Robert Spencer is living proof that there is no such thing as Islamophobia. It is thus a sign of our iconoclastic times that he is regarded as among the “most important propagandizing Islamophobes in the world.” So says the Southern Poverty Law Center, a demagogic “watchdog” group that specializes in mainstreaming the Left’s ostracism of “hate” (i.e., disagreement with the Left).
Spencer is not folding his tents. The intrepid scholar, commentator, and freedom fighter is pushing back. And, Spencer being Spencer, his refutation is learned, clever, and compellingly posited in an engrossing new book—Confessions of an Islamophobe.1
Notice there are no scare quotes around Islamophobe. Notice that the opus, the bestselling author’s most biographical to date, is not entitled Why I Am Not an Islamophobe. Years of denying the obvious—namely, that there is nothing remotely irrational about fearing sacralized texts that incite jihadist violence—have convinced Spencer that it is futile to deny Islamophobia. Thus, he has decided to embrace it. “I am an Islamophobe,” proclaims the bracing sentence that opens Chapter One.
It is a shrewd approach. “Islamophobia” is not a condition; it is an epithet conjured up by sharia supremacists to divert Western attention from their dogma by blackballing its analysts and critics.
“Islamophobia” is designed to be racism’s functional equivalent.
Western political and opinion leaders have whiled away a generation of jihadist onslaught by consciously avoiding the nexus between Muslim aggression and Islamic scripture. “Islam
