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Two thoughts on Spencer’s speech for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week
1. Anti-Islamo-fascism without Islamo-fascism As though proving my point that he does not share David Horowitz’s belief that our enemies are “Islamo-fascists,” Robert Spencer, in his 2,700 word talk delivered Monday at DePaul University for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, does not speak even once about Islamo-fascism. The single time the term “Islamo-fascism” appears in the speech is in reference to “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” Spencer’s topic is not the fascist hijacking of the “good” Islam, but the non-negotiable, tyrannical demands of Islam that he says are built into Islam by its millennium-old core documents. Thus Spencer’s position (the problem is the ancient religion of Islam) and Horowitz’s position (the problem is modern “Islamo-fascism”) are in complete contradiction with each other. But Spencer never points this out, either in this speech or elsewhere. As a result, the anti-Islamo-fascist movement is conceptually incoherent, as I have said. 2. Can we get along—or not? Spencer’s overriding theme in this speech is, can we talk with the Muslims about our mutual differences? And he keeps pointing out how that’s not possible, because the Muslims’ agenda is absolute and is built into their religion and so they have no interest in dialogue. This leads up to his summary statement that “I had hoped to see this dialogue in the past. I don’t any longer. I’ve been disappointed.” [Italics added.] Well, that seems pretty definitive, right? Hold on. In the next sentence, which is also the first sentence of the next paragraph, he continues:
Can’t we talk about this? Maybe we can, but one side can’t do all the talking or all the listening. The West is still looking for a force in the Islamic world with the courage, with the generosity of spirit, with the openness of intellect and the foresight to be a willing partner in this dialogue.So, having just said that he’s given up hope for dialogue with Islam, he immediately turns around and expresses his hope for dialogue with Islam. And he ends the speech on that note—a note of complete self-contradiction. What this demonstrates is that the conceptual incoherence that characterizes Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week does not only exist between Robert Spencer and David Horowitz; it exists within Spencer. And this contradictory quality is not new. For years, Spencer’s favored rhetorical trope has been to say that he’s still looking, still hoping to find a moderate authoritative version of Islam out there, but, gosh darn it, none has turned up, and, well, he’s starting to wonder if it will ever turn up. He speaks this way because he doesn’t want to be the one to declare definitively that Islam is hopeless and that we simply must treat it as an adversary. He would rather have that traumatic truth emerge from the behavior of the Muslims than announce it himself. Which, as I’ve said in the past, is an entirely reasonable tactic. However, Spencer does not stay consistently with this tactic—and who can blame him? Like all of us, he needs occasionally to come out and say what he really thinks. And what he really thinks, as he lets on at Jihad Watch from time to time, and which he says through most of this speech, is that there is no possibility of a moderate Islam that can get along with the West. However, he cannot stay with that hard position, because to say that jihad is mandated by unchangeable divine commands from the Muslims’ god—to say that Islamic extremism is based on Islam—would be to renounce the liberal and neoconservative axiom that all peoples and cultures including Muslims can get along in a global democratic culture. So he always moves away from his true, hard-line position and returns to his usual rhetorical ploy of saying he’s still looking, still looking …
In the present speech, Spencer compresses into one passage this same unresolved contradiction that has characterized his writings for years. In the second to last paragraph of the speech, he states in final, uncompromising terms that he has no hope for any dialogue with Islam, because Islam and Islamic extremism are inseparable. But in the last paragraph of the speech, as though realizing that he had gone to the brink and must come back, he reverses himself and indulges in irenic hopes for mutual dialogue. Thus at the last moment he brings himself into conformity with the neocon party line that Islamic extremism is based on a modern totalitarian ideology which is not natural to Muslims and which they will readily cast off if given the choice to do so. Email entry |