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Another excellent insight into CAIR's actual subterfuge, is how they try to destroy or marginalize anyone mulsim-studies or Middle-East expert that is not an apologist for their aggressions and lies. See the following defense that Harvard professor Daniel Pipes had to make to rebut the smear campaign launched against him by CAIR.




Back to Home Page Articles Interviews Books Book Reviews Middle East Forum Biography Join Mailing List Search for:		Reply to CAIR's Attack on Daniel Pipes If you have landed on http://www.cair-net.org/misc/people/daniel_pipes.html, you have seen an attack on me posted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Here is my response to that attack. It has two parts, one an analysis of CAIR and the other a defense against its attacks on me. What is the Council on American-Islamic Relations? CAIR is particularly worrisome because it claims to be nothing but a mild public affairs organization promoting "interest and understanding among the general public with regards to Islam and Muslims in North America," and is widely seen as such. In fact, it is radical to the core; to quote its chairman, Omar M. Ahmad (as reported by the San Ramon Valley Herald in July 1998), "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth." CAIR's record includes the following unpleasantries: Apologizing for killers such as Hamas (a group associated with the murder of 7 Americans) and Usama bin Ladin (charged with the devastation of September 11, 2001). Helping promote terrorism: In the words of Steve Pomerantz., a former Chief of Counterterrorism for the FBI, "CAIR, its leaders, and its activities, effectively give aid to international terrorist groups." Intimidation of patriotic Muslims who disagree with CAIR's militant agenda: In one case (Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani), the FBI has looked into charges that he received death threats after renouncing the chauvinists. In another (Khalid Durán), CAIR's attack on a writer led to a death edict against him - which CAIR has never denounced. (For details on this latter case, see http://www.danielpipes.org/article/384.) Associating with terrorism: Siraj Wahaj, a potential unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, sits on its advisory board. Bias against women: When a prosecutor in Cleveland argued that two Muslim men had engaged in the "honor killing" of their female cousin, CAIR accused him of "ethnic and religious stereotyping" and demanded he be investigated. Sponsorship of blatant antisemitism: At a May 1998 rally at Brooklyn College co-sponsored by CAIR, one speaker referred to Jews as "descendants of the apes." In short, CAIR represents not the great civilization of Islam but a radical utopian movement originating in the Middle East that seeks to impose its ways on the United States. Americans should consider themselves warned: a new danger exists in their midst. CAIR also has a history of vituperation and aggressiveness against anyone who opposes its Islamist vision for the United States. In my case, it has sent out nearly a hundred tirades impugning my reputation since July 1999. These have landed everywhere from the op-ed page of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to the hands of street picketers in Washington, D.C. and Cornell University. For more information on CAIR, see: Robert Daguillard, Unholy Fundraising, National Review Online, 6 December 2001. Nonie Darwish, CAIR Should Put America First, FrontPageMagazine.com, 7 February 2003 Khalid Durán, How CAIR Put My Life in Peril, Middle East Quarterly December 2001. Steven Emerson, Foreign Terrorists in America: Five Years after the World Trade Center Bombing, testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, 24 February 1998. Steven Emerson, Hillary and Hamas, The Wall Street Journal, 3 November 2000. Steven Emerson, International Terrorism and Immigration Policy, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, 25 January 2000. Joseph Farah, The media got fooled again, WorldNetDaily.com, 15 May 2002. Frank J. Gaffney Jr., Islamists' White House Gatekeeper, The Washington Times, 11 February 2003. Chip Joyce, Council on American-Islamic Relations Attacks Daniel Pipes -- An In-Depth Analysis of Their Charges, 7 January 2002. David Klinghoffer, It's All About Hate, National Review Online, 7 October 2002. Stephen F. Hayes, Uncle Sam's Makeover, The Weekly Standard, 3 June 2002 David Horowitz, Islamic Group Smears Frontpage, FrontPageMag.com, 7 January 2003 Matt Labash, Islam in the Slammer, Weekly Standard, 21 March 2002. Jonathan V. Last, Polling for Islam, "Weekly Standard, 16 April 2002. John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru, CAIR Package: Islamophobic smear campaigns?" National Review, 8 November 2001. Art Moore, American Islamic Lobby Gets out the Vote, WorldNetDaily.com, 21 February 2002. New York Sun editorial, The Real Extremists, 31 January 2003. Timothy Noah, Whopper of the Week: Council on American-Islamic Relations, slate.com, 30 November 2001. Kathleen Parker, Yo, Mohammed, lighten up: It was a joke! Orlando Sentinel, 7 January 