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(Updated March, 2010)
Introduction
This is a condensed response to an
article posted a few times since late 2007 on the website of Jim
Sutter that purports to be an exposé of my own website, TheReligionofPeace.com,
and myself. Although having gone through various edits, the article
remains a laborious rant that combines
a few irrelevant facts with baseless speculation and deliberate
falsehood. Even I haven't read the full piece, so I doubt that
anyone else has either. Still, I did want to counter the more
salacious lies and misconceptions that are promoted by the article, since
I don't feel it is wise to leave them out there.
First, it should be pointed out that the
man making the accusations about me is a proven liar, fraud and con
artist. In addition to masquerading as a clergyman, the "Reverend"
Jim Sutter of Cleveland, Ohio has claimed to be a
decorated Navy Seal, earning the
Navy Cross and
four Purple
Hearts over a 26-year career. He
also says that he earned
three
decorates, including a PhD in Psychology. In his time, he has laid claim
to being a Catholic priest, a
Baptist pastor,
seminary graduate, and a
licensed counselor. He has even
bragged that he can speak
eleven
languages, including Arabic!
All of these claims are complete fiction, of
course.
Jim Sutter is actually a nobody who dropped out of the Navy after only 7
months of peacetime training and never went to college. He is also
a convicted felon who has been in trouble
with the law on many occasions. He has spent the last twenty
years of his life in and out of jail while freeloading off of his wife,
pretending to be disabled and falsely advertising
his bogus counseling credentials to exploit unsuspecting individuals
suffering from very real emotional trauma.
Everything you need to know about Jim
Sutter can be found at PhonyRev.com,
where his criminal history and bogus claims are fully documented with
references.
He is truly not worth taking seriously, regardless of what issues he
pretends to champion. He is a cynic and a poseur who exists mainly
to pursue personal vendettas against those who have exposed him.
I came to Sutter's attention in 2007,
when I answered a threatening e-mail in which he vowed to do damage to
my reputation and business if I would not agree to modify my political
and ideological expressions to fit his demands. He did not take
kindly to my refusal, and has since sought to make good on his threat in
various ways including the phony article in which he alleges - among
other things - that I am being indicted for a battery of federal crimes
(even though he claims not to know my real name).
Of course, I am just one of several
people that the "Phony Rev" has gone after. His superficial
exposés are based solely on what he can find on the Internet (he
pretends to have phenomenal computer and journalistic skills, even though his
only real job is to convince the government that he cannot do productive
work). Sutter then fills in the many gaps with speculation
and imagination. He feels comfortable pushing lies about
others because he believes that he is judgment-proof, having no assets
or accomplishment to show for his life. At the age of 55, his bank
account is as worthless as his character.
Unlike Sutter, who attempts to promote
himself with numerous Internet profiles and bylines, I am a private
person. I do not even put my name on my own website.
Even though I am reluctant to discuss my personal life, there is nothing
there of which I am ashamed.
False Accusations about Glen Reinsford
False Accusation:
"Glen Reinsford is a
racist."
Fact:
Sutter recycles this slur
against almost everyone with whom he pursues a personal grudge.
He has even accused two
African-American owned businesses, the Yukon Group and CI2.com,
of being racist (one was forced to have an attorney contact him to
remove his libelous material).
For the record, I am actually an
anti-racialist, meaning that I do not even believe in race.
In my opinion, it is an artificial classification without merit.
Although it is not something that I think about, I suppose that my own family would
be considered multi-racial.
What makes this a
particularly disingenuous charge is that Sutter has a very curious history of
hostile and harassing behavior toward racial minorities.
False Accusation:
"Glen Reinsford's real name is... [take
your pick]"
Fact:
Sutter has long been obsessed with
throwing two names together and pretending that they are the same
person. In one of his first attempts, he claimed that JihadWatch's Robert Spencer
and Hugh Fitzgerald were "alter-egos" based on the contention that they
"shared" a PO box (they never did, in fact). When he had
a falling out with a person that he previously called a
co-editor on his own
Chasing Evil website named Bill Warner, he printed a slanderous piece
alleging (among other things) that Warner was really a person by the
same name who runs the Center for the Studies of Political Islam (A,
B).
