A cartoon in Arabic. On the left it reads “present-day Europe”. On the right, “Europe of the past”.
On January 19th of this year, the day before Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president, I became aware of a post written by Robert Spencer published by The Hill. Spencer saw a rumor that the actor, Lindsey Lohan, had converted to Islam. His response was to write that she had “made the biggest mistake of her life.” I knew who Spencer was. He was a major-league Islamophobe. He’s written books and made a career out of his insipid hatred of Muslims and Islam. He spreads easily falsifiable claims about Islam being a religion of violence and war and promotes the idea that all Muslims are part of Islam’s evil plan to take over the world by killing and enslaving unbelievers.
This fanciful, but extremely dark, fairytale could be condemned as repugnant tabloid anti-Semitism directed at the other Semites, namely Arabs (a common racist stand-in for all Muslims), if it weren’t for the fact that Spencer’s words inspire people to kill people. Spencer’s name and his “work” is used to justify murder and physical abuse every single day in the United States and around the world. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian self-described “Christian terrorist,” cited Spencer dozens of times in his manifesto against Muslims. Breivik killed 77 innocent people in cold blood because he wanted to purify Europe of Muslims. Spencer’s response was to liken Breivik’s quotations of him to Charles Manson’s claims that he was inspired by the Beatles.
Spencer, to put it mildly, is a twisted person. He’s able to wash his hands of the blood of innocents whose killers he motivated and all but instructed with his vicious words.
I came across the article in The Hill on my Facebook newsfeed. The person who posted it did so as a call to textual protest. He encouraged us all to write to the editor and demand that the article be removed. I decided I would write.
I was inclined to publicly share my letter sooner but, at the time, I thought my words might have been a little overblown. I was concerned the letter would be seen as alarmist. Trump hadn’t even been an office for a single day. How could I know whether he’d target Muslims? Or whether The Hill risked being remembered as being on the wrong side of history? After all, it seemed that every one, back then, was convinced that we needed to “give Trump a chance.”
It’s almost been 100 days of Trump’s administration. Here is my letter (I’ve added spacing and made adjustments for clarity):
Dear Editor,
Why would a reputable journal like The Hill tarnish its name to publish an “opinion piece” by a hateful Islamophobic bigot? His only occupation is the maligning of Islam and ordinary Muslims to stoke hate and fear in the hearts of people everywhere. His goal being to translate that hateful energy into policies that result in the violent deaths of human beings simply because they identify with the religion of Islam.
I’m not going to waste space trying to argue the merits of Islam or Muslims because that would only dignify the utterly ignoble, unwarranted, and wholly condemnable, vapid, perfidious claims of Robert Spencer and the other members of his noxious cohort of extortionists hellbent on killing Muslims for their own enrichment and aggrandizement. Their ideas are bankrupt. They are motivated by white supremacy and ethnocidal, if not genocidal, aspirations. They are, in this way, comparable to ISIL and Al-Qaeda who also focus their efforts on banning and killing the Muslims who disagree with them. 1/1000 of one percent of Muslims ever join or become involved in militant ideological terrorist groups. For ISIS and Al-Qaeda, that small fraction represents the only true Muslims. They refer to them in their apocryphal epistles to the leaders of their networks as “Muslimuun jihaadiyuun” (”Jihadi Muslims”). They have another term for all of the others, the non-Jihadis, or 99.999% of the world’s 1.7bn Muslims: “the near enemies”. In other words, Muslims who disagree with ISIL and Al-Qaeda are the first targets of these groups. That doesn’t stop them from occasionally dispensing operatives in European and North American cities to wreak havoc, but it explains why so many more Muslims in Muslim-majority societies are killed by these terrorist groups than non-Muslims are. It’s no accident. It’s by design.
Spencer and the other members of his odious industry of career Muslim-haters take their cues from ISIL and Al-Qaeda in this way. They claim any Muslims who oppose ISIL’s deviant version of Islam simply don’t exist. ISIL takes that as a warrant to kill all such Muslims. Likewise, Spencer and the others in his circle take it as warrant to register, intern, ban, arrest, torture and kill them too. Here’s Spencer in 2016 explaining why there’s really no such thing as “moderate” Muslims:
“Some people are very knowledgeable and very devout whatever their religion may be, and some people bear the name of the religion but they couldn’t care less or they don’t know or they’re just more interested in something else. That’s why moderate Muslims really are.”
For Spencer, “moderate Muslims” would theoretically be Muslims who reject the notion that Islam teaches violence or warfare. However, they don’t exist:
“You’re talking about maybe 5 or 10 people. I mean worldwide out of 1.6 billion.”
In fact, he specifically names a friend of his, a well-known Islamophobe, Zuhdi Jasser, who is Muslim, “and his friends”. Spencer falsely claims and without any evidence whatsoever that this handful of people are the only Muslims in the world who are both knowledgeable about Islam and do not believe Islam is a violent religion. Jasser is a self-described “Muslim reformer” who promotes virulently anti-Muslims views. He exploits his “insider status” as a person who claims Muslim identity or heritage to give credibility to his Islamophobic claims.
Spencer, like ISIL and Al-Qaeda, believes that only the Islam of terrorists is authentic, and he attacks and derides ordinary Muslims who wholeheartedly disagree with ISIL. Spencer and ISIL have the exact same group of Muslims in their crosshairs.
Spencer’s job - his actual and only source of income - is to hate Muslims and spread misinformation about Islam. He’s a professional bigot and liar. He works to persuade politicians to further vilify Muslim identity and Islam by proposing and passing laws that criminalize Muslims and Islam while financing wars that have resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people - of all faiths and none - across the Middle East and North Africa. The Global War on Terror, which was started by George W. Bush administration after 9/11, has, in fact, killed 1.3 million civilians in Muslim-majority countries. For Spencer and ISIL, however, no amount of Muslim blood can satisfy the hate of Muslims who defy their manufactured version of Islam.
I implore you to rescind the dreadful, ugly article you published by Spencer and issue a public repudiation and apology.
A viciously anti-Muslim administration is about to take the reigns of power over our government tomorrow and there is no doubt that they will do everything they can to hurt the American Muslim community for much the same reasons as the Third Reich sought to harm and desecrate minorities across Europe. Jews in Nazi Germany, like American Muslims under Trump will be, were systematically associated with criminality, deceit, violence, and terrorism.
Please, don't let The Hill become a co-conspirator in the machinations of this century's Nazi scourge: the Islamophobic Right. The same callow movement that is primed to overthrow France and the Netherlands. The same eerie specter haunting Greece, Germany, and Austria. It is a heartless, angry, lethal emptiness that blinds those it infects so they cannot see the suffering of refugees, cannot empathize with immigrants, and cannot abide difference.
In the name of pluralism and peace, I appeal to you, to do the right thing. Someone's conversion to Islam or Christianity or Judaism or any other faith, is nothing to mock or jeer at, let alone to assault in the manner that Spencer has. He has no decency - his long history of unbridled, dizzying hatred of Muslims and Islam proves that. The Hill must remain on the side of civility in the face of impending fascism. This may seem like a strong reaction to a minor writing but we mustn't disregard the banality of evil. It is incremental and subtle. Its entrance is creeping and often marked by the idleness of bystanders who chose not to see what only its victims could have decried from the start.
I appreciate your consideration,
Nazir Harb Michel
Epilogue: A day later, The Hill took the article by Spencer down. I didn’t locate any public apologies for having posted it in the first place though.