Barry Nussbaum: Hello, and welcome to ATP Report. I’m Barry Nussbaum. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We’re glad you’re back with us after a meal with your family, friends, and loved ones. Before we bring on our special guest, I want to remind all of you in ATP land if you haven’t already done so. Please take out your cell phone, text the word truth, and send it to the number 88202. You’ll be signed up for this and all of our content absolutely for free. You’ll get it in the palm of your hand every time we post a show.

With that said, I want to bring on Robert Spencer. He’s America’s expert on jihad, and he’s the expert on jihad around the world. He’s the publisher, editor, and writer of not only Jihad Watch but over two dozen books. He’s got a new book out he’s going to tell us about. Welcome back, Robert.

Robert Spencer: Thanks, Barry. Good to see you.

Barry Nussbaum: Same here, buddy. So, let’s start with an article that you’ve done some research on. The U.S. has warned Israel that its attacks on Iran’s nuclear program are, quote, “counterproductive,” according to the New York Times. U.S. officials say they are warning Israel against attacking Iran and stopping the nuclear program.

So, here’s what I don’t get, Robert. The JCPOA guarantees, eventually, Iran will get nukes. Everybody knows that JCPOA failed. Iran is producing uranium at catastrophic levels, and it could be days away from a bomb. Yet Iran is barreling ahead and refuses to compromise. Why should Israel listen to the United States and keep its hands off Iran?

Robert Spencer: Literal, we shouldn’t do that, obviously. What the Biden administration is trying to do is restore the nuclear deal with Iran because Trump dropped it. They want to show that they know better than Trump and can do everything better than the stupid amateur that they think of him as. They are the professionals, the experts. They know how to run foreign policy.

They’re determined to appease Iran and restore the nuclear deal at the expense of Israel, which of course, as we know from Obama’s first two administrations, first two terms, they’re very hostile to Israel. The people in the government now, in Obama’s third term, they’re just as hostile, if not more so, to Israel. So, above all, they don’t want to see Israel doing something that will keep them from appeasing Iran-in their view, showing up Trump.

Barry Nussbaum: Boy, is that the truth? The P.A., the Palestinian Authority, as you note, frequently pays out generous monthly stipends to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of terrorists who might have died while committing their attacks. The more serious the attack, the more Israelis killed, the more money the P.A. pays out. In other words, it pays to kill people if you’re a Palestinian. The martyrs get a fortune, and the descendants get the money if they don’t make it. The rumor is the P.A. is going to stop this pay-for-slay program. Do you believe it?

Robert Spencer: Not a chance. It’s just window dressing to try to curry international favor, which they don’t even really have to do. Because in the United States, we have the Taylor Force Act, which forbids money being given to an entity that funds terrorism, which should mean that not a penny of American taxpayer money goes to the Palestinian Authority, but the Biden administration has turned on the aid spigot.

Billions of dollars, millions of dollars, at the very least, are flowing to the Palestinians from American taxpayers in total defiance of the Taylor Force Act. Nobody is calling the Biden administration to account for violating the law in this way.

Barry Nussbaum: Excellent point, Robert, and shame on the opposition in Congress for not standing up for the law named after the American soldier Taylor Force, who was killed by a terrorist in Jerusalem several years ago. So, every time I think about the press finally getting the story right, it becomes a factual report rather than a bias.

I read a story like the one you published in Germany. The back story is there was an attack by a terrorist in the Old City in Jerusalem. This Hamas terrorist opened fire on pastor Byers with a machine gun. He killed one Israeli. He shot three others, and the police finally killed him. So, what did the German news say? “A Palestinian was shot dead today.”

Robert Spencer: By Israel.

Barry Nussbaum: It’s real, it’s true, but without the back story, it sounds like cold-blooded murder.

Robert Spencer: That’s the idea.

Barry Nussbaum: At what point does the truth matter here?

Robert Spencer: The truth doesn’t matter. The establishment media outlets in the United States and Western Europe are just propaganda arms for the hard left, hostile to Israel, and hostile to the United States. So, anything that they can publish that will undermine American interests and make people hate Israel. They’ll go with it, factual or not.

Barry Nussbaum: It’s pathetic, and it’s true. So, I’m going to ask you about two of your books. Let’s first start with, Did Mohammed Exist? We talked about this some weeks ago. Quickly tell our guests that are tuning in today. What has the response been to that book? It’s a very controversial subject, so give us a quick thumbnail of what the book’s about and what kind of reaction are you getting with it?

