Akbar Ahmed, Advocate of “Dialogue,” Claims “Islamophobes” are “Linking Islam to Violence, Terrorism and Intolerance”

Akbar Ahmed is the quintessential example of a “moderate” Muslim engaging in “dialogue” with Infidels who have no idea of what his goals for that “dialogue” really are. This article, however, is unintentionally revealing. “Interfaith dialogue: ‘Dialogue of civilisations’ key to global harmony,” by Aroosa Shaukat for the Express Tribune, December 3:

It’s interesting that Ahmed holds the Ibn-e-Khaldoon chair. Ibn-e-Khaldoon, or Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), is renowned today for his pioneering historical works. But it is doubtful that the authorities at the American University in Washington know that in his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, Ibn Khaldun wrote that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.” Unless the chair was named by Akbar Ahmed or people who share his point of view, it was probably named by people who assumed that Ibn Khaldun was a “moderate,” and would be shocked to learn that he was an advocate of jihad. This is particularly fitting since Akbar Ahmed himself is not what he is generally assumed to be.

“Building bridges": Such bridges are all too often just proselytizing mechanisms to convert them to Islam, not an attempt to engage in genuine dialogue – as the Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb explained:

Is this what Akbar Ahmed is trying to do? There are several indications that it is indeed. Read on.

This is a very common Islamic supremacist tactic to try to deflect attention away from the numerous calls to hatred of and violence against Infidels by Muslim clerics: to claim that non-Muslim foes of jihad and Islamic supremacism are “linking Islam to violence, terrorism and intolerance” in some unacceptable and illegitimate way, when all that they’re really doing is reporting on how Muslim clerics link Islam to violence, terrorism and intolerance. By speaking this way Akbar Ahmed is ignoring the fact that Islamic jihadists link Islam to violence every day by pointing to the Qur’an and Sunnah to justify their terrorist acts, and pretending that the only connection between Islam and violence is being made by “Islamophobes” -- a disingenuous practice that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) also follows in its attempt to intimidate the West into criminalizing all criticism of Islam so that the jihad can advance unopposed and unimpeded. That Akbar Ahmed would indulge in this cynical sleight-of-hand also is not a promising indication of his “moderate” bona fides. I never attacked Akbar Ahmed for “trying to build bridges between Islam and the West” as such, and neither did Pamela Geller. I attacked him for his inaccurate and misleading characterizations of Islamic teaching and the current situation. In 2006, I was interviewed by Brian Lamb for C-Span; then, in an extraordinary manuever I have never seen done for any other interview of anyone, before he ran his interview with me, Lamb taped a show with Ahmed, devoted entirely to playing my interview bit-by-bit and having Ahmed set the record straight about my “errors” and the true, peaceful Islam. C-Span ran the Ahmed show commenting on my interview a week before it ran my interview itself; ever since then I’ve always referred to my C-Span interview as my “pre-refuted interview.”

As you can see here, during his segment Ahmed keeps sidestepping the problems with how jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism. When Lamb asks him about the violent passages in the Qur’an, he starts talking about Rumi and says nothing about the specific problematic passages of the Qur’an at all. He sidesteps a great deal more as well -- not a sign of a man who is genuinely interested in honest dialogue.

And as for dialogue, when Lamb asks Ahmed if he has seen a documentary I was in,Islam: What the West Needs to Know, Ahmed responds: “I know the work of Dr. Spencer and I know a lot of these arguments because I’ve been a scholar of Islam for the last several decades. So, I’m very aware with all my friends and colleagues. And we interact with them. We debate. We discuss.” But this was patently dishonest, as he has for years now ignored my numerous invitations to “debate” and “discuss,” which I conveyed personally to some of his students, as well as through emails and Jihad Watch posts. And in those years he has gone from calling me a “distinguished scholar,” as he does on C-Span, to calling me an “Islamophobe” -- another alarm bell, since “Islamophobia” is a propaganda construct, designed to intimidate people into thinking there is something wrong and bigoted with resisting jihad terror and Islamic supremacism. Even worse, Ahmed has even blamed the “radicalization” of New York jihad bomb plotters on “Islamophobia,” as if resistance to jihad terror is what causes jihad terror.

That a disingenuous Islamic supremacist like Akbar Ahmed would be so widely feted and respected as a “moderate” is yet another indication of how confused, compromised, and cowed the West is today.