SUPERHEROS: BAT, BOSTOM, BOB (SPENCER)

Earlier this week, I sighed heavily when yet another high minded intellectual, David Frum,  following in Dinesh's footsteps, had switched gears and gone on to attack the very people that will lead us to victory in the war on the Jihad. The greatest historians of our time, once again getting nailed to the cross, for telling the truth. Kill the messenger. As if the counter jihad movement wasn't small enough!

The links (at Jihad Watch) and full texts to the eviscerating rebuttals of Frum’s self-righteous juvenilia by Bat Ye’or, and Robert Spencer, are provided below. 

When I ran Robert's rebuttal, I wrote here, " David Frum has entered the jihad fray hoping to project his Western thinking onto what he would like the  Koran to be. Isn't that special? And tiresome. This is not Frum's milieu and it shows. I have been studying and covering this single subject intensively for 3 years now after coming to it after 9/11/01. I won't pretend to know as much as Spencer, Yeor, Bostom, Warraq, but I do know that they provide empirical evidence. They do the work to substantiate their deductions. It's not theory. It's fact and they back it up."

I blame Bernard Lewis for a lot of bad information, bogus intel and  fallacious deductions. Considered the world's leading scholar on Islam, he is an apologist and in many cases confused,dithering even,  if not  a liar.  His historical inaccuracies are well documented but his positions are enormously influential to world leaders and opinion makers so the harm he does is incalculable.

Over at Jihadwatch Bat Yeor comes out swinging and Bostom's response  follows. Yes, Bat, Bostom, Bob, this post is a grand slam.

Bat Ye’or: Rejoinder to David Frum

David Frum's piece is here; my response is here. And now the great historian Bat Ye’or has kindly sent me this response:

In his latest article, “Ancient Holy Books, Modern Dilemmas” (posted January 8, 2008), David Frum poses as a referee in a disputation, pretending there are two alleged extremes, whereas he ignores the rules and the meaning of the subject itself. This hoax has often been used by Sages who pontificate: “As usual, the truth is in the middle.” But often this scenario of two opposed extremisms allows the Sages to pride themselves on what is only the appearance of wisdom. Moreover, this catch-phrase is meaningless, because truth is not found at a linear distance between two extremes. Between the Nazi genocidal policy toward the Jews and the victims’ affirmation of their right to live there is no middle-way solution. Would we discuss how many Jews it would be right for the Nazis to exterminate? Between slavery and human equality, there is no middle position. Between the dehumanization of dhimmitude and the inalienable right to freedom, dignity and equality, there is no meeting in the middle. Would one haggle over the amount due for protecting one’s life and rights?

David Frum describes my work as a study of Islam, whereas it is research into a neglected and specific domain involving Islamic theology, jurisprudence and history in relation to non-Muslims. Within this particular field, I only examined the Jewish and Christian aspect, not that of the Zoroastrians and other religious denominations. It is therefore not an assessment of Islam in general. Even more, in none of my writing is there the implication that Islam must disappear for the sake of peace. Maybe Frum has hidden his own thought, which he unconsciously projects on Robert Spencer and myself, while contrasting our alleged somber designs with his own generous wisdom -- which is not, in the least, very original. It hangs on the usual love paradigm of interfaith dialogue, dhimmi biased vision, and subvention of billions of dollars, while waiting with humble timidity for a powerful Muslim majority to reinterpret the Koran as a book of universal love and peace. I do not object to that, except that meanwhile, Muslim reformers even in Europe must hide to save their lives, while terrorism claims countless innocent victims throughout the globe, and tomorrow we might be facing a global nuclear jihad.

Here Bostom comes tearing out of the gate over FPG:

David Frum’s Axilla of Ignorance* January 11th, 2008 (25 minutes ago) by Andrew Bostom

*(“Axilla of Ignorance,” coined by Ruth King)

Inexplicably David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute—hardly an authority on Islamic doctrine, or history—has nevertheless lashed out——albeit inaccurately, and within the constraints of his own crude understanding—at two contemporary scholars, Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer. A serious, respected writer/essayist on jihad terrorism sent me this assessment:

I don’t know why I should be surprised at this kind of thing any more, but I am. Frum really should have known better.

His criticism makes it sound as if you [AB] and Bat Ye’or and Spencer simply read the Koran and the Life of Mohammad, and inferred the nature of Islam from these isolated texts. As I said in my book—I would have no problem if Muslims decided to go back and read jihad out of the Koran; it would be okay if they pretended jihad had never played any important role in the expansion of Islam. I would rejoice if Muslims really behaved as Frum thinks he would behave if he were a Muslim! But it ain’t gonna happen.

Secularized Westerner intellectuals like Frum simply cannot imagine what it is like to be possessed by a living faith that commands its faithful to expand the community of the faithful by violent methods. This kind of fanaticism, as I argue in my book, is outside their imaginative scope. So whenever contemporary scholars like you, Bat Ye’or, or Spencer point out what every schoolboy once knew about Islam, you are the ones who are treated like extremists. When your first book came out I was astonished that anyone thought it was controversial. You didn’t make up the idea of jihad—you simply documented the historical Muslim theory and practice of it. And yet that is considered as “going too far.” The same thing can be said of Bat Ye’or work. If the two of you were merely investigating a historically transcended and outmoded form of Islam, I suppose you could be blamed for failing to let the dead bury the dead. But today people are still dying and killing in the name of Islam—but we are forbidden even to see the truth, let alone speak it.

The links (at Jihad Watch) and full texts to the eviscerating rebuttals of Frum’s self-righteous juvenilia byBat Ye’or, and Robert Spencer, , are provided below.

Bostom couldn't resist the medical terminology pun on Frum's supposed formulation "Axis of Evil"