Former Defender of the Faith Throws in the Towel

In the same piece Alan Clifton also writes about his history of defending Islam against those who “ignorantly” attack it. On what basis does he feel entitled to use that adverb? What about those who are not ignorant, but well-informed about Islam? Would Alan Clifton characterize Sir Wililam Muir, C. Snouck Hurgronje, Joseph Schacht, K. S. Lal, Samuel Zwemer, Arthur Jeffrey, Claude Cahen, Georges Henri Bousquet, and dozens of others who studiedand wrote about Islam, before the Great Age of Inibition, as having been “ignorant” in their judgment? Does he think Tocqueville’s experience in Algeria, and Churchill’s in the Sudan, which led them both to make devastating criticisms of Islam, were based on “ignorance”? What makes Alan Clifton think he knows more about Islamic law than Antoine Fattal(the Lebanese author of “Le Statst legal des non-musulmanes en pays d’Islam”) or Majid Khadduri (Iraqi-American author of “The Law of War And Peace In Islam”)? Does Alan Clifton feel so well-versed in the Western scholarship about Islam that he is aware of, and knows exactly how to refute, their devastating analyses of Islam, and to explain why those who, in so many different countries, spent their entire professional lives studying Islam, turn out to have been those who, in an earlier age, when people were free to write and speak as they thought, were most critical of the ideology of Islam, and of the way Muslims, in conquering so many lands and peoples, behaved toward them?

Does Alan Clifton think it makes sense to describe those who have been most critical of Islamt, basing their criticism on long study of the texts, and the way those texts have been received and reflected in the history of Islamic conquest, as having done so “ignorantly”?

And what does Alan Clifton think about all the Defectors from the Army of Islam, articulate and attractive and sensible apostates, radiating intelligence, such as Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ali Sina, the late Anwar Shaikh? Is he aware of them at all? Is he familiar with their writings? Does he know, for example, of Ibn Warraq’s analysis, usiing Umberto Eco’s fourteen distinguishing characteristics of Fascism, of Islam? Are these people, born into Islam, intimate with what happens to those in communities suffused with Islam — and who are its most ferocious and unanswerable critics today, because they know and cannot be fooled — are these people who are “ignorantly” attacking Islam?

And finally, when Alan Clifton writes:” And I know there are millions of great Muslim people on this planet. And I believe the overwhelming majority of them are kind, loving and wonderful people.” on what basis does he say that? Does he know millions of Muslims? Is it simply a simpering and pious hope? Where is the evidence for “the overwhelming majority” of Muslims all over the world being “kind, loving and wonderful people.” I have found no evidence for this, but a lot of evidence suggests the opposite — and can be explained, as a kind of exculpation, by the effect on the minds of adherents by what is in Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira.