JS said-
" By way of comparison, imagine if someone were to assert that Christianity is a religion of peace. There would be deafening cries about the hsitory of religious wars, and support to dictators. Same with most religions."

did you not see the TITLE of spencers book?

"Religion of Peace: Why Christianity Is, and Islam Isn’t"

so where are the deafening cries?

I would be interested to read "Religion of Peace: Why Christianity Is, and Islam Isn’t" because it just sounds like such an obscure claim. I may not be a history expert but if anyone looks at any European or even world history a lot has been done in the name of Christianity that wouldn't be considered peaceful. Maybe I don't want to read that book, I think it would probably be a waste of my time.

Deb Chatterjee,
Let us be serious now-Robert Spencer's is no more than an empty polemic-and he himself is an Islam basher and hater,look at the company he keeps:Daivid Horror-witiz and Denile Wipes-oppps I meant Pipes-the AIPAC Pack.They are after distracting from Bush's quagmire in Iraq and more importantly israel's apartheid racist regime imposed on the Palestinians.

Visit WWW.PALNDS.ORG for scholarly and comprehensive coverage of what the AIPAC Pack is trying to distract us from.

I think Hafsa Arain must know - at least by now - that USA has something called 1st Amendment. So, anyone is free to make very polarizing comments. It is is this total freedom on speech (hateful or otherwise) that distinguishes USA from the rest of the world. Robert Spencer, on whom Adam Gadhan (American convert to Islam and Al-Qaeeda spokesman now living in Afghanistan) has issued the fatwa of death threat, is correct in his assertion about that he can read the Quran and hence claims he has some authority.

I have read some of Robert Spencer's works: his biograophy about Prophet Muhammad is most telling. In this, Spencer makes use of the authentic of all Islamic sources, and provides all the independently verifiable citations. This has elevated the status of his works on Islam to that of scholarship. Of course, he has a thesis: Islam is intolerant. This thesis is not incorrect, and Spencer opines that Muslims are not the problem, but Islamic doctrined is. This is also correct, if you agree that Stalinism or Maoism is most totalitarian but not every Russian or Chinese who have lived in these regimes is also the same. Spencer's works should be treated the same way. They have some value in today's times witnessing rise of radical (Wahabi) Islam.

The problem is that if we start to accord to special status to Islam and Muslims, then the whole USA shall be reduced to a third world. Already the signs are there that this is happening quietly and fast. In Minnesota the Somali cab drivers are not taking passengers who carry alcohol of pork. In many big cities public schools with Muslim majority population have started to observe Islamic holidays. Also many airports now have special washrooms for Muslims and small makeshift mosques to accomodate Islam. Why this special status ? What has Hafsa to say to such features we are witnessing with much distress ?

"to do good in school, learn new knowledge and return to my homeland to help others"

I feel the same way about helping my homeland and my people- America. I hope you are able to return to your homeland and bring about some good for your people.

I am a Muslim immigrant to the United States and was naturalized as a US citizen last year.

On September 11, 2007, I remembered a saying from the prophet that described a man who meets God on the Day of Judgement. God questions the man and asks him why he did not feed God. The man is puzzled and asks God how, as a human being, he could ever feed God. God then tells him that his neighbor was hungery and the man did not feed him. This was tantamount to not feeding God. I remembered this saying because it motivated me as a kid to do good in school, learn new knowledge and return to my homeland to help others. This was to be my gift to God. Time passed. I came to the US became part of that larger landscape where you count your years by increments of success: salary increases, degrees earned, starting a family etc. That dream of returning to my homeland and helping others seemed like a distant dream until that day. I was jolted.

So now I still work and earn degrees but I have a goal of returning to that homeland one day before I die and bringing back what I learned. I want to go back to a homeland that was sucked into the global economy through a colonial regime that dictated how and at what cost it entered this new brave world. I want us to make our place in that global economy on our terms. For me Islam is a source of strength and a reminder that we are more than the things we accumulate in our lives. This is my Jihad and it is about building something not destroying it.

There will always be people who commit violence and call for it. There will be fellow Americans who will be suckered in by the Right and believe that the only way to deal with Muslims is through violence. There will also be Muslims who will be galvanized by Al-Qaida's message and find violence to be the right path. Mohamed Atta was an architect who believed that burning a building down was more of a Jihad than helping build poor Muslims find ways to build institutions that reflect their values in the world. Much ink can be spilled on figthing the rhetoric of violence on both sides. But perhaps through cooperation Americans and Muslims, specially American-Muslims can build institutions that make us all better human beings. In many respects, that what many of us do in our daily lives. In the end, God is the ultimate judge regardless of what others say.

Radical Islam aims at polarizing all Christian/Jews and all Islam. Radical Islam WANTS a religious war between Christian/Jews and Islam. Many in the U.S. play right into their hands by condemning all Moslems with the same categorical hatred as Radical Islam.

Look, Radical Islam's first target is Moderate Islam. The vast majority of people who have died at Radical Islam's hand ARE MOSLEMS. If we want to win the war against Radical Islam, keep that point in mind. Don't unite Islam against America with bigotry against Islam.

I'm a DePaul student (in one of Professor Hibbard's classes, for that matter), and I also attended this event. It was disappointing on all sides. As one student put it, the event was utterly polarizing to all involved. The conservatives and liberals both represented the extreme fringes of their respective groups, and it was nothing but a humiliating shouting match. I wish that this week could have been something more than a continuation of the divisive politics that's characterized our country for so long.

Hafsa Arain writes:

"It is this sort of thinking .... that is the cause for so much enmity between many Muslims and the rest of the world."

Well, no. The "cause for so much enmity between many Muslims and the rest of the world" is the Muslim world's penchant for sending forth killers. It's jihad that's the problem -- no matter how you wish to obscure that with your deep-seated sense of persecution and grievance.

Robert Spencer, et al., would get no traction or media in the absence of Muslims slaughtering non-Muslims -- and one another -- with appalling regularity.

Well, we need a variety of approaches. I'm familiar with Spencer's articles on a variety of websites, including his own. The approaches can be broadly classified as :

1. Islam is a "religion of peace", but "hijacked by a violent minority"

2. There is a violent minority, and also, Islamic supremacism is passively supported by many, or maybe a majority, of Muslims.

3. All Muslims are suspect.

Spencer falls loosely in the 2nd category. I'm not entirely comfortable with it, but it's not useful to only hear the politically correct message #1, and we need to be aware of #2, so as to avoid the real danger of #3.

As a subcomment, I'll note that Islam is a "religion of peace" is historically untrue, and the only reason that politicians from President Bush downward say it is just as a soothing prelude. By way of comparison, imagine if someone were to assert that Christianity is a religion of peace. There would be deafening cries about the hsitory of religious wars, and support to dictators. Same with most religions.

Also, it's ridiculous to assert that the term Islamofascism in and of itself is the "cause for so much enimity". The history of Muslim violence vastly predates the origin of the term. The fact that the author can make such an assertion means he is counting on Americans being ahistoric.