The hysteria of Stanford fascists over my impending appearance on campus, and the ensuing smear campaign, continues, and is growing more desperate and vicious by the moment. Jihad Watch has been loaded with posts on this over the last few days, and I apologize if some readers find it tiresome, but I believe it important to expose and respond to each one of these smears separately, so as to inform people about how these defamation campaigns proceed, and about the low state of academia today and the dominance of Leftist propagandizing over free inquiry. I also mean to provide the truth for anyone of good will, at Stanford or anywhere else, who may be looking for it.
The latest is that although I am a strong and consistent supporter of Israel, I’m really aiding in the oppression of Jews. This foul little libel comes from one Courtney Cooperman in the Stanford Daily, but the claim that Muslims are being victimized as Jews were is not original to Courtney. It’s a common Leftist talking point. Many, many others have made this claim, including Noam Chomsky, Bernie Sanders; Prince Charles; the notorious non-Muslim Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong; Jeffrey Goldberg, “journalist” at The Atlantic; Leftist media darling and pseudo-intellectual hack Reza Aslan; Muslim Brotherhood-linked Congressman Keith Ellison; Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times; the deceptive Canada-based Islamic supremacist imam Syed Sohawardy; and Philadelphia chapter leader of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations Jacob Bender. Many others have repeated it.
The blazingly brilliant Daniel Greenfield takes it apart in this video. The idea that Muslims are the new Jews is put forward by the Left, but it also has opponents on the Left. In 2014, as part of his ongoing awakening to the nature and reality of the jihad threat, Bill Maher noted:
Jews weren’t oppressing anybody. There weren’t 5,000 militant Jewish groups. They didn’t do a study of treatment of women around the world and find that Jews were at the bottom of it. There weren’t 10 Jewish countries in the world that were putting gay people to death just for being gay.
Indeed. Further, no one is calling for or justifying genocide of Muslims. No individual or group opposed to Islam is remotely comparable to the National Socialists. Not that facts have ever gotten in the way of a good meme.
Maher isn’t alone on the Left in having pointed out the absurdity of likening opposition to jihad to the lead-up to the Holocaust. The late Christopher Hitchens also refuted this idea when writing a few years ago about the notorious Ground Zero Mosque proposal:
“Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s,” Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like.
Courtney Cooperman has seen an earlier post containing this data, for she links to it below, and calls the denial that Muslims are facing persecution as the Jews did “not only despicable but also objectively false, as the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar tragically demonstrates.”
In reality, there is considerable evidence that the “ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar” is a fabrication, like many alleged Israeli atrocities against the “Palestinians.” What’s more, the Rohingyas are guilty of massacres of their own, which the Jews in Germany, of course, never were. But no doubt Courtney Cooperman has never learned the full truth about the Rohingyas at dear old Stanford. If the Rohingyas are really being subjected to ethnic cleansing, that is reprehensible, but when so many atrocities turn out to have been faked, one must approach the situation with reserve.
Much more below.
“Not in my name,” by Courtney Cooperman, Stanford Daily, November 10, 2017:
In 2011, Abraham Foxman, then the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed: “We must always be wary of those whose love for the Jewish people is born out of hatred of Muslims or Arabs.”
This warning was written in the aftermath of a mass murder in Oslo, Norway carried out by far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. Ninety minutes before he detonated a bomb in Oslo, Breivik emailed out a lengthy manifesto — entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence” — to over 1,000 recipients. The document, which calls for the expulsion of all Muslims from Europe, quotes extensively from Robert Spencer,
Here again we see that all too many Stanford students seem incapable of doing or unwilling to do basic research. Or maybe Ms. Cooperman is simply dishonest. In any case, her implication here is that I have called for the expulsion of all Muslims from Europe, and that Breivik got it from me. Is that true? No. Have I ever called for the expulsion of all Muslims from Europe? No. Cooperman’s further implication is that because Breivik quoted me, I inspired or am responsible for his massacre. In reality, Breivik only seems to quote me extensively because he included in his manifesto the text of a documentary film in which I appear. Every time I speak, my name is given in the text, to make it clear who is speaking. That is not really quoting me extensively. Aside from the documentary script, Breivik actually referred to me only a few times. Courtney Cooperman did not mention that one of those references upbraids me for not calling for violence. Of course, if she had mentioned that, her readers would have realized that her implication, that my work incites violence, was false. Cooperman also omitted mention of the fact that Breivik says in his manifesto that he was inspired to commit violence not by me, but by al-Qaeda and Hamas – that is, by two Muslim entities. Nor did she mention that Breivik said in that manifesto that he decided to commit a massive act of violence in 1999. I published my first book about Islam in 2002.
the self-proclaimed Islamophobe who is scheduled to speak on campus next Tuesday.
