An oldie but goodie

For those who feel enlightened or interested by this week's long combox exchange with Mohamed "Abu Humaid" Elibiary, I invite you to take a look at this epistolary back and forth between ME and me. See which of us makes the more credible case. Oooh, and this one too, which contains this excerpt:

I bring it up here as a lesson. Notice how these folks strategized not to meet my own arguments with presumably better arguments of their own, and to have this debate in the public square. They discussed operating a whispering campaign, and co-opting unsuspecting churches, temples and business owners in a stealth effort to paint me as a David Duke bigot to well-meaning non-Muslims.

I can't say how representative this small group is, or was, of Muslim leadership, but I will say that every time someone like Elibiary trots out the "stirring up hatred and inciting violence" charge as a response to criticism, I think about this shabby little backroom discussion I stumbled onto. I think about how members of that listserv were discussing ruining my reputation and harm my newspaper with a groundless whispering campaign designed not to rebut a critic, but to destroy him professionally and to intimidate a newspaper into silence.