Asked Thursday whether he would debate Maajid Nawaz, Robert Spencer replied: “Yes, of course I would. But Maajid Nawaz won’t debate me.” It isn’t hard to understand why that is true. Maajid Nawaz has an image to protect: that of being an all-knowing Muslim reformist who’s never wrong. He presents himself as a softer, gentler, more articulate Muslim than the jihadis walking around in a rage and ready to explode at the mention of Muhammad’s name. He’s part dandy, but always makes sure to look like he’s stepped out of the office, with his tailored suits, ties, and pastel socks. He’s clean, serious, and ready for business. It all looks a bit gay to me, and I’m a gay man who would not be caught dead in half of what he parades around in. Maajid is a Muslim, and he’s visually trying to sell us a cool, funky and fashionable version of Islam, as he sits behind desks or on stages talking and debating with people about the merits of Islam and how truly peaceful it is. He’ll spout this tripe to uninformed and lazy interviewers, who sit and nod their heads like those plastic dogs you sit on the dashboard of your car. And if Maajid is ever in a debate, the viewer is led to believe that he’s engaging with an actual expert on Islamic theology, but more often than not Maajid is dealing with one-dimensional fundamentalists, or “far-right bigots” who don’t know the truth about Islam. He’ll debate anyone, it seems — anyone except for Robert Spencer.
Maajid likes to demolish his opponents by dazzling them with his knowledge of Islamic theology and law, and thereby trouncing and disposing of another Islamophobe, all of which adds to his public image of being the new kind of Muslim. He likes to sit on LBC radio and call out women who defend wearing the niqab, and all of this makes him look like the future of Islam to those people who refuse to admit the real truth about Islam, and who instead put their blinkers on and pin their hopes on Maajid. Most of these “head in the sand” types in the UK are white non-Muslims: Daily Mail or The Sun readers, purveyors of not very good journalism at the least. Maajid doesn’t have a large Muslim following. Muslims are following the hardline imams instead. Robert Spencer, together with Pamela Geller, is perhaps the world’s greatest Islamophobe. Robert has multiple best-selling books on the topic of the real Islam. Doesn’t Robert seem like the ideal candidate for Maajid to debate, and to ruin intellectually and scripturally? If you were Maajid, and if you defended Islam so vehemently, wouldn’t you want to wreck the career of a man who seeks to expose Islam for what it truly is? There could be no better target for Maajid than Robert Spencer. If Maajid won a debate with Robert, this would more than likely lead to Robert’s book sales plummeting, and put an end to his Jihad Watch website, because he would be exposed as a fraud and a charlatan.
The truth of the matter is that Maajid knows that in a debate with Robert Spencer, he would come away looking like the hypocritical fool that he is, and his money-making industry would come crashing down around him. At best, he would have to agree with virtually everything Robert has to say on Islam, and in this way he would be legitimizing Robert, and I don’t think that is something Maajid wants to do. Imagine being outwitted on camera, with all of your shortcomings revealed. Imagine your interpretations and your sources being refuted. In light of all that, I can’t imagine why Maajid would ever dare debate Robert. Yet Maajid even speaks Arabic (always an essential ingredient if one wants to criticize Islam, as we are repeatedly told), so surely he would have the advantage and upper hand. Maajid has lost in debates before, most notably to Douglas Murray and Ayaan Hirsi Ali at an event in which he tried and failed to convince the audience that Islam is a religion of peace (no more preposterous suggestion could have been put forward, because Islam was born in bloodshed and it continues in bloodshed and rape to this day). Maajid was putting his points to the audience, together with a practicing Muslima, and it’s my thought that he imagined the audience would side with him because he was up against a white non-Muslim man and a woman who was smeared as an Islamophobe. Notably, shortly after that event, Maajid told the media that his knowledge and views on Islam were ever-evolving. Well how about staying off the air, and out of the media, until you’ve reached a conclusive and definitive stance on Islam, Maajid?
