Screenshot of a new Muslim Public Affairs Council report
The overwhelming majority of the people who make up the Islamophobic right in the U.S. have no formal credentials on Islam, a new report from a Muslim-American group says. 24 out of 25 of the figures the group profiles “lack the formal academic qualifications to be classified as an expert on Islam and/or Muslims,” the report reads.
The report, titled “Not Qualified: Exposing the Deception Behind America’s Top 25 Pseudo Experts on Islam,” was released by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a Muslim-American advocacy group.
MPAC’s report looks at some of the more prominent figures on the anti-Muslim right, and skewers their claims of expertise on Islam. Daniel Pipes was the only person profiled in the study to have formal, academic qualifications on Islam.
MPAC defines an expert on Islam as “as an individual who has formal academic qualifications in Islamic Studies from either 1) an accredited institution of higher education in the West or 2) an institution of higher education in a Muslim-majority country that rank among the world’s top 500 universities. In order to be classified as [an] expert, as defined above, one’s credentials must also be publicly verifiable.”
The profiles include a look at Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney, Steven Emerson and more.
Despite their lack of qualifications to be talking about Islam and Muslims, these figures, while representing a fringe, have reach beyond their small community of pseudo-scholars. Their talking points are often blasted to the public by Fox News and some have taught U.S. law enforcement. Spencer’s book, The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, was recommended by the FBI in 2009. Spencer is a leading anti-Muslim activist in the U.S. and a close ally of Geller.
But Spencer has never studied Islam. He holds a master’s degree in religious studies related to early Christianity from the University of North Carolina.
Another lesser-known figure profiled by MPAC is former FBI agent John Guandolo, who taught law enforcement in Tennessee about Islam and terrorism. But Guandolo has “no formal academic credentials in Islamic studies.” He only holds a BA in engineering from the US Naval Academy.
Daniel Pipes who’s supposedly ‘qualified’ needs to be exposed for his grossly misguided interpretations and selective targeting of Islamic references purposely out of context to fear and hate monger….and for ethical misconduct in abusing said qualifications.
i just wrote the following to pippi longstocking regarding his article on “Rampaging Islamists” because he has a PhD in history, not religion/comparative theology, not middle eastern studies, and definitely not Islamic studies, so he’s hardly qualified. i doubt it will pass moderation to appear:
Dr. Pipes, your gross lack of education specifically in Islam, per se, immediately disqualifies you from discussing the meanings of Islamic teachings as well as the context from which those teachings stem from…both of which are indeed critical to a proper understanding of Islam, as is the case in any religion. This article (as well as the comments) is primarily fear and hate-mongering dribble drabble. You need to take responsibility for the harm this ignorance results in since you are contributing to a very dangerous separation in the human population. You haven’t a clue how serious your contributions are, obviously. And if you do, you can never associate the word peace with your name..NEVER. The very least you could do, which you do not do, is consult mainstream reputable Islamic scholars for their input on all this “rampaging”…they have all emphatically denounced violence and state clearly that Islam opposes violence, even in the face of such blatant insults which purposely incite. They do NOT condone the rampaging one iota. Yet you fail to bring this to the attention of your readers, thus your silence is complicit in spreading falsities which harm. Ethically, professionally and personally, you should be ashamed of yourself. I can state with absolute certainty that men of integrity do not abide by such complicit silence to promote fear and hate.
Couldn’t have said it better my self mondo. Good for u. I would love to read a response from him.
it didn’t appear in comments, i knew he wouldn’t expose his own incompetence. so i left the same comment (but added, “Let it be known, then, that you, sir, are a genuine, authentic fraud.”) on his stupid (but very public, haha!) ME forum facebook page for all his little flunkies to cogitate on.
thank you alex.
not surprising that these self-proclaimed “experts” on Islam lack the qualifications to be talking about Islam and Muslims. Were Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler et al qualified to discuss Judaism and Jews, homosexuality and Gays, disabilities and the disabled? Or (same as Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Frank Gaffney) were they merely power seeking hatemongers who opportunistically sensed that the populace might be susceptible to their brand of exploitation.
I wonder how many of these twenty five have even read the Qur’an?
It wouldn’t surprise me if few of them have. Every time I read one of their assertions about what’s in that book, when I go to check it, the reference either turns out to be wildly distorted or made up out of whole cloth. These people are professional liars. One might as well consult Julius Streicher on Jews and Judaism.
I often wonder why the need for so much hate. Under Islam, Judaism flourished.
