Reuel Marc Gerecht

Reuel Marc Gerecht is an analyst and commentator on issues of national security, radical Islam, and the Middle East, currently a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and generally associated with neoconservatism. Prior to entering the world of think tanks and interest groups, he was a Middle East operations specialist at the Central Intelligence Agency.

He served on the expert panel for the Iraq Study Group. Past roles ourside government include working as senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former senior fellow and director of Middle Eastern research for the Project for the New American Century.

While he is often perceived as "hard-line", he has also spoken about Islamophobia. For example, he criticized statements by Pamela Geller, known as an especially hard-line conservative blogger.

Let's take the Qur'an first, Muslim prayers second. Concerning the translation of the Muslim Holy Book, who might these Islamic scholars be? Since Ms. Geller is without Arabic, it's impossible for her to compare the original to a translation. She must depend upon others, who, if I follow Ms. Geller, are involved in a conspiracy to hide the ugly truth about Islam. If the translations were more "accurate," we would all see what's apparent to Ms. Geller, who ascertained the truth despite the blinding scholarly conspiracy. One has to ask whether Ms. Geller has perused the translation masterpiece by Cambridge's late great A.J. Arberry or my personal favorite, the awesomely erudite, more literal translation and commentary by Edinburgh's late great Richard Bell? Both gentlemen are flag-waving members of Edward Said's most detested species--Orientalists. Now if you look at these translations--especially if you look at Bell's, which is blessed with exhaustive notes in a somewhat complicated formatting--even the uninitiated can get an idea that Muhammad had trouble with Christians and especially Jews during his life. If you look at the Qur'anic commentary by Edinburgh's late great William Montgomery Watt (another Orientalist), who was always attentive to Muslim sensibilities in his writings, you can also fine in clear English Muhammad's unpleasant ruminations about Christians and Jews.

He also questions continuing the traditional cooperation between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.