Reuel Gerecht and Jeffrey Goldberg vs. Pamela Geller: Geller wins :)

Islamic scholar and one of the extraordinary minds of our generation, Robert Spencer, destroys jihad Jeffrey Goldberg (the worst enemies of the Jewish people come from our own womb) and Reuel Gerecht, another one of the multitudes of analysts who see there is a problem with Islam but can't quite bring themselves to address it head-on, in their attempted takedown of statements I made in my interview with The NY Times in their Sunday Geller profile piece. You can have your own opinion, you cannot have your own facts.

Reuel Gerecht and Jeffrey Goldberg vs. Pamela Geller: Geller wins

It is testimony to the effectiveness of my colleague Pamela Geller, in raising awareness of the issues surrounding the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero and Islamic supremacism in general, that the mainstream media is gunning for her with relentless fury. The cartoon above is apt, and applies to Jeffrey Goldberg's vicious and ignorant attacks upon her in The Atlantic. Even though this present piece isn't an interview, the principle is the same: a full-out campaign is on to discredit her, and the truth be damned in the process.

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In "Reuel Gerecht on Pamela Geller's Foul Anti-Muslim Ideology," by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, October 13, Goldberg explains that he sent some assertions Pamela Geller made about the Qur'an and Islam in her recent New York Times interview to Islamic scholar Reuel Gerecht:

In a recent New York Times interview, the blogger Pamela Geller leveled many serious charges against Islam; she stated that Muslims curse Jews and Christians during their five-times-a-day prayer; that the only good Muslim is a secular Muslim; and most perniciously, she said that the Qur'an has never been properly translated, insinuating that it contains dark secrets about Muslims and their religious responsibilities. This last bit struck me as outrageous, because, as a Jew, Geller should know that anti-Semites have spent nearly two thousand years insinuating that the Talmud contains secret instructions guiding the alleged Jewish attempt to dominate the world. To make the same unsupported charge against Islam is egregious.

Note that it is Jeffrey Goldberg, not Pamela Geller, who is talking about Muslims having "secret instructions" directing them to try to "dominate the world." All that Pamela said was that the Qur'an hasn't been properly translated; Goldberg then proceeds to excoriate her for what he thinks she was "insinuating." Well, any storefront clairvoyant can read tea leaves, and mothers are experts at evaluating tones of voice, but Jeffrey Goldberg neither. He is supposed to be a serious writer, so instead of trafficking in what people are "insinuating," he would be well-advised to stick with what they actually say.

I sent some of Geller's quotes to my friend Reuel Gerecht, a genuine expert on Islam, to see what he thought of them. Reuel, as many of you know, is no apologist for radical Islamism; quite the opposite. He believes we are at war with a dangerous ideology. But he also has respect for Islam, and a great deal of knowledge of it. Here is what he says about Geller's assertions:

I have to plead an embarrassing ignorance about Pamela Geller. I was well aware of the Internet-driven opposition to Feisal Abd ar-Rauf's Ground Zero/Park 51 mosque, but had not entered her name into my memory. I don't read blogs much–except Goldblog and those that publish me–and I was more than a little taken back when Jeffrey sent me a note containing comments by Ms. Geller about English translations of the Qur'an. The intersection of politics, public policy, and scholarship isn't always pretty, and we are most often fortunate that scholars don't write our domestic and foreign policies. However, there is a certain deference that activists must give to scholars when they tread on what is clearly academic terrain.

Deference? Is that an argument from authority? How about we have a certain deference for the truth and accuracy, instead of just pulling rank?

A good cause–and Ms. Geller's general concern about the harm that violent Islamic militants can do is an estimable fight–is no excuse for agitprop and what amounts to a slur against some of the greatest scholars of the twentieth century. According to the New York Times, Ms. Geller has stated:

Now I also believe that a true translation, an accurate translation of the Koran, is really not available in English, according to many of the Islamic scholars that I've spoken to. That's deeply troubling. And I don't think that many westernized Muslims know when they pray five times a day that they're cursing Christians and Jews five times a day. I don't think they know that.

