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So David has had a look at Efraim Karsh, the founding director and emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King’s College, London.

Or rather, he has had a look at the Wikipedia page about him and found that his book about Islamic imperialism that I referred to has has had critical reviews from some academics in the Middle East studies field.

He has been rather selective however. On the same Wikipedia page we find other, much more favourable, reviews, which David chose to omit:

Professor William E. Watson writes:

‘Efraim Karsh, professor and head of the Mediterranean Studies Programme at the University of London has written a book destined to become a seminal study on the history of radical Islam. In Islamic Imperialism: A History, Karsh explains that “the House of Islam’s war for world mastery is a traditional, indeed venerable, quest that is far from over”.’

Professor Marian Gross writes:

‘The ingenuity of Karsh’s monograph is that it portrays Islamic imperialism in the same light as all other imperialism—accentuating the utter normalcy of Muslim rulers’ imperialist ventures, goals, and means … By seeking the roots of the current situations in the Middle East within the framework of Middle Eastern history, Karsh provides an invaluable assessment.’

Professor Robert Tignor writes:

‘The book is timely as well as polemical. Its polemics and its obvious intention to arouse strong responses should not deter readers, since it is a work deserving to be read for its penetrating analyses of the long history of Islam as an expanding and proselytizing faith.’

Ok, so what to make of this?

There is a fundamental issue here. Academics, and I gather David is one, are very inclined to the ‘argument from authority’ approach that relies on citations from highly credentialled experts – and in some fields, such as the basic sciences and vocational areas, this might make reasonable sense.

So David demands of me a ‘reading list’ of ‘solid, respectable historians’ that support the argument I’m making, while exempting himself from this requirement when he asserts that Western meddling has produced all the problems with Islam.

But here’s the problem: the area of Middle East Studies is riven by bitter ideological divisions, with allegations that the long-standing peak organisation in America, the Middle East Studies Association, with which most of Karsh’s critics are affiliated, has evolved from a purely scholarly to a political activist role, buying into current political controversies like travel bans and BDS, and with a definite ideological slant grounded in the work of post-colonial theorists like Edward Said.

This reached a point where some of the most venerable figures in the field, like Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, broke away about a decade ago to form their own association, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa.

Then there is the problem of the wholesale compromising of the field by the flow of immense funds from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Iran and Turkey, and other Islamic states.

The sheer scale of this funding is extraordinary. Take the Saudi effort. In the six years from 2011 to 2017 Saudi interests paid $US614 million to US universities alone, with a special focus on some of the most prestigious ones and those most influential in the foreign policy establishment (Harvard, Johns Hopkins, George Washington, George Mason, Stanford). The other Gulf states, especially Qatar, are also major funders.
https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/23/saudi-arabia-universities-payment/

An article in the (left-wing) online magazine Vox (How Saudi Arabia captured Washington) describes how effective this influence-buying has been. The most insidious aspect is the incentive for researchers to self-censor, staying away from topics that might displease their sponsors:

'The expert, like others, described an unspoken effect whereby scholars, who are naturally aware of their funders' sensitivities, might think twice before writing critically on those issues: 'I could write about Saudi sectarianism, but then I might lose some money,' the expert said, explaining the thoughts a Gulf-funded scholar might have. 'I could write about UAE human rights abuses, but, you know, there are abuses everywhere, and there are a million other things I can write about.'
https://www.vox.com/2016/3/21/11275354/saudi-arabia-gulf-washington

Universities in the United Kingdom have likewise been the recipients of large sums of Gulf money, again targeted mainly at the most prestigious and influential institutions. According to Kristian Coates Ulrichsen of Rice University's Baker Institute:

'Almost every centre of Middle East studies in the UK is linked somehow to a Gulf backer. It's created dilemmas, especially over the last few years as the threshold for self-tolerance of any dissenting view has got lower.'

In 2009 the Centre for Social Cohesion produced a major report (A Degree of Influence: The Funding of Strategically Important Subjects in UK Universities) written by Robin Simcox that documents the extent of these contributions and describes how they distort scholarship in the targeted areas.

The report found evidence of censorship of discussion of certain aspects of Islam; changes to the governance of universities to meet the demands of donors; a lack of academic objectivity with specialist centres being set up with specific political agendas; provision of platforms for some of the world’s worst regimes; and a lack of transparency in the sourcing of donations.

Unsurprisingly, Australian universities are also into the Middle Eastern financial trough, a point highlighted when the Australian National University (ANU) rejected a proposal to deliver a course on Western civilization funded by the Ramsay Centre. It was revealed that the ANU had accepted donations of up to $2 million each from Dubai, Iran and Turkey. The ANU has a Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, which has on its advisory board an adviser to the deputy ruler of Dubai, and a former government minister of the United Arab Emirates.

Given this, it would be a brave, and rare, academic who was willing to say things, or pursue lines of research, that might reach conclusions that his/her institutions benefactors might not like. To talk of Islam having an inherent imperialist ambition, well that would be career suicide, social and professional death.

So, I guess, lots of people have axes to grind, financial or otherwise, in this area. In Middle East studies in particular, I suspect, the era of unbiased objective scholarship, if it ever existed, is over. Best to judge arguments on their merits, rather than the credentials of the speaker.