Esposito Gets 'Zero' for See-No-Evil Defense of Ground Zero Mosque

Stephen Schwartz demolishes the claim by Georgetown Professor John L. Esposito that criticism of the mosque project amounts to "Islam-bashing charges leveled with no concrete evidence by pundits and politicians." Esposito, professor of religion and international affairs and director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, is the nation's leading apologist for Saudi Wahhabism, the Turkish fundamentalist Justice and Development Party (AKP), and Islamist ideologies in general. "To many," writes Schwartz, he personifies all that's wrong with Middle East studies in America today" -- notably, a gross and systematic denial of inconvenient facts. The same can be said of his blinkered championing of the proposed mosque.