Let's take the Qur'an first, Muslim prayers second. Concerning the translation of the Muslim Holy Book, who might these Islamic scholars be? Since Ms. Geller is without Arabic, it's impossible for her to compare the original to a translation. She must depend upon others, who, if I follow Ms. Geller, are involved in a conspiracy to hide the ugly truth about Islam. If the translations were more "accurate," we would all see what's apparent to Ms. Geller, who ascertained the truth despite the blinding scholarly conspiracy. One has to ask whether Ms. Geller has perused the translation masterpiece by Cambridge's late great A.J. Arberry or my personal favorite, the awesomely erudite, more literal translation and commentary by Edinburgh's late great Richard Bell? Both gentlemen are flag-waving members of Edward Said's most detested species–Orientalists. Now if you look at these translations–especially if you look at Bell's, which is blessed with exhaustive notes in a somewhat complicated formatting–even the uninitiated can get an idea that Muhammad had trouble with Christians and especially Jews during his life. If you look at the Qur'anic commentary by Edinburgh's late great William Montgomery Watt (another Orientalist), who was always attentive to Muslim sensibilities in his writings, you can also fine [sic] in clear English Muhammad's unpleasant ruminations about Christians and Jews.

Note again that Pamela Geller only said that "a true translation, an accurate translation of the Koran, is really not available in English, according to many of the Islamic scholars that I've spoken to." No dark conspiracy theories about hidden content. That was all she said.

Now — is it true? Gerecht takes her to be casting aspersions on the work of the great scholars A. J. Arberry and Richard Bell. Both are indeed great scholars, and the integrity of their Qur'an translations cannot be impugned. I have loved Arberry's for many years, and wrote this about it here several years ago:

For years I have liked Arberry's for its audacious literalism and often poetic English. Compare, for example, 81:15-18:

فَلَا أُقْسِمُ بِالْخُنَّسِ الْجَوَارِ الْكُنَّسِ وَاللَّيْلِ إِذَا عَسْعَسَ وَالصُّبْحِ إِذَا تَنَفَّسَ

…in Pickthall and Arberry: Pickthall: "Oh, but I call to witness the planets, the stars which rise and set, and the close of night, and the breath of morning…" Arberry: "No! I swear by the slinkers, the runners, the sinkers, by the night swarming, by the dawn sighing…" Shades of the Symbolists. Arberry gives a hint of how the book sounds in Arabic, in which it is full of beguiling rhymes and rhythms.

Arberry's is an outstanding and accurate translation. Arberry, however, was not a Muslim, and accordingly his translation is not often used by Muslims, and when a non-Muslim cites it or other translations written by non-Muslims (such as N. J. Dawood's excellent edition for Penguin), Islamic apologists tend to dismiss it with the palpably false mystification that a non-Muslim cannot be trusted to render the Qur'an accurately or adequately. Thus in order to take that rhetorical weapon out of their hands, I generally use translations written by Muslims and for Muslims in my work, and these are the ones generally also used and cited by Muslims themselves.

For example, the USC-MSA's popular and useful online reference site now disingenuously entitled "Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement" offers three Qur'an translations by three Muslims: Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, and M. H. Shakir. All of these are flawed in various ways. Shakir's depends heavily on Pickthall's and Ali's. Ali's is the most transparently apologetic whitewash: in Qur'an 4:34, the verse enjoining the beating of disobedient women, he has "beat them (lightly)," although "lightly" does not appear in the Arabic. Both Ali's and Pickthall's are written in a stilted pseudo-King James Bible English that frequently cloaks in obscurity passages that are hair-raising in Arabic.

Another common Muslim translation, that of Muhammad Taqi al-Din al-Hilali and Muhammad Muhsin Khan, is more of a Saudi Wahhabi political tract than a translation. Note, for example, their revealing and anachronistic parenthetical gloss in Qur'an 8:60: "And make ready against them all you can of power, including steeds of war (tanks, planes, missiles, artillery, etc.) to threaten the enemy of God and your enemy, and others besides whom, you may not know but whom God does know."

What's more, even the best, most literal translation of the Qur'an does not give the full flavor of some phrases and passages, since the general English reader will not be aware of their precise theological significance in Islam. For example, the phrase "strive in the path of Allah," which appears in numerous places and various permutations in the Qur'an, refers in Islamic theology specifically to fighting hot war, with weapons, not metaphorical verbal conflict or some other kind of conflict. But unless one is reading along with commentaries, this phrase will look more like a pious exhortation to be more religious than a call to take up arms.