Ah, I see this is a talking point. It also appears here and here. Looks as if the snowflakes had a meeting! Anyway, thanks for plugging my book, Courtney. Have you preordered your copy yet? Get it here. In it, as well as in Jihad Watch posts advertising the book (not that Stanford fascist students can be expected to have done any actual research), I’ve explained that “Islamophobia” is an intentional conflation of two distinct phenomena: vigilante attacks upon innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terrorism, which is lumped together with those vigilante attacks in order to discredit such analysis and intimidate people away from attempting it. I am an “Islamophobe” in the sense of opposing jihad terror, discrimination against women, gays, and non-Muslims, and the denial of the freedom of speech. In that sense, everyone should be an “Islamophobe.” But in this propaganda piece, the Stanford fascists are attempting to give you the impression that I approve of vigilante attacks upon innocent Muslims. Note that they never define “Islamophobia,” because doing so would give away their game.
As Stanford grapples with this upcoming event, Foxman’s statement is all too pertinent.
Robert Spencer frames himself as a defender of the Jewish people, often invoking incidents of extremist violence against Jews to corroborate his anti-Muslim agenda. As an American Jew, I am deeply frustrated and infuriated by those who espouse racist hatred and claim to have the Jews’ best interests at heart.
What race is the jihad mass murder of innocent civilians again, Courtney? What race is the jihad murder of Israelis enjoying a Shabbat dinner? The Qur’an depicts the Jews as inveterately evil and bent on destroying the well-being of the Muslims. They are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); they fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); they claim that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); they love to listen to lies (5:41); they disobey Allah and never observe his commands (5:13). They are disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more. They are under Allah’s curse (9:30), and Muslims should wage war against them and subjugate them under Islamic hegemony (9:29). What race is all that, Courtney? And if I am supposedly enabling anti-Semitism by calling attention to it, what are you enabling by smearing me for calling attention to it?
I do want to acknowledge that the opinions I express reflect my individual understanding of Jewish history, values and identity. (For a communal Jewish response to Robert Spencer’s scheduled visit, see the recent open letter in condemnation of the event, to which the Jewish Students Association is a signatory.)
My response is here.
Of course, I have trouble grasping how any Jewish person could accept an ideology whose proponents are often found in coalition with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but I want to make explicit that I am speaking as an individual and do not claim to represent all Jews.
More libel. I have no coalition with white supremacists or neo-Nazis. Do these Stanford fascists have any regard for the truth at all?
Jews are made vulnerable in any society that discriminates and persecutes on the basis of religious and ethnic identity. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s oft-quoted remark, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” is more than just a platitude. If a society can deny freedom of religion to one group, it can employ the same mechanisms to systematically limit Jewish religious practice and denigrate Jewish communities.
Still more libel. I have never advocated for denying religious freedom to Muslims, and challenge Courtney Cooperman to quote me doing so. I am opposed to activity that is illegal under American law, such as shooting American civilians at a Christmas party, murdering one’s daughters for dating non-Muslims, the beating of disobedient women, etc. Courtney Cooperman should be against those things as well. Religious freedom is not a license to break existing laws.
Throughout American history, Jews have been leading defenders of civil liberties and equal rights for good reason. Despite our relative privilege, we will always be a minority in America. Public indifference, or open hostility, to the rights of any minority group is an implicit threat to the well-being of the Jewish people. When hatred remains unchecked or gains ground, Jews have little reason to expect that anyone will come to our defense when we face discrimination or existential danger.