Between Arab conquest in 640 from oppressive Romans & Crusaders in 1099 under Muslim rule the jewish & Christian communities flourished. Even Abu Eban (one of the founding fathers of “Israel”) wrote that for the first time the Jewish community thrived & under Islam it reclaimed its status of leading cultural, religious, theological & social center of Judaism around world. Then Crusaders invaded & Jerusalem was forbidden for Jews until Saladin conquered Jerusalem & Crusaders were defeated.
“Anti-Semitism is not an eastern phenomenon, it’s not an Islamic or Iranian phenomenon – anti-Semitism is a European phenomenon,” Ciamak Morsathegh, head of the Jewish hospital in Tehran, explained.
It’s the “ally yourself with whom fate shines on for the moment” scapegoat at play.
great comment Blake. but what a convenient omission by pippi pipes in all his undertakings, especially with his big harvard PhD in, of all things, history! LOL. he’s authentic and qualified, alright…at being a fraud!
The Jewish population of Jerusalem at the time of the Crusader conquest was 50,000 and that community was mostly killed off and the survivors went into exile. It took about 300 years for a Jewish community to re-emerge in that city.
The long exile had one amusing consequence. When they returned they forgot where the original wailing wall was located and misidentified what was likely the foundation of a Christian Church built in the 3 rd century as the “new” wall.
Toivo,
Can you point me to where I can read more of this?
I read one claim that the real site of the temple was over the Gihon spring. But my problem with this is that that area is a valley as I understand it, and it seems more likely the temple would be built at a high point.
Blake says: “…I often wonder why the need for so much hate. Under Islam, Judaism flourished…”
The hate is needed because absent the hate, Zionists would be forced to recognize the manifest injustice of their project.
If you are going to drive people from their homes, shoot them down at will, treat them as something worse than vermin — then you have to hate them. It’s a sin qua non. If the Zionists stopped hating, they would have to pack their bags and get in line at Ben Gurion tomorrow. They wouldn’t be able to live with themselves otherwise.
Notice the often almost desperate attempt to find in Islam a history of violent anti-semitism. You can find that in Christianity easily enough — but Zionism’s victims are mostly Muslim. It has to be found there — and they keep desperately scrabbling to find it. The ‘Syrian pogrom’ that was actually carried out by Christians, the rather tame extension of the Holocaust to Tunisia, the distressingly spindly links between Arab Nationalism and Naziism…anything. Oh Lord! Send us a reason to hate the Muslims!
They gotta have it. Absent it, the rationale for Israel gets even worse…you’re tormenting this people, and they didn’t even do much to you. That, right there, is the inadmissible thought. Do you realize how grateful the Zionists would be if only they could find a Palestinian Bogdan Khmelnitsky?
Maybe he was really Palestinian…quick. Run and check.
You are right Colin (Apt surname you have there). They need a scapegoat to escape from the reality of their sham and rather pick on the Gentile Christians, Islam is their target, the lesser of the 2 evils (for now anyhow).
Do they ever (re: title)?
That seems to be the universally defining characteristic of bigotry.
ritzl says: “Do they ever (re: title)[know what they are talking about]
That seems to be the universally defining characteristic of bigotry.”
In principle at least, one would have to not know what one is talking about to purvey hatred of a group — be the group Muslims, corporate executives, Poles, or homosexuals.
Actual knowledge of a subject almost invariably imparts ambivalence. For that reason, I tend to be as suspicious of uncritical admiration as of flaring bigotry. The guy who thinks Ruritanian peasants are examples of man before the fall is probably at least as ignorant of them as actual people as the guy who thinks of them as subhuman vermin who should be exterminated.
No one here believes in practice that you need an advanced degree on a topic to talk about it correctly. Otherwise, there would be a lot of silence and hardly a comment section on this or any site. Especially about Judaism.
There are some loathsome bigots on this list but that owes to their bigotry and political agenda not to their lack of a degree, a qualification which neither makes one right about anything. A very knowledgeable person on Islam who is critical is often written off as an Orientalist. And many admirers of Islam also don’t have degrees in the subject and most Muslims don’t speak Arabic, very few know Koranic Arabic which has no bearing on their status as Muslims, or their correctness about the religion.
This cuts across any discipline. I read the most informed, historical, and well written piece on Obama the other day by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Fear of a Black President. Coates is a college dropout.
Well, that’s hard to argue with, tokyobk. So I won’t.
The problem is not whether these bigots are qualified enough to talk/criticise Islam but to present their views to the public and especially governmental institutions as an expert is misleading and wrong.
Anytime someone, particularly someone in the limelight, is presented as an expert they have a formal degree or years of formal experience in that field. Geller and her ilk have neither and shouldn’t be on major news outlets spouting out this garbage selling it as undeniable facts. I doubt Fox News would have Mel Gibson on air talking about extreme Judaism. They have a clear and sinister agenda
That’s true, BK.
