Background
Spencer is a practicing Melkite Greek Catholic. It is a rite of the Catholic Church whose adherents are, according to Spencer, "mostly concentrated in Lebanon and Syria, also in Jordan and the Palestinian territories." His grandparents were forced to emigrate from an area that is now part of Turkey because they were Christians. According to a 2010 interview in New York magazine, Spencer's father worked for the Voice of America during the Cold War, and in his younger days, Spencer himself worked at Revolution Books, a Communist bookstore in New York City founded by Robert Avakian.
Spencer received a B.A. in 1983 and an M.A. in 1986 in religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His masters thesis was on a Catholic history topic. He has said he has been studying Islamic theology, law, and history on his own since 1980. He worked in think tanks for more than 20 years, and in 2002–2003 did a stint as an adjunct fellow with the Free Congress Foundation, an arm of the Heritage Foundation. Spencer named Paul Weyrich, also a Melkite Catholic, as a mentor of his writings on Islam. Spencer writes, "Paul Weyrich taught me a great deal, by word and by example – about how to deal both personally and professionally with the slanders and smears that are a daily aspect of this work." Spencer's first book on Islam was published in 2002.
Read more about this topic: Robert Spencer (author)
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