Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch denounces the author of the influential Islam: A Short History as just another apologist for Islam, covering up its violent anti-western essence:
“The time for such disingenuousness is over, as is the time, if there ever was time, for the unseemly self-recrimination to which Armstrong is calling the West. The Muslim rage against the Pope’s call to eschew religious violence reveals an Islamic world in deep denial, as irrational as it is unable to take responsibility for its own actions. And in this it has Karen Armstrong and other Leftist haters of Western civilization and culture as willing accomplices.”