Georgetown University Islamic Studies professor Jonathan A. C. Brown is a jerk. That’s not what’s notable or important about him, however.
That he’s a creep is something he has repeatedly demonstrated. Brown is a descendant of President Grover Cleveland. Raised as an Episcopalian, Brown converted to Islam when he was in college, and he’s now a true believer, if one who displays the sense of entitlement of someone from the direct lineage of a U.S. president.
Thus, a few months ago, Brown responded to a British member of parliament’s expressions of concern about the Pakistani grooming gangs that raped tens of thousands of young Christian women by tweeting out, “Get over it.” When he was told that this was gross, immoral and insensitive, he said it a second time.
Jonathan A. C. Brown: Well-dressed, articulate and a bit of a dirtbag.
Similarly, as a professor who teaches about the history of Islam, he has told his students that he would give an A to any one of them who could find an instance prior to modern times of a European denouncing the marriage of a child with an adult — as the fifty year old Muhammad wed the six year old Aisha. Yet, when a student identified such a comment and showed it to him, Brown denied her an A in the class and then boasted about this.
More startlingly, during an hour and twenty minute lecture at Georgetown in 2017, Brown said that, “I don’t think it’s morally evil to own somebody,” and “[f]or most of human history, human beings have not thought of consent as the essential feature of morally correct sexual activity.”
