In Pam Geller’s World, Everybody Jihads – The Daily Beast

For those who want more background on Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s views on Islam:

This sordid episode is typical of the way Geller and her comrade-in-arms Spencer, co-founders of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, conduct their misnamed “anti-jihadist” battle. It is also a good example of why the two are no heroes for free speech. No, Geller did not “provoke” the terror attack in Garland, as a number of pundits (and even the New York Times editorial board) have deplorably suggested; her cartoon contest is not the moral equivalent of the attack, and she does not need to apologize for the exercise of her First Amendment rights or for the terrorists’ actions. She does, however, have to answer for a lengthy record of peddling anti-Muslim hysteria, targeting Muslims’ First Amendment right to worship, smearing innocent people as jihadists, and even excusing the slaughter of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.  We cannot allow terrorists to curb our speech; but we also cannot allow them to turn hatemongers into heroes.

Whatever valid concerns Geller, Spencer, and their allies may raise about political Islamism wind up being eclipsed by the fact that they not only conflate Islamist radicalism with all Islam but make disturbingly little distinction between criticism of Islam and hostility toward Muslims.

In a contentious interview with CNN host Alisyn Camerota Monday, Geller indignantly denied that she paints Islam “with a broad brush,” declaring that she is “anti-jihad” and “anti-sharia.” But for the most part, she and Spencer make almost no secret that they regard radical Islam as indistinguishable from Islam itself.

Spencer, a prolific author who has a degree in religious studies and whose tone is more judicious than Geller’s, does not quite state outright that non-extremist Islam is impossible. Nonetheless, he calls Islamic reform “quixotic” and “virtually inconceivable,” and sweepingly describes the faith of “millions” of Muslim immigrants in the West as “absolutely incompatible with Western society.” When America’s first Muslim congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) chose to use a Quran in his swearing-in ceremony, Spencer flatly stated that “no American official should be taking an oath on the Qur’an.” His 2005 best-seller, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), has such chapter titles as “Islamic Law: Lie, Steal and Kill.”

Critics accuse Spencer of cherry-picking and distortions. While these charges often come from sources with biases of their own, there is no doubt that his account of Islamic history is blatantly one-sided. Thus, he tries to rebut the “PC myth” that Jews in the Middle Ages fared better under Islamic rule than in Christian Europe by quoting from a 13th Century papal bull that affirmed the rights accorded to Jews—but fails to mention the many expulsions of Jewish communities from European countries and glosses over crusader massacres of Jews.

When Spencer writes about moderate Muslims, it is invariably to disparage them as deluded, insincere, or irrelevant. His targets include reformist Muslims who are strongly critical of radical Islamism and have themselves been accused of being Islamophobic shills: Jasser, self-styled “Muslim refusenik” Irshad Manji, Sufi Muslim convert Stephen Schwartz. They also include Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State: last October, a Spencer post on his site, JihadWatch, reported a Kurdish woman’s suicide bomb attack on ISIS troops in a besieged town under the jeering headline, “Kurdish Muslima carries out moderate jihad/martyrdom suicide attack against the Islamic State,” and sneered at the idea that “the foes of the Islamic State are all moderate.”

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But treating Islam as a monolith, denying the possibility of reform, and demonizing Muslims en masse is not the answer. If Christianity and Judaism could transcend their scriptural and theological baggage once used to justify fanaticism and oppression, there is no reason to believe that Islam cannot do the same. Spencer has argued that Islamic reform has no theological foundation, but he ignores the work of such 20th Century thinkers as Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, who made the case for the abrogation of the Quran’s later, harsher texts by the earlier, more peaceful ones (rather than vice versa). Today, there are Muslim scholars who champion a revision of Islamic orthodoxy on everything from women’s rights to religious freedom. In 2004, over 2,500 Muslim academics from 23 countries signed a petition to the United Nations condemning “Sheikhs of terror” who use Islamic scriptures as justification for political violence.

This is why, while we must stand by Geller as a victim of an outrageous attack on fundamental speech rights, it would be a tragic mistake to treat her or Spencer as leaders in the fight against the radical ideology that has been called Islamism or Islamofascism.

In his 2011 response to their attacks, Jasser warned that “Geller’s and Spencer’s genre is headed in only one direction—declaring an ideological war against one-fourth of the world’s population and expecting to neutralize the Islamist threat by asking Muslims to renounce their faith.” It is, perhaps literally, a dead end.

In Pam Geller’s World, Everybody Jihads – The Daily Beast.