|
Spencer’s response to the Buffalo beheading
Kidist Paulos Asrat rites:
Here is Robert Spencer at FrontPage Magazine, going on in his usual contradictory ways again, this time talking about the beheading of the Muslim TV producer’s wife. He writes:
Immediately after the killing, Khalid J. Qazi of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) chapter of Western New York, declared: “There is no place for domestic violence in our religion—none. Islam would 100 percent condemn it.”
And later on, after quoting passages from the Koran (Qu’ran, in Spencer spelling) which show where Muslim men can act violently towards “misbehaving” women, and outlining Qazi’s falsehood, he says:
[A]s long as no one has the courage to call Muslim leaders like Qazi to account for statements like this [from the Koran], and ask them about clear justifications for domestic violence that do appear in Islamic tradition, what can possibly be done to combat the prevalence of domestic violence in Islamic communities?
Here is the best one yet:
Ignoring the Islamic justifications for domestic violence harms Muslim women. And ensures that there will be many more Aasiya Hassans, in the United States and around the world.
I’m almost getting to feel sorry for Spencer. As though he had no choice but to listen to Islamic justifications for “domestic violence” from Muslims.
He is still at the “reform” stage—despite his life-long study of a 1,400-year old religion that has not once changed its ways.
Actually, if I were a Muslim now, I would be insulted. Who does this American “Islamic” scholar think he is, trying to change my religion by wishful thinking?
On a more serious level, I have this feeling that he will use honor killings and Muslim men’s violence against Muslim women to enact some important policies—maybe bring in boatloads of discontent, non-modern women to live their lives on Western shores.
One of the problems, of course, is that such women as Aasiya Hassans would probably not have thought of (or needed) divorce in her familiar Muslim land. And those young Muslim women would not be tempted with all the infidel boyfriends they have to contend with had they stayed behind in their Muslim countries, with their own “Islamic justifications” and clear-cut rules. [LA replies: Exactly. By letting Muslims into the West, the West is putting Muslim women in circumstances that cause them to be murdered.]
I honestly think there is something wrong with Spencer’s thinking process. I still think he has been inadvertently “hijacked” by this religion, and cannot see outside of its perimeters very clearly.
P.S., I was going to quote more from a recent radio interview he had on a similar topic (Bill Bennett’s show), including a chance he missed when a caller started to ask him: “What should we do about it?” But, as usual, he missed his chance. Or more likely, it didn’t even occur to him that such a question, and a response to it, was possible.
LA replies:
Very good, this is an excellent critique.
What can one say? From time to time Spencer says we need to stop Muslim immigration. But then, when confronted with an actual, horrific Islamic practice that is growing in the West, an Islamic practice that is present and growing in the West solely due to Muslim immigration, an Islamic practice that will not end as long as Islam is Islam, what does he do? Does he use the opportunity to say, “As I’ve pointed out before, these Islamic practices will keep growing in our country unless we end all Muslim immigration and put such restrictions on the practice of Islam that the Muslims already here will not want to remain here”? No, he doesn’t say anything like that. Reversing himself 180 degrees, completely forgetting the hundreds of thousands of words he’s written showing that the reform of Islam has never happened and cannot be expected to happen, he proposes the reform of Islam. Instead of wanting to spare the West the presence of Islam, his main focus is to help Muslim women. He even says that the reason for the incidence of honor killings in the West is not that we are letting Muslims into the West, but that we are not instructing Muslims on the “Islamic justifications for domestic violence”! We’re supposed to get into a debate with them on the meaning of their religion! In other words, we, like dyed in the wool liberals, are supposed to try to persuade the Muslims, through a reasoned, civilized exchange of views, to give up what their religion tells them and become like us! And, by the way, which Westerners are equipped to engage in such a specialized interchange of views with Muslims on the true import of Islamic doctrine? Robert Spencer. So is Spencer interested in protecting the West from Islam, or looking for opportunities to demonstrate his knowledge of Islam?
Since I first began writing about Spencer several years ago, I pointed out how his liberal side keeps undermining his conservative side. That hasn’t changed. As discouraging as it may be to say this, having seen his contradictions continue year after year I have to say at this point that there is no more reason to believe that a reform of Spencer is possible, than there is reason to believe that a reform of Islam is possible.
Kidist replies:
Thank you.
I remember a long time ago I wrote to you about the “interview” I had with him, and how he slipped on the word “jizya,” writing as though it existed already in Western countries, and I perceived that he might under some kind of mental blockage, where he thinks we already are a Muslim country undergoing jizya. Or at least that we should be more fearful of Islam, although we clearly have the power to oust it in a minute if we wanted to. I felt that he was showing signs of hijack even back then.
Kidist writes:
“there is no more reason to believe that a reform of Spencer is possible, than there is reason to believe that a reform of Islam is possible.”
LOL!
LA continues:
Some historical background on the consistency of Spencer’s inconsistency.
In January 2008, in an entry at Jihad Watch on the honor killing by a Muslim in Texas of his two teen-age daughters, which was very similar to his current article on the Buffalo beheading, he struck a helpless pose, saying that this killing raised questions for Muslims (it raised questions for Muslims, not for us), and that we must hope that the Muslims realize that honor killing is a problem, otherwise they will continue to spread their customs among us and we’re done for. In Spencer’s treatment there was nothing we could do to defend ourselves from Muslims, we must hope that they change their entire religion.