2003. Daniel Pipes, CAIR: 'Moderate' Friends of Terror" New York Post, 22 April 2002. Daniel Pipes, Counterpoint: Look Closer at Group behind the Accusations" Star Tribune (Minneapolis), 24 August, 1999. Daniel Pipes, How Dare You Defame Islam, Commentary, November 1999. Daniel Pipes, Reply to CAIR's Attack on Daniel Pipes, www.DanielPipes.org. Debbie Schlussel, Bush's Scary CAIR Friends, TownHall.com, 17 October 2001, . Stephen Schwartz, CAIR's Axis of Evil, FrontPageMagazine.com, 13 January 2003. Stephen Schwartz, Not So Holy After All, The Weekly Standard, 17 December 2001. Stephen Schwartz, The Varieties of Muslim Experience, The Weekly Standard, 15 October 2001. Neil Seeman, Are we all Islamophobes? Not really, The National Post, 14 September 2002. Robert Spencer, Terrorism and the Hajj, FrontPageMagazine.com, 11 February 2003. Robert Spencer, Reaction to CAIR Advertising Launch, Free Congress Foundation, 14 February 2003. Jake Tapper, Islam's Flawed Spokesmen, Salon.com, 26 September 2001. Jake Tapper, Were We Unfair to CAIR? Salon.com, 1 October 2001. Jake Tapper, CAIR-less with the Truth The Weekly Standard, 7 October 2002. Larry Witham, Muslim Activist Won't Apologize to Evangelists The Washington Times, 22 November 2002. Robert F. Worth, Protesters Greet New [New York City] Human Rights Panel With Chants of 'Hamas!', The New York Times, 30 January 2003. For an extensive but indiscriminate bibliography of articles on CAIR, see http://cair.newstrove.com/. Defense of Daniel Pipes Before getting into specifics, it is interesting to note that CAIR has, on at least two occasions, cited me as an authority on Islam and Muslims. Once, in a press release dated 17 March 1998, when it needed an authority to discuss a staff member of the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, whom did it turn to? Me, citing me by name and quoting me. The second time, when CAIR listed the books it is sending to libraries (at http://www.cair-net.org/libraryproject/materials.asp), whose review in The Wall Street Journal of John L. Esposito's The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? did it quote? Mine. In other words, for all its defamation of my character and knowledge, CAIR itself acknowledges my expertise. In its attack on me, CAIR lists quotations by and about me going back to 1983, but it does so in so sly and selective a fashion that many things end up sounding like the opposite of what was intended. I regret the complexity of what follows, but due to quotations within quotations, it requires careful reading. The CAIR text which turns up at http://www.cair-net.org/misc/people/daniel_pipes.html is left-flush. [Square brackets] demarcate my commentaries within long quotes. My commentary is indented. << and >> mark the beginning and end of long quotes by me. UPDATES: "The Palestinians are a miserable people...and they deserve to be." Daniel Pipes, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2001 I replied to this made-up quote in a letter to the editor published in the October 2001 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs: <<Your reporter, Elaine Kelley, has it wrong in her report in your July 2001 issue on my talk at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon on April 19, 2001. I never said anything along the lines of "The Palestinians are a miserable people …and they deserve to be." That's not how I think, speak, or write. Here is what I wrote in an article just prior to that talk (The Left's ongoing Oslo delusion," The Jerusalem Post, April 25, 2001), which accurately reflects my thinking, both in April and now: "If Israel truly wants to end its problem with the Palestinians, it must adopt the opposite approach: convince Palestinians not of its niceness but its toughness. This means not replanting Arab olive trees but punishing violence so hard that its enemies will eventually feel so deep a sense of futility that they will despair of further conflict. "A historical analogy comes to mind: when World War I ended, German armies remained intact and their capital city unoccupied. Not convinced they had really lost the war, Germans harbored a deep discontent that led to the rise of Hitler. In contrast, Germans emerged from World War II utterly defeated and without any illusions to confuse them. This time, understanding the need for a fresh start, they turned to Konrad Adenauer and built a peaceful, successful country. "The Palestinian Authority is hardly Germany, but the analogy does hold: Palestinians will not give up on their aggressive ambitions vis-à-vis Israel until fully convinced that these cannot succeed. Only then can they build a polity and an economy commensurate with their dignity and talent. Ironically, then, Palestinians need almost as much to be defeated by Israel as Israel needs to defeat them. "It's time for the [Israeli] Left to recognize the vastness of its error in the Oslo process and adopt the tough-minded policies that will finally liberate Israelis and Palestinians from their mutual conflict." In brief, far from thinking the Palestinians a miserable people, I call attention to their dignity and talent, then propose how to