Now what did Pamela Geller say? "Now I also believe that a true translation, an accurate translation of the Koran, is really not available in English, according to many of the Islamic scholars that I've spoken to." That is a general statement made in conversation and not in a scholarly setting with any intention of forensic precision; nonetheless, it is generally true: ask any honest native Arabic speaker and they'll tell you that Qur'an translations in English in the main do not convey the full martial flavor of the original, and the principal translations have the defects noted above. As she was speaking in context about what Western non-Muslims as well as Western Muslims generally understand about Islam, the existence of largely accurate translations like those of Arberry, Bell and Dawood does not render her statement false: she was speaking about popular understanding, not about what is known among academics.

Gerecht continues:

Now what all of this means to contemporary Islamic militancy is a very long discussion, for which I suspect that Ms. Geller doesn't have abundant patience.

He said at the beginning that he hadn't heard of her, and suddenly he is a judge of her character. I expect this sort of cheap shot from sleazy Islamic supremacists like Reza Aslan, but not from someone of the stature of Reuel Gerecht.

Islam has been having awful problems absorbing modernity; its travails so far–let us underscore–have been less bloody than what we witnessed as Christianity modernized.

While this assertion is taken for granted among scholars of a certain ilk, it is by no means proven, and stems largely from a much greater familiarity among Westerners with the conflicts in Christian Europe in recent centuries than with the history of Islam. When one examines the history of jihad wars, the picture begins to look quite different.

Any non-Muslim certainly has the right to study, question, and criticize the Islamic faith, as Muslims have the (well-exercised) right to let loose against what they see as the imperfections of Christianity, Judaism, and humanist secularism (the West's dominant faith). As Iran's robust, astonishing intellectual wars over the last twenty years have shown, it's good for Muslims and non-Muslims not to pull their punches. Muslims should never be treated as children, which is a debilitating disposition found widely now on the American Left. (President Obama has not helped.) But the great Islamic scholars of the past did not lie. There is no conspiracy. We are blessed with illuminating English translations of the Muslim Holy Book. Ms. Geller might consider blogging less, and reading more.

Gerecht's haughty arrogance toward Pamela Geller is as unbecoming as his presumption, noted above. In any case, I have established above that some of the principal English translations of the Qur'an are distorted in various ways (and there are plenty more examples of such distortions), and that some of its key concepts cannot be immediately grasped by the uninitiated reader. Thus Pamela Geller's point — in which she said nothing about any kind of "conspiracy" — was made. Mr. Gerecht might have considered her own words more carefully, and not Jeffrey Goldberg's poisoned and tendentious packaging of those words.

And about Muslim prayer: I certainly have no perfect way of knowing what Muslims think when they pray, but I really do think they know what they're doing.

That is a very large and vague assertion. Muslims "know what they're doing" when they pray, and yet Gerecht must know that most Muslims are not Arabs, and yet no matter where they are and what language they speak, they must pray in Arabic; huge numbers recite syllables by rote without having any precise idea of what they're saying. They may know what they're doing, in terms of engaging in Islamic prayer in a general sense, but is Gerecht saying that they know all the details of what they're saying and the theological and political implications thereof? I have spoken to many non-Arab Muslims who have confirmed this, and it has been widely reported, particularly in connection with the madrassas in Pakistan. Is Reuel Gerecht really interested in denying it?

If westernized Muslims are facing the Almighty, they know what's in their hearts. Devout Muslims need not hate Jews and Christians to worship the Creator.

Pamela Geller didn't say they did. She said, "And I don't think that many westernized Muslims know when they pray five times a day that they're cursing Christians and Jews five times a day. I don't think they know that." That is not the same thing as saying that Muslims must "hate Jews and Christians to worship the Creator."

Christians have slaughtered Jews through the centuries. But it would be theologically atrocious to believe that the Christian message requires Jewish blood. (Christians' killing Jews so often did provoke some Christians to question the foundation of their faith–a theologically estimable exercise.) The Prophet Muhammad is certainly a different kind of historical figure than Jesus, but it should not be startling to discover that Muslims through the centuries have not seen the prophet's slaughter of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe in Medina as a mainstay of their creed.

In this Gerecht is saying that just as Christian doctrine doesn't require Christians to slaughter Jews (although he seems to harbor an immense distaste for Christianity, far exceeding any revulsion he may feel toward Islamic jihadists and supremacists), so also Islamic doctrine doesn't require Muslims to slaughter Jews. This is, again, a red herring, since Pamela Geller didn't say that it did, but Gerecht has perhaps forgotten this key hadith, in which Muhammad says that the wholesale slaughter of Jews by Muslims will usher in the end times: "Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews."

