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Chronicles Online, Wednesday, March 7, 2007


DINESH THE LYING CHARLATAN


Srdja Trifkovic





On Monday, March 5, Dinesh D'Souza, a Hoover Institution fellow and an
author of some prominence, and I had a lively debate on WDAY's Hot Talk
with Scott Hennen, following our recent vigorous exchanges in print and
on the Web on the nature of Islam. Faced with D'Souza's delusional
ignorance and arrogance in the first five minutes of our debate I
concluded that his knowledge of Islam was pretty tenuous, his claim that
he had spent four years studying it notwithstanding. Hence the key
segment of our exchange, transcribed verbatim from the recording of the
show:




TRIFKOVIC: Have you actually read the Kuran? Have you ever actually
read the Kuran?

D'SOUZA: Of course I have.

TRIFKOVIC: Do you know how are the Suras arranged?

D'SOUZA: They are. er. they are not arranged in any chronological
order. er. [pause] and. er. [pause] and so I quote in my book both the
violent and.

TRIFKOVIC: Just tell me how ARE they arranged.

D'SOUZA: The other point.

TRIFKOVIC: Can you just tell me how are the Suras arranged?

D'SOUZA: .right. You can't just call.

TRIFKOVIC: Why don't you just tell me how are the Suras arranged?

HENNEN: OK, one at a time here; your question for Dinesh, Serge,
is?

TRIFKOVIC: In what order are the Suras arranged in the Kuran?

D'SOUZA: [long silence] . I really don't know what you mean by
that. When you say "in what order" then. err. [pause] there.

TRIFKOVIC: [.] They happen to be arranged by size, from short to long!
[sic!]

D'SOUZA: [without interruption] And when did Iran.

By continuing blithely with his "points," rather than correcting my
assertion, Dinesh D'Souza merely confirmed urbi et orbi what had been
established beyond reasonable doubt in the course of our exchange: that
he has not read the Kuran and that he may never had one in his hands.

As it happens, the eccentric arrangement of the Muslim holy book - from
those endlessly long and often boring Medinan Suras like Al-Baqarah with
almost 300 verses, or Al-'Imran with 200, to the shorter and more
interesting Meccan ones - is the Kuran's most salient feature. It is its
one feature that is bound to be noticed and remembered by any modestly
observant and not necessarily astute layman.

That this key feature of the book is unknown to an author who claims to
have spent four years studying it is indicative either of his tenuous
hold on reality, or of his excessively creative imagination. Either way,
the gall necessary for such a person to aspire to authoritative
statements on Islam defies belief. Grotesque images spring to mind:
Groucho spewing pronunciamientos on Dostoyevsky, Yogi Berra on quantum
physics, Maya Angelou on poetry. The story would be farcical, were it
not for the seriousness of the subject.

D'Souza's particular statement in our debate that prompted my impromptu
Kuran 101 test is worth quoting in extenso:

We can't win the War on Terror without driving a wedge between the
radical Muslims and the traditional Muslims. There are many Muslims who
are very different from the stereotypical Muslim that Serge and [Robert]
Spencer feature in their work. My point is simply this: ultimately I
think that we have to draw traditional Muslims away from radical Islam,
because the radical Muslims are fishing in the pool of traditional
Islam. So for this reason I think that these attacks on Islam - the
Koran is a gospel of violence, Mohammed is the inventor of terrorism -
they are not just tactically foolish, they are historically wrong
because Islam has been around for thirteen hundred years, Islam
radicalism was invented in the 1920s, and came to power in 1979. How can
we blame the Prophet Mohammad for things that Khomeini and Bin Laden are
saying, that are very new. Historian Bernard Lewis points out that
radical Islam is a radical break with traditional Islam. Never before
have Muslim mullahs, or clergymen, ever ruled a Muslim country. All
Muslim countries have been ruled by non-clergymen until Khomeini. So I
think the flaw we see in this work and in the Islamophobic literature is
that it tries to link the early centuries of Islam. It cherry-picks the
Koran and finds all the violent passages, leaves out all the peaceful
passages, and then basically concedes to Bin Laden that he is the true
Muslim, that his reading of the Koran is correct, and it pushes the
traditional Muslims towards the radical camp by denouncing their
religion. Then we complain all these traditional Muslims [indistinct] .
by denouncing Islam itself.