In any debate with Robert Spencer, Maajid could only come away the loser, which is why he is avoiding the meeting. In the event of Maajid being exposed by Robert, his Islamophobia empire would crumble, and perhaps Robert Spencer would be allowed to enter the UK again, redeemed and forgiven. The Quilliam organisation are filled with hypocrites. One journalist called Tommy Robinson “far-right,” and couldn’t back up his stance when confronted, and another Quilliam “researcher” falsely labeled Spencer and Geller “alt-right,” while Maajid crowdfunded in order to pay lawyers to sue the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for calling him names. There’s a double standard and hypocrisy at play here. Maajid and company get to demonize others, including Robert Spencer, but no one can dare call into question the learning and the character of the dapper, pink sock-wearing Maajid. Nor will he appear alongside Robert Spencer in public in order settle matters once and for all as to who is telling the real truth about Islam.
Terry Gain says
Very few Muslims have the courage to debate Robert Spencer. He knows too much and has a very calm, even affable demeanour.
mortimer says
A mullah on British radio admitted that he was not prepared to debate Robert Spencer and that Robert Spencer is ‘an expert’ on jihad, thus destroying the mullah’s credibility and revealing his lack of integrity.
Save Europe says
Alexander Murray also beat Nawaz in a tag team debate ?
mortimer says
Maajid Nawaz is too much a craven COWARD to debate with the mighty ROBERT SPENCER, the master of JIHAD debating. Maajid Nawaz KNOWS in advance that he would end up looking foolish and insincere, thus losing much of his income.
Maajid Nawaz is like the hunter who only shoots ducks sitting in a barrel … and at close range! That way, Maajid Nawaz is always victorious.
MAAJID, WE SEE YOU ARE AN IRRESPONSIBLE CON ARTIST and COWARD HIDING FROM THE FACTS.
Maria Sederholm says
True.
mortimer says
The ‘snake oil’ that Maajid Nawaz is selling is this: ‘ISLAM CAN BE REFORMED and I Maajid Nawaz am its PROPHET.’
1) No, Islam cannot be reformed.
2) No, Maajid, you are not a ‘prophet’. You are a well-paid huckster selling snake oil.
Dave says
In the Red corner we have Robert Spencer, weighing in at 200 lb. and in the pink corner, Maajid Nawaz weighing in at 140lb. May the best man win!
Maria Sederholm says
:-DDD
lebel says
“Nor will he appear alongside Robert Spencer in public in order settle matters once and for all as to who is telling the real truth about Islam.”
I agree that he needs to do this. If Robert Spencer is wrong then let’s debate. I hate it when people dismiss RS as a clown and therefore not worthy of debate. I think he is scared of RS and hopes he would just go away. His buddy Sam Harris is also scared of RS.
Another VERY important point. Both Maajid and Harris are friends with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. There is essentially no difference between her view of Islam and RS’s so if RS is an extremist then so is she. Why is Maajid debating then with Hirsi Ali and not RS?
gravenimage says
Unlike Maajid Nawaz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a bona fide Anti-Jihadist. She may indeed have too rosy a hope that Islam can be reformed–I believe she does–but she is an honest and brave person who has no hidden agenda, which is hardly true of the Taqiyya-spewing Nawaz.
Maria Sederholm says
Ayan Hirsi Ali seems to be totally under Nawaz’s control. My guess is that she has been brainwashed to go along with the globalist cabal’s narrative, that is the lie that Islam can be reformed and stealth jihad is a figment of imagination and that the boat must not be rocked too much and that Islamic immigration to non Islamic countries is a positive thing…
Malignant narcissists have the uncanny ability to control just about anyone who isn’t alert enough to their manipulative tricks. Also, I suspect Ali is under heavy influence from her husband, the narcissistic Bilderberg stooge & anti Brexit historian Niall Ferguson (who sucks up to Soros). If Ali isn’t under narcissistic mind control she is a sellout. A person without a moral compass or integrity. I haven’t seen or heard Ali come to the defense of Robert Spencer or anyone else (I’m not counting fraudster Nawaz of course) who has falsely accused of being a “hate preacher” or “anti-Muslim” by the SPLC. Has anyone else? Please let me know if that is the case. I find this very disturbing, especially as Robert and others have expressed their views on Ali being branded and slandered by the SPLC.
gravenimage says
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is brave and has courageously stood against Jihad for many years now.