There is, by the way, nothing like that in Christianity.

In my experience–and I'm intuiting here–most Muslims do not think about Jews and Christians at all when they pray.

What Muslims think about when they pray was not what was at issue. Look again at what Pamela Geller said: "And I don't think that many westernized Muslims know when they pray five times a day that they're cursing Christians and Jews five times a day. I don't think they know that." Not only did she not say anything about what they were thinking about; what she actually said was that many Muslims in the West do not know that their prayers involve curses of Christians and Jews.

So if they don't know it, how could they be thinking about it? Gerecht's response to Geller sounds as if he read what she wrote very hastily and carelessly, or only through Goldberg's venomous spin.

Now — what about those prayers? In the course of praying the requisite five prayers a day, an observant Muslim will recite the Fatihah, the first surah of the Qur'an and the most common prayer in Islam, seventeen times. The final two verses of the Fatihah ask Allah: "Show us the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast favoured; not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray." The traditional Islamic understanding of this is that the "straight path" is Islam — cf. Islamic apologist John Esposito's book Islam: The Straight Path. The path of those who have earned Allah's anger are the Jews, and those who have gone astray are the Christians.

This is not my interpretation; it comes from the classic Islamic commentaries on the Qur'an. The renowned Qur'anic commentator Ibn Kathir explains that "the two paths He described here are both misguided," and that those "two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them. The path of the believers is knowledge of the truth and abiding by it. In comparison, the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why 'anger' descended upon the Jews, while being described as 'led astray' is more appropriate of the Christians."

Ibn Kathir's understanding of this passage is not a lone "extremist" interpretation. In fact, most Muslim commentators believe that the Jews are those who have earned Allah's wrath and the Christians are those who have gone astray. This is the view of Tabari, Zamakhshari, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, the Tanwir al-Miqbas min Tafsir Ibn Abbas, and Ibn Arabi, as well as Ibn Kathir. One contrasting, but not majority view, is that of Nisaburi, who says that "those who have incurred Allah's wrath are the people of negligence, and those who have gone astray are the people of immoderation."

Wahhabis drew criticism a few years back for adding "such as the Jews" and "such as the Christians" into parenthetical glosses on this passage in Qur'ans printed in Saudi Arabia. Some Western commentators imagined that the Saudis originated this interpretation, and indeed the whole idea of Qur'anic hostility toward Jews and Christians. They found it inconceivable that Muslims all over the world would learn as a matter of course that the central prayer of their faith anathematizes Jews and Christians.

But unfortunately, this interpretation is venerable and mainstream in Islamic theology. The printing of the interpretation in parenthetical glosses into a translation would be unlikely to affect Muslim attitudes, since the Arabic text is always and everywhere normative in any case, and since so many mainstream commentaries contain the idea that the Jews and Christians are being criticized here. Seventeen times a day, by the pious.

The Hadith also contains material linking Jews to Allah's anger and Christians to his curse, which resulting from their straying from the true path. (The Jews are accursed also, according to Qur'an 2:89, and both are accursed according to 9:30). One hadith recounts that an early Muslim, Zaid bin 'Amr bin Nufail, in his travels met with Jewish and Christian scholars. The Jewish scholar told him, "You will not embrace our religion unless you receive your share of Allah's Anger," and the Christian said, "You will not embrace our religion unless you get a share of Allah's Curse." Zaid, needless to say, became a Muslim.

So once again, what did Pamela say? "And I don't think that many westernized Muslims know when they pray five times a day that they're cursing Christians and Jews five times a day. I don't think they know that." There appears to be abundant foundation for that idea in the content of Islamic prayer and the ways those prayers have been understood by mainstream Islamic theologians.

Suffering, in all its merciless variety, takes center stage, I suspect. When I've watched Muslim pilgrims come to Sunni and Shiite tombs and sacred sites in Egypt, Turkey, and Iraq, I've not seen a conquering people. I've usually just seen misery and the human hope that good fortune will come with a better heart. I've seen fraternity among a men who live in lands where fraternal behavior is rare. Ms. Geller would do well to travel more. It's a very good and essential cause to fight jihadism, but such a struggle should not incline us to maul Islamic history or to treat Muslims as if they were merely a walking version of this surah or that legal treatise. Christians and Jews and atheists are much more than the sum of their parts. So, too, are Muslims.

