
Thank you
Champ says
Idania, the link is right there when you watch the video. Besides, i don’t contact people I meet on Jihad Watch. Sorry. Take care.
linnte says
It is indeed powerful! God is awesome!
Cecilia Ellis says
Idania, just in case you have not been able to find the link to the video that Champ posted, here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLoUq8vybzY&feature=youtu.be
As a word of caution, it is inadvisable to post a personal e-mail address on a public forum.
Cecilia Ellis says
Champ, I just had a chance to view the video you posted. Wow! If anyone doubts the source of the Qur’an, this video should open his/her eyes. Hopefully, it will open his/her heart to the truth about the evil inherent in and sustained by Islam, just in case the savagery, brutality, deceit, and supremacy demonstrated by that ideology for the past 1400 years have failed to do so. Thank you for your post.
We indeed are at war.
Champ says
You’re welcome, Cecilia! 🙂
Thank you for your great comment.
خَليفة says
You win at chess by taking one piece at a time, moving and strategizing, until your opponent can no longer prevent you from placing them in checkmate.
jihad3tracker says
PROFESSOR LUMBARD IS ANOTHER ONE OF THE SLIMEBUCKET PUSSIFIED ACADEMIC FREEDOM HATERS WHO POPULATE OUR UNIVERSITIES —- this is even more evidence of the submissive slave of totalitarianism’s refusal to never accept responsibility for anything.
Along with CAIR’s Nihad Awad, Ibrahim Hooper, ACMCU’s pondscum Nathan Lean, John Esposito, Christian traitor Jordan Denari, Jocelyn Cesari, plus notorious clown Reza Poofy Aslan, and female pathologicals Dahlia Mogahed, Linda Sarsour.
THEY ALL OBSESSIVELY READ EVERY POST HERE ON JIHAD WATCH, so I say hello to them . .. You can’t win them all, right ?
jihad3tracker says
Here is the actual link in Robert’s post above — http://theislamicmonthly.com/of-belief-and-tenure-islam-at-a-crossroads-in-the-academy/
There is a comment section AND THE AUTHOR’S NAME. We still have one more day in this weekend, so if 10 spare minutes magically appear, think about sending a bit of reality to either of those endpoints.
Vectoring to the writer is probably better than attempting to get a jihad reality post cemented on the article — because the Muslim moderator’s erase-option will wipe you off the site.
linnte says
I almost BOUGHT that study Qur’an instead of my Mawdudi copy. Maybe he will quit while he has a HEAD! hahahahahahaha!
Angemon says
Indeed. Were he an African-American and it would have been “racism”. Were he a woman and it would have been “sexism”. Similarly reasoning for “homophobia”, “transphobia”, “fat-shaming” or “ableism”. And if he were a transgender, black, fat, disabled muslim woman, that would be jackpot for all those groups of “civil rights” “activists”. Of course, if he was a straight white Christian male, he’d need to check his privilege and take solace in the fact he was taking one for the team – the next tenured teacher would need to fill “diversity” requirements.
mortimer says
Brilliant, devastatingly on target, Angemon. ‘Diversity’ is another name for the promotion of mediocrities because they represent, not excellence, but a certain visible demographic.
Westman says
I could see a possible welcome crack in Islam if the “Study Quran was deemed “doctrinally correct” by Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Mufti of al-Azhar. Of course, that’s a fantasy. It’s just an apologist, unauthorized, muddy-the-water, attempt to keep the leftists in the tent and the rest ignorant of the real ideology.
If Western “moderate” Muslims intend to form a new version of Islam, without all the violence, then they should get some intestinal fortitude and declare openly that the old ways are kaput for them, make their Mosques distinct, and fully join society.
But, no, this is just an attempt to get society to drop the magnifying glass; which won’t work because the Umma “brothers” are too busy sowing mahem across the world.
mortimer says
Koran 48:29 is a verse that clearly and unmistakably, perhaps even deliberately, contradicts the Golden Rule:
Koran 48.29 “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah
Those with him are VIOLENT (ashiddaa’) against the unbelievers (kufaar),
Compassionate amongst themselves.” (Richard Bell’s translation)
Arabic transliteration: “Muhammadun Resoulu-llaahi, wa-ladhiina ma’ahu ashidda’u ‘ala-l kuffaari, ruhama’u baynahum.” Koran 48:29
The Arabic Word ‘ASHIDDAA’
The Arabic (aSHiddaa3u) word covers a very broad semantic field and the specific meaning depends on the context in which the word is used. It’s usual meanings include powerful, sharp, ardent, extreme, strong, intensive, rigorous, severe, vehement, quick, violent, and vigorous. The above adjectives make the ayat even more severe and discriminatory. If the verse in question is to be understood in the context of self-defense against physical attacks by unbelievers, then words like harsh, terrible, implacable are proabably correct. If the verse is to be understood in a broader, religious context, then a better choice would be made from words like strong, ardent, severe, stalwart, unmoved, unremitting, uncompromising, etc.
