The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of a Clash of Civilizations

Excerpt from “Fascist-Islamophobia”: A Case Study in Totalitarian Demonization by Dr. Robert Dickson Crane, published in The American Muslim, October, 2007. To read the entire article, click here.

The future of America and of global civilization will depend on whether and when the leaders of each of the world’s nations can join to bring out the best of each civilization in order to build a single civilization of global pluralism. The purpose must be to bring out the best of the past in order to build both for the present and the future a global federation of independent nations in the pursuit of peace through compassionate justice.

The opposite alternative is mutual demonization whereby members of one civilization join the extremists of another in supporting the extremists’ perversion of their own religion. In practice this would bring out the worst of the past to paralyze the present and destroy the future.

The many books by Robert Spencer and a host of lesser professionals in demonization typify a genre of books that have captured the imagination of an entire nation. Amazon’s list of books on Islam and Muslims available for purchase in the Year 2007 exceeds 75,000. Of the first 400 listed, fifty could be classified as Islam-bashing, and half of these are militantly or extremely so. A critique of any one of them could serve as a critique of them all, though Robert Spencer’s book is perhaps the most sophisticated in its virulence. The basic theme is a self-fulfilling prophecy that brands Islam as inherently terrorist and thereby provokes Muslims to become exactly what they are said to be. Spencer writes: “It is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain that Islam is a religion of peace when warfare and booty were among the chief preoccupations of the prophet of Islam. Sincere Islamic reformers should confront these facts, instead of ignoring or glossing over them, and work to devise ways in which Muslims can retreat from the proposition that Muhammad’s example is in all ways normative. If they do not do so, one outcome is certain: bloodshed perpetrated in the name of Islam and in imitation of the prophet will continue.”

Obviously no Muslims will ever retreat from the proposition that the Prophet Muhammad is normative, any more than any Christians (or Muslims) would retreat from the same proposition about Jesus Christ, because for either of them to deny their model would render them outside the religion.

A few self-styled modernist, liberal, or progressivist Muslims have reacted to the trend toward demonization by agreeing with the detractors that the religion needs to be reformed. Certainly Muslim thought is badly in need of a thorough overhaul and, in fact, is in the midst of just such a revolution among most of the Islamic scholars around the world. None of these revolutionary reformers, however, would think for a moment that Islam as a religion needs to be changed or ever could be, because it is based on a direct revelation from God. If Osama bin Laden wants to reform the religion, then he is no longer a Muslim. His problem is that he is un-Islamic. He is not practicing his self-professed religion. In fact, he has invented a distinct, new totalitarian ideology as a brand new religion.

If Islam bashers agree with his new ideology as the equivalent of Islam, they have joined him and become part of the problem. If those concerned about ideological extremism among Muslims want to help marginalize extremists, they should not reinforce them by copying the extremists’ perversions of the Qur’an. Robert Spencer and his cohorts copy each other in producing a whole library of books that not only de facto promote totalitarian terrorism among Muslims but, in fact, faithfully demonstrate the totalitarian mentality in their own writings.

As a professional in his trade, Spencer uses the language of think-tank academese in order to give the appearance of objectivity. He asks the rhetorical question whether there is any difference between Islam and Islamism and between Islamism and Osama bin Laden as its most faithful model in the modern world. Spencer’s whole book, The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Region, was written to serve one objective, which is to prove that all three, Islam, Islamism, and Osama bin Laden are one ball of wax.

Spencer quotes a secondary source, “Jihad in Canada,” from the Ottawa Citizen of June 5, 2007, to prove his points by marshaling the opinions of those who agree with him. The author of this article first politely states that he has nothing against Islam, but instead condemns Islamism. He writes: “A Muslim is one who practices Islam, a great religion. An Islamist is one for whom Islam is not just a religion, but a political ideology. Islamists seek to establish pure Islamic societies governed according to the harshest interpretations of Islam. Islamism has apocalyptic echos of another millennial ideology, fascism (think of the Thousand Year Reich). Islamism is totalitarian, utopian, violent – and like fascism it is expansionist.”

Spencer quotes Richard Lowry in the National Review of March 27, 2006: “Although the idea that Islam is a religion of peace … seems a polite fiction, it is an important one. Influential Muslims believe it to be true, and it is crucial that they prevail in the Muslim struggle for self-definition.” Spencer adds, “If Muhammad’s own life and teachings are the source of jihad violence, identifying the truth will not compel Islamic states to fight America. But it will allow for clear-minded policy-making, make possible reform within Islam, and have the advantage of being based on facts. … If the jihad terrorists are correct in invoking (Muhammad’s) example to justify their deeds, then Islamic reformers will need to initiate respectful but searching re-evaluation of the place that Muhammd occupies within Islam.” It would be hard to find a more sophisticated argument in support of Spencer’s mission to convince policy makers that Islam is the most dangerous threat in the world today.

Having already reached his conclusions before he poses the questions, Spencer writes, again in respectable and disarming academese: “In Islam, as in every religious tradition, there is a spectrum of belief, knowledge, and fervor. One cannot be sure from anyone’s self-identification as a Muslim how much he knows about the Qur’an and the life of Muhammad. … As both reform-minded Muslims and bloodthirsty jihadists invoke his example to justify their actions, the question of which will guide the Islamic world that is in the grip of a religious revival and increasingly hostile toward America and the West, will largely be determined by Muhammad – by what he was really like according to Islamic texts.” Spencer, of course, has devoted his professional career to demonize the Prophet Muhammad as a conclusive answer to his own question.

“The battle is already raging,” he writes. “The vast majority of peaceful Muslims show no signs of resisting or condemning global Islamic jihad waged in their name. Members of jihad groups are already claiming the Qur’an and hadith as their allies in their efforts to win over the cultural Muslims. Muslim hardliners have made deep inroads into peaceful Muslim communities by preaching violent Islam as ‘pure Islam’ and calling Muslims back to what they present as the full observance of their religion. And that full observance involves warfare against non-Muslims in order to establish the hegemony of the Islamic social order. This recruitment centers not only upon the Qur’an and other key texts, but also on the figure of Muhammad.”

From all his writings, it is clear that the hardest “hardliner” is Robert Spencer, who attempts to prove that the Prophet Muhammad gloried in his favorite passion of beheading his enemies one by one as a model for all subsequent generations. His further conclusion, of course, follows logically that all Muslims who do not reject their faith are a mortal threat to America.

The implications for the future of Muslims in America is obvious from Spencer’s conclusion at the end of his book: “This is why Western officials … have so much trouble finding reliable spokesmen for this alleged majority. Such officials place themselves in the peculiar position of maintaining that Muslim supporters of terrorism are only a tiny minority, but acknowledging at the same time that this tiny minority controls the leadership of virtually every significant Muslim body.”

The Islam bashers warn against a developing clash of civilizations, but they themselves have joined the totalitarian radicals around the world who are doing everything they can to accelerate the threat.