Quote:
|
Will you be quoting John Esposito as well?
|
"Notes on the Ideological Patrons of an Islamophobe, Robert Spencer"
by Carl W. Ernst - William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Who are the publishing firms that publish Spencer's works? Who funds them? Who supports his work? Some information on these patrons is given below (the numbers refer to the citations of the organizations marked in bold in the paragraph above). This information is significant because these books are not scholarly, and they do not pass the review of blind refereed evaluation practiced by university presses. They are instead supported by specific political and ideological interests through think-tanks and private foundations. They need to be evaluated differently from scholarly studies, since their agenda does not have to do with the scholarly goals of the humanities and the social sciences. In particular, the lectures given by authors such as Spencer on college campuses may be misunderstood as being equivalent to scholarly research. While it certainly may be acknowledged that scholarship has political implications, independent research needs to be distinguished from hired polemics.
http://www.unc.edu/~cernst/courses/2...01/spencer.htm
And so it goes...
Richard's $.02 
__________________
“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)… There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.” - To Kill A Mockingbird (Atticus Finch)
“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.” - Robert Heinlein
|