Stardate 20030316.0919

(On Screen via long range sensors): Sharp-eyed reader Rob points me to a hard-hitting article about Arab culture that he found through Donald Sensing's site, who, in turn, found it at "Petrified Truth". Donald quotes the following as an example of how the article pulls no punches:

Our enemy is a culture which is deeply diseased. Our enemy holds to a traditional belief, a traditional culture. The problem with our enemy's culture is that in the 20th century it was revealed as being an abject failure. By any rational calculation, it could not compete, and not simply because the deck was stacked against it. The problem was more fundamental; the culture itself contained the elements of its own failure.

I must say, I do agree with what it says. Indeed, I agree so much with it that I wrote it, last September.

I don't have the faintest idea who Muhammad Oueiny is. No one at USCFL ever contacted me about this, and I only learned of it because Rob recognized the writing style and wondered if I was writing under a pseudonym.

So I have sent the following letter to the "info@" and "webmaster@" email addresses there:

Subject: Plagiarism

May I invite you to compare two articles? You may notice a rather striking similarity between them.

The first is this, on your site:

http://freelebanon.org/articles/a361.htm

The second is this, which I wrote in September of 2002:

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/09/Whoisourenemy.shtml

Please understand that I don't mind if this idea gets publicity; I wrote it because I thought it was important, and I wanted others to read it. But it would be nice if the authorship was properly credited, not to mention if my permission had been asked.

They say that "Plagiarism is the most sincere form of flattery", but I am not flattered.

I'll be interested to see how they react, and how soon.

Update: And as I continue working through my mailbox, I see that John also noticed it and sent me mail. He sent mail to the web site and got the following answer from Ziad K. Abdelnour:

FYI, this article was submitted to us one year ago but fell between the cracks given the 1000 articles we receive a month.

Thanks for noting it however; it is rather Steven Den Beste who plagiarized it from Muhammad Oueiny.

How, exactly, could I have plagiarized it if they hadn't published it? Where was it published before it appeared on my site, where I might have seen it to copy it? And can we see anything else written by Oueiny which might demonstrate his tendency to write in a style so similar to my own? Not to mention the fact that Oueiny is claimed to be "a founder" of the site; odd that a submission by one of the site principles would "fall between the cracks".

I myself haven't received any response yet. But if they actually do try to claim that I myself am the plagiarist, I will cease to be bemused. Plagiarism is a bagatelle; defamation of character is not.

Of course, the supreme irony here is that one of the points I made in the article was to cite Ralph Peters' article about "seven failings", and one of those failings was "Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure."

Update: Here is another article from Oueiny, also posted on that site. Compare its writing style to the one whose authorship is in dispute, as well as to this one I wrote the next day on the same subject (as a follow-on to the original). Who seems more likely to be the author?

(Does anyone have access to one of those computer programs which does a statistical analysis of writing styles?)

Update: I have just sent the following letter to Abdelnour:

Sir:

In September of 2002, I posted the following article on my web site:

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/09/Whoisourenemy.shtml

In February, your "founding member" Muhammad Oueiny posted this article:

http://freelebanon.org/articles/a361.htm

It is very clear that Oueiny created his article by copying almost all of mine word-for-word.

One of my readers reports to me that he pointed this out to you, and that you personally wrote back to say that Oueiny had submitted his article a year ago, and that therefore it was clear that I was the plagiarist.

I do not find defamation of my character to be amusing. If Oueiny had written the article before 9/2002 but it had not been published anywhere, then there's no obvious way I could have seen it so as to steal it.

But it was posted on my web site on the 18th of September, and there are thousands of witnesses to that fact (my readers), and Oueiny could easily have seen it, or have been mailed a copy of it, before he submitted it to you.

I also note that his writing style in this article:

http://freelebanon.org/articles/a313.htm

is radically different than in the one in dispute.

I consider plagiarism to be a small annoyance. But I do not consider any claim that I am the plagiarist to be a small matter. Before you repeat that claim to anyone else, I suggest that you research the issue more fully. For instance, I suggest that you read this article I posted the next day which expands on the first one:

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/09/Arabtraditionalism.shtml

Note the similarity of writing styles.

And in particular, unless you can find a publicly-available copy of the article claimed to be written by Oueiny which appeared earlier than mine and which I could plausibly have seen, then you would do well to cease slandering me. For if it truly was submitted to you a year ago but only published in the last month, then how could I have copied it and posted it to my site last September?

I will post more about this as it develops.

Update: Abdelnour has responded to this letter, as follows:

Let me talk to Oueiny and get down to the bottom of this.

So for the moment I'm willing to give him time to investigate.

Update: Samuel writes to tell me that the article on Free Lebanon's web site has been deleted; the link is now a 404.