liberate them from their demons so they can build a civil society and decent lives. Daniel Pipes, via e-mail>> POLICE, MUSLIMS REFUTE HERNDON LINK TO TERRORISM, By Jeannie Baumann, Herndon (Va.) Observer, 6/15/2001 The Herndon police chief has refuted a statement in a Wall Street Journal editorial [by Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes] that identified Herndon as the location of an organized terrorist cell connected to international terrorist Osama bin Laden... ...Herndon Police Chief Toussaint E. Summers Jr. said the police department contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation after the editorial appeared to verify the citing, and he said the bureau has no evidence of any al-Qaeda activity in the town. "All we did was try to verify the information in the article, and there appears to be no truth to it at all..." I replied to this article in the Herndon Observer at length in Bin Laden and Herndon, Virginia, The Jerusalem Post, 20 June 2001. Since September 2001, much more has come to light about Herndon and Tarik Hamdi, the person I focused on in that town. John Mintz and Tom Jackman, Finances Prompted Raids on Muslims, The Washington Post, 24 March 2002, explain that when Federal agents searched 16 Muslim homes and offices in Northern Virginia on 20 March 2002, "At the center of the federal investigation is a cluster of companies and charities based in Herndon." Likewise, Judith Miller, "Raids Seek Evidence of Money-Laundering," The New York Times, 21 March 2002, notes that Federal agents specifically raided Tarik Hamdi's house. That CAIR continues to post an ignorant and unreliable snippet from the Herndon Observer only serves to make CAIR itself look ignorant and unreliable. WHO IS DANIEL PIPES? Throughout his career, Daniel Pipes has exhibited a troubling bigotry toward Muslims and Islam. As early as 1983, even an otherwise positive Washington Post book review noted that Pipes displays "a disturbing hostility to contemporary Muslims...he professes respect for Muslims but is frequently contemptuous of them." Pipes, said the reviewer, "is swayed by the writings of anti-Muslim writers...[the book] is marred by exaggerations, inconsistencies, and evidence of hostility to the subject." (The Washington Post, 12/11/83) Yes, Thomas Lippman did write the above, but within an extremely positive context that CAIR does not provide: << As the Islamic revolution approached its climax five years ago, many Western journalists in Tehran, including myself, wasted hours interviewing the wrong people [meaning the Westernized elite]. … Perhaps we would have better understood what was happening if we had access to Daniel Pipes' remarkable book, In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power. Pipes has taken on, and very nearly accomplished, a daunting task: to explain the political and social development of the Muslim peoples from their origins to the present …. Pipes, a lecturer in history at Harvard, has produced a brilliant, authoritative, but occasionally infuriating and inconsistent work which demonstrates encyclopedic knowledge of Muslim intellectual history and a disturbing hostility to contemporary Muslims. … Here he professes respect for Muslims but is frequently contemptuous of them. He sometimes misstates conditions in Muslim countries, and is swayed by writings of anti-Muslim commentators less judicious than himself. But on balance these unfortunate lapses do not diminish the perceptiveness of his analysis. … Few other writers have explained so lucidly such complex developments in Muslim history as [a long list of phenomena] …. These points are forcefully presented and cogently argued. The book is a valuable contribution to our understanding. This makes it all the more unfortunate that it is marred by exaggeration, inconsistencies, and evidence of hostility to the subject. [Lippman then lists some of these and concludes:] A more perceptive editor might have counseled Pipes to purge these and similar passages. Without them, the book would be the definitive work of its kind." >> CAIR's modus operandi includes name-calling and the indiscriminate spewing of anything negative it can find about those it disagrees with, no matter how irrelevant or inaccurate. This is a first example; many other follow. In The Weekly Standard (1/22/96), Pipes offered a glowing review of the infamous anti-Muslim book "Why I Am Not a Muslim." The National Catholic Reporter (11/17/95) called that book "the literary equivalent of hate radio...literary warfare against Islam," useful only to those "interested in returning to the polemical past to do battle with Islamic believers." Pipes called the book "quite brilliant" and "startlingly novel." "This religion would seem to have nothing functional to offer," remarked Pipes. This is a perfect illustration of CAIR's deceptiveness. Here is the above quote from the National Catholic Reporter review in context: "On the one hand, some might call Ibn Warraq's book Why I Am Not a Muslim the literary equivalent of hate radio. On the other hand, some might make the case that Warraq's book on Islam is a courageous and prophetic call to value and