The claim that analyzing and exposing those aspects of orthodox Islamic
teaching that prompt bloodshed will drive "traditional" Muslims into the
radical camp is the exact moral and logical equivalent of the claim
often advanced during the Cold War by Moscow's apologists and
fellow-travelers that a vigorous and principled stand by the West in
defense of the Free World would be detrimental to the "moderates" in the
Kremlin and play right into the hands of the "hard-liners." Aside from
the logical absurdity of this line of reasoning, it is also
hypocritical: D'Souza's latest book does not allow for any possibility
of a cleverly driven conservative wedge between the "traditional" Left
and its self-hating, post-modern mutant offspring.





In his book and in our debate D'Souza made a clear point (however
objectionable) that Spencer and I must stop writing as we do, and that
"conservatives have to cease blaming Islam for the behavior of the
radical Muslims." Such demands, coupled with D'Souza's embrace of the
classic leftist slogan of "Islamophobia," go way beyond mere
disagreement; yet he dismisses as "paranoid" anyone who sees this as a
call for us to be silenced, or to be silent.





"How can we blame the Prophet Mohammad for things that Khomeini and Bin
Laden are saying," asks D'Souza, casually adopting a pious Muslim's
designation of Islam's founder. On this crucial issue of Islam's core
teaching, Robert Spencer responded by noting that both Khomeini and bin
Laden invoked Muhammad to justify their positions: D'Souza's
"traditional Muslims," as he himself acknowledges, have no theological
differences with the jihadists, and clearly they have mounted no
large-scale or effective response to the jihadists:





So we are supposed to ignore the fact that the jihadists use Muhammad,
instead of calling upon those "traditional Muslims" to formulate some
effective counter to this use - whether by rejecting the literal meaning
of Muhammad's words in some cases, or by some other means? Here again
D'Souza continues to repeat points that have no substance, all the while
robotically invoking Lewis like the homo unius libri that Hugh
Fitzgerald pointed out that he is. One would think an established
conservative such as D'Souza would recognize that sometimes the
conventional wisdom on a given topic is incorrect, and that the truth
can be found among those who are despised and vilified by the lemmings
of the mainstream.





When D'Souza asserts that "all Muslim countries have been ruled by
non-clergymen until Khomeini," continues Spencer, he is suggesting that
some form of separation of Mosque and State is dominant in Islamic
history, when just the opposite is the case: Islam does not accept any
separation of the sacred and the secular realms: "Here again, it is hard
to escape the impression that D'Souza either doesn't know the facts of
Islamic history and law, or actually wishes to give his audience a false
impression."





For a more lighthearted comment on the affair let us end with Hugh
Fitzgerald on JihadWatch, who says that from now on "anyone debating
Dinesh D'Souza should be sure to do exactly as Serge Trifkovic did":
simply ask D'Souza a question or two about the most obvious and
elementary of matters. In his view, D'Souza now has three choices: 1. Be
shown up for an ignoramus; 2. Be forced to study Islam, and perhaps
modify his views in the process; or 3. Never appear where anyone can
debate him about his knowledge of Islam:


I think Dinesh D'Souza will choose #3. #1 is something he obscurely
realizes he is, but like the mountebank hawking his wares at the County
Fair, he has assumed that no one will call him on his hollow claims. But
he can no longer assume that. #2 requires work. It requires study. It
requires thought. [.] #3 it will be. No more debates, for Dinesh
D'Souza, with anyone at all. But what if - for him, a hellish What If -
some of those interviewing him started to bone up on Islam, and asked
him questions? What if on Talk Shows there were callers who would call
up pretending that they were about to ask one thing, and then suddenly
asked D'Souza one or more of those questions, the ones he cannot answer,
to what should be his own great shame and chagrin? Then where would he
be?

And the same can be done at those appearances he solicits for "Corporate
Audiences" and "University Audiences," Fitzgerald continues, as it is
perfectly legitimate - it is hardly harassment - to simply ask him a few
questions to see what this self-minted and self-described "expert on
Islam" knows about the isnad-chain, or the work the muhaddithin, or
"naskh," or "fiqh," or "tafsir, " or "Jihad," or "dhimmi," or "Ahl
al-dhimma":

And say, just what did happen at the Khaybar Oasis? And who was Asma
bint Marwan? And who was little Aisha, and of what contemporary
relevance is her story? And who can issue a fatwa, and what is the
difference between a fatwa and a rukh? And what is the Treaty of
Al-Hudaibiyya, and why does it matter? And who was Abu Bakr? Ali?
Hussein? And what does the phrase "al-masjid al-aksa" mean, and who
decided what that phrase must refer to?

But Fitzgerald has faith that no matter how hard Dinesh D'Souza starts
studying now, he simply won't be able to figure it all out - not given
the list of his authorities, and certainly not given his mental
faculties on display at the best source of information about Dinesh
D'Souza: his own website, where the copy is written by - Dinesh D'Souza.
Don't miss it.



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