Update:
I changed my previous title for this essay --
Finally, Robert Spencer gets it right about "Stealth Jihad"
-- because while responding to a commenter in my comments section, I recalled one other previous time when Spencer used an apt description/definition for the phenomenon of "Stealth Jihad".
That was three years ago.
As far as I know (and I have been a rather thorough reader of Jihad Watch for at least five or six years now), that instance three years ago, and the instance I write about here below, are the only two times Spencer the broken clock got it right -- though unlike a broken clock, it takes him not 24 hours, but apparently three years, to get back around, clockwise, to the same correct reading (and, moving counterclockwise, before that instance three years ago, he was using inept descriptions/definitions of the phenomenon of "Stealth Jihad" whenever he had the opportunity to mention it in his editorial remarks about various stories dealing with it, which I noted in various comments and probably also on my blog, Jihad Watch Watch). If any reader has more instances of Spencer educating his readers with the correct description/definition of the phenomenon of "Stealth Jihad", I will amend the metaphor. To see the details, simply scroll down to the comments section and see my comments to the commenter "awake" (caveat: I am severely arithmetically challenged, and in those comments I mention "some four years ago" when I should have said "three years ago", counting back from 2011 to the summer of 2008).
At any rate, here follows the original essay that had been formerly titled as noted above:
In a recent posting on Jihad Watch --
"Muslim prof in Kansas: Muslims should ask Congress to outlaw Qur'an-burning -- because it incites violence"
-- Spencer, as he is wont to do with the news stories he reports on his site, adds this trenchant editorial (and pedagogical for his readers) remark:
And so here we have a vivid example of how the stealth jihad and the violent jihad go hand-in-hand, support each other, and are two aspects of the same effort.
Had I not been unfairly banned back in September of last year from posting comments at Jihad Watch (the fourth time in several years, in fact), I would have complimented him for finally getting this important point about "Stealth Jihad" right. Indeed, it is acutely ironic that one of the two reasons cited by his right-hand woman, Marisol (in specific agreement with Spencer), who did the actual banning for him, was my habit of "sideline sniping" -- and one of the many issues I "sideline sniped" about over the past couple of years was precisely Spencer's habit of bungling this most elementary nexus between Stealth Jihad and Violent Jihad, through inept wording in his various editorial remarks whenever the subject came up that tended to obfuscate (if not eliminate), rather than elucidate, that most crucial nexus. (The other reason cited by Marisol for banning me I argued in the above link was spurious.)
In fact, I recall with fondly nostalgic amusement a most curiously intense, juvenile and largely incoherent barrage of emails Spencer and his rabidly devout attack-dog who goes by the names of "awake" (or "Mike Slumber") sent me many moons ago in the summer of '08, during which one of the issues I explained I had a problem with was Spencer's inadequate description of the nexus between Stealth Jihad and Violent Jihad. This sub-dispute (among a dozen other things) went on in back-and-forth emails for a while -- during which among other unimaginative things, Spencer complained that he couldn't say everything in his editorial remarks and that it would be too complicating and verbose to try to do so ("I am simply unable to use every occasion in which I touch on a subject as an opportunity to repeat in a comprehensive way all that needs to be said about that subject") -- until I managed to pierce Spencer's stubborn skull with a phrase that apparently turned on a light bulb therein. First I quoted one of his typical editorial remarks, concerning a story involving Stealth Jihad:
"All he [Dr. Fadl] is doing is advocating a change in strategy: less terrorism, more stealth jihad. This news shouldn’t make Americans go back to sleep; it should spur them to become aware of the ways in which the jihadist agenda of Islamic supremacism is advancing without guns and bombs."
Then I showed him (by inserting a simple short phrase in bracketed bold text) how easy and painless and succinct this could be tweaked in order to highlight the nexus of Stealth Jihad and Violent Jihad:
"All he [Dr. Fadl] is doing is advocating a change in strategy: less terrorism, more stealth jihad. This news shouldn’t make Americans go back to sleep; it should spur them to become aware of the ways in which the jihadist agenda of Islamic supremacism is [not only being pursued through violence, but also on a parallel track is] advancing without guns and bombs."
Amusingly, his next email to me was a brief compliment saying he liked the phrase "on a parallel track". I tell you, it was like pulling fucking teeth to get him to concede that.
But now, as we showed in our quote up top, Spencer was able to express in a mere 30 words, apparently without getting winded or breaking a sweat, the crucial point about the nexus between Stealth Jihad and Violent Jihad. Was it so hard?
And not only does Spencer present that most apposite nutshell about the nexus quoted above about the Kansan Muslim professor (why do we even have Muslim professors in Kansas, for Allah's sake?), he goes the extra mile by showing succinctly how it works in this case:
Muslims go crazy and kill innocent people over a burned Qur'an, and their useful idiots in the mainstream media blame the Qur'an-burner instead of the Muslims who behaved violently and irrationally. Then a smooth and rational voice -- a law professor -- says that because burning the Qur'an leads to violence, it must be outlawed.
Oh my God! An additional 55 words! Spencer must have had to have a stiff drink and take a nap after that monumental effort.
P.S.: Back in October of last year, fresh from being unfairly banned by Spencer, I commended him (with reservations) in another essay on his finally getting the racial issue that figures so prominently, if not centrally, in our Western Problem of Islam (i.e., the problem that the West sees no Problem of Islam).