No amount of travel will change the contents of Islamic prayers or the nature of English translations of the Qur'an. Reuel Gerecht would have come off better if he had taken care to be less condescending — his superciliousness is especially unbecoming since the facts are not on his side.

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MARTEL

13 years ago

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T ——- Are we SICK of this bullshit yet? islame IS as islame DOES —- PERIOD. There is NOTHING redeeming about islame. Unless they consider misery, ignorance, no freedom etc. etc. to be “redeeming”. God I am sick of these fucking people. JACKASSES. And these people call themselves “educated”? Well, they are certainly NOT educated in the law of the jungle and the “law of the jungle” is TOTALLY what you’re dealing with when dealing with islame. GOD-DAMNED fucking shitty islame.

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Haltau

13 years ago

That should be allah damned —— —— islame. What they believe is that since they are sympathetic toward islam they will be over looked when islam starts knocking on doors at 3 a.m. without the party pizza. However, WE know that they will be the first to be rounded up and exterminated by the “peace and light religion” of islame. allah forbid it should not be so. Which it will not do.

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Tr Sterling

13 years ago

Jihad Jeffie is going to run now to his best pal Fidel Castro and complain!
“Spencer uses big words Fidel. Tell me how I can be a bad boy like you?”
Jefiie says “I cant stand it when Pamela Geller is smarter and wiser than me.
Waaaaaaaah whahhhh. Im not a jewicidal jeffie Im not a jewidical jeffie.
I looooove Fidel. A “great man of the world”
(who kills his people but so did Stalin! big deal…)”

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Jbjd

13 years ago

Mr. Spencer certainly de-constructs the edicts against Ms. Geller cast out in The Atlantic. How disconcerting that, in order to redress the myriad inaccuracies in such diatribe, he had to expend what must have been some time formulating this most lucid response. Did The Atlantic publish this clarification of its mischaracterization of her NYT interview?

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JewishOdysseus

13 years ago

“I’ve seen fraternity among a men [sic] who live in [Muslim] lands where fraternal behavior is rare.”
Contest to see who can identify all the layers of irony in this short sentence in defense of Islam.

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JewishOdysseus

13 years ago

“Ms. Geller would do well to travel more. ”
Yesssssss, Pamela, why don’t you begin in northern Nigeria…Head over to southern Sudan…A short stint in Gaza, then a dash to Iran…then off the beaten path to southern Thailand, and maybe end it with a tour of Malmo, Sweden…Just to see all the wonderful works of Islam that our crass media never lets us see.
This has to be the biggest pack of puked pabulum I’ve read in a loooooong time. And I used to subscribe to the Boston Glob.

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Irritable Infidel

13 years ago

Muslims Gone Wild
http://barenakedislam.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/dumb-and-dumber/
3:50 Muslims Gone Wild
“US Army night vision goggles catch exciting, live muzzie-on-donkey action! Watch those nightshirts fly up at the sight of some real ‘ass’!! OOOPS there’s even an exciting ending when the donkey attacks his would be lover. Ain’t love dramatic!”
Hadiths instruct that as long as muzzieman makes wudoo after some pasture fun, it’s all good!

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Richard

13 years ago

I watched that and the donkey love was funnier than hell! The long shot and night vision was authentic, they’re going to have to sell that donkey to another villiage. The clip where the donky is on the attack is not from the same episode however. I’d seen that clip by itself presented as a fellow who was driving and had to relieve himself in an urgent way and tried to do so in the field of an armorous equine. I don’t even think he was a muzzie, just dropped trow in front of the wrong donkey.
I saved the link.
If you want to laugh your ass off some more, check out Sands of Passion.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sands+of+passion&aq=f
Beer Me
-Rick

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that's about it

13 years ago

Congratulations on having SO AWESOMENESS in you and the crew!!

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armaros

13 years ago

The irony is that Gerecht doesn’t really disagree with Pamela.
I can imagine the “sample” quotes Goldberg furnished him with to judge Pamela with.
Gerecht admits that his sources are Orientalists. That right there is a qualifier which Gerecht purposely mentions in his post.
What remains are statements about Christianity as supposedly somewhere in history Pamela had whitewashed Christian motivated medieval violence.
I certainly don’t neither would I whitewash Christian antisemitism in Europe. But that’s neither here nor there when it comes to the precepts found in the Koran and what and how Muslims may pray each day.
It is true that not all Muslims see the Jews as the eternal enemy and they believe that based on their reading of the texts. That does not exclude the texts themselves and how they are recited today.
Goldberg and Johnson were gloating in another “I gothca” vis avis Pamela while there was nothing to gloat about but details on who translates from whom.