protect human rights, especially the rights of women. Warraq's treatment of contemporary violations of women's human rights, often stemming from the effects of Islamic law, can be rightly regarded as a passionate and prophetic cry for justice." CAIR's distorted quotation of this review is typical of its dishonesty. It also bears noting that the National Catholic Reporter and I were hardly alone in hailing Why I Am Not a Muslim as a major study. Free Inquiry called it "courageous" and The Salisbury Review praised it as "invaluable." Among leading scholars of Islam, Maxime Rodinson called it "very learned" and Bernard Lewis said it is "important" Further, the assumption behind CAIR's attack - that a reviewer of Why I Am Not a Muslim (written under pseudonym, incidentally, because the author rightly feared for his life if he went public with his identity) be expected to condemn it due to its contents - is extraordinary. It implies that we have reached the point that everything Islamic must be praised and everything skeptical of Islam must be condemned. What is this anyway, Saudi Arabia? As for the phrase, "This religion would seem to have nothing functional to offer," it was not a statement of my beliefs but the introduction to a quote from the book itself, and the word "seem" was my way of distancing myself from the assertion that followed: << Turning to the present, Ibn Warraq argues that Muslims have experienced great travails trying to modernize because Islam stands fore-square in their way. Its regressive orientation makes change difficult: "All innovations are discouraged in Islam-every problem is seen as a religious problem rather than a social or economic one." This religion would seem to have nothing functional to offer. "Islam, in particular political Islam, has totally failed to cope with the modern world and all its attendant problems-social, economic, and philosophical." >> (For the full review, see http://www.danielpipes.org/article/893.) Recently, Pipes questioned the origins of the Quran, Islam's revealed text, and questioned whether the Prophet Muhammad ever existed. I wrote a column about a book edited by Ibn Warraq, The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2000). That book - not me - raises profound questions about the origins of Islam. (For the column, see http://www.danielpipes.org/article/333.) Have we reached the point in the United States where open discussion of scholarly analysis is now forbidden if it pertains to Islam? He wrote: "The Koran is a not 'a product of Muhammad or even of Arabia,' but a collection of earlier Judeo-Christian liturgical materials stitched together to meet the needs of a later age...A few scholars go even further, doubting even the existence of Muhammad." (The Jerusalem Post, 5/12/2000) As the quotation marks within the quote suggest, I am not speaking in my own voice but quoting contributors to The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. The citation about not 'a product of Muhammad or even of Arabia,' is on p. 495 of that book. More slippery, inaccurate, and dishonest quoting by CAIR. According to Pipes, the night journey of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem referred to in the Quran (17:1) never occurred. This event, known as "al-Isra wa al-Miraj," is marked each year by millions of Muslims worldwide. In the Los Angeles Times, Pipes wrote: "The Prophet Mohammed never went to the city, nor did he have ties to it." (7/21/2000) CAIR is inadvertently flaunting its ignorance of Islam here. First, the Qur'an verse 17:1 does not mention Jerusalem and there is a long debate where exactly the "further mosque" of that verse is located. There are many reasons to think the reference was not to Jerusalem. (For a brief discussion of this matter, see "If I Forget Thee: Does Jerusalem Really Matter to Islam?" The New Republic, April 28, 1997, at http://www.danielpipes.org/article/281.) Second, the Prophet Muhammad's night journey is traditionally understood by Muslims to be allegorical - not a historical event. In the huge body of biographical information about the Prophet, there is no mention of his having traveled to Jerusalem. Pipes also displays a racist's distaste for Muslim immigrants who "wish to import the customs of the Middle East and South Asia." (Los Angeles Times, 7/22/99) For Pipes, this sort of raw bigotry is nothing new. Let the reader judge this phrase - but in context. I argue that there are two sorts of Muslim immigrants in the United States: "integrationists are delighted to live in a democratic country where the rule of law prevails, whereas chauvinists wish to import the customs of the Middle East and South Asia." Sound racist to you? (For the full column, see http://www.danielpipes.org/article/313.) In 1990, he said: "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." (National Review, 11/19/90) My article (available at http://www.danielpipes.org/article/198) points to two Western fears of Islam, one having to do with jihad, the other having to do with immigration. I dismiss the former, then move on the latter, which I then characterize in the words CAIR quotes. This is my description of European attitudes, not of my own views: << Fears of a Muslim influx have more substance than the worry about jihad. Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene. Muslim immigrants bring with them a chauvinism that augurs badly for their integration into the mainstream of the European societies. The signs all point to continued clashes between the two sides; in all likelihood, the Rushdie affair was merely a prelude to further troubles; already it has spawned a Muslim political party in Great Britain. Put differently, Iranian zealots threaten more within the gates of Vienna than outside them. Still, none of this amounts to Richard Condon's notion of "another terrible threat" in any way resembling the Soviet danger. Muslim immigrants will probably not change the face of European life: pubs will not close down, secularist principles will not wither, freedom of speech is not likely to be abrogated. The movement of Muslims to Western Europe creates a great number of painful but finite challenges; there is no reason, however, to see this event leading to a cataclysmic battle between two civilizations. If handled properly, the immigrants can even bring much of value, including new energy, to their host societies. >> It is illustrative that CAIR ignores the last sentence here - the summary and most important one of the whole two-paragraph section. It does not want to show how my writings are often favorable to Muslims. In a review of a book that called for dialogue with the Muslim world, Pipes objected to the fact that the author: "...fails to...consider the implications of growing Muslim populations in the West. [The book], in other words, provides little guidance to the Islamic threat." (Wall Street Journal, 10/30/92) The book here, by John Esposito, is called The Islamic Threat. CAIR quotes the final sentence of the review (for the full text, see http://www.danielpipes.org/article/882) but leaves out the context and the fact that I am playing with the book title: << Mr. Esposito offers an informed and reasoned discussion of Islam in politics. But he fails to recognize the hostility and ambition of radical fundamentalists and to consider the implications of growing Muslim populations in the West. The Islamic Threat, in other words, provides little guidance to the Islamic threat. >> On a radical pro-Israel web site, Pipes claims that "as the population of Muslims in the United States grows, so does antisemitism." (The New Anti-Semitism) Typical of CAIR's carelessness, if not dishonesty, it fails to note that this article was written by me for the Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia and published there on October 16, 1997 - even though this is indicated clearly on the above-cited website. Second, the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies reprinted my article without asking my permission - and CAIR did not check with me to find this out but simply makes assumptions that I chose to publish there. Third, the Freeman Center, whose mission is "to aid Israel in her quest to survive in a hostile world," is a perfectly respectable institution, not "radical" except in CAIR's fevered view. As for the substance of my remark, it is unfortunately true that more Muslims in the United States means more antisemitism - and I stand by that statement. Would anyone argue the reverse - that an increase in the Muslim population of the United States leads to a diminishment of antisemitism? Or even that it has no effect? It bears noting in this context that CAIR is a foremost sponsor of antisemitism. To cite one example of many, on April 2, 2000, its New York chapter hosted a lecture by Yusuf Islam (the former pop singer who went by the name Cat Stevens). Here is a typical statement by Mr. Islam on the subject of Jews: "The Jews seem neither to respect God nor His Creation. Their own holy books contain the curse of God brought upon them by their prophets on account of their disobedience to Him and mischief in the earth. We have seen the disrespect for religion displayed by those who consider themselves to be 'God's chosen people.'" Yusuf Islam, Eyewitness (Tucson: Islamic Association of Palestine, 1988). CAIR also cosponsored a rally at Brooklyn College at which Jews were described as "pigs and monkeys" (The Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2000) He does not limit this claim to Arab Muslims alone. Pipes wrote that "Iranians and Pakistanis, to take two groups of non-Arabs, are at least as widely conspiracy-minded and as anti-Semitic as, say, Tunisians and Kuwaitis." (Commentary, 9/1/99) Happens to be so, unfortunately. All I am doing is pointing out a truth. Of African-American Muslims, Pipes wrote: "...black converts tend to hold vehemently anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic attitudes." (Commentary, 6/1/2000) Some proof is needed? Louis Farrakhan, perhaps the leading antisemite in the United States, has called Judaism a "gutter religion" (The New York Times, June 29, 1984) and described Adolf Hitler as a "very great man" (radio broadcast, March 11, 1984). In an infamous speech at Kean College in November 1993, Farrakhan's deputy