Today I spoke at the Young America’s Foundation’s 2017 Chicago Freedom Conference. As usual with YAF, the young people in attendance were informed, committed, and enthusiastic.
A number of journalists and bloggers have confused counter-jihadist Robert Spencer with white supremacist Richard Spencer, just as they confuse opposition to jihad terror with racism. In this video, Robert Spencer and David Wood discuss the differences between opposing terrorism and promoting race-based bigotry.
(The following video, praising both Robert Spencer and Juhdi Jasser, was posted a few days before Robert Spencer posted an article about the futility of the Muslim Reform Movement and personally attacking a leading proponent, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. Mr. Spencer stated, inter alia,
There are many viable strategies, most completely untested, for resisting the global jihad, but in the fifteen years since 9/11 it has become clear that supporting Muslim reformers is nice identity politics and makes some people feel as if they’ve headed off charges of “racism” and “Islamophobia” from the Left, but where are the Muslims who are saying, “I supported the jihad and was about to join ISIS until I heard Dr. Jasser”? There are no such people. Jasser mentions Raheel Raza; she spoke after me at an event in Toronto last year, and said that she read the Qur’an every morning and denounced terrorism. That’s very nice, but all it did was confuse the audience about the ways in which Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims. Is Raheel Raza going to jihadis and explaining to them how they’re misreading the Qur’an? Somehow I doubt it.
. . . .
It’s no wonder that Zuhdi Jasser, with his Blaze program, and his CPAC speech, and his Fox appearances, and the uncritical adulation of so very many non-Muslims on the Right, is feeling insecure and threatened: his position is incoherent, and somewhere in his heart of hearts, even he knows it.And so not content with all the fame and fawning and financial advantages, he lashes out against the few remaining people who dare to challenge him on the facts, desperate to destroy us. He is in this doomed to fail as spectacularly as he has in trying to reform Islam, because there is just one weapon we have that he does not: the truth. [Emphasis added.]
In some respects, Robert Spencer diatribe intersects with that of Joy Reid. She seems to contend that all Muslims are good, and Spencer seems to contend that none are amenable to a Muslim reformation and all favor Sharia law, even in America. I do not know the source of the “financial advantages” Dr. Jasser allegedly gets from the Muslim Reform Movement, but assume that his funding comes from his medical practice.– DM
WarSclerotic 
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