6 comments:
So, you are complimenting Spencer on the correct usage of a term that he himself coined?
awake,
"So, you are complimenting Spencer on the correct usage of a term that he himself coined?"
Had you actually read my full piece (where the verb "read" means to mentally receive and intelligently digest the words written), you would not have needed to ask your question (either sincerely or with rhetorical sarcasm).
Coining a term is great; spending a good four years explaining your own coined term ineptly is not so great. To then finally (note the "Finally" in my title) explain the term aptly merits a compliment, but not without noting the egregious tardiness involved on that long and winding road to finally getting it right.
Additionally, the correct usage of the term was something I had to show him (in the email exchanges to which my piece refers), and only after repeated attempts to get through his obtuse stubbornness in this regard (he was probably fixated on me as an "enemy" rather than on the ideas we were supposed to be arguing about) when I showed him how easy it is to describe the crucial definition correctly, did he compliment me!
[continued next]
[cont.]
Which brings me to this late-breaking old news. This just in:
I didn't mention this in my piece, but I remember noticing in one of Spencer's editorial remarks on Jihad Watch, some time after my email exchange with him on the proper explanation of his own coinage, his own use of my term "parallel track" -- but my memory at the time of writing this present piece had been hazy. I just now Googled "parallel track" specifying the Jihad Watch site, and lo and behold: on July 15, 2008, exactly three days after I showed him how to formulate his own coinage more effectively and correctly (on July 12, 2008) -- I see essentially the same formulation which I had formulated to him in that email (read my piece to see the quote):
Referring to the infamous Muslim Brotherhood memo about sabotaging America, Spencer wrote then:
This sabotage is not only being pursued through violence, but is also advancing on a parallel track without guns and bombs -- a stealth jihad.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:D0-jaVPWwDoJ:www.jihadwatch.org/2008/07/prosecutors-yes-isna-and-nait-are-unindicted-co-conspirators.html+%22parallel+track%22+site:http://www.jihadwatch.org/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com
As I said, my memory of this had been hazy when I wrote this present piece; I had vaguely remembered him using "parallel track", but now I recall somewhat less vaguely at the time being pleasantly surprised that I had gotten through to him, and chuckled to myself -- even if my getting through his thick and paranoid skull had been not through my "sideline sniping" that gets me banned for trying to offer such useful insights to him in Jihad Watch comments sections, then at least through an email that came near the end (and near my wit's end) of a long email barrage of juvenile and stubbornly sophistical (or just plain dense) nipping at my heels by him and you.
[cont. final part]
So, in a nutshell, while I was in this piece complimenting Spencer for finally getting around to formally using my explanation of his own coinage in order to educate his readership, I will have to update my readers in a subsequent piece on the fact that Spencer did in fact use his own coinage correctly (though still not quite as fully as this most recent quote I used in my present piece) at least once before -- some four years ago; even if that correct form was essentially mine, not his (or at least crucially indebted to me). Being a close reader of Jihad Watch from that time forward (not to mention for at least two years prior to '08), I don't recall him employing a correct description/definition of his coinage other than these two times; but he may have (perhaps someone could ask the long-time and assiduously meticulous reader of Jihad Watch, "dumbledoresarmy", who rightfully has styled herself the informal "Librarian" of Jihad Watch comments -- but then, she might be too afraid of being honest in this regard, for fear of saying the "wrong" thing (as she did when she censored herself by not mentioning Andrew Bostom as the author of an important work on the history of Islamic antisemitism).
But don't worry; I'm not going to threaten to sue Spencer or use hyperbolic paranoid language about him as he does with his old friends Andrew Bostom and Diana West. I merely present the facts of the case and their implications (though amid all my inhuman and heroic restraint I just had to offer myself the little bone of accurately describing how finally, in that email exchange, getting Spencer to see the point of how easy it is to describe/define the crux of his own coinage was like "fucking pulling teeth"). Speaking of restraint, I also had to mention the searing irony of the fact that his recent banning of me was (aside from a spurious pretext) for my alleged habit of "sideline sniping" -- and, as I noted in my piece, one of the many things about which I "sniped" at Spencer from the "sidelines" was precisely on his repeated, ongoing inept descriptions/definitions of his own coinage, whenever he had the chance to right that wrong in his editorial remarks to this, that and the other piece that reflected Stealth Jihad.
I read the piece, the whole thing, as well as your long reply. I wasn't aware of and couldn't find the direct discussion about a "parallel track" in any emails I was privy to, so I guess we'll take you on your word that you and Spencer had them.
That said, I see by a new revelation, that you now seem to be taking credit for the whole concept, because essentially, you helped Spencer identify his own term properly in your estimation:
"I will have to update my readers in a subsequent piece on the fact that Spencer did in fact use his own coinage correctly (though still not quite as fully as this most recent quote I used in my present piece) at least once before -- some four years ago; even if that correct form was essentially mine, not his (or at least crucially indebted to me)."
Well I'm glad you cleared that up. Now myself and the JW readership can move on now that we finally understand what the stealth jihad is. Manmy thanks, Hesp!
You should stop and listen to yourself sometimes, for you seem to project a paranoia and personal obsession with Spencer, one you accuse him of routinely, that is unhealthy on any level in my estimation.
awake,
You still aren't actually reading.
Get back to me when you finally learn how to do it.
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