It is just that she is too hopeful in believing that Islam can change. She is not the only Anti-Jihadist to hold onto this hope.
Stang says
Keep it up, you know Maajid will eventually have to come out, when being called out.
mortimer says
Is Maajid Nawaz a former Muslim pretending to be a Muslim or is a Muslim pretending to be secular?
As long as Maajid Nawaz doesn’t aggressively say he doesn’t believe in Islam, he is not likely to get a fatwa calling for his execution as an apostate.
How long can he keep up the pretense without spilling the truth of his apostasy?
Maria Sederholm says
I don’t believe Nawaz is an apostate or that he will ever be one.
dee says
He is a jihadist, which ought to trigger oh so righteous leftist convulsions, since they prefer to remain ignorant of and utterly reject Islam’s own definition of jihad.
gravenimage says
Stang, I don’t think Nawaz will ever come out.
mortimer says
Lebel, the question is this: IS MAAJID NAWAZ really a Muslim or is he pretending to be one? I assume the latter.
SPLC called him an anti-Muslim extremist. Here is what he replied: “… the SPLC have conflated my challenge to Islamist theocracy among my fellow Muslims with somehow being “anti-Muslim”. The regressive left is now in the business of issuing fatwas against Muslim reformers.”
Where is the ‘SECULAR ISLAMIC’ country that Maajid Nawaz thinks should exist? How can a country be ‘Islamic’ and ‘secular’ at the same time? It can’t.
Maajid Nawaz is a master of obfuscation and a snake-oil salesman, and that is why he will not debate Robert Spencer and neither will you, lebel.
lebel says
“Where is the ‘SECULAR ISLAMIC’ country that Maajid Nawaz thinks should exist? How can a country be ‘Islamic’ and ‘secular’ at the same time? It can’t.”
It can if it wants to, whether it’s Islamically correct is another question. I think Maajid is talking about a Muslim majority country with secular institutions.
As for debating with RS, whenever I provide evidence I either get insults from you and your friends or ignored by RS.
gravenimage says
Yes, a secular Islamic country could theoretically exist–but, notably, it never has. (And no–whatever aspect of Turkey that has been secular has been due to the past suppression of Islam, not to Islam itself. Moreover, Turkey’s secularism under Erdogan is increasingly a thing of the past.
As for lebel, he has seldom been able to cite anything that Robert Spencer has ever gotten wrong, and despite his repeated attempts over the years, he has *never* been able to prove that Robert Spencer or anyone else at Jihad Watch is an “Islamophobe” for recognizing the threat of Jihad. He considers it an “insult” when he is called out for his bs.
mortimer says
Lebel, when you cease being an anonymous COWARD (as we know you are), then CHALLENGE ROBERT SPENCER personally … he will be MORE THAN WILLING TO GO HEAD TO HEAD WITH YOU IN A SCHEDULED, REFEREED DEBATE.
But, wee little lebel, we all know you will not challenge ROBERT SPENCER TO DEBATE YOU ONE-ON-ONE, because you truly are a CRAVEN COWARD … prove us wrong by making your PERSONAL challenge to Spencer or we will all know you need to hide behind your mommy.
He will debate you in a REGULATED debate, not on these pages. There will be a REFEREE and it will be a PROPER debate. Bye bye, coward.
gravenimage says
Maajid Nawaz Has an Image to Protect
…………………
Spot on analysis from Joshua Winston.
The oily Maajid Nawaz has even fooled some Anti-Jihadists. A nasty piece of work.
Anjuli Pandavar says
It’s an entertaining though, and so it shall remain. Maajid Nawaz may not be a genius, but he’s not a fool either. He’ll avoid RS for the same reason he avoids Mufassil Islam and Gad Saad (I haven’t checked whether that’s changed over the last year). He prefers soft targets like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, around whom he easily runs rings. Here’s someone who thought he was worth spending time on:
https://medium.com/@chatterjee_vk/maajid-nawaz-stealth-jihadist-exposed-https-vkchatterjee-wordpress-com-2015-12-30-maajid-nawaz-375a1f231384
It is an entertaining thought, though.
