STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: SELF-LOATHING "JEW-FOR-ALLAH" DEBUNKED

Srdja Trifkovic

January 17, 2003

While Schwartz's "scholarship" on Islam is worthless, his failure to acknowledge in his many diatribes that he is a convert to the religion of Muhamad is obviously mendacious. He is either secretly ashamed of his new identity, or he wants to mislead his readers and editors; perhaps both. In view of what Islam teaches about the Jews, however, self-loathing is probably the most applicable diagnosis of Schwartz. This "Jew-for-Allah" now belongs to the religion whose founder, Muhammad, declared urbi et orbi: "verily, Allah teaches us, and we believe it, that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him an immediate entry into paradise and into the august presence of Allah." [. . .] Schwartz, as a Muslim, believes that [this] is literally the word of Allah. He seems oblivious to the fact that Baghdad's Caliph al-Mutawakkil was the first to designate a yellow badge for Jews in the 9th century, setting a precedent that would be followed centuries later in Nazi Germany. [. . .] So is Schwartz just another self-hater in the tradition of Otto Weininger, or is he a genuine convert to the "religion of peace and tolerance"? Either way, people who employ or publish him owe us an explanation for his and their failure to acknowledge this significant fact: that he is a Muslim. The attempt to turn Schwartz, a.k.a. Suleyman Ahmad, a.k.a. Comrade Sandalio into an author will come to haunt all those helping him in his latest self-invention, especially when this deeply troubled and unstable man decides to turn a new page in his Odyssey.

Last Monday (January 13) a slanderous attack on me by one Stephen Schwartz was published by Frontpagemag.com. Calling me "the noted Islamophobe," Schwartz claimed that I am closely identified with "the Russian 'red-brown' (Communazi) newspaper Pravda" and that I was "the main public advocate in the West for the regime of Slobodan Milosevic" (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=5517).

Two days later, on January 15, David Horowitz published the following Apology and Correction Regarding Serge Trifkovic on FrontPageMagazine.com:

Frontpage regrets characterizations of Serge Trifkovic, author of Sword of Islam, that were made in an article by Stephen Schwartz (CAIR's Axis of Evil) to the effect that Trifkovic is an Islamophobe, is associated with Pravda or Antiwar.com, and "was the main advocate in the West for the regime of Slobodan Milosevic." Serge Trifkovic is not associated with either Pravda or Antiwar.com. He was not a supporter of Slobodan Milsoevic. He is not an Islamophobe nor would Frontpage have given extensive space to a summary of his book if he were. Frontpage regrets any pain or injury this may have caused to Mr. Trifkovic.-David Horowitz.

The site also published the following Reply to Stephen Schwartz by me:

It is troubling and disappointing that Frontpagemagazine has allowed Stephen Schwartz to slander me. Had the diatribe been launched privately I would never have stooped to replying, directly or otherwise, to this deeply troubled man. Since FPM has seen it fit to provide the vehicle, however, I have no choice but to react.

To be called "the noted Islamophobe" is not only an invitation to a fatwa, it is doubly sinister coming as it does from a convert to Mohammedanism.

Schwartz writes that "Trifkovic is much more closely identified [with] the Russian 'red-brown' (Communazi) newspaper Pravda." This comes as a genuine surprise to me. What foreign websites carry my articles is beyond my control, but since I have never written anything for Pravda or spoken to anyone associated with it, this slanderous little aside only reinforces the way in which Mr. Schwartz has not allowed mere facts to stand in the way of his creativity.

Schwartz accuses me of being in league with Slobodan Milosevic's apologists at Antiwar.com - although the site's only mention of my name in this context came in the form of a scathing personal attack by one of its former columnists: "Kostunica's American worshippers, including Fleming and his Chronicles colleague Srdja Trifkovic continue to indulge themselves in their puerile fantasies." (George Szamuely, Antiwar.com, September 29, 2000)

But it is the claim that I was "the main public advocate in the West for the regime of Slobodan Milosevic" that is as unfunny as it is untrue. It is also hurtful to me personally in view of the many risks I have taken with my long and well documented position vis-a-vis Mr. Milosevic. Let us therefore leave rhetoric aside and look at a small segment of verbatim quotes from my extensive record of articles and interviews on the subject of the former Serbian president, starting 13 years ago and continuing until our time:

"Slobodan Milosevic is cynically exploiting the nationalist awakening to perpetuate Communist rule and his own power in the eastern half of Yugoslavia." U.S. News & World Report, June 18, 1990

"Communist leader Slobodan Milosevic needs outside enemies to halt the erosion of his popularity... Yugoslavia could be well on its way to becoming the Lebanon of Europe." U.S. News & World Report, November 12, 1990

"Demagogue and populist." The Yugoslav Crisis and the United States. Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1991

"Trifkovic said he [was] critical of the authoritarian rule of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and has called for his removal from office and democratic reforms." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), Sunday, September 6, 1992, p. 6-B

"Trusting] Milosevic is like giving a bloodbank to Count Drakula." The Times (London), Thursday, November 23, 1995, p. 16

