Overview of my critiques of Jihad Watch

Over the course of this blog, I have explored various deficiencies in the thought of Robert Spencer and his Vice-President, Hugh Fitzgerald with regard to the Anti-Islam Movement; and, by extension, with the Jihad Watch project.

The following lists are by no means complete, but they provide some links of my archives here apportioned out into the following categories. My links have not provided actual essay titles, but only numerals (it would have been too much trouble to type them all here).

Spencer’s apparent bias toward a Christian neo-pacifist tendency:

1
2
3

Spencer’s and Fitzgerald’s failure to link, necessarily and crucially, violence and Jihad:

1
2
3

Spencer’s and Fitzgerald’s over-emphasis on “Elites” as the source of the problem of the Western inability to deal rationally with the Problem of Islam (POI):

1
2

Jihad Watch readers fail to adequately comprehend the nature and dimension of PC MC:

1
2
3
4
5
6

Fitzgerald’s bafflingly simple-minded trivialization of PC MC expressed through his repeated theory—the “Esdrujula” Explanation—of a psychologization of the problem of PC MC that ignores its sociological and historical dimension:

1
2
3

Spencer’s unfair treatment of Vlaams Belang, Filip Dewinter and the BNP:

1
2
3
4

Spencer’s and Fitzgerald’s failure to promote the project of a comprehensive Manual of all the necessary bullet points of the POI:

1
2
3
4

Spencer’s and Fitzgerald’s failure to sufficiently appreciate the community of readers who help the Jihad Watch project in various ways:

1
2
3
4
5

Spencer’s and Fitzgerald’s failure to adequately comprehend the nature and dimension of Politically Correct Multi-Culturalism (PC MC):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

(The above list is just a small sampling: there are probably 30 or 40 other essays on this blog dealing with permutations of the same flaw in Jihad Watch.)

A relatively newly noticed flaw has been:

The curious evidence of kid gloves both Spencer and Fitzgerald sometimes put on with respect to Islam:

Fitzgerald soft on Islam:

1

Spencer soft on Islam:

1

Closely related to this is:

Spencer rhetorically unrealistic about Islamic potential for reform:

1
2

More on Spencer being soft on Islam:

Toward the end of my writing this blog (which retired formally in late May of 2008), I wrote a series of essays on the general topic of Spencer being strangely, and/or self-contradictorily, soft on Islam, particularly after I was reminded by a reader of extended arguments Spencer had had with readers in a couple of comments sections on Jihad Watch, where this particular issue was articulated quite well by those readers. My essays on this are the following:

1
2
3
4 (the extended dialogue among myself and two other readers in the comments section of this essay should also be read)
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15