Anjuli Pandavar says
On second thoughts, while Robert is correct in being willing to debate Maajid Nawaz, I now think that it will bring Robert nothing, not even some sport. It doesn’t take much to lay Nawaz flat. He has a little more flair than Mehdi Hassan, but is no smarter. So it’d be like a heavyweight against a bantamweight. There’d be no art in that. Nawaz is the next-generation Tariq Ramadan: Muslim b*llshitters who know what buttons to push. Today people like that fail to impress enough people for there no longer to be any need for heavy guns to take them on, such as, say, Christopher Hitchens against Tariq Ramadan. Robert’s time is better spent on the serious stuff. It least he gets a challenge out of that.
thebigW says
the only thing Maajid Nawaz is protecting is Islam, by whitewashing it with his taqiyya. This has nothing to do with his “image”. The fact that the writer Joshua Winston things Maajid is just a narcissist who cares about his image, shows how successful Maajid’s taqiyya is.
gravenimage says
thebigW, Nawaz is able to whitewash Islam so successfully because so many accept this image as a “moderate” Muslim.
mortimer says
Yes, GI, he is able to retreat behind a SCREEN OF PROTECTION. He pretends to be a Muslim, but he is actually an apostate who wants to walk down the center of the road… very dangerous. He will eventually get hit by both the IN-ISLAM and the OUT-OF-ISLAM sides. The SPLC ‘hit’ him already, but now it’s the turn of the mullahs to slap Nawaz with a fatwa. Then he will go into hiding like Salman Rushdie. So much for his defending Islam then.
How can he attack authentic Islamic doctrines on one hand and say he Islam a Muslim on the other? Nawaz is a SLY LIAR. One is either in or out. The center line doesn’t work in Islam… that is called BIDA and all bida is considered heresy (kufr) in Islam.
gravenimage says
Mortimer, I don’t think that Nawaz is an apostate. He regularly whitewashes Islam to make it more palatable to the Infidels.
thebigW says
Maajid’s main schtick is he says there’s Islam over here, fine and dandy, and a little thing called “Islamism” over there, ooh has problems but it’s not that big compared with nice Islam. This is how he protects Islam and he ain’t the only one doing this.
gravenimage says
+1
Maria Sederholm says
I for one don’t think Nawaz is “just” a narcissist. Like all people on the high end of the narcissism spectrum Nawaz is an expert liar. Which means he also lies to himself and sometimes even believes his own lies. Any strategy that will save a narcissists butt and garner him narcissistic supply is the one that he will use. When Nawaz finally is outed as the fraudster he is I can very well see him moving to Pakistan to follow in Imran Khan’s footsteps. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he denounced Western values, saying he’d come to his senses and realised that the Western lifestyle is in fact wrong and sinful. He will be as convincing (to most) in that role as he is in the role he is playing now. #Chameleon
patriotliz says
There are quite a few Muslim “reformers” who are critical of Islam (which makes them Muslim heretics) who make a living of being courted and lionized by the non-Muslims in the West who tell them (deceive them) that “Islam” is OK and can be tolerated except for THOSE Muslims who “pervert” the religion of Islam.
The fact is that the only Muslims to be trusted are bona fide ex-Muslims.
gravenimage says
Agreed. Note that like so many of these supposed “reformers” that he usually takes his message of a supposed “moderate” Islam to Infidels, and not to other Muslims–as he would do if this was not just to make Islam more palatable to the West..
Unconquered says
Best things about Maajid are suing the SPLC and winning because he opened the door for others not of his ilk to do the same against it and others of SPLC’s ilk.
Save Europe says
Lol. I sent 5 (of the same) of Robert’s books to 5 students studying theology in Kuwait, 3 days ago! They’re all non Muslim students. Already, his book on Islam is being passed around. Best thing I’ve done in a long time ?