Frontpage Interview with Robert Spencer
FP: Robert Spencer, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Spencer: Thank you, Jamie. FrontPage is one of the few media outlets, liberal or conservative, that is willing to allow honest discussion and exploration of the roots of Islamic terrorism, and I am honored to be a part of that.
FP: Thank you Mr. Spencer. So tell us, what is the politically correct guide to Islam?
Spencer: Unfortunately, there are many such books. Among the most notable, and egregious in their whitewashing of Islamâs theology, history, and present-day reality, is Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong and The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? by John Esposito. One that is more like my latest book in format is The Complete Idiotâs Guide to Understanding Islam by Yahiya Emerick. A popular new PC guide to Islam is No god but God : The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan.
FP: What is your inspiration to speak the unspoken truths about Islam?
Spencer: I speak out simply because few others are doing so. The general refusal to face the realities of what we are really up against in what is popularly known as the war on terror is crippling our ability to mount a fully effective response to the challenge of the global jihad. Political correctness and well-meaning naïveté are playing into the hands of the jihadists and making for some egregious policy miscalculations. Several rather high-profile conservatives, for example, have told me that by focusing attention on the elements of Islam that give rise to violence and fanaticism, I am alienating moderate Muslims who might otherwise be our allies in the struggle against Islamic terror. So in effect they would prefer to pretend that Islam is a peaceful religion at its core in the hopes that this fiction will win us some friends in the Islamic world.
This kind of thinking is flawed in many ways. In the first place, pretending that anything false is true is not ultimately going to get us anywhere. And if we refuse to allow honest exploration of what it is about Islam that is making so many Muslims violent today, we are not really helping sincere moderate Muslims: in fact, weâre cutting the ground out from under them by denying that there is anything about their religion that they need to face and combat if they wish to establish a lasting framework for peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims.
FP: If Islam is truly a religion of peace and tolerance than why is it so dangerous to say what you want about it? You have received death threats over the years for instance. Can you talk a bit about this?
Spencer: Yes, these threats are in effect saying, âSay that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, or weâll kill you!â I have received death threats, but I am not going to stop telling the truth because of them. If everyone who tells truths that others donât want people to know gives in to violent intimidation, what kind of world would it be?
FP: It is interesting you say this because the numerous death threats I have received entail the same irrational paradigm. Let me explain:
While it is a given that many Muslims are on our side against extremism, that we must ally ourselves with them (i.e. Free Muslims Coalition, Sheikh Palazzi etc.), and that Muslims have the power to collectively reform and change their religion into one of tolerance and peace (and that we must promote this effort), I have at times shed light on the elements of the Islamic religion that, as you show, legitimize and promote violence. Because of this, I have often encountered email correspondence of the following nature:
[a] A Muslim emails me and tells me to never say again that Islam ever advocates violence because this is not true.
[b] I answer in an email that I am not saying such a thing off the top of my head but simply just gathering conclusions from reading the Qur'an (i.e. the Verse of the Sword, Sura 9:5, 9:29 etc.) -- a source from which Osama and al-Zarqawi receive their inspiration.
[c] Then the Muslim writes back saying that he will kill me.
The logic here is very twisted. How does the individual who threatens me rationalize his step c with step a? If his effort is to convince me of the inaccuracy of my own findings, he is not doing a very successful or convincing job, to say the least. What is the psychology here?
Spencer: This is a strange contradiction from a non-Muslim perspective, but not from that of a Muslim who believes in traditional Islamic legal directives calling for the deaths of unbelievers who are at war with Islam. From the perspective of such a man, Islam is indeed a religion of peace: the peace that will prevail over the world when Sharia is the supreme law of every land. To bring this about, he believes he is commanded by God to wage war â not undifferentiated mayhem, but war for specified purposes, under specific circumstances and for particular ends. When you invoke the Qurâan and other Islamic sources to make that point that elements of the Islamic religion legitimize and promote violence, you are doing so as an infidel. Even if what you say is correct, you are approaching it all as an infidel and are thus insulting Islam. And this insult must be avenged. It isnât that you are inaccurate, it is that you are critical. You are mistaking what they see as justice for undifferentiated violence.
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[DAWN] THE debate about religion and science dates back centuries. The debate is not about a technical matter, but about two realms of knowledge ‐ theological and scientific. There seems to be an epistemological clash of validity between the two, apparently with each claiming sway over human life.
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