Daniel Pipes: Fixing Islam's "Image Problem"

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/1179

[Fixing] Islam's Image Problem

Americans are increasingly negative about Islam and Muslims - or so found an important survey that the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press published last week.

Perhaps the most dramatic change has been the jump in Americans who find that Islam, more than other religions, is likely "to encourage violence among its believers." In March 2002, 25 percent of the sample advocated this view. Now 44 percent do.

What explains this increasingly worried attitude? Clearly, much of it follows on the on-going reality of terrorism, hate-filled statements and other problems tied to militant Islam around the globe. But some of it also results from the problems concerning militant Islam's control of the institutions of American Muslim life.

Whether it be the imam at the local mosque, the principal of the Islamic school, the Muslim chaplain in a prison or the armed forces, the editor of an Islamic publishing house or the spokesman for a national group, the American Muslim scene presents an almost uniform picture of apologetics for terrorism, conspiracy theories about Jews and demands for Muslim privilege.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, with 17 offices across North America, has emerged as the powerhouse of Muslim groups and best exemplifies this problem. Consider the sentiments of its leadership:

Nor does CAIR just excuse violence. Two of its former employees, Bassem Khafagi and Ismail Royer, have recently been arrested on charges related to terrorism. And a member of CAIR's advisory board, Siraj Wahhaj, was named by the U.S. attorney as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in an attempted terrorist assault.

Despite this ugly record, the U.S. government widely accepts CAIR as representing Islam. The White House invites it to functions, the State Department links to its Web page and Democratic senators rely on its research. In New York City, the mayor appoints its general counsel to the Human Rights Commission and the police department hosts its "sensitivity training" seminar. In Florida, public schools invite it to teach "diversity awareness."

The national media broadcasts its views. Which Muslim, for example, did the Los Angeles Times quote responding to the Pew report? Why, Ibrahim Hooper, of course.

CAIR, in brief, has established itself as the voice of American Islam, thereby battering Islam's noble reputation among Americans.

Improving Islam's reputation will require two steps: that the great institutions of American life reject all contact with CAIR and like groups, while moderate Muslims build sound organizations, ones that neither apologize for terrorism nor seek "the government of the United States to be Islamic."

(Technical note: The Pew study, "Religion and Politics: Contention and Consensus," was conducted June 24-July 8. Replies have a 95 percent confidence level and accuracies of +/- 2.5 percent or +/- 3.5 percent.)

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/1179

Daniel Pipes + more subjects at[littlegreenfootballs.com]-type 'pipes' in their search. ____________________________________________________________ Caroline Glick has written one of her best op-eds ever, beginning with the smear campaign against the nomination of Daniel Pipes to the US Institute of Peace, and ending with big questions about America’s commitment to the War on Terror: Pipe dreams, reality, and war. Highly recommended.

Pipes, a renowned scholar of Islam and the Arab world who heads the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, is the bane of the existence of Arab-American terrorism apologists and radically anti-American Middle East scholars. These detractors understand the importance of Pipes' unapologetic and intellectually-anchored attacks on radical Islam and the threat such radicalism manifests both to Islam itself and to the US.

These terrorism apologists, heavily concentrated in high-profile organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Council on Public Affairs, and the Middle East Studies Association among others, launched an intellectual and public relations war against Pipes years ago. This war was intensified after the 9/11 attacks when millions of Americans woke up to the stark reality of the malignant force of radical Islam on US national security.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Pipes, who had been warning of this threat for over a decade, suddenly rose to national prominence. Pipes's detractors rarely debate the actual issues that he raises. Rather, they ignore the inarguable substance of his claims and seek to smear his reputation by resorting to the gutter tactic of launching an unrelenting stream of ad hominem accusations of bigotry and war mongering against him.

In nominating Pipes to the previously obscure US Institute of Peace, the White House was making an important statement. It was saying that it recognizes that in the war on terrorism, no less than in the Cold War, the intellectual foundations and rationales guiding the war effort are in many respects as important, if not more important for eventual victory, than the military battles. If the US is not able to intellectually discredit its enemies then it will not long sustain the will to fight them on the military battlefield.

In backing away from Pipes's nomination when it found itself exposed to baseless Muslim allegations of racism, the Bush administration is following the pattern of policy inconsistency that has marked its path since it entered office. Writing this week of this inconsistency as it relates to the president's domestic agenda, commentator George Will argued that "the administration's principal objective may be to avoid fights about cultural questions." As if to prove the salience of this inconsistency, last week, The New York Sun published an article about a new advisory group formed by the State Department at the beginning of the month to guide US public diplomacy towards the Arab and Muslim world. The group, which is charged with recommending policy initiatives, "will report its findings and recommendations to the president, the Congress, and the secretary of state." Given its mandate, it should be noted, this new panel is infinitely more influential on US policy than the board of directors of the Institute of Peace.

Disturbingly, the group's members share none of Bush's expressed commitment to bringing freedom to the Arab world but rather have argued for years that Israel is to blame for the instability in the Arab world and the terrorism that emanates from it.

Dr. Daniel Pipes has advocated for a program of cultivating the moderate Muslims in the world, to bring them strongly to the side of the US, and to have them be a resource against radical Islam.

That's the sort of thing that the US Institute of Peace could get involved in. Pipes is an ideal candidate for the position.

Pipes has advocated dividing the Muslim world, by getting the moderates firmly on the side of the US. But that has made CAIR and other militant Islamist front organizations very angry, because the militants are able to dominate the Muslim world; and the last thing they want is any division in the Muslim world.

"That is where the moderate Muslims come in. If roughly half the population across the Muslim world hates America, the other half does not. Unfortunately, they are disarmed, in disarray, and nearly voiceless. But the United States does not need them for their power. It needs them for their ideas and for the legitimacy they confer, and in these respects their strengths exactly complement Washington's."

"When it comes to Islam, the US role is less to offer its own views than to help those Muslims with compatible views, especially on such issues as relations with non-Muslims, modernization, and the rights of women and minorities. This means helping moderates get their ideas out on US-funded radio stations such as the newly created Radio Free Afghanistan and, as Paula Do9briansky, the undersecretary of state for global affairs, has suggested, making sure that tolerant Islamic figures-- scholars, imams, and others -- are included in US-funded academic and cultural exchange programs." --Pipes, in Militant Islam Reaches America.

The US Institute of Peace is the ideal place where Pipes could pursue his plan for helping moderates get their message of tolerance out to the Muslim world.

But that's exactly what the militant Muslim organizations like CAIR want to prevent. They control the Muslim world. They don't want any competition, and they don't want any split in the Muslim world. They want to keep the Muslim world under the control of the militants.

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