Criticism
Spencer's work has been criticized as showing "entrenched hostility" towards Islam, and condemned as hate speech by a number of Muslim-American and civil rights groups.
Karen Armstrong criticized Spencer's citations of Islamic scripture as cherry-picked, stating among other examples that "Spencer never cites the Koran's condemnation of all warfare as an 'awesome evil', its prohibition of aggression or its insistence that only self-defence justifies armed conflict..." She concludes that "His book is a gift to extremists who can use it to 'prove' ... that the west is incurably hostile to their faith." Spencer responds: "Yet the verse she quotes (2:217) actually says only that warfare during the 'sacred month' is an 'awesome evil', and adds: 'Persecution is worse than killing.'" Spencer accuses Armstrong of context-dropping by omitting the fact that this was a defense for Muhammad's war in response to his persecution.
Benazir Bhutto accused Spencer of "falsely constructing a divide between Islam and West". She said he was using the Internet to spread hatred of Islam by presenting a "skewed, one-sided, and inflammatory story that only helps to sow the seed of civilizational conflict".
Dinesh D'Souza, of the Hoover Institution, wrote that Spencer downplays the passages of the Quran that urge peace and goodwill to reach one-sided opinions. He contends that Spencer applies a moral standard to Muslim empires that could not have been met by any European empire.
In an article discussing Bat Ye'or's 2005 book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, French academic historian Ivan Jablonka refers to Spencer, saying he has made a specialty of denouncing Islamist threats and quoting Spencer's own review of Eurabia as criticizing Europe for "selling its soul to the devil 'in exchange for markets'".
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) listed Spencer as a "Smearcaster" in an article in 2008, stating that "by selectively ignoring inconvenient Islamic texts and commentaries, Spencer concludes that Islam is innately extremist and violent".
Spencer co-founded Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and the Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI) with Pamela Geller in 2010. Both organizations are designated as hate groups by the Anti-defamation league and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In the Summer 2011 issue of Intelligence Report, published by the SPLC, Robert Steinback listed Spencer as a member of the "anti-Muslim inner circle", noting that "Spencer has been known to fraternize with European racists and neo-fascists, though he says such contacts were merely incidental."
Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called Spencer and Geller American anti-Muslim writers because their writings "promote a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the pretext of fighting radical Islam. This belief system parallels the creation of an ideological — and far more deadly — form of anti-Semitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries." He continued, "we must always be wary of those whose love for the Jewish people is born out of hatred of Muslims or Arabs."
Read more about this topic: Robert Spencer (author)
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