I don’t usually use the Ibishblog for this kind of thing, but sometimes variations on a theme are absolutely necessary. As my regular readers will know, I was alarmed enough by the failed Times Square car bomb to agree to a couple of TV interview requests I would’ve normally turned down in recent years, and made, among others, two appearances on Fox News. The first, on the O’Reilly Factor, was largely without incident and was probably as reasonable a discussion as one could expect under the circumstances, although the fundamental premise was predictably off-base. The second was an interview with me by a Fox News journalist called Lauren Green, and I wasn’t aware that once they were done with me, some panel or other discussed my remarks in my absence. I learned this last night when I ran across a blog posting from the anti-Muslim hatemonger Phyllis Chesler, who was apparently part of the conversation about my remarks from which I was excluded. She writes the following instructive rubbish:

Fox News had convened a panel to discuss the relationship between “faith and terrorism.” We began by discussing the interview with Hussein Ibish, formerly the director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, now the Executive Director of the Foundation for Arab American Leadership, a non-member organization. Ibish made a series of false claims, all of which sounded reasonable, “fair,” and logical, and he did so in excellent American English. For example, he said that Muslims were persecuted by pagans when Mohammed was alive and that’s why there are some Qu’ranic verses that encourage or permit violence.
Poppycock! Muslims under Mohammed were busy raping, pillaging, plundering, and enslaving the so-called pagans, trying to convert them; Mohammed and his soldiers genocidally slaughtered the Jewish tribes of Arabia. So, what Ibish is really saying is that when Muslims cannot convert another faith group to Islam, that Muslims feel “persecuted” and therefore resort to violence.
Nothing’s changed.

The only thing Ms. Chesler is right about is that my English is much better than hers. Other than that, her comments are not only hate-filled, they completely misrepresent the substance of my discussion with Ms. Green. Green was asking me about faith and violence in the context of Islamist extremists, and I said I didn’t care for the phrase "religion of peace" which she mentioned, because all religions are social texts determined by the interpretations of their followers and all major religions had historically proven amenable to legitimating both peaceful and aggressive intentions. Green disputed this, saying that the Bible contains a narrative in which the relatively more violent, militaristic Old Testament texts can be reinterpreted in light of the New Testament texts in order to create a peaceful ethos, but that no such narrative existed in the Koran. "Or does it?" she asked me.

I noted first of all that while Green is absolutely right about the way many Christians have interpreted the chronology of scripture composition to allow more peaceful texts to condition the interpretation of more violent ones in the Bible, historically that hasn’t stopped many Christians and Christian societies from behaving in an extremely violent manner, frequently in the name of God. However, I also pointed out that Muslims too have a narrative, which Green was clearly unaware of, that allows for the same kind of interpretation of more violent passages of the Koran in the context of more peaceful ones. I pointed out that the Koran was revealed over a period of historical time and that Muslims are well aware of and have discussed in detail throughout their history the understanding that most of the aggressive and militant passages had to do with the period in which the early Muslims are said to have been persecuted by pagan tribes. It is therefore possible, and indeed common, to find Muslim scholars interpreting the more militant texts in the context of more peace-oriented ones, in a manner that is indeed analogous to the way many Christians interpret the more militant Old Testament texts in the context of the more peace-oriented New Testament ones. Indeed, this process of contrapuntal interpretation is supported by the several passages of the Koran itself, including Surah 2:106. This is an absolutely accurate explanation of an important element of Muslim religious thinking that Green was unaware of and was suggesting doesn’t exist, and it was important to correct her misapprehension. What I was "really saying" was, of course, that there is a strong basis in Islamic theology and doctrine for interpreting more violent texts in the context of more peaceful ones just as there is in Christianity. It’s as simple as that. And it’s true.

From all this, Chesler got the impression, probably willfully but possibly out of ignorance and/or a simple lack of brainpower, that I was justifying Muslim violence by stating as a fact that Muslims were persecuted by pagans when Mohammed was alive. Of course what I was actually doing was defending and explaining peaceful interpretations of Islam. What I understand perfectly well, but she doesn’t, is that in all of these ancient religious narratives we are dealing in the realm of myths and legends, not facts. Green was asking about the supposed lack of any Muslim narrative analogous to the Christian rereading of the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, and because there is in fact such a narrative I tried to explain it. Chesler leapt to the indefensible conclusion that I was presenting this narrative as a historical fact, when there was nothing whatsoever in my remarks to indicate this, any more than agreeing that Christians have the narrative Green was referring to indicated an acceptance of the literal truth of any aspect of the Bible. Chesler baselessly misrepresents me as endorsing rather than describing this narrative, and accuses me of making "a series of false claims," which is itself a completely false claim.

What’s most amazing about her is that while I’m capable of discussing religious narratives while retaining a healthy understanding that all of this is firmly in the category of myth and legend and not historical fact, she’s certain she knows the historical truth, and of course it’s the most negative possible interpretation of the early history of Islam. Frankly, there isn’t much in the historical record to independently support the Muslim version of events, but that version is the majority of what we have, so while it’s right to view it with skepticism, her complete dismissal of every aspect of the Muslim narrative is even more silly than a complete acceptance of it. Moreover, she is 100% certain, without any historical basis, in describing the early Muslims as pretty much the worst group of people who ever lived in a transparent effort to malign present-day Muslims across the board since "nothing’s changed."

Which brings me to her extremely telling comment that I spoke in "excellent American English" as if this is an extraordinary, eyebrow raising phenomenon. The implication, of course, is that I am some kind of slick, fast-talking Muslim spin merchant serving up to the innocent American viewers a dish of "reasonable, fair and logical sounding" falsehoods all sauced in duplicitously "excellent American English." The point of her intervention is transparently to promote fear and hatred of Muslims and Islam, and to cast me — a skeptical, rational agnostic — preposterously in the role of someone who is surreptitiously justifying Muslim violence in a very crafty manner and in duplicitously good English. Her clear-cut and unavoidable message is: nothing has changed, all the Muslims were always evil and bad or at least extremely dangerous, and they’re all the same, so fear and hate them. She would have made a fantastic Christian or Muslim anti-Semite.