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Irritable Infidel

13 years ago

@5:02 he’s trying to do the donkey who will have none of it

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MARTEL

13 years ago

Actually Haltau, I have to stick with GOD-damned, know what I mean?

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ApolloSpeaks

13 years ago

IS PAM GELLER NO BETTER THAN ISLAMO-NAZI JEW HATERS?
If I understand brain dead leftist writer Jeff “Imam Rauf is a misunderstood Jew lover” Goldberg correctly what he’s saying about Pam Geller in his Atlantic Monthly smear piece is this: Pam is to Moslems what Islamo-Nazi Jew haters (most Moslems) are to Jews. In other words, Pam’s fear and hatred of Islamo-Nazis (most Moslems) makes her no better or worse than Islamo-Nazis themselves. By raising awareness about widespread Moslem hatred of Jews (going back to Islam’s toxic Jew killing founder and his “divine” warmongering Koran) Pam Geller is as bad and dangerous as vicious Moslem Jew haters and that Hitler-like power crazed monster Mohammed. Go figure

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juniper

13 years ago

the whole of the koran seems to be made up of lies:
“The Hadith also contains material linking Jews to Allah’s anger and Christians to his curse, which resulting from their straying from the true path. (The Jews are accursed also, according to Qur’an 2:89, and both are accursed according to 9:30). One hadith recounts that an early Muslim, Zaid bin ‘Amr bin Nufail, in his travels met with Jewish and Christian scholars. The Jewish scholar told him, “You will not embrace our religion unless you receive your share of Allah’s Anger,” and the Christian said, “You will not embrace our religion unless you get a share of Allah’s Curse.” Zaid, needless to say, became a Muslim.”
No Jew or Christian would EVER have talked about “Allah’s Anger and Allah’s Curse”!! Its all made-up propaganda because Mo was so furious no one wanted to belong to his new club!!

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Dagny Taggart

13 years ago

“Reuel, as many of you know, is no apologist for radical Islamism; quite the opposite. He believes we are at war with a dangerous ideology. But he also has respect for Islam, ”
Say what?

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Danusha Goska

13 years ago

They are going after Pamela, with such focus and ferocity, because Pamela is a woman and a Jew. She’s their target, not, to this degree, Spencer, or Ayaan, or Wilders, or Hitchens, who has also criticized Islam …
Pamela is the target because she is a woman and she is a Jew.
They are banking on misogyny and anti-Semitism to their work for them. Combine the two, misogyny and anti-Semitism, and you get the JAP stereotype, and that is exactly what they are doing to Pam Geller. The NYT piece and the comments that followed was one big long hatefest indulgence in the JAP stereotype.
It’s more than ironic that the hatemongers indulging in this hateful stereotype are themselves sometimes Jewish.
It makes me want to scream. I admire Pam Geller and I am immensely grateful to her honorable service to this country.

