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/
washes all the kingdom’s dirty linen in public, and though the fall predicted by Aburish hasn’t happened yet, after reading his indictment, it’s hard to believe the princes can last much longer. By the way, there are over twenty thousand princes and not one of them has to work for a living. That sounds like an incredible number, but Ibn Saud, the first king, who died in 1953, had 37 sons and they have all been reproducing with similar dedication ever since. You do the math. No one knows how many daughters the old man had because no one kept score. Girls don’t count, but I would guess that their sons are princes. It’s an exponential dynasty.
,by Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the 
by Hamid Algar, is a short, focused look at the legacy of Muhammad ibn-Abd al-Wahab (born 1703), the Muslim scholar who founded the sect that has become the official religion of 
, Mackey describes her part of this whirlwind, with a very keen eye for the human dimension. She knew very little about Islam before arriving in the kingdom and never shows much interest in religion. This doesn’t harm her book at all. Her focus is always on the people and since Islam affects every aspect of daily life there, the effect of religion is always evident. She tells her story like all good travel writers, by anecdote. Certainly much has changed since she left, but I’m sure the things she noticed: the oppression of women; the privileges of the royals; and the unimaginable corruption have not abated at all.
, Yaroslav Trofimov, a veteran journalist for the Wall Street Journal, uncovers the astounding facts about the battle that changed Islam forever, facts that the Saudi government is still trying to suppress. He talked to soldiers who fought for the army and even found a few survivors from among the rebels, most of whom were beheaded. It is a gripping story of brutal close combat that lasted weeks, most of it in the endless tunnels under the Grand Mosque. At the time, because the Saudis were saying nothing, disinformation predominated, mainly coming from 
by Karen Armstrong, a former nun, who previously wrote a best selling biography of God. In her telling, Mohammed is the very soul of compassion, who brought enlightenment to the pagans of 
, Armstrong’s general thesis is that Mohammed never did anything wrong, and if he did, everyone else was doing it too, and in 
she describes her seven years as a nun, an experience which she says left her scarred emotionally. It is difficult to summarize her current religious beliefs, but basically she thinks all the great religious traditions are trying to approach the same God, and if you don’t take what they say literally, they are equally valid. She says that compassion is the supreme virtue and the one we must honor when speaking of anyone else’s religion. She believes this requires her to accept at face value everything Muslims say about Muhammad and Islam, so she accepts without question every dodgy excuse Muslims have ever made to excuse the barbarous cruelties of their prophet. For instance, Muhammad had two concubines, more correctly known as sex slaves, one of whom he enslaved after defeating her tribe in battle, and then executing her husband and father. Armstrong says, “The emancipation of women was a project dear to the prophet’s heart.” And on the same page she adds, “…Muhammad was one of those rare men who truly enjoy the company of women.” (Islam: A Short History, pg. 67) In short, Karen Armstrong might as well be a muslim missionary.
by Ibn Warraq, a readable guide to every argument ever made against Islam. The author was raised as a muslim, then became an atheist. He attacks every claim made by muslims about their faith and leaves not one stone standing on another. The Koran is not infallible, not the word of God, it is not even good Arabic. Mohammed was a mass murderer, a pedophile and a fraud. Islam despises women and hates science. If this sounds harsh, you should be aware that all the facts presented by Ibn Warraq come from canonical Muslim sources. I believe his arguments are irrefutable and that they should be read by anyone who wants to discuss Islam in public. Aside from the fraudulent nature of the Koran and the reprehensible character of Mohammed, Ibn Warraq discusses two important areas which are commonly shrouded in myths: Science and Women.