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Spencerism Unveiled
There are many interesting things to read at Jihad Watch, the website of Robert Spencer, America’s top scholarly critic of Islam, but I rarely go there. And the reason is that when I do go there, I inevitably end up reacting to what (to me) are the maddening twists and turns of Spencer’s mind, particularly his amazing, ever-inventive evasions on the immigration issue, which cry out for critical comment, and which I seem to be the only person in the universe to notice or care about. And that puts me in the obnoxious and disliked role of criticizing someone who is basically on the same side as myself. For example, here is Spencer’s response to the Washington Post’s dishonest and comforting spin on the Pew poll finding that at least 13 percent of U.S. Muslims consider suicide bombings justified:
I don’t see how this can possibly be spun as good news. Imagine if 13% of Christians had been polled as supporting suicide bombing. Do you think the WaPo headline would have been that Christians are “opposed to extremism”? It seems as if once again we are witnessing the soft bigotry of low expectations. No Muslims, or anyone else, in the U.S. or anywhere else should be supporting suicide bombing. If a significant number in the U.S. does support them, as seems to be the case, that is a matter of grave concern for government and law enforcement officials, and raises numerous important questions about immigration, the monitoring of American mosques, and more.Now I’m sorry to ask this of Mr. Spencer, I really am—but what questions does the widespread Muslim support for terror raise about immigration? Does it raise the question: Should we stop all Muslim immigration into the United States? Does it raise the question: Should we strip some or all Muslim resident aliens of their resident status and send them home? Those are the kinds of things we would consider doing in a time of war. And remember that Spencer just lambasted Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards for saying that we are NOT in a war on terrorism. Furthermore, Spencer understands better than anyone that Muslims’ highest loyalty is not to the particular country they come from, but to the Islamic community as a whole. Internal conflicts among Muslims fade into insignificance when Muslims are confronted by non-Muslims. Then the Muslims tend to band together as one. This was why, for example, the July 2005 suicide bombers in Britain, who were all British-born, began to hate Britain as a result of its participation in the occupation of Iraq and the “war on terror”: they saw Britain as an enemy of Islam and thus as their enemy. In any case, Spencer, who insists we’re in a war on terror, refuses to say outright what we should do about a domestic population of aliens who share the same overarching religious loyalty and identity as the terrorist enemies, and a very significant portion of whom actively support the enemies’ most extreme actions. If we were really in a war, as Spencer says we are, and if Spencer supported that war, which he says he does, then he would at least say that non-citizen Muslims with jihadist sympathies should be deported, and he would certainly say that Muslim immigration must be significantly reduced or stopped altogether. But Spencer doesn’t say or even hint at any of that (which suggests that Spencer himself does not really think we’re in a war). He just says that unspecified “questions” have been “raised” about Muslim immigration. I earlier suggested what a couple of these questions might be. Here is a more complete list:
These are the types of questions that Spencer hinted had been raised, but that he declined to specify. If these were not the sorts of question he was thinking of, then I frankly can’t imagine what he had in mind, especially as he says we’re in a war against jihadist Islam. In any case, now that I’ve stated several questions about Muslim immigration that are logically raised by the discovery of the large scale incidence of pro-terror sentiment in the U.S. Muslim population, will Spencer answer these questions? Based on his past handling of the issue, particularly his comment yesterday, the most he’ll do is say that he agrees that we must do something about Muslim immigration, but that we shouldn’t talk about it until there is a wide recognition on the part of the American public of the dangerous nature of jihadism, because only at that point will people understand the real issue and be prepared to support strong measures. The trouble is, the level of understanding that Spencer says is required may not be reached for many years, if ever, meaning that Spencer will not tell us for years, if ever, what are his questions about Muslim immigration and what are his answers to those questions. But if he is not prepared himself to address the questions about Muslim immigration that he says have been raised, why did he say that the Pew poll “raises numerous important questions about [Muslim] immigration”? And here’s my explanation: He is hoping that other people will ask and answer the questions, so that he won’t have to do it himself. Once it becomes the safe, consensus position that Muslim immigration should be stopped or that Muslims resident aliens should be deported, once taking that position no longer requires a person to butt his head against the conservative establishment, once it becomes the case that frankly addressing such questions does not threaten one’s career, one’s place in the world, or one’s friendly relations with one’s fellow elite conservatives, at that point Spencer will go along with the newly emerged hardline consensus on these issues. Until then, he will keep sticking his toes in the cold ocean, waiting for other people to jump in. And that, I propose, is what it comes down to. Spencer keeps planting these tantalizing hints about “something” that needs to be done about immigration, without saying himself what that “something” is, because he hopes that his vague suggestions will gradually lead others to adopt the specific and concrete positions on Islam that he himself is unwilling to adopt. And when enough people (not just wild-eyed extremists like me) do adopt them and they become normal positions for conservatives to have, then Spencer will suddenly come out as an immigration restrictionist. This, I believe, is Spencer’s modus operandi.
Jeff in England writes:
Again “we” try to get some sense out of Spencer and again I anticipate not doing so. But you have updated the periodic attempt to get clarity from Spencer on the Muslim immigration issue and let’s see what happens. It is well written even if it is doomed to be ignored by Spencer or answered in his usual unclear muddled way. Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 24, 2007 09:51 AM | Send Email entry |