But then in an FP symposium in April 2008 he struck a radically different note, completely rejecting the possibility of an overall reform of Islam and saying that he believes in the cessation of Muslim immigration:
Many strange things have happened in history and I would never say that Islamic reform is absolutely impossible, but Westerners are extraordinarily foolish when they harbor any hopes of it actually happening on a large scale. We need instead to focus on efforts to defend ourselves both militarily and culturally from the jihadist challenge, and to continue to call the bluffs of pseudo-reformers who intend ultimately only to deceive Western non-Muslims—many of whom are quite anxious to be deceived. [Italics added.]
So, April 2008, he completely rejected the possibility of the large scale reform of Islam.
But now in February 2009, he’s back where he was in January 2008, responding to a Muslim honor killing in the U.S. by arguing that we must inform the Muslims that their religion mandates honor killing, and that if we make it impossible for them to go on pretending that Islam does not mandate honor kiling, then that might push them to re-write the Islamic law so that it no longer mandates honor killing. According to Spencer today, the cessation of Muslim honor killing in America is up to the Muslims, through a large-scale reform of their religion which in April 2008 he said was out of the question.
Now, some will point out in Spencer’s defense that he said in the FP symposium, “I would never say that Islamic reform is absolutely impossible…” Yes, but in the very next phrase he clarified that by saying, “but Westerners are extraordinarily foolish when they harbor any hopes of it actually happening on a large scale.” So he was saying that in practical terms the large-scale reform of Islam is out of the question. The Islamic reform that he declines to say is “absolutely” impossible would appear to be reform on a small scale. But, of course, reform on a small scale, even if it were to occur, would not end Muslim honor killing and all the other things about Islam that threaten our society.
- end of initial entry -
Terry Morris writes:
Kidist wrote:
One of the problems, of course, is that such women as Aasiya Hassans would probably not have thought of (or needed) divorce in her familiar Muslim land. And those young Muslim women would not be tempted with all the infidel boyfriends they have to contend with had they stayed behind in their Muslim countries, with their own “Islamic justifications” and clear-cut rules. [LA replies: Exactly. By letting Muslims into the West, the West is putting Muslim women in circumstances that cause them to be murdered.]
This is precisely right as regards Muslim women. Indeed, as I wrote on the same topic a few days ago at Reflecting Light, “if Muslim women in America are going to be beheaded or otherwise abused by their husbands, sons, brothers, cousins and other male Muslim friends, relatives, and acquaintenances, then what good are we doing them allowing them to live in America?” Ans: We’re not doing them any good, and in fact, we’re doing them more harm than good by allowing them to come here to live because to Islam, America can be nothing more than a corrupting influence on them. Sure, their men allow them to dress and act like American women so as not to raise any alarms (it’s all just a ruse), but eventually this becomes intolerable for them as their wives and daughters begin to internalize certain American values. From that point forward they’re at risk of getting their heads cut off. Even their own daughters, as we have seen.
But we’re also putting young American women, specifically, at risk as well by allowing Muslims—men and women—into America. Naturally our young girls and women become friendly with these Muslim girls and their families through meeting them at school and in the workplace and so forth and so on. What this portends for many of our young women who are not equipped to know what Islam is in its essence—and virtually none of them are so equipped because liberal society will not tolerate their being so equipped—is that they will wind up developing relationships with Muslim boys and young men who will eventually begin to abuse them in accordance with the teachings of Islam, and perhaps even subject them to the same fate as Mrs. Hassan.
These people do not belong here, period.
LA replies:
Very well put. A person who was truly concerned about Muslim women would say that Muslims should not come to the West, because in the West Muslim females will inevitably be influenced by Western ways, and will start to violate Islamic customs, and then get murdered by their male relatives.
The idea that Mr. Morris and I have just stated is inconceivable to a liberal. To the liberal, all problems, inequalities, oppressions, can be solved by America. The liberal’s automatic response to people having problems abroad is to say, “Bring them here!”
In this connection, Robert Spencer’s first response to the indictment of Geert Wilders for hate speech was to say that Wilders should be given asylum in America. It didn’t seem to occur to him that if Wilders came to America, Europe would lose its most prominent and hopeful anti-jihadist.
This typical attitude suggests that liberals are not really concerned about the problems of people abroad. They are primarily concerned about narcissistically expressing the superiority of liberalism as incarnated in America. Thus liberals bring Muslims into America in the name of America’s wonderful liberalism, but are indifferent to the fact that by doing so they are producing conditions in which male-female conflicts within Islam are greatly exasperated, resulting in the ongoing incidence (it seems quite a regular phenomenon now) of the honor killings of Muslim women in the West. That doesn’t matter to the liberals. What matters to the liberals is the demonstration and advertisement of their own liberal virtue.
I am reminded of a magnificent letter Richard Lamm wrote in the early 1990s to a young man abroad who had written to Lamm asking him to help him immigrate to America. Lamm told him, in a firm but not cruel way, that he should stay in his own country and improve his own country instead of coming to America. No one ever talks that way in today’s world!
As I remember, I heard Lamm read the letter as part of a speech he was giving at a FAIR dinner; it was probably published later in the Social Contract..
Jeff in England writes: Your Spencer blog entry page with comments was excellent and definitive and clarified the situation to readers. Either he is against further Muslim immigration or not, time to make a consistent stand on it. But as you said his liberalism is in a battle with his conservatism so to speak.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 19, 2009 09:10 AM | Send
|