I have received an email from Stephen Schwartz objecting to a post on my blog entitled “Cheerleader For Genocide.” Actually I’ve received two objections from him and I will discuss them in order.
In my original post, I reviewed his book, “Two Faces of Islam.” In that post I criticized the first sixty-five pages of the book, which I consider to be crude and even childish missionary propaganda for Islam, but I praised the remaining two hundred pages for the valuable information presented about the ways in which Saudi Arabia sponsors jihad all over the world. Discussing the first part of the book, I took particular exception to Schwartz’ account of the aftermath of the Battle of the Trench, in 627 A.D., where Mohammed murdered all the men of the tribe of Qurayzah and sold their women and children into slavery. I feel that Schwartz defends what is indefensible here, which was in fact genocide, by any definition. I stand by what I said concerning that issue.
However, I made a serious error of fact when I stated that Schwartz converted to Islam from Judaism. He was in fact raised without any religion, as he pointed out to me in his first objection. I’m not sure where I got the incorrect information. I have been reading his articles in magazines for several years and somewhere I got the idea he had been Jewish before his conversion. After receiving his email I removed the post from my blog and apologized to him, in these words:
Today, however, I received his second objection, which follows:
Dear Mr Pickett
Your original column cannot be removed from google blogs and I really do consider the headline “Cheerleader for Genocide” to be quite offensive, and even libelous. I have thought about this and really must insist you publish a complete apology as soon as possible.
I am not a cheerleader for genocide. I would point out to you that when the gentle Christians expelled Jews as well as Muslims from Spain, the Jews were welcomed into Morocco and the Ottoman domains, settled, and provided with resources to build homes, businesses, synagogues, and religious schools.
For almost five centuries there was only one mosque in Christian Europe — the Ottoman merchants’ mosque in Venice — while there remained many Christian churches in the Muslim world. These are incontrovertible facts that nobody can challenge.
I have published a book called SARAJEVO ROSE about Muslim-Jewish relations in the Balkans that defends friendship between the two communities, not genocide. And Albanian Sufis led a successful effort to protect Jewish refugees from the Nazis, so that Albania was the only Axis-controlled state in Europe with more Jews at the end of the second world war than at the beginning. That is the Islam I accepted and defend, as anybody could see from my books. Bosnian Muslim and Albanian Muslim righteous gentiles are now recognized at Yad Vashem in Israel; I was there and saw the memorial, while helping lead a delegation of moderate Muslims to the Jewish state.
Finally, amateur scholarship on Qur’an and the life of Muhammad is shaky ground at best and I fear your exercise in defamation against me is an excellent proof of that fact.
All that said, I already indicated that I appreciated your compliments to me about my expose of the Wahhabis, but referring to me as a “cheerleader for genocide” is simply not acceptable. I am well known for helping prevent two attempted genocides, in the Balkans.
Sincerely
Stephen Schwartz
My response is that I never said that Stephen Schwartz is in favor of all attempts to commit genocide. I am happy to hear that he has campaigned against genocide in the Balkans and I’m glad to hear that there has been interfaith understanding there in the past. My post makes it clear that my argument with him is that he definitely defends and excuses a successful genocide against the Jewish tribe of Qurayzah committed by Muhammad. This is typical of far too many Muslims who say, for example, that they are against suicide bombing if Muslims are killing Muslims, but that it is okay if they are killing Jews. You are either against terror in all cases or you are for it. The same goes for genocide. Being against it in two out of three cases isn’t good enough. Because of his current religion Stephen Schwartz is not allowed to criticize Muhammad, but non-Muslims have been criticizing the “prophet” for his atrocities at the Battle of The Trench and other places for 1300 years.
It is amusing to see that he thinks that the title of my post is “libelous.” If we were in Great Britain, it would be. There you can be successfully prosecuted for libel even if you can prove the truth of what you have said. In the United States, however, truth is a perfect defense against libel. Readers can make up their own minds as to whether I have libeled Stephen Schwartz by reading the post in question, which is back on my blog, minus the incorrect information about his religious history: http://edmundpickett.com/blog/2009/05/31/cheerleader-for-genocide/
I hope you noticed his dig at me for being an amateur student of Islam. That’s a good point, but he doesn’t list a single factual error in my revised post. The facts about the Battle of the Trench that I used are taken from canonical Muslim sources. Those who have not sworn allegiance to Allah’s Messenger have the right to form their own opinions of these facts. It should be mentioned that not all Muslims agree with Schwartz’ own scholarship. Here is an opposing view: http://www.icsfp.org/EN/contents.aspx?AID=2592
Another source on Stephen Schwartz are the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen-Schwartz-(author)
Both the above sources make for very interesting reading. The Muslim critique is obviously written from the Wahabi point of view and defends Al-Wahab while ingoring Schwartz’ main target, which is the actions of the government of Saudi Arabia. It doesn’t matter what label you use to indicate the official religion of Saudi Arabia. That is all theological hair-splitting. What matters is what the Saudis do, and Stephen Schwartz has information about that which you can find nowhere else.
I will conclude by saying that God gave me and all people the right to free speech. That includes freedom of religion and the freedom to have opinions. I will continue to blog on that subject. I’m now preparing a post that I doubt will please Stephen Schwartz, entitled “Muhammad’s Sex Slaves.” It also is based solely on canonical Muslim sources.
And don’t forget, June 21st is not far away, and that will be the first “International Say Anything About Islam Day.” Read about it here: http://edmundpickett.com/blog/2009/05/14/say-anything-about-islam-days/
Tags: genocide, Islam, Say Anything About Islam, Stephen Schwartz