In
my case, he has literally come up with the names of six other individuals
over the years and accused them of "being me." In order of appearance, they are
Parker, Peter, Shannon, Sean, Jamil and Drew. It would be comical except that these are real people with real careers and families who
often have no association with TheReligionofPeace.com.
I was
once inclined to respond each time Sutter came up with a new guess
The one that he clung to for nearly two years is that I am Sean Drake, who allegedly had
child support problems and 55 criminal convictions (Sutter provides no validating links,
of course). Obviously I am not this person - and neither do I have any children from previous relationships.
There
really is no reason to spend much time with this. Sutter
is a documented forger and felon who isn't going to be taken seriously
by anyone who does the least bit of fact checking into what he says.
By his own admission, he doesn't even know whether or not Glen Reinsford
is my real name - therefore he knows nothing about me.
[March,
2010: I had to break my own rule here, because I can't help but
note that Sutter is now saying that I am an African-American businessman
living in Atlanta, when exactly one year ago, he was saying that I was a
White Supremacist and Neo-Nazi!
If I'd known things were going to get this ridiculous, then I wouldn't
have spent as much time as I originally did with this article.]
False Accusation:
Glen Reinsford has been indicted for "conspiracy,
forgery, cyberstalking, money laundering, wire fraud, theft of a social
security number, and using interstate communications to make personal
threats." (source)
Fact:
This one is a no-brainer,
given that Sutter is also claiming not to know my real name. The
feds do not file criminal charges without identifying the subject, so
all this really proves is that Sutter may actually be as stupid as he is
dishonest. (Elsewhere he even claims that
the charges have been filed by federal authorities on his behalf, and
that he is scheduled to testify as a witness against me!)
This is who Jim Sutter is.
He makes up obvious lies about the people that he is trying to slur, even if
his tactics are so crude at times that they border on the clownish.
Since he simply scratches out one name with another, even his most naive
fans must have found it suspicious by now that his last three guesses as
to Glen Reinsford's "real" identity have all had exactly 55 criminal
convictions!
(For the record, I am
obviously not under any sort of indictment or investigation. I
have no criminal history at all, in fact. My only "brush with the
law" was an incident in college in which I paid a $20 fine for fishing
without a license).
False Accusation:
"Glen Reinsford is dependent on donations and is on the verge of bankruptcy."
FACT
Sutter claims that I informed him of this in a private e-mail. In
fact, I have
never had any conversations about my finances or career with Jim Sutter,
written or otherwise.
He knows nothing about me.
For
the record, I have no debt. In my entire life, I have
never once carried a credit card balance. Everything I own is
completely paid for, and it has been that way for many years.
By
contrast, Sutter is quite comfortable living off of other people's
money, be it that of his wife or of ordinary taxpayers. Another
reason that he is so unhappy with himself is that he has limited
options in the final years of his wasted life because he
served time in
prison for multiple felony convictions that involved cheating
people out of money at the same time that he claimed
to be a "Christian minister."
He
has only himself to blame for his misery. I took a different path.
False Accusation:
"Glen Reinsford
used to work for a company that lost its government contracts in 2002
because he was running a 'racist' website on one of their servers."
FACT
Sutter apparently invented this entire tale around two domain registration
records which make no mention of any of this.
In fact, there has never
been any company in the United States
that has lost government contracts over a racist website.
The two companies that he mentions, GoDaddy and CI2.com are both
ISPs, which means they provide Internet services (such as IP addresses,
protocol access, e-mail storage, and domain registrations) to clients,
including the one for which I used to work. I have never been
fired by GoDaddy.com, CI2.com, nor the firm for which I was actually
employed at that time.
At
one point Sutter pretended to have spoken personally to the president of
one company about me. The business was eventually forced into
having an attorney request that he retract his slurs.