A recurring theme in the Qur’an is opposition to disbelief and mutual support within the community of believers. There may be, however, a problem with the translation of this verse. The key word is rendered as “harsh” in your version. Other translators use
other words. Yusuf ‘Ali uses “strong”. Rodwell uses “vehement”. Dawood uses “ruthless”. Palmer uses “vehement”. Pickthall uses “hard”. In French, Grosjean uses “dur” (harsh or hard) and Kasimirski uses “terrible”. Ben Mahmoud uses “implacable”.
But in any context, the ayat implies the application of a double standard whenever one is wronged by a non-believer as opposed to a believer.
Westman says
“But in any context, the ayat implies the application of a double standard whenever one is wronged by a non-believer as opposed to a believer.”
Without question. Instead of a Golden Rule, Islam has a Rule Of Discrimination.
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
“the ayat implies”
I had to look this up, but “aya” (a verse of the Quran) is singular, “ayat” is plural. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayah
mortimer says
‘The Study Quran’ is intentionally dishonest. The authors are pettifoggers who are intentionally whitewashing the faults of Islam.
Professor Harold Frankfurt wrote of this process in his précis ‘On Bullshit’:
“However studiously and conscientiously the bullshitter proceeds, it remains true that he is also trying to get away with something. There is surely in his work, as in the work of the slovenly craftsman, some kind of laxity which resists or eludes the demands of a disinterested and austere discipline. The pertinent mode of laxity cannot be equated, evidently, with simple carelessness or inattention to detail.”
In other words, ‘The Study Quran’ was put together by people who eluded disinterested principles of scholarship with an agenda of propaganda, of pettifogging…and of ‘bullshitting’.
Why is Islam worth adopting, if one has to read misleading statements that disguise the Koran’s real and horrifying messages.
Is Islam so bad that it needs to be surrounded by so many lies, how can it be true?
Seth says
Brandeis ‘…was founded in 1948 as a non-sectarian Jewish…institution’ (from Wikipedia).
Somewhat ironic.
citycat says
More Islamophobia?
It can’t be a virus or all the Muslims would have it, ah maybe not, they a have a reasonable fear of Islam, which they deal with by the process of surrender. “Suicide is painless”
A phobia, of Islam. That’s different to say fear of being attacked, or bombed, or raped, or stabbed by a “lone wolf”, or beheaded by a “lone wolf”.
I don’t know. I’d have to get professional advice on that if i thought i’d caught Islamophobia, or is the phobia contagious, via the mind, via communication from one individual to another.
Do they know how one catches Islamophobia, i wonder, like is there any research been done. Can they stop Islamophobia being passed from one person to another.
linnte says
Hummmm…I wonder if someone could claim disability saying they are Islamophobic? Schizophrenics can, why not Islamophobes? ?
Cthulhu says
http://cdn.csectioncomics.com/csectioncomics/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/lies-damned-lies-and-lions-750x-256c-C.png
abad says
Joseph Lumbard, meet Scott Lucas:
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4784
I am convinced that Ivory Tower White Men Professors Who Convert to Islam(TM) know not what they do.
Dave says
Brandeis is left of left. Denied tenure there has to be on professional grounds. The Muslim whining is ridiculous. They are pusses.
George Poll says
You would have to be crazy and/or stupid to hire a Muslim. They will ruin your business. They will sue if you criticize them (or they THINK you might criticize them). They only look to make trouble for everyone with their nut job religion.
abad says
I’d like to know something.
And feedback can come from anyone here including Mr Spencer himself.
Isn’t it entirely unprofessional for a professor to put the following on his or her resume:
“Converted to Islam in (year)”
Exactly what does that have to do with a professor being able to perform the job he or she is hired for?
Highly personal information like that should stay off of resumes IMHO
linnte says
And, I agree that ones religious preference should NOT be on a resume. But Islam is this man’s focus-period. His resume is a red flag saying, I am a Muslim, therefore more qualified to teach about Islam. But what you and I see is”I am a Muslim, therefore Islam Trumps everything I do”and we know that is dangerous. I am glad he put that there. Problem solved. He didn’t get the job because of WHO he was.
UNCLE VLADDI says
When liberals eat their own LOL!
Brandeis is totally in the dhimmi-tank for islam!
somehistory says
When a psychopath does not get his way, when he makes an error, when he ruins something, when he doesn’t get a job, doesn’t get the girl he wishes to dominate, loses his keys….he blames someone else…anyone else. Everyone else.
When a psychopath is incompetent, he looks for others to blame for his failure.
This guy is looking to blame everyone who has the facts, the full, ugly facts, about islam. If he and cair…the group of loud psychopaths, are able to find or think of a suit, they will wear it. And we will hear of it.
dumbledoresarmy says
Joseph Lumbard, convert to Islam, signed off on the deeply-sinister “A Common Word” “letter from the Muslims to the Christians’ that was published (and sent to all leaders of all major Christian sub-groupings) in October 2007.
He did so in very, very bad company; the list of signatories to that letter – of which list I made and have kept a copy – makes for interesting reading, once one deploys google, MEMRI et al, and has a look at what *else* those signatories are or have been up to.