Coffee you thought was good...

The Bad Habits cafe, in Daylesford

The CJM (Counter-Jihad Mainstream) has a bad habit of praising various individuals for their anti-Islam cred, even though some of those individuals say things that go against some of the core principles (one would think) of the still incohate A.I.M. (Anti-Islam Movement).

As one example of this, over the years I've noticed various writers at Jihad Watch praising a 20th century scholar of Islam, Ignaz Goldziher, in terms of him being free of the politically correct nonsense we, in the Counter-Jihad, note with annoyance & weariness abounds all too much throughout our Western mainstream.  Thus, for example, we have one member of the CJM Leadership, Ibn Warraq, a decade ago list Goldziher as a "real Orientalist" among others of whom he approves.  Or a few years earlier, in 2004, we see the CJM luminary, Bat Ye'or, write this:

"...the great Orientalists of the 19th century, particularly Ignaz Goldziher, whose work has since become anathema to the Muslim intelligentsia."

And of course, of Ignaz Goldziher's eminent qualifications as a counter-jihadist pioneer, we have copious references by that other member of the CJM Leadership, Hugh Fitzgerald -- here, here, here and here.

The only problem with all this reflexive praise of Goldziher I got a sudden inadventitious glimpse of quite by accident, as this past week I was browsing around in Google Books and bumped into this rude piece of furniture, an otherwise finely turned Ignaz Goldziher coffee table, circa 1971, castigating none other than fellow Islam scholar Bernard Lewis:

No other propagandist alive is more responsible for sustaining this delusional opposition between "Islam and the West" than Bernard Lewis. He even forgets the books he himself has already written on the subject and writes new ones... essentially the same ideas, almost verbatim similarities... in practically everything that he writes -- "the West" got it right, "Islam" and Muslims did not, there were some accidentally intelligent Muslim reformists who did, but the ignoramus masses and fanatics did not, and thus we are in the mess that we are. This is Bernard Lewis in a nutshell.

The irony here is that the CJM when they mention Bernard Lewis often criticize his tendency to be too soft on Islam (example, Hugh Fitzgerald in his ironic "tribute" to him); and yet Goldziher -- whom they uncritically praise -- himself childes Lewis for being too harsh on Islam!

P.S.: This reminds me of another great scholar of yesteryear whose specialty was Islam, the Dutch scholar Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936), and Hugh Fitzgerald's penchant for unalloyed -- and apparently uncritical -- praise of his work as well.  In an essay on The Hesperado some five years ago, I recounted my disagreement with Hugh over this (actually mixing it up with him in Jihad Watch comments back in 2006).  In retrospect, my concluding remarks were way too soft on Hugh, in the interest, I suppose, of being civil and charitable.