False Accusation:
"Glen Reinsford's book 'shows his racism'"
FACT
Despite the fact that it only cost $8.95, Sutter never bothered to read
Age of Tolerance, which is a good thing, since it should make it that much harder
for anyone to mistake him for a serious journalist.
No doubt, there is legitimate criticism to be made against the book (which is
a first effort on my part), but this clearly does not include racism.
For Sutter to so casually use the most horrible of slurs in such
groundless fashion speaks poorly of his character.
In
fact, the book is plainly anti-racialist, which is
impossible for anyone who has read it to have missed. If I
remember correctly, the four most positive characters in the story are
from four different races (and three religions - including Islam).
In keeping with my personal beliefs, one of the more prominent themes is
the absurdity of categorizing people by race (as this
excerpt from the book makes
obvious).
False Accusations about TheReligionofPeace.com
False Accusation:
"TROP, lumps all Muslims together as
terrorists and makes no distinction between them."
FACT
We
have said exactly the opposite in so many places that even Sutter can’t
help but quote us.
Case in point (Jim Sutter quoting from my site):
“CAIR may be the epitome of selfish indifference
towards those outside one's own race or religion, but that doesn't
mean that your Muslim neighbor or co-worker shares their
narcissism... so please don't be an ass. The Muslims that you
know in your private life mean you no harm and deserve no abuse from
you, verbal or otherwise.
Islam is interpreted in different ways and
followed to different degrees. No Muslim should be harassed or harmed
anywhere in the world because of his or her religion. Every Muslim
should be treated as an individual and judged only by his or her own
words and deeds”.
This has always been our policy. We also expound on
the subject of stereotyping Muslims
here,
here,
here and in many other places on TheReligionofPeace.com. We
criticize the elements of Islam with which we disagree (such as the
inferior status of women) and the effect that it has on those who
believe. Whatever sophistry Sutter employs to pursue a personal
grudge will not
change this truth.
False Accusation:
"The list of attacks on TROP includes any act of
violence committed by a Muslim for any reason."
FACT
Not true. We do not record an incident unless it
can be reasonably inferred that religion played a role in the violence.
We do not include deranged mosque shootings in Yemen, for example, political
shootings in Pakistan (such as the recent
political killings), clan violence, or acts of terror by either the
Balochistan Liberation Army or the PKK in Turkey.
From a list of over 10,000 items, Sutter provides only four examples of
what he says are attacks that shouldn’t be there. In fact, he does
no other research into these beyond merely looking at my description.
Each of the four attacks that he cites was committed by Kashmiri
militants, who are supported by Pakistan and have charters that specify
Islamic goals. They are therefore Muslim terror attacks.
False Accusation:
"The National Counter-Terrorism Center refutes
the
claim that Muslims commit the majority of deadly religious terror
attacks."
FACT
Sutter apparently overlooks the word ‘deadly.’ I do not count an
attack unless it results in loss of life. If one uses the NCTC’s
advanced
search page to compare terror attacks with at least one death
committed by the world’s major religions, they will find that NCTC
records 2,379 deadly attacks by members of Islamic extremist groups and
only 68 committed by all other religions combined.
Even this last figure is deceptive because 63 of the 68 attacks are by
the Lord’s Resistance Army, which is not a Christian
organization. The leader of the group is Joseph Kony, a Ugandan
madman who invented his own voodoo religion by borrowing ritual elements from
both the Bible and the Qur’an. Kony also claims to be Jesus
himself, which means that he is no more a Christian than would be a
"Muslim" who declared himself the prophet Muhammad.
Kony's followers actually bow to Mecca, as Muslims do, and his terror
campaigns are funded entirely by the Islamic Republic of the Sudan.
This actually leaves five deadly attacks by all other religions,
compared to the 2,379 by Muslim organizations, meaning that Muslims
are responsible for 99.8% of the violence that NCTC puts into this
category. Draw your own conclusions as to whether or not there is
something different about Islam.
