Way to go Spencer 
Al-Arabiya in a froth over Spencer book: ’
Al-Qaeda’s Azzam Al-Amriki, however, loved it*
Al-Arabiya discovers a sixteen-month-old promotion for my book The Truth About Muhammad, and the spittle starts flying.
As for the headline of their piece, I challenge anyone at Al-Arabiya, or anyone anywhere, to substantiate a single lie or hateful statement within the book.
‘US magazine distributes free anti-Prophet book: Book is said to contain lies and hate,’ from Al-Arabiya (thanks to all who sent this in):
A right-wing American weekly magazine will distribute free copies of a book that insults Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and associates Islam with terrorism, Washington-based news agency America in Arabic reported.
‘Right-wing’! Boo!
The neo-conservative, Republican-oriented Human Events magazine will distribute Robert Spencer’s The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion (2006), America in Arabic said.
‘Neo-conservative’! Boo! ‘Republican-oriented’! Boo!
Actually, as I noted above, this promotion has gone out many times over the last year and a half.
Actually, Human Events is a newspaper.
The book — regularly priced at 30 dollars — is released by Regnery, which has published a string of controversial neo-con books and is a division of Eagle Publishing, which owns Human Events.
Actually it’s $27.95, unless it has gone up without my knowledge.
‘Controversial neo-con books’! Boo!
Well-known British writer Karen Armstrong, author of Muhammad: A Prophet of Our Time, has said that the book is ‘written in hatred,’ contains ‘basic and bad mistakes of fact’ and that the author ‘deliberately manipulates the evidence’.
Actually, it was Karen Armstrong (who cannot, as far as I know, read souls and thus has no idea whether or not I wrote the book in ‘hatred’) who committed ‘basic and bad mistakes of fact’ and perhaps ‘deliberately manipulate[d] the evidence’ in her truth-free review of my book, as I demonstrated here.
The magazine says Spencer unravels facts not known to historians.
No, it doesn’t.
The book claims that Muhammad said terrorism made him victorious and that he used to tempt people with paradise so they would crush his enemies.
Yeah, I made all that up, and cast it into the canonical hadith by means of my Zionist black arts.
‘I have been made victorious with terror’ — so says Muhammad not according to me, but according to Bukhari (Vol. 4, Book 52, Number 220). Sahih Bukhari is the hadith collection, that is, the collection of traditions of Muhammad, that Muslims consider most reliable.
And what about that bit about Paradise? Here’s another ahadith: ‘On the day of the battle of Uhud, a man came to the Prophet and said, ‘Can you tell me where I will be if I should get martyred?’ The Prophet replied, ‘In Paradise.’ The man threw away some dates he was carrying in his hand, and fought till he was martyred’ (Bukhari Volume 5, Book 59, Number 377).
Yes, more of Spencer’s lies!
The author also accuses Muhammad of treason, breaching the Treaty of Hudaybiya with the Meccan tribe of Quraish, and instigating Muslims to kill Jews.
According to Muhammad’s earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, the Treaty of Hudaybiya contained this provision: ‘If anyone comes to Muhammad without the permission of his guardian he will return him to them; and if anyone of those with Muhammad comes to Quraysh they will not return him to him.’
That is, those fleeing the Quraysh and seeking refuge with the Muslims would be returned to the Quraysh, while those fleeing the Muslims and seeking refuge with the Quraysh would not be returned to the Muslims.
But soon thereafter a woman of the Quraysh, Umm Kulthum, joined the Muslims in Medina; her two brothers came to Muhammad, asking that they be returned ‘in accordance with the agreement between him and the Quraysh at Hudaybiya.’ But Muhammad refused: Allah forbade it. He gave Muhammad a new revelation: ‘O ye who believe! When there come to you believing women refugees, examine and test them: Allah knows best as to their faith: if ye ascertain that they are believers, then send them not back to the unbelievers’ (Qur’an 60:10).
In refusing to send Umm Kulthum back to the Quraysh, Muhammad broke the treaty. Although Muslim apologists have claimed throughout history that the Quraysh broke it first, this incident came before all those by the Quraysh that Muslims point to as treaty violations. Islamic apologist Yahiya Emerick, in his own biography of Muhammad, essentially admits this, and asserts that Muhammad based his case on a bit of legal hair-splitting: the treaty stipulated that the Muslims would return to the Quraysh any man who came to them, not any woman. But even if that is true, Muhammad soon – as Emerick acknowledges – began to accept men from the Quraysh as well, thus definitively breaking the treaty. See Yahiya Emerick, The Life and Work of Muhammad, Alpha Books, 2002, pp. 230-240.
So I suppose Emerick’s book also, in acknowledging all this, also contains ‘lies’ and ‘hate’?
And as for the bit about killing Jews, both of the earliest biographers of Muhammad, Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa’d, both zealous Muslims, record his telling his followers at a certain point: ‘Kill any Jew that falls into your power.’
Spencer, the director of the Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch websites, also claims that the prophet encouraged Muslim men to take women captive to control them.
Yes, it is I who wrote into the Qur’an the permission for Muslim men to have sexual relations with women ‘whom your right hands possess’ (4:24).
Ultra conservative attorney Ann Coulter, who writes a column in the magazine, is taking part in the campaign to promote the book.
‘Ultra conservative’! Boo! Ann Coulter! Boo!
The rest of the Al-Arabiya piece goes on to smear Coulter, and me by association. But the troubling aspect of all this for the folks at Al-Arabiya, as I show by the citations above, is that everything I say in the book is true, and it is they who are either lying or ignorant about what the earliest Islamic texts say about Muhammad.
* Yes, folks, it’s a Photoshop job.
‘
(Via avideditorla’s shared items in Google Reader.)
The two explosives were hurled into the Hillel delegate’s home in Providence, Rhode Island. One landed in the living room without exploding and was taken for fingerprint analysis. The second hit an external wall, igniting a fire in the yard.
‘
