Robert Spencer
As the director of the Jihad Watch blog and co-founder of Stop Islamization of America, Robert Spencer is one of America鈥檚 most prolific and vociferous anti-Muslim propagandists.
About Robert Spencer
Spencer is one of the most prolific anti-Muslim figures in the United States. An incessant blogger, author and activist, he insists 鈥 despite his lack of academic training in Islam 鈥 that the religion is inherently violent and that extremists who commit acts of terror are simply following its most authentic version. His writing was dozens of times in a manifesto written by the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik. Spencer was banned from the United Kingdom as an in July 2013.
In his own words
鈥淔or while Americans may ignore these unpleasant passages of the Qur鈥檃n, Islamic jihadis are not ignoring them at all. To allow such a book to be used by American officeholders is to imply that loyalty to this nation and its principles is meaningless, or that Islamic scripture is meaningless, or both. A wiser path would be to respect what the Qur鈥檃n says, and take it seriously, and accordingly disallow the use of the book for swearing in American officials.鈥
鈥 What鈥檚 Wrong With Being Sworn in on the Qur鈥檃n?, 2022
鈥淚f Western Europe does become Islamized, as demographic trends suggest, before too long America will be facing a world that is drastically different and more forbidding than today鈥檚. And that same process of Islamization will proceed here 鈥 unless enough people wake up in time to head it off. The Muslim population in the United States is much smaller than that of Western Europe. The active supremacists among them are even smaller in number. Nonetheless, the same things that have happened in Europe could easily happened in the United States.鈥
鈥 Mass Migration in Europe: A Model for the U.S.?, 2020
鈥淚 have written about how Jihad terrorists use the Quran to justify violence and to make recruits among Muslims who are peaceful. If the Muslim community at Stanford [University] was actually threatened by that, then they are actually saying, or implying, that they're on the side of the terrorists, because if they鈥檙e not, then why would they oppose anybody who is exposing the motivating ideology of the terrorists?鈥
鈥 Speech at David Horowitz鈥檚 鈥淩estoration Weekend,鈥
鈥淎t some point, Western officials are going to have to face the contents of Islamic teaching and recognize that bringing large numbers of Muslims into the West is only going to increase the number of beheadings and exhortations to kill Jews, as both those things are taught in Islamic texts.鈥
鈥 鈥淥klahoma Beheading Trial: Is Obeying the Qur鈥檃n a Form of Mental Illness,鈥 PJ Media,
鈥淲hen they crafted the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers did not envision a religion that mandated warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers; nor did they intend to lace the Constitution or Bill of Rights with time bombs that would ultimately destroy the republic they were trying to create.鈥
鈥 鈥淲illful Ignorance: House Rejects Rep. Franks鈥 Proposal to Study Islam,鈥 PJ Media,
鈥淓verybody鈥檚 avid to find moderate Muslims and say, 鈥楽ee these people are the ones we can trust and everything鈥檚 okay.鈥 The thing is that there certainly are moderate Muslims. In other words, Muslims who are not interested in beheading us or asserting political supremacy and hegemony and destroying the American system and imposing Islamic law, there鈥檚 millions of such Muslims. The thing is that there were millions of Germans who were not Nazis. There were millions of Russians who were not Soviet Communists. But they did not do anything. And for many reasons they were not able to do anything to stand up against the people who were the organized and energized vanguard. And that鈥檚 what we have today.鈥
鈥 Spencer speech at David Horowitz鈥檚 鈥淲ednesday Morning Club,鈥
鈥淭here has never been in the history of the world before, large scale immigration of a people from one place to another with a ready-made model of society and governance that they consider to be superior to the model to the place in which they鈥檙e coming, no interest in integration, no interest in assimilation. All they want to do is Islamize and transform the society that they are coming to.鈥
鈥 Appearance on Fox News鈥 鈥淗annity,鈥
鈥淲e also have to end immigration from Muslim countries into the United States. This is a simple matter of national security. It will of course be condemned as racism, but the harsh reality is that you cannot tell peaceful Muslims from Jihadis in any discernible manner. And so it is simply ridiculous and suicidal to continue to import whole communities of Muslims from hot Jihad areas like Somalia and Syria and Pakistan into the United States and drop them down into American communities.鈥
鈥 Spencer speech at David Horowitz鈥檚 鈥淩estoration Weekend鈥