Now back to the subject: fraudsters who claim expertise in order to spread hatred of Islam. Are you defending this practice, or claiming it doesn’t exist? Or this just more butwhatabout-ism?
Yeah but these guys often present themselves as if they were experts. ‘In Islam…’
…and it readily becomes apparent they don’t frigging know. They’re practically making it up out of whole cloth. In some cases, they are making it up out of whole cloth. They just want to grease up their hatred of Islam with a completely spurious show of academic expertise.
How about the boat loads of vile bigots speaking on European Christendom on the Western Left, including bulging out of the Ethnic, Women’s, and GLBT studies departments, or even the Occidentalists in the Middle Eastern studies departments as well as around the globe?
The problem is that this cuts both ways, and yet…I see no denouncement of the tribalist minorities and their bigoted analysis of European Christendom.
Why is one speaking truth to power, all truth is relative, and the personal is the political and the European Christian Male is not welcome to the diversity dance? When they criticize others, it’s hatefilled bigotry and imposition of Eurocentrism and white privilege and hatefilled bigotry.
Withdraws Defamation Suit
“Terror” Slut Steve Emerson Eats Crow (Just for Starters)
CounterPunch Wire
Self-styled “terrorism expert” Steven Emerson has filed for dismissal of a multi-million-dollar defamation suit against a Florida newspaper and its senior editor. The “notice of voluntary dismissal” (Case No. 00-03739) filed in the Circuit Court in and for Hillsborough County, Fla., states: “Plaintiff Steven Emersonherewith serves notice of his dismissal of this action, without prejudice, against defendants John Sugg and The Weekly Planet, Inc.”
“This lawsuit did not have any merit, and I believe it was filed in bad faith to deter us and others from telling the truth about Emerson. I think that ‘pseudo-journalist’ is a perfect description for Steven Emerson,” said Sugg, currently senior editor of Creative Loafing in Atlanta, Ga. Sugg added: “We reported the truth. In four years of litigation, Emerson has been unwilling or unable to come up with any evidence that what we reported was false. Now that we were close to forcing him to back up his claims, he has run away.”
Emerson’s lawsuit alleged that Sugg, then senior editor of Florida’s Weekly Planet newspaper, “maliciously and repeatedly published false and defamatory utterances” in an “ongoing campaign to undermine Emerson’s credibility and damage his professional and personal reputation.” Emerson sought one million dollars in actual damages and ten million dollars in punitive damages on each of three causes of action.
The complaint centered on allegations reported by Sugg that two Associated Press reporters said Emerson gave them a document on terrorism supposedly from FBI files: “One reporter thought he’d seen the material before, and in checking found a paper Emerson had supplied earlier containing his own unsupported allegations. The two documents were almost identical, except that Emerson’s authorship was deleted from the one purported to be from the FBI. ‘It was really his work,’ one reporter says. ‘He sold it to us trying to make it look like a really interesting FBI document.’” (Weekly Planet, May 1998) In that same article, Sugg quoted AP reporter Richard Cole saying: “‘We were not really clear on the origin of his [Emerson's] material.’ Because of that, Cole recalls, much of Emerson’s information was sliced from the series.” (Cole was the lead writer of a 1997 AP series on terrorism.)
The lawsuit also disputed allegations that Emerson gave false information to a Senate subcommittee during testimony in 1998. In an article headlined “Ties to Spies?” Sugg wrote: “In a missive submitted to a U.S. Senate subcommittee in February, Emerson stated that a federal lawman and other authorities in 1995 told him ‘radical Islamic fundamentalists had been assigned to carry out an assassination of me. An actual hit team had been dispatched…’ Emerson claimed the authorities said he could probably ‘get permission to enter the Witness Security Program’ “After I sent Emerson’s document to the Justice Department’s Terrorism and Violent Crimes Section, this on-the-record response was made by spokesman John Russell on May 5.
“‘You pushed the right button asking about your friend Steve Emerson,’ Russell said. ‘We’ve never given any thought to putting him in the witness protection program.’ Is there any truth to the allegation of an assassination team? ‘No, none at all,’ Russell responded.”
In documents filed with the court, Emerson said he was “notified by U.S. government officials in 1995 of a death threat against him.”
Emerson is best known for his controversial 1994 PBS production “Jihad in America.” Muslims say he has a long history of defamatory and inaccurate attacks on the Islamic community in this country.
link to counterpunch.org
Even if Islam was as they’d have it, it is completely irrelevant to the legal status of Israel’s actual sovereign territories.
IOW it’s just another ignorant attempt to justify a Greater Israel and US belligerence.