Note added, September 3, 2022: To belabor the obvious–for those who need a belaboring–this post was a response to a post on a separate blog, then called Neo-Neocon, now called The New Neo. The original post was posted in 2014; I don’t know whether it still exists. Neo-Neocon was defending the idea of US military involvement in Syria (back in 2014), which I was opposing. A commenter on the original blog post on Neo-Neocon, “blert,” had attacked my views by doing a cursory Google search, finding what he thought were photos of me, mistakenly identifying me with a fashion model with the name “Irfan Khawaja,” and then offering an elaborate confabulation about how I was an out-of-the-closet gay academic jihad blogger (implying, inadvertently, that Irfan Khawaja the fashion model was one, too). Obviously, blert’s whole comment was premised on a series of really stupid, obviously false assumptions and fabrications. That hasn’t deterred people from making some more.

To be absolutely clear: I am not Irfan Khawaja the fashion model, and have never pretended to be. The references to Irfan Khawaja the fashion model below are obviously satirical references to the erroneous identification of us made by the commenter “blert” on Neo-Neocon. If I’m gay, I must be in the closet about it even to myself, and to all of the women I’ve ever married or dated. I know nothing about the sexual orientation of Irfan Khawaja the fashion model, have no interest in knowing, and have never made any assertions about it whatsoever. I don’t mind being called a “blog jihadi,” but I have no comment on whether Irfan Khawaja the fashion model is. I don’t sympathize with ISIS, and have no reason to believe that Irfan Khawaja the fashion model does. I posted his photo in the post to satirize the error of the commenter, blert. As my bio makes clear, I’ve never claimed to be a fashion model. All of the commenters below except Irfan Khawaja the fashion model grasp that I am not Irfan Khawaja the fashion model, and am not claiming to be.

I wouldn’t have to belabor these obvious points if Irfan Khawaja the fashion model hadn’t, eight years after this post was first posted, decided to misread it by identifying my views with blert the commenter, and then attacking me for what blert had said. The ludicrous results of this misreading are now in the comments. As Dwight Eisenhower put it, “There is no final answer to the question ‘How stupid can you get?'”

And the worst thing is, I’m a participant in it. It’s taking place at a blog called Neo-Neocon. Feel free to visit, and feel free to wade through the combox (that’s not a recommendation)–at least if you have some time to waste, and don’t mind the prospect of sacrificing a few thousand brain cells in the process.

I thought I went there to take issue with the idea of U.S. military intervention in Syria. But that no longer seems to be the issue. Apparently, I’m the issue. As commenter “blert” puts it:

Khawaja is a very strange critter, blog wise.

Based upon a first pass Google-up:

1) Out of the closet gay model of Pakistani descent…

2) Brainy enough to make it/ fake it in academe…

3) And alienated enough to construct what seems to be a totally synthetic name… or some homage to the past or to culture. Any connection is too obscure for Westerners.

4) Probably engaged in blog jihad. This is now commonplace among those Muslims with advanced literacy. Blog jihad is used to inject cultural demoralization among kafir elites, so it can be no surprise that this player advocates the classic Libertarian script.

So I guess that makes me an alienated, low IQ gay Libertarian jihadi pseudo-academic…with looks to die for. Things could be worse.

Postscript, September 7, 2014: For a notably more intelligent discussion of the subject, read this post by Brandon Christensen at Notes on Liberty. I regret that I haven’t had the time to give the idea of intervention-in-Syria the thrashing it deserves, but I hope that everyone so inclined (i.e., disinclined to intervention in Syria) will take some time out to make their sentiments known, above all to their political representatives.

Postscript, September 8, 2014: I haven’t given the idea of intervention-in-Syria the thrashing it deserves, but I guess I haven’t been able to stay silent, either.  The preceding link goes to a comment on Brandon Christensen’s comment on a recent piece by Richard Epstein, “Rand Paul’s Fatal Pacifism,” Defining Ideas (Sept 4, 2014). I’m agnostic on the recommendation that Christensen makes in the latter half of his post, but I agree with his criticisms of Epstein–as far as they go. The original Epstein piece strikes me as a problematic combination of pomposity and vapidity badly in need of a more thorough fisking than I have time to give right now.

Blog-jihad in style…with Irfan Khawaja. 

The real Khawajaenator: Maryam al-Khawaja