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Yes.
The Muslims are Coming! The Muslims are Coming!
by Daniel Pipes
National Review
November 19, 1990
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To make matters worse, Muslims have gone through a terrible trauma during the last two hundred years-the tribulation of God's people who unaccountably found themselves at the bottom of the heap. The strains of this prolonged failure have been enormous and the results terrible; Muslim countries host the most terrorists and the fewest democracies in the world. Specifically, only Turkey and Pakistan are fully democratic, and in those two countries the system is very frail. Everywhere else, the head of government reached power through force-his own or someone else's. As in the rest of the world, autocracy invites leaders to pursue their own interests. The result is endemic instability plus a great deal of aggression.

But none of this justifies seeing Muslims as the paramount enemy.

For one, not all Muslims hate the West. Muslims who most hate the West-the fundamentalists-constitute a small minority in most places. Survey research and elections suggest that dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalists most places constitute no more than 10 percent of the Muslim population. Muslims are not fanatical by nature, but are frustrated by their current predicament. Most of them wish less to destroy the West than to enjoy its benefits.
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Protecting Muslims while Rooting out Islamists
by Daniel Pipes
Daily Telegraph (London)
September 14, 2001

THAT the assault on New York's highest buildings and the American military headquarters appears to have been organised by Osama bin Laden and carried out exclusively by Muslims has large implications for the way Muslim populations living in all Western countries will be seen in the future.

Knowing a bit of background helps to explain what brought us to this situation. Bin Laden's men are not just Muslims but also Islamists. Islam (a religion) is not the problem, but Islamism (a totalitarian ideology) is. Islamism is not so much a distortion of Islam, but a radically new interpretation. It politicises the religion, turning it into a blueprint for establishing a coerced utopia. In many ways, its programme resembles those of fascism and Marxism/Leninism.

This week's events mark not the outbreak of a new problem but the heightening of a two-decade-long pattern of Islamist violence. That violence is a truly global phenomenon, affecting such varied countries as Algeria, Pakistan, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Philippines. Islamists constitute a small but significant minority of Muslims, perhaps 10 to 15 per cent of the population. Many of them are peaceable in appearance, but they all must be considered potential killers.

Here is some guidance, starting with steps to take to protect the rights of the Muslim minority:

Maintain the utmost respect for individual Muslims, mosques and other institutions. A time of crisis does not change the assumption that each of us is innocent until proved guilty.
Do not make any prejudicial statements against Muslims, a great majority of whom are innocent of Islamism or illegal behaviour.
Provide extra protection against acts of vandalism or hooliganism against Muslim property and individuals.
The press, politicians and other opinion leaders should speak out on these points.
So much for the easy steps. The harder ones concern the investigation of past crimes and their prevention in the future. The painful fact is that Muslims alone are susceptible to the lure of Islamist extremism. While safeguarding the civil rights and religious freedoms of Muslims, then, steps must be taken to diminish their unique susceptibility to this totalitarian ideology.
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It Matters What Kind of Islam Prevails
by Daniel Pipes
Los Angeles Times
July 22, 1999

Islam is said to have 6 million adherents in the United States and to be the fastest-growing religion in this country; in 1960, there were an estimated 100,000 Muslims living here. In important ways, this is a unique community, unlike any that came before, and it faces choices that are likely to have a major impact both on the United States and on Muslims around the world.

American Muslims--immigrants and native-born converts alike--look at the United States in one of two predominant ways. Members of one group, the integrationists, have no problem being simultaneously patriotic Americans and committed Muslims. Symbolic of this positive outlook on the United States, the Islamic Center of Southern California displays an American flag.

These integrationists insist that the West's norms--neighborly relations, diligence on the job, honesty--are essentially what Islam teaches. Conversely, they present Islam as the fulfillment of American values and see Muslims as a very positive force to improve America. As one integrationist put it, to be a good Muslim, you have to be a good American and vice versa. Or, as the American black leader W. Deen Mohammed put it, "Islam can offer something to the West, rather than represent a threat to the West." Integrationists accept that the United States will never become a Muslim country and are reconciled to living within a non-Islamic framework; they call for Muslims to immerse themselves in public life to make themselves both useful and influential.
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Fighting Militant Islam, Without Bias
by Daniel Pipes
City Journal
November 2001
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The problem at hand is not the religion of Islam but the totalitarian ideology of Islamism. As a faith, Islam has meant very different things over 14 centuries and several continents. What we can call "traditional Islam," forged in the medieval period, has inspired Muslims to be bellicose and quiescent, noble and not: one can't generalize over such a large canvas. But one can note two common points: Islam is, more than any other major religion, deeply political, in the sense that it pushes its adherents to hold power; and once Muslims do gain power, they feel a strong impetus to apply the laws of Islam, the shari`a. So Islam does, in fact, contain elements that can justify conquest, theocracy, and intolerance.

In the course of the twentieth century, a new form of Islam arose, one that now has great appeal and power. Militant Islam (or Islamism—same thing) goes back to Egypt in the 1920s, when an organization called the Muslim Brethren first emerged, though there are other strains as well, including an Iranian one, largely formulated by Ayatollah Khomeini, and a Saudi one, to which the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan and Usama bin Ladin both belong. Islamism differs in many ways from traditional Islam. It is faith turned into ideology, and radical ideology at that. When asked, "Do you consider yourself a revolutionary?" Sudanese Islamist politician Hasan al-Turabi replied, "Completely." Whereas traditional Islam places the responsibility on each believer to live according to God's will, Islamism makes this duty something for which the state is responsible. Islam is a personal belief system that focuses on the individual; Islamism is a state ideology that looks to the society. Islamists constitute a small but significant minority of Muslims in the U.S. and worldwide, perhaps 10 to 15 percent.

Apologists would tell us that Islamism is a distortion of Islam, or even that it has nothing to do with Islam, but that is not true; it emerges out of the religion, while taking features of it to a conclusion so extreme, so radical, and so megalomaniacal as to constitute something new. It adapts an age-old faith to the political requirements of our day, sharing some key premises of the earlier totalitarianisms, fascism and Marxism-Leninism. It is an Islamic-flavored version of radical utopianism. Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.

Traditional Muslims, generally the first victims of Islamism, understand this ideology for what it is and respond with fear and loathing, as some examples from northern Africa suggest. Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's Nobel Prize–winning novelist, said to his country's prime minister and interior minister as they were suppressing Islamism: "You are fighting a battle for the sake of Islam." Other traditional Egyptian Muslims concur with Mahfouz, with one condemning Islamism as "the barbaric hand of terrorism" and another calling for all extremists to be "hanged in public squares." In Tunisia, Minister of Religion Ali Chebbi says that Islamists belong in the "garbage can." Algeria's interior minister, Abderrahmane Meziane-Cherif, likewise concludes: "You cannot talk to people who adopt violence as their credo; people who slit women's throats, rape them, and mutilate their breasts; people who kill innocent foreign guests." If Muslims feel this way, non-Muslims may join them without embarrassment: being against Islamism in no way implies being against Islam.
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