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TL Winslow

13 years ago

“Most perniciously, she said that the Qur’an has never been properly translated, insinuating that it contains dark secrets about Muslims and their religious responsibilities. This last bit struck me as outrageous, because, as a Jew, Geller should know that anti-Semites have spent nearly two thousand years insinuating that the Talmud contains secret instructions guiding the alleged Jewish attempt to dominate the world. To make the same unsupported charge against Islam is egregious.”
Show-stopping, outrageous, gorgeous. People who are Islam ignoramuses love to publicly accuse others of being ignoramuses, while exposing their own ignorance. When it comes to translations of the Quran, only an ignoramus would believe that they could ever do it justice, the real reason being that it’s a MUSIC SCORE, the original Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones, with tons of secret instructions that can’t be translated, because it’s wrapped up in the mood and rhythms. Here’s a good site about the subject, with the quote:
“Comparing any translation with the original Arabic is like comparing a thumbnail sketch with the natural view of a splendid landscape rich in color, light and shade, and sonorous in melody. The Arabic vocabulary as used in the Quran conveys a wealth of ideas with various subtle shades and colors impossible to express in full with a finite number of words in any other language.”
http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/translate.htm
Therefore, the ignoramus who slammed Pam Geller for being ignorant is exposed as totally ignorant about the subject he was pontificating on, so everything else he says is highly suspect since it’s from the same source 🙂 As to the Talmud, I guess he doesn’t know that the Quran was written by people familiar with it, and contains many ideas and passages lifted from it, as German Jewish scholar Abraham Geiger (1810-74) described in his dissertation way back in 1833. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Geiger Indeed, Islam is a bold attempt to steal the fire from Judaism and transfer it to Arabs, which is no surprise since for centuries there was a tribe of converted Jewish Arabs in Yemen called the Himyarites, who were the dominant kingdom in Arabia, and it was only after the Christians destroyed them that Islam suddenly arose, obviously as revenge, as proved by what they did, namely, attack Christendom. The Jews were never a solid block, and when they wouldn’t accept the new Arab prophet and faith and new false Bible that says that Ishmael is the favored son of Allah not Isaac, the Muslims turned on them, becoming eternal enemies, unless of course they convert and join the army heading toward Constantinople. The Quran shows a deep knowledge of Judaism and only a slight knowledge of Christianity, that’s why.
You know why he knows none of this? Because he never took the Historyscoper’s free online Islam history course that lays it out like a magic carpet, and prefers to wallow in ignorance. Don’t be like him,
master Islam’s history, ideology and terminology in English with plenty of links to history Web pages to check and go deeper in your browser anytime at http://go.to/islamhistory

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Hainer

13 years ago

dWe cannot tell what is in the hearts of people but whatever it is will be reflected in their actions.
When the 911 attack on the US became known, thousands in the Moslem world were in the streets celebrating. Celebrating the destruction of the towers, pentagon and death of thousands in the US.
What they celebrate is much different than our celebrations. Take WWII for instance. We did not celebrate the destruction and the death of innocent civilians, we celebrated the end of the war. We did not want the war, we did not start it and the only reasons for fighting was in defense of our freedom and way of life.
They have said it themselves, the Mosque is their barracks and whether or not they know what is in the prayer they recite they do know what they are doing. And by they I refer to those who intend, or silently approve, to destroy the West, our freedom and way of life and replace it with theirs. And that is the deal people like Goldberg are making.

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nautiusmaximus

13 years ago

The donkey gene pool has been hopelessly contaminated; now the term “Dumb-ass” will have new meaning.

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john jay

13 years ago

pamela, friends:
and, in specific reply to danusha goska:
pamela geller is not being attacked because she is a woman and a jew.
she is being attacked because she is so very effective in her criticism of islam, and increasingly recognized as such by the american and european public. she is being attacked because she is an extremely effective proponent of the spirituality of judaism and christianity, and because she emphasizes the spirituality and aesthetic in those two great religions, in stark contrast to the dark violent soul of islam. she is being attacked, because she points out with accuracy and zeal the savage violence perpetuated by islam everywhere to the detriment of all other human achievement, in contrast to the flowering of the human intellect and spirit as seen in judaism and christianity, an epoch contribution to civilization.
it is a genuine measure of how effective an exponent of our civilization, and how effective a critic of and defender against islam, that pamela geller has become by the stature of those islamic apologists now drug out to attack her. in her appearances on television and radio she has demolished islamic apologists one after the other. and, now, the forces of the left of of islam feel the need to haul before the public “scholars” to attack and refute her.
they bring the big guns to bear on her, precisely because she has become a very big gun in her own right, and one who is in demand to be heard by the public, and because the public responds to her trenchant criticisms, and to her call for people to rise in allegiance to their beliefs, their religions, their heritage and their civilization in the defense of the west and our society.
this is why they attack her. and, this is why they will continue to attack her, because she will continue being this voice to which we all respond. she will continue to call us to rally to our own defense, and to assert our heritage and our beliefs against this scourge of islam which wages unrelenting attack upon us.
islam fears that it cannot win with the likes of pamela geller and robert spencer leading us.
in this, islam makes a correct assumption.
john jay
milton freewater, oregon usa
p.s. there is only one pamela geller. nurture her, and protect her, my good friends. we need her to lead us. and, let me add. there is only one robert spencer, whose command of koranic & islamic scholarship lends him capacity to write such a sterling defense of our friend and leader. there are very few who could write such a defense, and expose the attacks on pamela leveled by goldberg & his “intellectual proxies” for the blarney and bullshit that they are: spencer shows, conclusively, that they try to create “controversy” where no controversy exists. geller, spencer, bat ye’or adn ibn warriq. truly a magnificant assemblage of warriors for our civilization. we must protect them with our loyality and our lives, if need be.

