“They thrive on militancy and violence. They seek to strike terror and they kill and maim, yet they claim to serve the cause of Islam. These misguided people are found everywhere and unfortunately their number continues to swell – thanks primarily to poverty, injustice and the West’s double standard…. Terrorism, in every form and manifestation, should be condemned not by words but by action and extremists should not be allowed to distort the true image of Islam.”
Naushad Shamimul Haque opposes extremist distortions of Islam.
Most of us would regard this as a balanced and reasoned argument. Not Robert Spencer, though. The very suggestion that poverty, injustice and double standards on the part of the West might have made a contribution to the rise of extremist Islamism reduces him to apoplexy:
“Yes, it’s all our fault. I would like to get into a little discussion of history with Naushad Shamimul Haque, and find out how he explains all those jihads that were waged by Islamic empires at a time when those empires had an overwhelming military superiority over Western non-Muslim lands. Was it poverty? Injustice? Double standards that led Muslims to conquer Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Eastern Europe, North Africa, Spain, India, etc. etc. etc.?”
As distinct from the peace-loving, non-imperialist history of regimes adhering to Christianity, of course.
Anyone tempted to dismiss Robert Spencer’s arguments as the ravings of an isolated right-wing nutter should refer to the outcry that greeted actor Maggie Gyllenhaal’s suggestion that the US itself bore some responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.
See New York Daily News, 24 April 2005 and BBC News, 27 April 2005
For an article by one of Spencer’s co-thinkers from the US right, which actually encourages physical violence against Gyllenhaal (“massaging her scalp with a two-by-four”), see Front Page Magazine, 29 April 2005