spewed out a mind-boggling series of statements about Jews. The Nation of Islam sells the Protocols of the Elders of Zion at its events. And the organization has even done original "scholarship" of its own, putting together a volume in 1991 called The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews that purports to show that Jews were primarily responsible for the enslavement of blacks and their transport to America. And so on and on. In an editorial in Canada's National Post, Pipes implied that the Canadian Muslim community could pose a threat to that country. He wrote: "Following Marxism, Leninism and Fascism comes Islamism...Islamism is a...phenomenon that has the power to do mischief...right here in Canada." (8/7/99) Islamism sure can do mischief in Canada. But note again the tricky change in wording: I wrote about Islamism, CAIR turns this into a statement about "the Canadian Muslim community." This is the same "expert" who claims Muslims have no real religious attachments to the city of Jerusalem Yes, I reviewed 1,400 years of history in If I Forget Thee: Does Jerusalem Really Matter to Islam?, The New Republic, April 28, 1997 and concluded that Muslims do not have a deep religious attachment to the city. Here is an excerpt: << Jerusalem is not the place to which Muslims pray. It is not directly connected to any events in Muhammad's life. And it is not even mentioned by name in the Koran. The city never became a cultural center or served as capital of a sovereign Muslim state. Jerusalem has mattered to Muslims only intermittently over the past thirteen centuries, and when it has mattered, as it does today, it has been because of politics. … the fact that politics has so long fueled the Muslim attachment to Jerusalem has two implications. First, it points to the relative weakness of the Islamic connection to the city, one that arises as much from mundane need as from the immutable claims of faith. Second, it suggests that the Muslim interest lies not so much in controlling Jerusalem as it does in denying control over the city to anyone else. Jerusalem will never be more than a secondary city for Muslims. >> and who recently argued that American Muslims pose a threat to the Jewish community. (If I Forget Thee: Does Jerusalem Really Matter to Islam?, The New Republic, 4/28/1997, and America's Muslims against America's Jews, Commentary, 5/01/1999) No, I did not argue that "American Muslims pose a threat to the Jewish community" in the second of these pieces (available at http://www.danielpipes.org/article/308) but that Islamists and the Nation of Islam pose a threat to Jews. After giving examples of Islamist and Nation of Islam actions and speech, I wrote this careful distinction: << It is a fortunate fact that such Muslims do not represent all Muslims in the United States. Some, indeed, resist, whether actively or passively, the demonization of Jews. [followed by some examples] A few brave souls-most notably W. Deen Mohammed, the leading figure among black converts to mainstream Islam-have also stood up against Muslims who attack Jews. [then I conclude this positive appreciation:] But, in truth, these positive attitudes are very much the exception. [and go on to explain the Islamist and NoI activities] >> In response to a suggestion that American Muslim voter registration drives are a positive development, Pipes wrote: "I fail to see how conducting voter registration drives implies the Islamists are not 'bad.' The CPUSA [Communist Party USA] also staged registration drives, and for similar reasons." (MSANEWS, 8/18/99) Good analogy, actually, and I stand by it. Following the arrest of two Arab graduate students on a flight bound for Washington, D.C., (the airline later apologized for the incident) Pipes supported the practice of religious and ethnic profiling. According to the Baltimore Sun: "'It seems well worth it in order to keep would-be terrorists off guard,' said Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, a think tank. He defended the close monitoring of Arab passengers, arguing that 'the record shows over the last generation that the great acts of violence are coming from the Middle East...'" (The Baltimore Sun, 11/24/1999, Page 1A) Poor CAIR! This is one argument it now must regret arguing with me about. Had religious and ethnic profiling been in place on September 11, it is very unlikely that 19 Arabic-speaking Muslims would have made it on board with their box-cutters. More broadly, as a passenger on an airplane, don't you want law enforcement to use whatever statistical methods it has to figure out who is most likely to make trouble aboard? If last-minute ticket purchasers who use cash fit the category, should they not be scrutinized more than others? The same logic applies to 20-year-olds and men; regrettably, it also applies to Middle Easterners and to Muslims. Noted scholar and author Edward Said, whose works include "Covering Islam" and "Orientalism," wrote that Pipes is one of a group of anti-Muslim pundits who seek to "make sure that the '[Islamic] threat' is kept before our eyes, the better to excoriate Islam for terror, despotism and violence, while assuring