"Milosevic has used his newly-fangled international legitimacy [after Dayton] to stifle even further all political opposition and to reassert state control." The Phoenix Gazette, Tuesday, March 19, 1996, p. B5

"Milosevic is afraid of having Mladic and Karadzic delivered to The Hague not because of the possibility of a Serb backlash in Serbia itself, but because those two know quite a lot about Milosevic's own role in the early days of the Yugoslav war, in '91 and '92." BBC World Service TV, Newsdesk (live) 10:25GMT, Wednesday, 29 May 1996

"For Mr. Milosevic, the very existence of any alternative to his own power is not legitimate. Even the current fa×ade of multi-party system he allowed only under pressure, treating it as something odious and temporary." The Phoenix Gazette, Wednesday, December 18, 1996, p. B4

"The sanctions had proved an absolute boon to Milosevic. He could blame them for the abysmal economic situation in the country, which was in fact due to the structural defects of an inefficient socialist economy - an economy he was unwilling to reform... Milosevic could observe with calm equanimity the exodus of about a quarter of a million predominantly young and well-educated urban Serbs. Those who had provided the backbone of political opposition to his government were emigrating, and he was staying." Chronicles, June 1997

"An incorrigible communist and blunderer." The Philadelphia Inquirer, Saturday, September 6, 1997

"Milosevic... manipulates these crises to preserve his power. With each new surrender he is temporarily converted by the West from the Beast of the Balkans into the Necessary Partner. This outcome would be awful for Serbia. The nation should lose its tyrant, not its borders." The Times (London), Thursday, March 18, 1999

"Albright and Milosevic manipulate each other and deserve each other... He had always been a recycled Communist apparatchik who manipulated the thetoric of nationalism in order to extend his shelf life. And his behaviour had always been personally functional, but systematically, from the viewpoint of Serb interests, dysfunctional. That's why Serbs are in such a dire predicament right now." CNN, Friday, March 26, 1999.

"Milosevic [is] a misshapen tyrant who will not flap his wings as long as he can feed on the evr-shrinking innards of Inner Serbia." The Philadelphia Inquirer, Monday, November 22, 1999, p. A15

"Serbia, thanks to Milosevic, acquired the image of the last bastion of communism in Europe." Testimony to the Canadian House of Commons, February 17, 2000

"Milosevic in Serbia and President Franjo Tudjman in Croatia were both busy establishing a quasi-dictatorial post-communist regime, and they needed vulgar nationalism - for a time - to outbid the most vulgar nationalists." The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World. Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 80

"Something has snapped in the minds of many Serbs. They can now visualize Serbia after Milosevic. They can visualize Serbia without sanctions and without the shame that he has brought upon his people... And once they lose their respect, they will loss fear. And once they lose fear, they may end up lynching him." CNN Headline News, live, Saturday, September 30, 2000, 6:10 p.m. Eastern

"Like some crazed anti-Midas, in his 13 years of chaotically autocratic rule Milosevic destroyed everything he touched... [He] cared not a hoot for his people's interests or dignity, and turned his country into a corrupt, mafia-infested basket case. Milosevic's arrogance and low cunning were matched only by his utter inability to devise a coherent strategy of anything - including his own political survival... It will take Serbia decades to recover from this awful man." ChroniclesExtra Online, April 14, 2001

The list goes on, but this small sample should suffice. Of course I opposed the misguided NATO intervention in the Balkans, and the systematic misrepresentation of the wars of Yugoslav succession by the likes of Schwartz. In doing so I was in good company on both Left and Right, and on both sides of the Atlantic-but that is a different story.

In his Reply to Trifkovic, published immediately after this article, Stephen Schwartz expressed surprise that his comments would elicit such a violent reaction from me, "when the attacks on [Trifkovic] by CAIR, and his service to Radovan Karadzic, have not done so":

I mention Karadzic because Srdja Trifkovic has conveniently left out of his self-defense the fact that according to his own biography, he was a political consultant for two members of the Milosevic regime who served its aggression in the Balkans. These are Radovan Karadzic and Biljana Plavsic. Trifkovic may cite all the comments he wants about Milosevic, but I would remind him that many witnesses were present when I debated him at Stanford a decade ago. In that debate, he defended the Milosevic regime, while I criticized it.

After that came the following Final word from me:

In regard to our Stanford debate: I repeated, more or less, the key points from my Hoover paper, which is available to the curious. My presentation was above all a defense of the Serbs' right to self-determination, and not a "defense of Milosevic." I have met Karadzic during my many trips to the Balkans but I never "worked" for him. Yes, I was Plavsic's consultant during her brief presidency (1998), when she was persona gratissima in Washington, where I accompanied her during her visit in May of that year. She was certainly not a "member of the Milosevic regime" - quite the contrary, she was his determined foe, which made it possible for me to help her, and made her attractive in the eyes of the U.S. Administration.

