Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law. He is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of eight books on Islam and jihad. Spencer is a weekly columnist for Human Events and the website Front-Page Magazine, and has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community. Robert Spencer is the author of two New York Times bestsellers: The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion (Regnery) and The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery), as well as four other books on Islam and terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World's Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter), and Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery), as well as eight monographs and hundreds of articles. He lives in a secure, undisclosed location. ooo OOO ooo FP: Throughout my life in academia, myriad volumes have passed before me that contained criticisms of Christianity, within which there were various mocking and ridiculing portrayals of its tenets and values etc. Your book doesnt mock anything, but just quotes Islamic sources and lets them speak for themselves. I think that it would be essential to have this book as a must-read in the curriculum for every introductory course for first-year students in the Arts in university. Why is it that it is a given that this would never happen? For instance, in many courses where the topic of 9/11 is raised, all kinds of readings are given out that blame the U.S. for being the victim in this terrorist attack. Why wouldnt they at least offer this book as an alternative explanation? It is a given, of course, that this book would never make it on any curricula readings in academia, even in courses on Islam which profess to give all sides of the picture. Why? Robert Spencer: Because the academic establishment the Middle East Studies Association is not interested in really giving all sides of the picture. Since the 1970s it has been dominated by Edward Saids view that any critical look at Islam or the Muslim world by Westerners was ipso facto racist and imperialist. This idea has coalesced nicely, of course, with the multiculturalist dogma that the Judeo-Christian West is responsible for all the evils in the world, and that those outside of and set against Western civilization can only be victims, never perpetrators... Also, it is not unheard-of for outright Islamic apologists to occupy academic positions in American universities, and to present Islamic proselytizing material in academic settings. This is in part a manifestation of the general American ignorance of Islam. Universities hire Muslim professors in order to teach about Islam and the Middle East, and the other professors know so little about the subject that they cannot perform adequate peer review even if their world view would allow them to do so in the first place. The academic establishment has become so politicized that many professors of Middle East Studies are presenting as fact highly tendentious and apologetically motivated assertions about Islamic teachings and history, and their peers either dont know or dont care, or both. Source and additional information: http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=7380