And it ended, mind you, with Safi refusing to debate me -- hiding behind his degree even when I offered to get someone who had a PhD to debate him, and continuing to propagandize his students about "Islamophobia" rather than train them to think critically about the issues of Islam and jihad.

Or at least that's where it ended for me. Safi, it appears, has been nursing a grudge -- one he could easily have assuaged by accepting my challenge to debate, defeating me, and thus proving that I really am the empty-headed ideologue he pretends that I am. Instead, he chose a different route.

I have just been sent the email below -- one that Omid Safi sent on November 11, 2008. It contains the most outrageous falsehood about me that I have ever seen in all the years I've been doing this work: it's one thing to say I'm stupid, or evil, or secretly inclined to this or that rotten ideology. It's quite another to claim that I have done something I have never done -- something that if I had indeed done, Safi could have and should have gotten me arrested. The fact that he didn't do that shows in itself that he is lying. Nonetheless, there is no way for me to know how far and wide he has spread this defamatory charge. I am publishing his email here now as an example of the depths to which a pseudo-academic propagandist like Safi will sink when intellectually cornered, and as a public challenge to him to retract and apologize. I also call upon the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to rebuke and/or dismiss this sorry excuse for an academic.

And I warn Professor Safi that if he claims this email is fabricated, that I have all the necessary documentation and testimony from its recipient to demonstrate that it is genuine.

Professor Safi, I await your retraction of this claim about me, and your public apology.

dear Parvaneh khanoom,
ba arz-e salam.
I have not looked at Spencer's latest piece of trash, but I have to caution you against taking what he says seriously. He is a hateful man, who has personally threatened me and my family with death. These are not people who are interested in serious scholarly debate.

My own work has tended to focus on the tradition of falsafeh, 'erfan, and poetry, especially the works of people like Molavi and Attar, Hafez and Sa'di. But I also think (and you are free to disagree with this) that it is impossible to read these people aside what they were: observant Muslims. All of their poetry (especially for Molavi) is filled with references to the Qur'an and Islamic teachings.

Of course you are right that we as Iranians had a beautiful civilizations before the rise of Islam. As a historian of Iran I also think that we have had a beautiful civilization after the rise of Islam.

If I may ever suggest readings, please allow me to be of service. It would be my great pleasure.

ba nahaayat-e ehteraam
omid

One last note: Safi defends those who really do threaten to murder their opponents, such as the Iranian mullahs who have built the "beautiful civilization after the rise of Islam" that he praises above. Then, in a classic example of projection, he charges those who oppose such murderous regimes with doing what they do.

A beautiful civilization after the rise of Islam

Mohamed Elibiary, who is no less a personage than "the country's leading Muslim deradicalization expert," was quite unhappy with this post, in which I noted that he was one of the speakers at a December 2004 conference in Dallas entitled "A Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary," Ayatollah Khomeini, and that when Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News called him on this, he threatened Dreher, telling him: "Expect someone to put a banana in your exhaust pipe."

Elibiary demanded a retraction and an apology in an email in which he accused me of "character assassinating others when you claim to be standing up for freedom of speech instead of debating their ideas." This is yet another example of the projection we have seen so often from Islamic spokesmen, since in reality it is I who have so often reiterated my willingness to debate both Muslim and non-Muslim Islamic apologists, while they have contented themselves with making broad-based and inaccurate attacks on my scholarship and integrity, and declining to defend their claims in debate with me. These include:

Ahmed Afzaal
Akbar Ahmed
Karen Armstrong
Jamal Badawi
Robert Crane
Dinesh D'Souza
Carl Ernst
John Esposito
Suhail Khan
Mark LeVine
Khaleel Mohammed
Grover Norquist
Brave Ahmed Rehab
Louay Safi
Omid Safi

Anyway, Elibiary asked me to post his explanation of his appearance at the Khomeini tribute conference, from here:

"I have been asked whether, if I had realized before I spoke that the event honored Imam Khomeini, I would have left immediately. I don't know. My activism, which is designed to bring Muslims into the mainstream, calls upon me not to cede any territory to radical views without presenting a moderating counterpoint."