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Jamadagnii

13 years ago

After reading this post and then again on Jihad Watch, where the formatting was a lot easier to read, I looked at some of the the work of Reuel Marc Gerecht. I also looked at the fluff piece put out by Goldberg at The Atlantic, and saw that it was rather cursory, based on impressions. They came across as a couple of frat guys dissing some female they didn’t like.
And then I seriously wondered why Gerecht was even asked to comment on the work that Pamela Geller is doing. Gerecht was a CIA agent and now specializes on our government’s response to Al Qaeda — his orientation is military based and concerned with the bureaucracy which has been built up for national security. He is not at all a scholar of the Koran nor Islam.
I saw an interesting video by Fareed Zakaria with Gerecht and others about how our preoccupation with Al Qaeda and terrorism is exaggerated and leads to xenophobia: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11791247&Itemid=0 Worth a look.

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Jamadagnii

13 years ago

PS
Zakaria displays poise and sophistication always, but there’s also an agenda he tries to promote by his choice of guests and the questions he asks. His guests do not always agree — and in fact, Gerecht provided the strongest repudiation of Zakaria’s premise, about half way through the second part.
I thoroughly agree with the commendation given by John Jay and his assessment of the importance of the work Pamela is doing. This is not ultimately a military problem, it’s cultural. And this is a culture war which Pamela is waging. Hurrah!

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john jay

13 years ago

pamela, friends:
and, especially to jamadagnii:
there is one other reason for the concerted attacks by the left upon pamela geller.
it has not to do with you and i. those who will oppose her, will concede her influence with you and i, … , they do not consider us important, really.
what they cannot concede, and still win the day, is pamela geller’s continuing and growing influence among middle of the road/centerists types, and the steady inroads she makes upon the left and amongst the “opinion makers.”
she has become an “opinion maker,” as a matter of fact. and, you know what? some of them find her charming, and some of them are conceding that she makes sense, when her opinions and expressions are considered in context, and considered within the full body of her work: and, this body of work, some are becoming familiar with. while the “opinion makers” may not agree with her, more and more of them are coming to the conclusion that what she says is lucid, logical, cohesive and persuasive.
this islam, and the left, cannot bear. if pamela geller makes significant inroads on their turf, and she is & has been doing so for a while, then the left & islam are lost in this country.
and, so they excoriate her, in an attempt to destroy her or marginalize her. they think that without her, her ideas and influence do not live. they think that without her, you and i will wither up and die.
this explains the attack upon her by seemingly the entire left, and by the entirety of islam, something which is really quite unprecedented in this country, except as to perhaps the left’s attacks upon rush limbaugh.
and, now, you understand the reach of our friend pamela. you know, now, her stature.
it is measured by the vehemence of the attacks of her adversaries, and it is motivated by their understanding of the threat that she is to them, and their fear of her.
john jay
milton freewater, oregon usa

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Irritable Infidel

13 years ago

It’s interesting how she’s coaxed them out of their snake holes.

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Radegunda

13 years ago

I have read comments by scholars saying that a substantial portion of the Qur’an is incomprehensible even to people who know Arabic. I think it’s partly that a chronology cannot be established without the Sunnah and Hadith, but that’s not the whole reason. Can our resident scholars shed some light?

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Pamela Geller

13 years ago

Classical Arabic is not today’s modern standard Arabic.
Much of the qu’ran is incomprehensible even to Arabic speakers

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Laura L

13 years ago

“Suffering, in all its merciless variety, takes center stage, I suspect. When I’ve watched Muslim pilgrims come to Sunni and Shiite tombs and sacred sites in Egypt, Turkey, and Iraq, I’ve not seen a conquering people”.
………………………………………………………………
Muslims long ago violently conquered those places. Gerecht is just another scumbag apologist for islam.

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FishEagle

13 years ago

Danusha, I wouldn’t be too worried and I don’t think they’re targeting her because she’s a woman or a Jew. They’re targeting her because she is absolutely spot on with her observations and logic. She’s hurting them because they are the opposite of what she is. She’s perfectly capable of defending herself if she continues along the same path that she’s on now.

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FishEagle

13 years ago

I didn’t see your comment and posted a similar comment above in response to Danusha. I wholeheartedly agree with you.

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