Fortification of civil liberties, strong bulwarks against intolerance and deep commitment to a pluralistic society are the best safeguards of Jewish freedom and the most important pillars of our security. In a society where these institutions and principles do not apply to Muslims, Jews have no guarantee that they are stable. Any platform for Islamophobia is well-equipped to double as a platform for anti-Semitism. No matter how vociferously Robert Spencer proclaims to respect and defend the Jews, his ideology gives license to our oppression.
In reality, Courtney Cooperman is giving license to the jihad mass murder of Jews, and to Islamic antisemitism, by smearing and defaming those who stand against those things.
Spencer also consistently rebukes the claim that “Muslims are the new Jews.” He rejects the idea that the same phenomena that gave impetus to systemic oppression and genocide of Jews underlie anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies. He also maintains that the threat of Islamophobia to Muslims cannot be compared to Nazism’s threat to Jews, writing, “[N]o one is calling for or justifying genocide of Muslims now; there is no individual or group remotely comparable to the National Socialists in any genuine sense.” This claim is not only despicable but also objectively false, as the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar tragically demonstrates.
I am also compelled to bring up a seminar I am taking that explores the historical origins of anti-Semitism. One of the main theses of the class is the notion that hatred accumulates. Anti-Jewish theological interpretations, legislation and imagery did not develop in a vacuum. Stereotypes, persecution and violence only gained traction because subtler forms of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism were already ingrained in the cultural consciousness, as hatred and exclusion were legitimized throughout generations. Across ages and empires, the existing repertoire of anti-Jewish assumptions gave justification to denigration and oppression. The Holocaust would not have been possible without thousands of years of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism that emerged in increasingly catastrophic forms and that, left largely unchecked, accelerated over time. Nazism was only a thinkable outcome because hateful ideologies, with many parallels to Spencer’s, gained widespread acceptance and intensity throughout the history of the Western world.
Produce the parallels, Courtney, or stand accused yet again, and justly, of plain and outright libel.
Spencer’s worldview evokes one particular event that we studied: the trial of the Talmud in 13th-century Paris. The Talmud is the body of Jewish teachings that interpret the words of the Torah. As historians John Friedman, Jean Connell Hoff and Robert Chazan describe in “The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240,” Christian religious and secular authorities were appalled that the Talmud is much longer than the Torah itself, which suggested that Jews were more devoted to human analysis than to G-d’s own word. Christian officials insisted that the Talmud “contained so many falsities and offensive things that they are a source of shame to those who repeat them and horror to those who hear them.” Calling the Talmud a fundamentally anti-Christian document, critics pointed to passages that depicted Jesus burning in excrement in Hell and portrayed Mary as a whore. These passages from the Talmud were not fabricated, but were unjustly taken out of context and highlighted as representative of an entire faith tradition. Spencer’s hostile readings of the Qu’ran follow the same pattern.
As the Qur’an says, “Bring your proof, if you be truthful” (2:111; 27:64). Give one example of my taking any Qur’an passage out of context, ever. You did not, and will not, because you cannot.
In 13th-century Paris, thousands of copies of the Talmud were seized and burned, which not only deprived Jews of their religious practice but also planted the seed for later anti-Jewish attitudes and policies. I should not need to reiterate that a misinformed societal view of a faith should never limit the rights of its adherents, but I find it important to note that Jews have a special historical impetus to denounce such blatant misreadings.
As much as I am frustrated and infuriated that Spencer cites Jewish well-being to corroborate his claims, this is trivial in the context of his entire worldview. The most abhorrent aspect of Spencer’s ideology is the blatant Islamophobia that he embraces, justifies and proliferates. I cannot fathom how I would feel if a self-proclaimed anti-Semite were given a platform to speak on this campus, and I am in awe of the Muslim community’s courage in the face of this affront to their identity and security. Even if one of his stated aims is to protect the Jewish community, Robert Spencer brings nothing of value to the Stanford student body — as a Jewish student, his presence at Stanford is simply insulting. No matter how much Spencer positions himself as a defender of the Jewish people, his rhetoric only serves to undermine our rights, threaten our security and resurface the tragedies we have suffered throughout history.
Islamophobia is a propaganda term designed to intimidate people into thinking it wrong to oppose jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and non-Muslims. And look how well it has worked on the unfortunate Ms. Courtney Coooperman.