Talk:Robert Spencer/Christian-IslamicForum
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Robert Spencer's leadership role in the Christian-Islamic Forum has been re-added to the page. Mr. Spencer's own bigraphies on the web list him being on the board of the forum and it no secret what the forum is about.
Before the information is removed again, its expected that those who have removed it will give a justification as to why Spencer's ties to a Christian group that targets Muslims for conversion to christianity should not be mentioned on the page.
Robert Spencer's being on the board of the organization:
An account of the founding of the organization and its purpose by Daniel Ali.
Out of concern that the information will disappear, I provide the following quote from the above page.
"I begin the work on the legal framework for the non-profit Christian-Islamic Forum, Inc. On August 13, 2001, the Christian-Islamic Forum officially came into being.
The very first introductory meeting of our new organization was to be held at Holy Spirit Catholic Church, in Annandale, Virginia....The conclusion Sara and I drew from the horrific events was that God was telling everyone it was time to pay attention to the Muslims. Either they were going to aggressively “evangelize” the West through their various forms of Jihad, or we were going to have to evangelize them with the Good News of Jesus Christ. I’ve been called on to speak numerous times in the last months since the tragedy. These talks have been about the realities of Islam, their strategies for converting us to Islam and what we can do to successfully be heard and received by them. In the past, Christians have depended on the Bible to evangelize Muslins. This strategy has been largely unsuccessful because Muslims consider the Bible to be corrupted and falsified by Christians and Jews. We are developing a method to reach out to Muslims using only their sources, the Qur’an"
This reversion from the last edit seems to be just a wiki war The previous version read "Robert Spencer was a board member of the now-defunct Christian-Islamic Forum[4][5]. He has also co-written Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics with the founder of the Forum Daniel Ali." That seems a far more neutral claim than the latest revision.
- The only way it is more "netural" is that it hides from the reader the goals of the Christian-Islamic Forum. As to the forum being defunct, if anyone claims to know that for certain they had better be prepared to offer citations or an explaination of how they know. They could also perhaps add details about when spencer joined the forum and when it went away (if it went away).
The account of the founding of the organization and its purpose by Daniel Ali [6] only concerns Mr. Ali, and does not mention Robert Spencer.
- Mr. Spencer served on the board of Mr. Ali's organization. Board membership would seem to require that Mr. Spencer understand the goals of the organization. Material from Daniel Ali is necessary in the absence of other material about the forum. The use of the material is used strictly to show the purposes of the organization that spencer was a board member of.
Spencer's personal bio[7] no longer lists the association, and the group no longer seems to be active. It seems quite on the periphery of Spencer's work.
- That is a difficult arguement to make. It is difficult to consider this to be on the periphery of his work considering that he served on the board of the organization and co-wrote a book with the leader of the organization. The nature of the organization in using Islamic scriptures as a tool to convert Muslims to Christianity would seem vitally relivant given the contents of many of spencer's books.
It would seem that a detailed account of the forum would be pertinent in a bio of Daniel Ali, not Robert Spencer.
- Spencer's association with the group has been listed in his biographies for years. The biographies even go so far as to call the organization "highly reputed". His being on the board of a group whose stated goal was to use the Qu'ran to convert muslims to christianity is a very important fact about the man. Removing descriptions of the purposes of the group would seem to only result in hiding information which would make the page anything but neutral.
Actually, the "highly reputed" meme comes from a review of one of his books, not from any biography of Spencer. He has also explicitly disavowed any religious agenda at his website. This fixation on his connection with an obscure defunct group has the odor of conspiracy theorizing, not genuine investigation of his work and intentions.
This is not conspiracy threory. Spencer quite explicitly states a religious agenda in his book, published in 2003. The wording within the book makes it clear that this is his opinion, not the aggregate opionion of the two authors. We should let the words of the author speak for him, and let wikipedia readers decide. Quotes and specific page numbers have been added. - 6 Dec 2005
However, on 6 Dec 2005 the disavowal of a religious agenda still remained in his biography at his website: "Here again, people like to imagine that a Christian cannot write accurately about Islam, but they cannot point to any inaccuracy in my work. Nor is there any religious agenda here. I envision Jihad Watch as an opportunity for all the actual and potential victims of jihad violence and oppression -- Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, secular Muslims, atheists, whatever -- to join together to defend universal human rights. There are many things about which we all disagree, but at this point we need to unite simply in order to survive. We can sort out our disagreements later."
Yet this continues to be removed from Wikipedia, despite its obvious relevance. If you really want to let the words of the author speak for him, you should allow all the words, not just quotes selectively chosen in order to demonize.
Added this comment below, but adding here for trackability. Spencer's web site does have a disavowal of a religious agenda. But his publisher's description of him on their web site still has it listed. Given that they are publishing his current bestseller, it seems like a reasonable source in the absence of a statement explicitly saying they are incorrect. --Yalto 05:01, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
That would be true if you were actually looking at his current bio, instead of one that is two years old.
Both are active on the Regenery website, so both are "current". The link is not an archive or anything like it. If you look at the description of Onward Muslim Soldier, it is the bio used. It is not uncommon to tailor your messages to different audiences, and that appears to be what Regnery is doing. Plus, I am not sure what all this attention to the age of statements is for - almost all of Spencer's books are less than 5 years old, so I think it is stretching it a bit to suggest that something he believed two or five years ago is no longer relevant. Especially when the relevant books are still in print. --Yalto 18:12, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't have Spencer's latest book, PIG to Islam, but Amazon lists this as "About the Author" on the back cover: "Robert Spencer is an Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation and a board member of the Christian Islamic Forum. He writes frequently on Islam in a wide variety of publications and is the author of Onward Muslim Soldiers and Islam Unveiled. He has been studying Islam for more than twenty years." Can anyone validate whether or not that is accurate? If so, it should dispel any question of the Christian-Islamic Forum issue.--Yalto 06:37, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