False Accusation:
"The NCTC refutes the TROP claim that all 10,000
attacks on the list are motivated by religion, since the center ascribes
the majority of the attacks in their own database to other factors."
FACT
In
the first place, NCTC is reluctant to classify attacks by individuals as
terror attacks unless they are determined to belong to an official
terrorist organization.
Secondly, NCTC will usually disregard
religion as a primary motive if there are other possibilities to choose
from (they only classify each under a single category).
Here are three examples in which NCTC and TROP may have reached
different conclusions as to primary motive:
An Iranian
woman is planted in the ground and pelted with stones because she
was accused of adultery. NCTC might consider this to be a
judicial matter. TROP looks at it from the perspective of the
victim, who is wrongfully and violently put to death by those who
think they are following Allah's will with regard to a law laid down
explicitly by Muhammad.
A
group of Sunni radicals shoot a dozen Iraqi policemen to death in cold
blood while shouting, “Allah Akbar!” NCTC might consider this a
political statement. TROP relies on the audio.
Three Christian employees of a Bible publisher are kidnapped by Muslim
extremists, tortured for three hours and then brutally slain. NCTC
notes that they were members of an ultra-Nationalist group and calls it
a "nationalist" attack. TROP notes that Turkey is already a
nation, and that Turkish Christians (the victims) are targeted there because they are not
Muslim. In this case, the killers, members of the Nurcu Muslim
sect, said they intended to "protect
Islam from lies."
We
do not claim that Islam is the only motive for each attack on our list,
but we have taken pains to explain how the terrorists themselves
appeal to it as their justification.
We
have nothing but respect for NCTC, but they have their process and we
have ours.
Each of our attacks is available for review, complete with date,
location and description. We have always been open to considering
objections to any specific entry on our list. We have made any
corrections that have been proven necessary.
False Accusation:
"TROP's list of attacks is top-heavy with US
combat deaths.”
FACT
Since Sutter provides no examples, and he apparently has a very poor
grasp of what
“combat” actually means. The only attacks on US troops that we have recorded are
those in which a soldier might have been attacked while standing guard,
eating mess, or traveling on a non-military mission, such as providing
medical care to Iraqis. Though recording a handful of these
attacks early on, there are not very many on the list, certainly well
under one tenth of 1%.
Is
less than one tenth of 1% really "top-heavy?" It's difficult to tell because
Sutter doesn't provide any actual numbers. This is because he
didn't do any actual research. All we know for sure is that
the man who masquerades as a decorated military veteran thinks it is
wrong to include American victims of Islamic terror on our list if they
happen to be in uniform at the time.
Despite the fact that every single one of our items is available in a
tabular format that can be easily loaded into a database for analysis
(see my own
IBC article for an example), Sutter was too lazy to do even this.
He is a charlatan, not a journalist.
Conclusion
One of the drawbacks to
the digital age is that it enables practically any fool to push libelous propaganda with
impunity to other fools. A dishonest man like Jim Sutter, who has
otherwise been a failure in life, now realizes that he has an
opportunity to make an impact on the world by slandering others.
In Sutter's case, he abuses the very serious issues of racism and social
dysfunction to damage the reputations of others under the guise of
"fighting hate." Unfortunately he harms real people and does
damage to noble causes. Beyond the personal grudges, his immediate
targets have included advocates of racial genocide victims and true
Muslim reformers who battle on behalf of women and others suffering
under Sharia.
But Sutter also affects the credibility of those who are directly concerned with the
issues that he exploits merely for false legitimacy. There are
individuals and even organizations that have sometimes promoted his work
without looking too closely at either the content or the integrity of
the source. Not only has he made fools of these people, but he has
cheapened their cause.
Sutter's attack on
TheReligionofPeace.com is flimsy and contrived. The embarrassment
that this insincere person causes to those on "his side" of any debate,
however, is very real.
See
Phony Rev, the Con Artist Behind Hate Watch for more about
"Reverend" Jim Sutter.
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