At the Guardian, Andrew Brown takes a look at some Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s European links, noting the views of Anders Gravers of Stop Islamisation of Europe, Geller’s support for the English Defence League, and Spencer’s association with Douglas Murray. Last year’s dinner fiasco is raised:
Spencer was invited to supper by Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion when he visited England last autumn, only for the evening to break up before it had even started when a bunch of EDL skinheads turned up at the restaurant, invited along by a supporter of Spencer who was making a video about him and had been interviewing them, too. The difference between the EDL and the various “Stop Islamisation of [your country here]” on the one hand, and the Centre for Social Cohesion on the other, while obvious to Murray, does not seem to have occurred to the American videomaker.
This was an incident I blogged on at the time. (The videomaker was Martin Mawyer, an anti-gay Christian fundamentalist. Spencer and Geller maintained that Mawyer’s views on homosexuality were his own affair, although they changed their minds and acted shocked when his views reached Dutch media and embarrassed Geert Wilders.)
Further:
Spencer was the subject of a fulsome interview in the Catholic Herald in 2007, which was, in turn, plugged by Damian Thompson in the Daily Telegraph; Thompson was then the Herald’s editor-in-chief, and now is a leader writer on the Telegraph. “Major bookstores, gutlessly, refuse to stock Spencer’s work,” wrote Thompson then, “so here is a link to his main titles…
Thompson and I quarrelled, terminally, when I criticised him for reprinting without checking another Spencer-linked story about a mob of Muslims closing down a hospital in Sydney, which turned out to originate from the imagination of a neo-fascist group there. He hasn’t spoken to me since. Neither, though, has he used anything from Spencer on his blog. It looks as if some of the respectable English right has learned its lesson, but in America, Spencer and Geller are still taken seriously.
No response from Thompson so far.
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Spencer does have some nice and nasty fans.
However, Spencer does document the criminal aspects of the life of Muhammad from Sahih Hadithic sources (eg sex with Ayesha when she was 9), Massacre of surrendered POWs at Banu Qurayza and the Verses of the Sword in the Qur’an far better than his critics.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/08/muslim-scholar-offers-lies-about-muhammad-to-counter-spencers-truth-about-muhammad.html
Just as there are violent verses in the Bible which Jews and Christians say do not apply today, Muslims need to state that the violent verses in the Quran and the warlike examples from Muhammad’s life are not for imitation today. Instead most just scream ‘Islamophobia’ when this mentioned.
It is physically dangerous to criticize or mock Muhammad it is not physically dangerous to mock Jesus or the Buddah.
I fail to see anything scndalous in Andrew Brown’s article.
You links promised dirt, but I,m still squeaky clean.
In fact, I’d say that overall both Geller and Spencer are doing the work that leftists like Andrew Brown should be doing, but won’t.
It’s andrew Brown I find shocking and here’s why:
Isn’t it the responsability and duty of The Left to expose and denounce clerical fascism in all its manifestions, including that of Islam?
Isn’t it The Left’s duty to fight against and to denounce gender inequality?
And isn’t it also The Left’s duty to denounce religious discrimination, especially of the kind that can be found in spades in just about any majority-muslim country?
Shouldn’t Andrew Brown, as a leftist-progressive, be standing in solidarity with Spencer and Geller?
Why is he acting as an apologist for clerical fascists?
I’d had an open mind on Douglas Murray, but was not at all impressed by his recent performance on Any Questions.
To Richard Bartholomew: I would appreciate it very much if you could help publicize two Upcoming counter-protests against recent anti-mosque protests.
Thanks for all the work you’ve done to keep an eye on the bigots.
To Richard Bartholomew: I would appreciate it very much if you could help publicize two Upcoming counter-protests against recent anti-mosque protests
Every last one of the 57 Muslim-majority states have laws that severely discriminate against ALL religious minorities.And Islam itself is headquartered in a religious-apartheid hell-hole that forbids the practice of any other religion except Islam. Those caught doing so are severly punished and imprisoned.
Since you’re so ( apparently) concerned for the rights of religious minorities, then why haven’t you and your organisation done anything to highlight this horrendous and unjust situation?
Why no takers to champion such blatant discrimination and injustice? Isn’t that what progressives are supposed to do?
There are already over a hundred mosques in New York city alone, including two within just blocks of the proposed G.Z. project, and yet in the Muslim world, even in those countries considered moderate, getting permission to just repair an older church or temple, let alone to build a new one, is next to impossible.
You champion religious bigots and intolerant, medieval, Saudi- financed religious obscurantism, all the while righteously ignoring the real victims of religious descrimination.
How can you be so blinkered, so hate-filled and such a hypocrite?
How long did it take and just how hard did you have to work at it?
If international Christian religious bodies, or other international groups, were to work on pressuring the governments of Muslim-majority countries to become more religiously pluralistic, I would have no problem with that. But that’s not a reason for Western countries to mistreat the Muslims in our own midst.
Immigration does not equal military invasion. And the medieval battles you speak of occurred at a time when Christian countries were WORSE than Muslim countries in their treatment of religious minorities. Of course, that’s no longer true, at least here in the West..
My own group is focused more on opposing bigotry here in the U.S.A. than overseas. (Why? Because religious bigotry here in the U.S.A is both easier to overcome and, at the same time, more likely to be a danger to people whom we personally know.) However, opposing religious bigotry overseas IS certainly a valid concern, too, and we would be happy to endorse genuine efforts against it. If indeed opposing religious bigotry overseas is YOUR concern, why don’t you work on that, rather than using it to justify mistreating people here in the U.S.A.?
P.S.: I see that my reference to medieval battles was posted in error here. That was intended to be part of my reply to another comment here.
My own group is focused more on opposing bigotry here in the U.S.A. than overseas. (Why? Because religious bigotry here in the U.S.A is both easier to overcome and, at the same time, more likely to be a danger to people whom we personally know.)
Cute. Opposing religious bigotry, for al there is of it, in America is risk free and allows you to engage in much moral preening without incuring the least danger.
If indeed opposing religious bigotry overseas is YOUR concern, why don’t you work on that, rather than using it to justify mistreating people here in the U.S.A.?
I make no distinction between domestic and overseas religious dsicrimination, because the principles of religious freedom are enshrined in a UN Human Rights Charter that has been signed by most of the world’s nations.
Now back to ( the mostly mythical) domestic Islampophobia. I commented above that there are already 100 mosques in New York City.
Well, I was mistaken; there are, in fact, more than TWO HUNDRED of them.
Such is our islamophobia.
Maimonides, noted anti-Muslim bigot, on religious intolerance.
http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2007/12/26/maimonides-and-the-%E2%80%9Cmeshugga%E2%80%9D-prophet/
[…] 14. The following articles from 2010 and 2011 briefly mention Douglas Murray’s links to Robert Spencer, although it’s unclear if the Guardian authors were aware of the full scale of Murray’s direct involvement with the Spencer cabal: See here, here and here. […]
[…] 14. The following articles from 2010 and 2011 briefly mention Douglas Murray’s links to Robert Spencer, although it’s unclear if the Guardian authors were aware of the full scale of Murray’s direct involvement with the Spencer cabal: See here, here and here. […]