鈥淚slam is not a religion of peace. It has an inherently political character that is being brought to the West by immigrants and will cause more trouble in the future. The jihadists have not hijacked it. Peaceful Muslims should be encouraged but do not have a sufficiently influential voice in the Islamic world to allow them to be counted on. The jihadists will not be bought off by negotiations or concessions. This is the revival of a 1,400-year-old war, and we need to be prepared for the fact that it will not end anytime soon 鈥 and prepared to defend ourselves militarily and ideologically.鈥
鈥 Spencer interview with the Liberal Institute,
鈥淥f course, as I have pointed out many times, traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.鈥
鈥 鈥淲hat is a moderate Muslim?鈥, Jihad Watch,
鈥淚 have written on numerous occasions that there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven.鈥
鈥 鈥2 Men, in New York and Florida, Charged in Qaeda Conspiracy,鈥 Jihad Watch,
鈥淥sama [bin Laden]鈥檚 use of these and other [Koranic] passages in his messages is consistent 鈥 with traditional understanding of the Quran. When modern-day Jews and Christians read their Bibles, they simply don鈥檛 interpret the passages cited as exhorting them to violent actions against unbelievers. This is due to the influence of centuries of interpretative traditions that have moved them away from literalism regarding these passages. But in Islam, there is no comparable interpretative tradition.鈥
鈥 The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), 2005
Background
Robert Spencer is the director of the anti-Muslim Jihad Watch website, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is also the co-founder, along with Pamela Geller, of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI).
Self-taught in the study of Islam and its religious texts, Spencer has been widely criticized for a lack of scholarly credentials and espousing selective ultra-literal readings of scriptures. He considers these texts to be innately extremist and violent and refuses to acknowledge nonviolent passages and centuries of adapted interpretations. According to : 鈥淭raditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.鈥
Spencer received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees (religious studies) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published over 25 books (as of January 2023), most of which focus on his intolerant and warped version of Islam. At least three have been New York Times bestsellers. Despite Spencer鈥檚 bias, he has given seminars on Islam and terrorism to the U.S. Central Command, Army Command and General Staff College, the Army鈥檚 Asymmetric Warfare Group, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the U.S. intelligence community. He also appears regularly on Fox News.
In 2003, the David Horowitz Center launched Jihad Watch. Spencer spends most of his days aggregating and populating the blog with negative news stories involving Islam and Muslims 鈥 seemingly the more violent the article the better, which serves Spencer鈥檚 overarching goal of perpetuating a narrative of Islam as an inherently violent and threatening religion. He averages anywhere from five to 10 posts daily.
As a practiced public speaker, Spencer also travels the country spreading his anti-Muslim message. His speaking invitations range from fellow anti-Muslim organizations to conservative and Tea Party groups. Conservative-leaning college student groups have also invited Spencer to speak on campus, which is usually accompanied by controversy. His speaking events have faced protests and backlash. After students peacefully walked out of his presentation at Stanford University in 2017, he responded by calling them the 鈥渃hildren of Brownshirts and Nazis.鈥 In 2015, he alongside then-presidential candidate Ted Cruz at a New Hampshire event organized by the Young America鈥檚 Foundation.
Spencer is a mainstay at events organized by his parent organization, the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is a regular speaker at Horowitz Center鈥檚 鈥淩estoration Weekend鈥 and 鈥淲ednesday Morning Club.鈥 He is also a frequent contributor to FrontPage Magazine, another project of Horowitz Center that publishes anti-Muslim and far-right content.
In July 2011, Wired that two of Spencer鈥檚 controversial books were listed in FBI training materials. The Truth about Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam were recommended for agents hoping to better understand Islam. Following the report, 57 Muslim, Arab and South Asian civil rights and advocacy organizations to the Department of Homeland Security鈥檚 John Brennan urging a task force be established to examine anti-Muslim biases within federal law enforcement training materials. Spencer and his works were later from federal training programs.
