Reading Robert Spencer Alongside William R. Polk on Crusade and Jihad?


4:28 PM Wednesday.

I have decided to spend the next twelve months or so with a deep dive into Islamic studies. But I am a little worried that my current set of Islamic studies authors may be too apologetic with respect to Islam and not critical enough to help me understand what the American and European right is truly thinking about clash and dialogue between Islamic, Jewish, and Christian civilizations. 

The current flashpoint of my consideration is Robert Spencer's Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades). Is it Islamophobic hate speech, or protected right-wing political speech? It doesn't look like the book is banned as hate speech in Norway, but would be welcomed as a text in a critical Norwegian university seminar along the following lines:


I am thinking Spencer's Guide could be a helpful right-wing polemical counterpoint to Polk's Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War between the Muslim World and the Global North. At the same time, I need to better understand the Stanford student community's attempt to prevent Spencer from giving a campus speech to the Stanford College Republicans (cf. An open letter to the College Republicans regarding Robert Spencer). When is it more appropriate for an elite American university to censor a thinker, as opposed to socially contextualizing and repudiating his arguments? Does the attempt to ban Spencer from speaking on some elite university campuses in America amount to anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-Republican discrimination by unwitting Islamist apologists?

I guess I need to look into the UK situation more carefully. Spencer was banned from entering the UK in 2013. While it wasn't directly for Islamophobia, it does seem to have been for anti-Muslim rhetoric not conducive to the public good. I'd really like to read a copy of the actual decision letter, and then see how the decision letter was analyzed by the Court that ruled on Spencer's appeal:


Ah, I found the Court's analysis (via SN07035) and read most of it:


I didn't see what seemed to me adequate judicial handling of the first point made by Mr. Khan, namely, "The policy used to refuse entry to the Appellants is unlawful, as it is used to refuse the Appellants entry into the UK, when the Appellants themselves do not intend to incite violence, but whose presence it is said may lead third parties to commit violence." 

Would Spencer be banned from entering the UK today to give a lecture about his work? I suppose this depends in part on the current definition of Islamophobia in the UK: 




On the one hand, I see that Robert Spencer was platformed in 2015 to give a talk entitled "The Theological Aspects of Islam That Lead to Jihad" by the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville. On the other hand, I see that the ADL includes Spencer's organization Jihad Watch "in its databases of extremist and hateful organizations, similar to hate group classifications used by other organizations," according to Google Gemini. 

On a related front, if I want to engage in serious religious reading of Abrahamic Scripture, including the Quran, I will need to address the very deep problem of the canonical roots of fundamentalist Abrahamic violence. Do the canonical Abrahamic texts - as opposed to the later interpretative traditions - say things that we would not accept from a credible moral leader in the American academy today? Do they sometimes say things we would not even accept under free speech protections in some European countries? How should a reverent interfaith Abrahamic religious reader respond to morally problematic verses in the canonical core?

Here is a link to a helpful dialogue that I just had with Google Gemini about the issue:


I think, in the interest of avoiding moral compromise, that I will add Spencer's Guide to my personal library, and maybe even start reading it tonight, but from a very cautious and critical perspective. I want to learn how to think critically and guardedly about jihad, but without any harmful bias, intellectual injustice, or discriminatory hatred in my heart:   


Am I a little bit suspicious about Islam? 

I don't honestly know at the outset if I am suspicious about Islam as a whole. Let me look into this for a moment. I was definitely suspicious about Islam as a whole in the immediate aftermath of October 7, when I couldn't fathom why the OIC failed to condemn the Hamas terror attack. I felt this gave considerable traction to Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis. But now, after seeing so many influential Muslim political leaders finally condemning October 7 and supporting Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza, I feel that the "dialogue of civilizations" is winning, and I am cautiously optimistic about the core impulses of Islam. I guess I wouldn't say that I am suspicious of Islam at this point in time. I am very curious to learn more about Islam, and optimistic that what I learn will reinforce my faith in the importance of respectful, honest, and deeply constructive interreligious and geopolitical dialogue with my peace-loving Muslim brothers and sisters in the United Nations two-state solution family.


End 8:37 PM.

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