Another baseless claim from WorldNetDaily, in a plug for a book:
…a controversial new book that makes the case that the biblical Antichrist is one and the same as the Quran’s Muslim Mahdi.
Meet “The Islamic Antichrist,” a book greeted in the Muslim world with the same enthusiasm as Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses.” The author, Joel Richardson, is prepared. He has written the book under a pseudonym to protect himself and his family.
There is no evidence that anyone much in “the Muslim world” has ever heard of The Islamic Antichrist, let alone “greeted” it with the same kind of scenes that we saw with Rushdie back in 1989. If I were Richardson, I’d be embarrassed by such a whopper.
But why make up such a thing? The clue is in an older WND article, from last year:
…Meet “The Islamic Antichrist,” a book almost certain to be greeted in the Muslim world with the same enthusiasm as Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses.” The author, Joel Richardson, is prepared. He has written the book under a pseudonym to protect himself and his family.
Yes, some WND hack has simply updated an old puff-piece by putting the claim into the past tense.
As I also noted last year, this is not the first time that WND editor Joseph Farah has trivialised what happened to Rushdie by suggesting that his own wares are under threat from extremists. In 2008 WorldNetDaily published a book about ex-Muslims – also co-authored by Richardson – calledWhy We Left Islam. Farah gleefully predicted riots across the Muslim world, but instead all that happened was that CAIR issued a statement pointing out that Farah was known for anti-Islam views and that the book should be ignored. Farah then laughably claimed it was unfair to suggest he was anti-Islam, and that CAIR had lied by suggesting he had run a column which suggested dropping pigs’ blood over Afghanistan. In fact, Farah has always been perfectly open with his anti-Islam views, and he had run a post-9/11 column which suggested (jokingly) putting pigs’ blood in Kabul’s water supply. Farah whined that CAIR’s “Hooper put a target on my back”, and he threatened to sue for libel. Obviously, this was a shameless attempt to concoct a death threat where none existed.
I discussed Richardson’s ludicrous theory – which comes with an endorsement from Robert Spencer – here.
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Richardson doesn’t seem to be protecting himself via pseudonym very successfully if WND is publicly identifying him as author.
The WND article makes no sense. It says Richardson wrote the book under a pseudonym and yet there is his name prominently displayed on the picture of the book jacket — at least that’s what I’m assuming the picture depicts.
Most WND readers don’t know what the word “pseudonym” means. To them it’s just a word that somehow gives Richardson creedence.