He lamented the Muslim advocacy groups who worked to rid bias from law enforcement training materials have only 鈥減urged鈥 anything they found 鈥渙ffensive 鈥 that is, any honest discussion of how Islamic jihadists use Islamic teachings to justify violence.鈥
Spencer argues that such extremists as Osama bin Laden and the Islamic State group are the most authentic interpretation and practice of Islam, despite being actively rejected by the overwhelming majority of the world鈥檚 Muslims. He brushes this fact off by bombastically claiming the majority of Muslims either do not understand their own holy book or are masking their extremism. He depicts incidences of extremism as normative and representative of the entire group. Critics have been quick to point out that Spencer鈥檚 argument requires an exceptionally narrow reading and that it exempts Islam鈥檚 texts, hypocritically, from the benefit of interpretation granted to other religious texts, like the Bible.
One example of this tactic can be seen in Spencer鈥檚 and Geller鈥檚 treatment of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the American-born project leader of the Park51 project aiming to build a mosque in lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. By painting Rauf as an extremist who was striving to build a 鈥渧ictory mosque鈥 to celebrate the destruction of the World Trade Center, the two leaders of SIOA sought to block the project while portraying all Muslims as radical 鈥 an assertion simply not supported by facts.
Spencer also attacks individuals and organizations that claim to represent mainstream Muslims. This is most commonly done through accusations of those entities acting as secret operatives to destroy the West. Spencer engages in fearmongering through steady reference to theories including 鈥渟tealth jihad,鈥 eminent 鈥淚slamization of America,鈥 and the infiltration of Congress by 鈥淢uslim spy interns.鈥
Spencer is known to have associations with European racists and neo-fascists. He claims, however, that his contact with them is merely incidental. On June 25, 2013, Spencer and Geller were from Britain after planning to attend a rally organized by the English Defence League, an anti-Muslim extremist group. According to a issued by the Home Office of the United Kingdom, 鈥淭he Home Secretary has reached this decision because you have brought yourself within the scope of the list of unacceptable behaviors by making statements that may foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.鈥 Spencer鈥檚 response to the announcement was to accuse the British government of being a 鈥渄e facto Islamic state.鈥
Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who slaughtered 77 people, mostly teenagers, in Oslo and the nearby island of Utoya on July 22, 2011, Spencer鈥檚 writings dozens of times in his 1,500-page manifesto. Breivik believed that Islam was destroying Western civilization. In response to media reports about the connection, Spencer likened the situation to Charles Manson鈥檚 statements about drawing inspiration from the Beatles.
This is not the only racist piece of writing associated with Spencer. In 2011, Spencer wrote an article for Crisis Magazine with a recommended reading list that included Jean Raspail鈥檚 1973 The Camp of the Saints, a racist novel that depicts France overrun by swarthy hordes of non-white immigrants from India. In his Crisis article, Spencer described multiculturalism as a 鈥渉eresy鈥 that is intent on 鈥渄enigrating and ultimately destroying the Judeo-Christian West.鈥
Raspail鈥檚 dystopian novel has been lauded by white nationalist and nativist 鈥渋ntellectual鈥 thinkers including John Tanton, the architect of the contemporary anti-immigrant movement. The book has been translated into English and published in the United States five times, with its most recent publisher being The Social Contract Press, a white nationalist publication founded by Tanton.
In 2017, Spencer came out in favor of President Donald Trump鈥檚 attempted Muslim ban and suggested adding Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to the list of banned countries. He offered an oversimplified justification of the ban, , 鈥淪ome harmless people will be kept out, or some harmful people will be let in.鈥 Spencer has long advocated curtailing Muslim immigration to the United States and other Western nations. In 2015, he and Pamela Geller, via their organization American Freedom Defense Initiative, an 18-point plan for 鈥減reserving and defending free societies.鈥 The plan, among other things, calls to for 鈥渁n immediate halt of immigration by Muslims into nations that do not currently have a Muslim majority population.鈥 It also outright advocates 鈥減rofiling of Muslims at airports鈥 and the 鈥渟urveillance鈥 and 鈥渞egular inspections鈥 of mosques in America.
