For those who are famil­iar with ​“Faith­free­dom Inter­na­tion­al”, the name of its founder Ali Sina (a pseu­do­nym) is syn­ony­mous with the big­otry and vile rhetoric often dis­played against Mus­lims and Islam. He open­ly advo­cat­ed for the atom­ic bomb to be used on Mus­lims and declared that he will ​“wipe out” Islam with­in 30 years. 

King Abdul­lah dis­putes the mis­tak­en view that Arab oppo­si­tion to Zion­ism (and lat­er the state of Israel) is because of long­stand­ing reli­gious or eth­nic hatred.

After Denise Spell­berg, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry and Mid­dle East­ern stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, assessed the man­u­script as ​“a very ugly, stu­pid, piece of work” which turned sacred his­to­ry into soft-core pornog­ra­phy and warned that pub­li­ca­tion could pro­voke vio­lence, Bal­lan­tine Books, a divi­sion of Ran­dom House, con­sult­ed with secu­ri­ty experts and then nego­ti­at­ed an agree­ment with Jones to ter­mi­nate their $100,000 two-book contract.

Occa­sion­al­ly, we come across Chris­tians face-to-face and, more fre­quent­ly, on the Inter­net, who, when informed that the text of the gospels under­went cor­rup­tion dur­ing their trans­mis­sion, often react with the fol­low­ing type of ques­tions : ​“When ? Who did the cor­rup­tion ? In what coun­try ? Before or after Muham­mad ? Why was it done ? How come no one noticed it?” These type of seem­ing­ly ​“inno­cent” ques­tions mere­ly reveal the incal­cu­la­bly colos­sal igno­rance of the per­son in question.

Chris­tians might argue that nev­er­the­less we need lofty ideals to strive for, even if they are vir­tu­al­ly unat­tain­able. Mus­lims might reply that it is detri­men­tal for pub­lic moral­i­ty if unat­tain­able rules are pro­mot­ed which, of course, are con­stant­ly vio­lat­ed by every­body in sight, because that (Chris­t­ian) approach cre­ates a cli­mate of, and pro­motes, hypocrisy at a mas­sive scale.

In a recent arti­cle in The Spec­ta­tor mag­a­zine in the UK, the evan­gel­i­cal leader Patrick Sookhdeo takes a swipe at Mus­lims and their reli­gion. Does his case stand up to scruti­ny ? Patrick Sookhdeo’s arti­cle (July 30, 2005) in London’s The Spec­ta­tor, ​“The Myth of a Mod­er­ate Islam” reflects a dan­ger­ous trend in the war on ter­ror. Under the guise of inform­ing West­ern­ers about Islam, he is in fact spread­ing the very same dis­in­for­ma­tion that anti-Islam­ic polemics have been based upon for over 1,000 years. This plays direct­ly into the hands of Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zar­qawi and oth­ers, for it encour­ages the ​“clash of civ­i­liza­tions” they so appalling­ly desire. It is indeed of the utmost impor­tance that we learn more about Islam and fight the scourge of extrem­ism with all the tools pos­si­ble. But Sookhdeo and those like him cor­rupt this process, seek­ing to advance their own agen­da by turn­ing the war on ter­ror into an ide­o­log­i­cal war against Islam.