Robert Spencer: The book is an examination of the early history of Islam to evaluate the historical reliability of the records of how Islam was founded and the life of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. It essentially finds, which other people have found in the past, that there is very little historical value to the Islamic texts about Muhammed. Islam does not seem to have come to exist in the way it is described as coming to exist in the canonical Islamic sources.

The response to this has been a great deal of hostility, some threats, people saying that I have insulted Muhammed and thus should be killed, and so on, but one interesting thing that nobody has managed to do is say that the book is wrong. As a matter of fact, there was just a fellow who made a video not long ago that was brought to my attention.

So, I went ahead and watched it. He’s purporting to refute the whole book, and what he does is he finds that in the beginning, the introductory section of the book says that Mohammed had three daughters, and actually, he had four. That is true.

It’s a mistake in the book, but an editorial error came from a phrase being dropped out by mistake. It has nothing to do with the actual point of the book at all. So, even if you were to grant that it’s just some idiotic mistake by the Islamophobic Spencer, it doesn’t do anything to refute the substance of the book itself. This is the kind of quality of the responses we’ve been getting.

Barry Nussbaum: Yeah, it’s pretty much what I expected. So, I understand you have a new book. Let’s give our audience a quick Robert Spencer book report on Robert Spencer’s new book.

Robert Spencer: Yeah, it’s called The Critical Quran, and it is an honest translation of the Quran plus commentary that draws from the mainstream Islamic commentaries on the Quran because I’ve found over the years that when I quote the Quran, Muslims almost invariably respond, you’re taking it out of context.

So, I go to the Islamic commentaries to show what the context is and how it’s understood. The passages of the Quran are understood, according to the mainstream Islamic scholars of the Quran. This book is designed to elucidate for people in the West who are not Muslim what it is about Islam that gives rise to terrorism and all these other human rights abuses that we see.

It shows where they are all rooted in the Quran itself, when many other translations have obscured, often intentionally, these passages of the Quran that are violent, misogynistic, or anti-Semitic, and so on.

Barry Nussbaum: Well, let me ask you this. This sounds like not only fascinating reading, but it should be required reading. I used to ask for a show of hands when I would speak to a large group about Islam, and I’d say how many people have read the Quran, and it would be crickets. Is your book a good place to start to educate people on what they should know?

Robert Spencer: Yeah, that’s the idea of it, that it’s an essential guide. I remember years ago people saying the Quran doesn’t really teach beheading. It doesn’t really teach terrorism. It doesn’t really teach wife-beating, and so on. Every time people would quote something from the Quran, you’d find people writing in mainstream media sources denying it. This book shows what is in there and how it has been understood throughout Islamic history by Muslims themselves.

Barry Nussbaum: Well, that seems to be on the ATP required reading list. Is the book out?

Robert Spencer: It’ll be out in the middle of December. I just got my author advance copies recently, just a few days ago. I can tell you it looks very nice, and it’ll be available. It’s on Amazon now for preorder, Barnes & Noble for preorder, and it’ll be in bookstores in a couple of weeks.

Barry Nussbaum: Thank you for doing that, and I’m advising all ATP families out there, coast to coast, and around the world that are watching today. Go get this book. You need to know who and what you’re dealing with, and there’s no better scholar on this subject than Robert Spencer. Robert, tell people where they can find out more about what you’re doing. You mentioned where we could get the book. What about the rest of your writings?

Robert Spencer: Yeah, JihadWatch.org, I give news and commentary about jihad activity in the United States and around the world updated daily. Also, on Twitter @JihadWatchRS, I sometimes get into some Twitter wars that some people might find entertaining. Also, there’s a jihad watch page on Facebook.

Barry Nussbaum: Wonderful. Please follow him. He’s the scholar. You can’t get a better source on Islam around the world than Robert Spencer. For those of you that didn’t do it at the beginning. Please sign up for our text message alert system. Simply send the word truth to 88202 on your cell phone through a text message, and push send.

You’ll be signed up in about four or five seconds. You’ll get everything from Robert Spencer and all of our other contributors absolutely for free right in the palm of your hand. Again, for ATP Report, thank you for coming on.

Happy Thanksgiving. I’m Barry Nussbaum.