themselves profitable consultancies, frequent TV appearances and book contracts." (The Nation, 8/12/1996) The same Edward Said who told a Kuwaiti newspaper some years ago that "the Israeli and U.S. Governments are our enemies" (Al-Qabas, Oct. 7, 1989); he is someone whose judgment we are to respect? And he, the guru of Middle Eastern studies, the president of the Modern Language Association, the celebrity intellectual of Columbia University, and the darling of post-modernists, accuses me of having fashionable politics? A former director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (and one of Pipes' instructors) had this to say: "...to speak for myself, I have been appalled frequently by his [Pipes] polemical stance on almost everything having to do with Islam, Muslims, or the Palestinian/Israeli issue... "...The irony in [an article written by Pipes] is of course that Dr. Pipes and other radically and blindly pro-Zionist American Jews are much farther along the chauvinist and ultimately anti-American spectrum than are even radical American Muslims. "Yet Dr. Pipes, despite his own apparently strong, even blind, support for the Israeli state and its policies-even those policies that are attacked by thoughtful Israelis themselves as racist and oppressive-sees no incongruity in his condemnation of many Muslim Americans as a threat to the American state and democracy..." (Posted on Arabic-Info, PNET and Arab Nationalist lists, 9/10/99) It would be nice if CAIR could get its facts right. In 1999, it sent out a notice titled "More on Daniel Pipes From His Former Arabic Instructor at Harvard," then proceeded with the above quotes from William A. Graham of Harvard University. Trouble is, I never studied Arabic at Harvard with Professor Graham. For the record, Wilson Bishai and Annemarie Schimmel were my Arabic teachers. I sent a public notice out to this effect immediately after CAIR's mailing, correcting the record. Yet CAIR persists in repeating its mistake. How can one believe anything CAIR says when it knowingly distorts facts in this way? One of the anti-Muslim pundits supported by Pipes is Steven Emerson. Emerson is best known for his 1994 PBS production "Jihad in America." Muslims say he has a long history of defamatory and inaccurate attacks on the Islamic community in this country. Emerson was the "journalist" who fueled anti-Islamic hysteria by blaming Muslims for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. He also said Muslims were responsible for the downing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. Emerson's organization, the Investigative Project, is a spin-off of Pipes Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum (MEF). In an investigative report by iViews.com, Emerson confirmed that MEF funded his activities in the past and said: "Clearly I had a very close relationship with them (MEF) and I continue to have a very close relationship." Emerson is currently involved in a multi-million-dollar defamation lawsuit against a Florida newspaper, its senior editor, and a former investigative reporter for The Associated Press (AP). The complaint centers on allegations published by the newspaper that two AP reporters said Emerson gave them a document on terrorism supposedly from FBI files. The reporters said the document was actually authored by Emerson. The lawsuit also disputes allegations that Emerson gave false information to a Senate subcommittee during testimony in 1998. He has recently been forced to retract accusations he made last year about a former journalism lecturer at California State University in Hayward, Ca. Of Emerson, Pipes says: "I am proud to work with him." (MSANEWS, 9/2/99) I am indeed proud to work with Steven Emerson, a brave investigative journalist with a distinguished career at U.S. News & World Report, CNN, and other news organizations, plus a winner of the Polk Prize. He has paid a particularly heavy price for his pathbreaking work on American Islamists; because of their threats against his life, he has had to go into hiding and now lives underground. (For details on his predicament, see http://www.danielpipes.org/article/321.) It took a while for the country as a whole to appreciate Mr. Emerson as much as I have, but the September 11 atrocities carried out by militant Islamic operatives quickly found his understanding of events a very wide and very appreciative audience. Pipes also seeks to silence those who oppose his one-sided view of Islam. In 1996, he attacked the Council on Foreign Relations for publishing a newsletter that he accused of "giving voice to Muslim fundamentalists." ("Fundamentalist Flap Roiling Council on Foreign Relations," Forward, 5/10/1996) I don't seek to silence anyone. I was perturbed that the Council on Foreign Relations had sponsored a publication, the Islamic Politics Report, that was effectively apologizing for Islamism. As a member of the Council and a supporter of it financially, I felt completely within my rights, indeed, I felt a responsibility, to bring the nature of the Islamic Politics Report the attention of the Council leadership. The Council's president, I am pleased to note, completely agreed