In September 2017, Spencer wrote the script for Pamela Geller鈥檚 latest anti-Muslim film, , and was also featured. He said, 鈥淪tay quiet and you鈥檒l be okay is what the Islamic world is saying to the US 鈥 if we stay quiet they will think it鈥檚 okay until we are completely subjugated under Islamic law.鈥 Spencer鈥檚 group AFDI paid for a provocative billboard in New York City鈥檚 Times Square promoting the film.
On top of writing at his blog Jihad Watch, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Spencer also writes columns for FrontPage Magazine and PJ Media. In one at FrontPage, also a Horowitz Center project, Spencer claimed Trump鈥檚 controversial Warsaw in July 2017 showed that unlike Obama, this president is 鈥渨orking very hard to ensure that Judeo-Christian civilization survives.鈥 The speech was also celebrated by neo-fascists, and the event where it was delivered attracted factions of Poland鈥檚 far-right in support of Trump鈥檚 message.
In 2017, Spencer published Confessions of an Islamophobe, a memoir diving into the nuances of being an anti-Muslim hatemonger and the ways he tries to justify it. The book states:
There are, in short, very good reasons to be an Islamophobe, that is, to be concerned about Islam for the devastation that it brings into the lives of human beings both Muslim and non-Muslim. It is not hatred and bigotry to be the right kind of Islamophobe; indeed, the only chance for the survival of free societies into the latter part of the twenty-first century may be if large numbers of people join me in becoming this kind of unrepentant Islamophobe.
In 2020, Spencer was officially hired as a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a hate group founded by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, after consulting with them for a few years. Spencer produces a Jihad Watch video series he says is co-sponsored by CSP. In one of these s from 2017, Spencer claimed Christmas and other holidays celebrated in the West are now 鈥渦nder siege鈥 from terrorist threats because 鈥渢here are large numbers of Muslims in the West.鈥 According to Spencer, this is due to the 鈥渇eckless to the point of suicidal immigration policies in Europe and North America.鈥
鈥淭he responsibility,鈥 he adds, 鈥渓ies with those who admitted them without regard for Islam鈥檚 doctrines of religious warfare and supremacism.鈥
Spencer is a frequent guest on Gaffney鈥檚 鈥淪ecure Freedom Radio鈥 and 鈥淪ecuring America TV.鈥 Spencer appears frequently to swap conspiracy theories with Gaffney ranging from the Biden administration鈥檚 alleged efforts to criminalize dissent to the Muslim Brotherhood鈥檚 attempts to implement Sharia law in America.
In August 2020, the Center for Security Policy published a book by Spencer titled Mass Migration in Europe: A Model for the U.S. In the book, Spencer fearmongers about Muslim immigration and demographics in Europe and the U.S. He writes:
If Western Europe does become Islamized, as demographic trends suggest, before too long America will be facing a world that is drastically different and more forbidding than today鈥檚. And that same process of Islamization will proceed here 鈥 unless enough people wake up in time to head it off. The Muslim population in the United States is much smaller than that of Western Europe. The active supremacists among them are even smaller in number. Nonetheless, the same things that have happened in Europe could easily happened in the United States.
The Center for Security published another book by Spencer in 2021 titled Who Lost Afghanistan? The book says the 鈥淎merican foreign policy establishment鈥檚 bipartisan consensus refused to take seriously the theocratic ideology of the Taliban and Al Qaeda or the religious and cultural character of Afghanistan.鈥
In 2022, the David Horowitz Freedom Center published a monograph by Spencer called What鈥檚 Wrong With Being Sworn in on the Qur鈥檃n? Keeping in line with Spencer鈥檚 Islamophobia, he argues elected officials should not be sworn into office using the Quran as some Muslim politicians have done. Spencer deploys his go-to anti-Muslim tropes, such as claiming the Quran is a violent text that 鈥渢eaches values that are vastly different from American and Judeo-Christian values.鈥
Another trope he deploys is Muslims cannot be trusted to take the oath of office 鈥渇aithfully and honestly鈥 using the Quran because it commands them to lie. This is based on an of 鈥渢aqiyya鈥 used by anti-Muslim propagandists to frame Muslims as being untrustworthy and to be always viewed with suspicion.