"I have been asked what I would say to someone who believes that there is no good reason to attend a tribute to Imam Khomeini. If their concerns revolved around the American experience of him, I would say that I echo their feelings. But if anyone wishes to learn about their opponent, they must listen, or they'll remain ignorant and make mistakes that cost them in their struggle to defend their values and views."

Elibiary claims, as you can see here (along with some libelous claims about this website), that he didn't know beforehand that the event was a tribute to Khomeini, and that he never saw the poster advertising it as such. I told him I would have been livid if I had been invited to speak at one kind of conference that turned out to be a different kind, and asked him if he had taken any action against this craven bait-and-switch; no answer. In light of attempts by CAIR and its tool and ally, the libelblogger Charles Johnson, to demonstrate that I have spoken at "racist" or "neofascist" events, when I never have done so and never would, I take this kind of thing very seriously. I can only imagine how indulgent Elibiary's jihadist coreligionists and their non-Muslim stooges on the Left would be if I ever did speak at a conference that really was unsavory in some way, and then claimed that I had not known beforehand what the conference was really about.

Thus I admit to a certain skepticism, but nonetheless, as I am only interested in true and accurate reporting, I pass on to you Elibiary's claim for what it's worth. Perhaps he could clarify matters by being so kind as to repudiate and reject in no uncertain terms Khomeini's assertion that "Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you!...There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim." Would Elibiary be a recipient of Khomeini's spittle? We can only hope so, and perhaps he will enlighten us.

Elibiary also claimed in his email to me that Rod Dreher fabricated the banana-in-the-exhaust-pipe threat:

Concerning the banana threat issue with Rod Dreher. it like some of Rod's postings is a fabrication. There was never a threat to him and his superiors at the DMN and FBI who reviewed the email chains also found no threat. So I don't see any reason to say anything further on that topic other than what I told Rod when he tried to concoct this threat instead of addressing my arguments by cutting partial sentences out of context, call the police/FBI if you feel you were threated [sic].

Note that Elibiary doesn't actually claim here that he didn't say "Expect someone to put a banana in your exhaust pipe." He just says that Dreher was taking his words...that's right..."out of context," and that the Dallas Morning News and the FBI didn't see any threat in them. The "out of context" defense is so tired and flimsy that I am surprised Elibiary was not embarrassed to haul it out again, but maybe it's true: maybe Elibiary said that someone would want to surprise Dreher with a fruit for his lunch and would mistake his exhaust pipe for his glove compartment. You just never know. But the fact that the DMN and the FBI saw no threat in these words doesn't strike me as impressive; after all, this is the same FBI that didn't see any particular threat to me in the words "Motherf**ker, I am coming to kill you. I will hack the head off your face and i will kill your family."

Anyway, Elibiary says that he didn't say it, or didn't say it like that, or didn't mean it as a threat, or something, and there you have it. I know how I would take those words if I were the recipient of them.

And so there you have it. Mohamed Elibiary wants me to retract my statements that he spoke at a conference honoring Khomeini -- except he did, but claims he didn't know it was a conference honoring Khomeini. Since all I said was that he spoke there, and he did, no retraction is necessary on that score. And he also wants a retraction of my statement that he threatened Dreher, and yet Dreher himself took his words in that way, as I believe any reasonable person would.

And so no retraction for that one either, Mr. Elibiary. And certainly no apology for telling the truth.

However, if you wish to present some honest and genuine clarifications, rather than more detours, deceptions, and defamation, I'll be glad to publish them here.

Iranian laws about the Web are purposely kept vague. Ahmed Batebi, the dissident who recently escaped Tehran after eight years in prison, told me that “The regime can arrest people and bloggers for any reason precisely because the laws are not clear.”

A journalist in the city of Yazd recently reported several cases of bloggers being shut down or involved in lawsuits due to readers’ comments. And on Nov. 14, local Iranian press reported that a new police unit was formed to fight “insults and the spreading of lies” on the Internet—another phrase which effectively bans any criticism of the regime.

It’s hard to believe in light of this Internet repression, but Iran’s president is himself a blogger. “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Personal Memos” is the place where he goes to vent and stay in touch with the common folk. He says he allots himself 15 minutes a week to write on his blog, but admits that at times he exceeds this limit.

via David Keyes: Ahmadinejad, the Blogger – WSJ.com.