- Spencer, Robert.
The Politically Incorrect Guide
to Islam (and the Crusades).
Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2005.
ISBN 0-89526-013-1.
-
This book has the worthy goal of providing a brief,
accessible antidote to the airbrushed version of Islam
dispensed by its apologists and echoed by the mass media,
and the relentlessly anti-Western account of the Crusades
indoctrinated in the history curricula of government
schools. Regrettably, the attempt falls short of the mark.
The tone throughout is polemical—you don't feel like you're
reading about history, religion, and culture so much as that
the author is trying to persuade you to adopt his negative
view of Islam, with historical facts and citations from
original sources trotted out as debating points. This runs the
risk of the reader suspecting the author of having
cherry-picked source material, omitting that which argues
the other way. I didn't find the
author guilty of this, but the result is that this book is
only likely to persuade those who already agree with its
thesis before picking it up, which makes one wonder what's
the point.
Spencer writes from an overtly Christian perspective,
with parallel “Muhammad vs. Jesus” quotes in each chapter,
and statements like, “If Godfrey of Bouillon, Richard the
Lionhearted, and countless others hadn't risked their lives
to uphold the honor of Christ and His Church thousands of
miles from home, the jihadists would almost certainly have
swept across Europe much sooner” (p. 160). Now, there's
nothing wrong with comparing aspects of Islam to other religions
to counter “moral equivalence” arguments which claim that every
religion is equally guilty of intolerance, oppression, and
incitement to violence, but the near-exclusive focus on Christianity
is likely to be off-putting to secular readers and adherents of
other religions who are just as threatened by militant,
expansionist Islamic fundamentalism as Christians.
The text is poorly proofread; in several block quotations,
words are run together without spaces, three times in
as many lines on page 110. In the quote from John Wesley
on p. 188, the whole meaning is lost when the
phrase “cities razed from the foundation” is written
with “raised” instead of “razed”.
The author's earlier
Islam Unveiled
(February 2003) is similarly flawed in tone and
perspective. Had I noticed that this book was by the
same author, I wouldn't have read it. It's more
to read, but the combination of Ibn Warraq's
Why I Am Not a Muslim
(February 2002)
and Paul Fregosi's
Jihad in the West
(July 2002)
will leave you with a much better understanding of the
issues than this disappointing effort.
November 2005 