You enquire about my response to David Horowitz’s characterization of myself as "a dangerous professor". Horowitz’s most preposterous allegation is that I was "formerly the North American spokesman for the Islamic extremist group Al-Muhajiroun". This is real news to me! I know very little about who the Al-Muhajiroun are, and have never been connected with them.
With whom does Horowitz think I "co-authored" a paper entitled "Is Israel a Threat to American Democracy?" Such a paper was entirely my own, and did not have a co-author. I still believe that Israel and its allies within the United States are indeed a threat to American democracy.
Horowitz accuses me of "explicitly supporting the genocidal conduct of the Sudanese Islamic government." This it just a lie! Totally untrue!
He also confuses a Reader which I co-edited (The Africans: A Reader) with another book which I authored (The Africans: A Triple Heritage). He mistakenly uses the multi-authored Reader as a major source for my views. Sloppy research!
He also accuses my family (the "Mazrui Dynasty" of Mombasa) of having traded in slaves. Since the Mazrui were a ruling family in the eighteenth century, they did own slaves – like most Royal houses of those times. Horowitz is wrong in depicting the Mazrui as slave-traders – any more than Thomas Jefferson was a slave trader! Horowitz is also wrong when he accuses me of never mentioning that my own family had been rulers and slave owners. I did discuss precisely those issues in my PBS television series, as I proclaimed that I was "personally descended from both masters and slaves" – as are half the population of African Americans today! (The Africans: A Triple Heritage, BBC/PBS, 1986).
Horowitz is totally wrong about the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, of which I was once Chair. The Center has had no connection whatsoever with radical Islamic movements – otherwise the US Federal Government and the US Institute of Peace would not have funded some of its projects about Islam and democracy.
Ali A. Mazrui