That was the end of the affair as far as Frontpagemag.com is concerned. It is not the end of the story, however. The piquant twist is that Stephen Schwartz is a convert to Islam. He is a self-avowed "Jew-for-Allah" (http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/Suleyman-Ahmad.htm) who has taken to calling himself Suleyman Ahmad, but he keeps this significant fact concealed from his readers. Why? He provides the answer, too:

"Since accepting Islam, I have proceeded carefully in informing my friends, neighbours, co-workers, and others. . . I want to proceed in a way that will do the most for the welfare of the Ummah and for better relations between all believers in la ilaha illallah."

Since "the welfare of the Ummah" is his main motive, everything is allowed, including lies and slanders. His attack on me was part-and-parcel of Schwartz's second motive: to demonize any opposition to jihad along Europe's eastern rim (Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Cyprus). "I speak Albanian and was involved with the KLA struggle almost from the beginning," he even boasts, forgetting that in view of the KLA'a distinguished record such admission may make Schwartz interesting to the office of the prosecutor at The Hague war crimes tribunal.

Schwartz's attempts to promote the "tolerant," Turkish variety of Islam, as opposed to the "bad" Wahhabist variety was comprehensively demolished by Andrew Bostom in National Review Online: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-bostom120602.asp. As Bostom reminds us, it was not Arab Wahhabism but "enlightened" Turkish variety of Islam that gave us the blood levy (devshirme), the Armenian genocide, the eradication of the Christians of Anatolia, and the SS divisions Handzhar and Skanderbeg. But such petty details do not concern Schwartz. His morbidly obsessive demonization of the Serbs is inseparable from his willingness to adopt in toto the justifications of an Islamist regime in Sarajevo with ties to the Iranians and a drug-running, white-slaving mafia in Kosovo.

While Schwartz's "scholarship" on Islam is worthless, his failure to acknowledge in his many diatribes that he is a convert to the religion of Muhamad is obviously mendacious. He is either secretly ashamed of his new identity, or he wants to mislead his readers and editors; perhaps both. In view of what Islam teaches about the Jews, however, self-loathing is probably the most applicable diagnosis of Schwartz. This "Jew-for-Allah" now belongs to the religion whose founder, Muhammad, declared urbi et orbi: "verily, Allah teaches us, and we believe it, that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him an immediate entry into paradise and into the august presence of Allah."

Muhammad's wholesale slaughter of the Jewish tribes in Medina was accompanied by his suitably grim revelations in the Koran. According to the Muslim holy book, the Jews "rebelled and disobeyed the Command of Allah, and became extremely arrogant." They have drawn on themselves wrath upon wrath, and their just reward in the form of "disgracing torment" yet awaits them. So Allah brought them down and cast terror into their hearts, had some killed and others made captives, "And He caused you [Muslims] to inherit their lands, and their houses, and their riches, and a land which you had not trodden before" The Muslims are able to do so because the Jews are cowards: "If they fight against you, they will show you their backs, and they will not be helped" Until the Day of Resurrection they will be afflicted with humiliating agony. They are accursed for their obstinate rebellion and disbelief, so "We have put enmity and hatred amongst them till the Day of Resurrection." Even the stone behind which a Jew hides will say, "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him." They have incurred the Curse and Wrath of Allah, who transformed them into monkeys and swine. "Indignity is put over them wherever they may be"; "they have drawn on themselves the Wrath of Allah, and destruction is put over them" because they disobeyed Allah and used to transgress beyond bounds. They cling greedily to this life even if it is humiliating and villainous life, "And verily, you will find them the greediest of mankind for life." Schwartz, as a Muslim, believes that all of the above is literally the word of Allah. He seems oblivious to the fact that Baghdad's Caliph al-Mutawakkil was the first to designate a yellow badge for Jews in the 9th century, setting a precedent that would be followed centuries later in Nazi Germany.

Talking of yellow badges, let us not forget that Schwartz's admiration for Islam was shared by the architect of the holocaust, Heinrich Himmler. Himmler's hatred of "soft" Christianity was matched by his liking for Islam, which he saw as a masculine, martial religion based on the SS qualities of blind obedience and readiness for self-sacrifice, untainted by compassion for one's enemies. By creating an SS division composed of Bosnian Muslims Himmler was only taking the first step in the planned grand alliance between Nazi Germany and the Islamic world. One of his closest aides, Obergruppenfìhrer Gottlob Berger, boasted that "a link is created between Islam and National-Socialism on an open, honest basis. It will be directed in terms of blood and race from the North, and in the ideological-spiritual sphere from the East."

So is Schwartz just another self-hater in the tradition of Otto Weininger, or is he a genuine convert to the "religion of peace and tolerance"? Either way, people who employ or publish him owe us an explanation for his and their failure to acknowledge this significant fact: that he is a Muslim. The attempt to turn Schwartz, a.k.a. Suleyman Ahmad, a.k.a. Comrade Sandalio into an author will come to haunt all those helping him in his latest self-invention, especially when this deeply troubled and unstable man decides to turn a new page in his Odyssey.

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