with me (repeatedly calling the Report "a piece of junk") and quickly shut down this forgotten and unlamented publication. American Muslims recall Mr. Pipes finger-pointing following the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. (Pipes now admits that he was wrong on this point.) As The Village Voice noted: "Leaping directly into hysteria was the right-wing Daniel Pipes...who told USA Today...'People need to understand that this is just the beginning. The fundamentalists are on the upsurge, and they make it very clear that they are targeting us. They are absolutely obsessed with us.'" (5/2/95) In my statement to USA Today on the day of the blast, I said that the West is "under attack," and went on: "People need to understand that this is just the beginning. The fundamentalists are on the upsurge, and they make it very clear that they are targeting us. They are absolutely obsessed with us." I have three comments on this statement: (1) It was the FBI, not I, which informed the public that Middle Easterners were the primary suspects behind the Oklahoma City bombing. (2) In saying that "this is just the beginning," I was referring to assaults by Islamists against Western interests going back to about 1983-the bombings in Beirut and Kuwait, the killing of Americans on airplanes, the World Trade Center explosion of 1993. As a prediction made in 1995, moreover, the statement looks pretty good these many years later, after U.S. embassies have been blown up in Tanzania and Kenya, the U.S.S. Cole has been attacked, and nearly three thousand Americans lost their lives on September 11. (3) I learned my lesson not to comment on speculations and have not done so since. Given this history of hostility toward Muslims in general and to the American Muslim community in particular, it is not surprising that Pipes paints a black and white image of good "integrationist" or "traditional" Muslims who love mom and apple pie versus bad Muslim "chauvinists" and "Islamists." This distinction without a difference is merely a smoke-screen for attacks on any Muslim who would defend Islam. Actually, it is "surprising": were I hostile to Islam, as CAIR alleges, I would not paint a "black-and-white image" of good and bad Muslims. I would paint a black and black image of only bad Muslims. The fact that I differentiate between Muslims, looking at their politics rather than their religion, goes back to my main point, the one CAIR wants to obfuscate: I oppose the Islamist program because I consider it an ugly totalitarianism. Plenty of pious Muslims agree with me on this point. Perhaps the most notable is Fethullah Gülen of Turkey; within the United States, the best known is Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi sheikh. Even more secular Muslims - Salman Rushdie comes to mind - concur. In his writings to date, Pipes has never offered objective criteria that would distinguish between "integrationist" and "chauvinists." I have used these terms exactly once (Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1999), where I clearly defined them. (For the full article, see http://www.danielpipes.org/article/313.) His definition of "chauvinist" must be fairly broad. In his National Post article, Pipes wrote: "The Internet boasts hundreds of Islamist [chauvinist] sites; I doubt whether there is a single one that is traditional [integrationist] Muslim." (8/7/99) I wish my definition were broad; sadly, this domination of the Internet is a symptom of the Islamist domination of Muslim life in the West. Now, however, there are some traditionalist sites, including http://shell.spqr.net/islam/, http://www.islamicsupremecouncil.org/, and http://www.aicp.org/. Pipes obviously hopes to convince people of other faiths that the bad American Muslims are in the majority since he claims they "run most of the Muslim institutions in the United States." (Los Angeles Times, "It Matters What Kind of Islam Prevails," 7/22/99) I am hardly the only one to note how the Islamists dominate Muslim institutions. Speaking at the Department of State, Muhammad Hisham Kabbani estimated that they dominate 80 percent of the Islamic institutions in this country. (For his statement and the intense controversy that followed, see http://www.sunnah.org/events/statedept/unveiling_the_controversy.htm.) I wish I could report that patriotic, non-totalitarian Muslims run the key organizations. The kind of agenda-driven polemic offered by Pipes only serves to fan the flames of ignorance and prejudice. But perhaps that is his intent. No, as is clear to anyone who reads my work, is to help Americans understand the complexities of the Middle East and Islam. Distinguishing between traditional Islam and militant Islam is one of my main subjects due to its importance. (For more on my background and goals, see http://www.danielpipes.org/article/351.) I suggest that the aggressive, slightly hysterical, and untrustworthy analysis that is CAIR's hallmark is what fans the flames of ignorance. All material on this site ©1980-2003 Daniel Pipes. Site built and maintained by Grayson Levy.

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Defense of Daniel Pipes