On the March 1, 2016 Bible Answer Man broadcast, Hank Hanegraaff interviewed Robert Spencer director of Jihad Watch and author of The Politically Incorrect Gide to Islam (And the Crusades) as well as The Complete Infidels Guide to the Koran. The following are some highlights from their discussion.
Hank Hanegraaff: I should note that Islam is the only religious system in the history of the human race with a socio-political structure of law that mandates violence against the infidel, and that graphic, global reality makes Islam a religious ideology espousing terrorism as a permanent policy not just a temporary expedient. Such is the historical reality from the seventh century Median massacres to the twenty-first century Manhattan massacre and so much more. Thus the portrait of millions of peaceful and tolerant Muslims must not obscure the very real depiction of Islam as a violent and intolerant religion. The current narrative is that to “tell it like it is” is tantamount to radicalizing Muslims and, therefore, exacerbating hostilities that might will otherwise lie dormant. As such, a common refrain reverberates throughout the West, “Islam is not our enemy.” In fact, those were precisely the words that Hillary Clinton used in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks just last November. Barack Obama went even further. He noted that in concert with Muslims worldwide, he shares common principles, principles of justice, progress, tolerance, and dignity of all human beings. Not only that, but according to Obama, throughout history Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.
Joining me on the broadcast today to discuss all this and more is Robert Spencer. He is the author of The Politically Incorrect Gide to Islam (And the Crusades) as well as The Complete Infidels Guide to the Koran. Robert is the director of Jihad Watch. He is also the author of fourteen books on Islam. He has led seminars on Islam for the FBI, for the Joint Terrorism Task Force, for the United States Central Command and other intelligence and military groups, and I am just delighted to have you on the broadcast.
Robert Spencer: Thanks so much Hank great to be here.
Hank: I just heard today that you have been banned from Britain, whatever for?
Robert: I was banned from Britain for the crime of saying that Islam is a religion that has a developed doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers. In other words, I was banned from Britain for telling an obvious truth that the British government would rather not be told.
Hank: How do you fight the current narrative?
Robert: I just tell the truth, Hank. It’s very easy the job that I have. I sometimes think it must be very hard for the people who oppose me because they’re constantly having to devise ways to lie and spin the narrative whereas all I have to do is say what’s happening. What I do is when things happen like the various jihad terror attacks or the Islamic State doing various things that it has become notorious for doing, what I do is show at Jihad Watch, my web site or in my various books, that these things are all based upon various teachings of the Qur’an and Islam. Quoting the Qur’an, quoting the teachings of Muhammad and so on, you know I didn’t make up the quotes, and so it’s very easy to simply set it all out and then people can make the judgments that they’re going to make. But, in any case, I find it mystifying actually to tell you the truth that people think that what I do is hateful or bigoted, or something or other, because I’m usually just quoting their material. If there’s any hatred and bigotry, it’s in the Islamic sources.
Hank: The word that’s appended to you and many others like you who would speak the truth about Islam is that you are Islamophobic.
Robert: Yes. You know, Hank, if you think about it, that’s never a word we heard when we were young men; certainly, never a word that I heard all through my childhood, high school, college. It’s a new coinage. The idea of it is to intimidate people into that there’s something wrong with resisting jihad terrorism. It’s really an insidious coinage because of that. It makes people think that when jihad terror attacks happen, that there’s something going on with non-Muslims, that it must be our fault in some way. So, nobody every challenges the Jihadis to deal with the problems within—nobody every challenges the Muslims community that is in the larger sense to deal with the problems within the Qur’an and Sunnah, with the material in the Islamic texts and teachings, that Jihadis use to justify violence and to make recruits among peaceful Muslims.
Hank: A senior member of al-Qaeda called on you to convert. Is it convert or else?
Robert: Oh, yes! Oh yes! Well, see Muhammad the prophet of Islam taught that when you meet unbelievers you fist invite them to accept Islam. If they refuse that, then you invite them to submit to the hegemony of the Muslims, which would mean that you accept various humiliating discriminatory regulations in return for a so-called covenant of protection. If you refuse both of those then the Muslims will have to fight you. So, the idea is conversion or subjugation or war. Adam Gadahn, who was a convert to Islam from California, made a video. He came to be high up in al-Qaeda, he was killed later in an American airstrike, but he made a video that was introduced by Ayman al-Zawahiri—who is of course now the head of al-Qaeda but was then the number two man—and in that video Gadahn invited me by name to convert to Islam. I was pleased that he noticed my work, but of course I had declined. Now, the difficulty there is what that means is that he now is saying that Muslims can legitimately kill me because I’ve been invited to accept Islam, I’ve refused, and so now my life has been forfeited.
Hank: What do you make, Robert, of the boycott by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for your refusal to adhere to their dogma of Islam as a religion of peace?
Robert: Well, you know it’s kind of dispiriting, in a sense, Hank. The church is above all people—Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox—they should be aware of the history of the relations between Christianity and Islam. They should be aware of that fact that Islamic doctrine that mandated jihad against Christians in the Middle Ages, and really from the seventh-century, the very beginning of Islam, these teachings have not changed, they’ve not been reformed, they’ve not been rejected, they’ve certainty not been forgotten. Now with Islam resurgent all around the world, and Christians persecuted, they have a responsibility to educate their people about the nature of Islam, about the challenges that the West faces, and that the free world faces, and that Christianity in general faces from the Jihadis. Instead, they are systematically silencing voices that speak out about this, and working to make sure that the truth about Islam and jihad does not reach their people. For example, I was speaking at a Lutheran conference last summer in Dallas. I was the keynote speaker, speaking about Muslim persecution of Christians and why is it happening, what it is based upon in Islamic teachings, and so on. I was told once I got there that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops actually, they usually send a representative every year to this Lutheran conference, but this year they found out I was the keynote speaker, they pulled out. I think, you know, what terrible crime am I exactly guilty of? Well, I’m guilty of pointing out that the Qur’an and the example of Muhammad actually do contain things that the Jihadis use to incite violence, and that is so unpopular nowadays, such an unwelcomed thing that they would rather I be silenced, boycotted , etc.
To request your copies of Robert Spencer’s The Politically Incorrect Gide to Islam (And the Crusades) and The Complete Infidels Guide to the Koran, click here.
(Interview taken from the March 1, 2016 Bible Answer Man broadcast.)