by Robert Spencer
Charles Manson thought he heard instructions to kill in the Beatles song “Helter Skelter,” and committed mass murder. There were no instructions to kill in the song. In the video below, Bono says, “This song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back.”
The Breivik murders are being used to discredit all resistance to the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. But we’re stealing it back.
Yesterday morning I received this email:
Dear Robert Spencer I am a staff writer at the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. You have probably heard about the tragic terrorist attack in Norway this Friday. Just before the attack took place, the perpetrator published a manifest he has called “A European Declaration of Independence”. In the manifest he uses text from your work and also lists you as one of the leading intellectuals he has been inspired by.Have you ever been in contact with Anders Behring Breivik?
What do you think about being listed as an inspiration for his work?
Best regards
Gunnar Thorenfeldt
I responded:
I have never been in contact with Anders Behring Breivik.If I was indeed an inspiration for his work, I feel the way the Beatles must have felt when they learned that Charles Manson had committed murder after being inspired by messages he thought he heard in their song lyrics. There were no such messages. Nor is there, for any sane person, any inspiration for harming anyone in my work, which has been consistently dedicated to defending human rights for all people.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, renowned poet Reza Aslan graced us with another masterpiece. He wrote this to me on Twitter:
According to logic used by Robert Spencer and @jihadwatchRS to blame muslims for all terror he is personally responsibility for #Oslo
Yes, it’s incoherent, but give the man a break: he’s a poet. Here, try it this way:
According to
logic
used by Robert Spencer
and @jihadwatchRS
to blame muslims for
all terror
he is personally
responsibility
for #Oslo
Genius!
In any case, seriously, I know what he means. But he is wrong, of course. The difference is this: Islamic texts and teachings, and frequently imams, directly exhort their followers to commit acts of violence. I do not. Nor does anyone else in the counterjihad. There is nothing Breivik could conceivably have read at JihadWatch.org or in any of my work anywhere as a justification for killing anyone. There is plenty in the Qur’an and Sunnah that jihadists can and do use as justification for murder.
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch.
Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/07/26/anders-breivik-stole-the-counterjihad-movement-from-freedom-fighters/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
1 comment:
Breivik was right in his facts that Islamic jihad is carried out both by violence and by stealth (Spencer) and by migration (Bernard Lewis) but very wrong indeed in the way he tried to convey them to others. Why did he not prepare a report for the Norweigan parliament as did the Team 2B anti Islamists in the United States.
These facts Breivik mentioned are available in the Team 2B report on Shariah presented to Congress and are based on documents admitted in evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial on terrorism without any objection to their authenticity. The report is available from Amazon and it is also on the internet. Are those who prepared a report containing facts that appear to be true for the purpose of petitioning Congress to be tarred with negligence for having caused the deaths in Norway? That's what Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post on July 25. To decide that one must first determine if there is not only "but for" causation, but also "proximate causation".
To understand the difference in these legal terms, one must read, and understand the Supreme Court's opinion in Palsgraaf v. the Long Island Railway that has terrified many a first year law student. In that case the complainant claimed the Long Island Railway was negligent because a conductor pushed a man into the railway car who dropped a package that happened to contain fireworks. They exploded and many yards down the platform, a heavy scale placed high on a shelf fell on poor Mrs. Palsgraaf. But for the conductor pushing the passenger onto the railway car, poor Mrs. Palsgraaf would have remained unscathed. But the Court decided there was no "proximate causation".
Two lessons can be learned from this. 1. If an act cannot reasonably be anticipated to be the cause of another act, the first event is not the "proximate cause" of the second. 2. Mrs. Palsgraaf's lawyer made a mistake in the drafting of the complaint. He should have sued the railroad for negligently placing a heavy scale on a shelf in a RR Station where vibration might shift it and it might fall on somebody.
So are the US writers on Islamism the proximate cause of the deaths in Norway. Hell no! Pipes, Spencer, Geller and others have even a stronger defense than the Long Island Railway. Not only is what they have done not a proximate cause of the Norway deaths, but to stop it would be to cut off two rights guaranteed by the US Constitution. It would stop making public truths about Islamic conspiracies to install Shariah law, thus depriving them of their 1st Amendment Rights, and also, prevent them from preparing a report to Congress, depriving them of their right to Petition Congress for greivances. In cutting off their right to publish, they also cut off the right of the public to vote out the government if their grievances are ignored.
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