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The current insurrection in Iraq was discernable a year ago, as I already noted in April 2003: “Thousands of Iraqi Shi’ites chanted ‘No to America, No to Saddam, Yes to Islam’ a few days ago, during pilgrimage rites at the holy city of Karbala. Increasing numbers of Iraqis appear to agree with these sentiments. They have ominous implications for the coalition forces.” The recent wave of violence makes those implications fully apparent. Two factors in particular made me expect Iraqi resistance. First, the quick war of 2003 focused on overturning a hated tyrant so that, when it was over, Iraqis...

A Detroit-area Islamic organization, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, released a survey of Detroit Muslims, A Portrait of Detroit Mosques: Muslim Views on Policy, Politics and Religion, on April 6, 2004. Written by Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky, and conducted in mid-2003, the survey’s key thesis, according to the sponsoring organization itself, is that “The vast majority of Muslim Americans hold ‘moderate’ views on issues of policy, politics and religion.” Bagby also emphasized this point in a newspaper interview: the results, he said, show that “the mosque community is not a...

The global war on terror cannot be won through counterterrorism alone; it also requires convincing the terrorists and their sympathizers that their goals and methods are faulty and failing. But how is this to be done? By focusing on the ideological and religious sources of the violence, say I: “the immediate war goal must be to destroy militant Islam and the ultimate war goal the modernization of Islam.” I have not worked out the detailed implications of this policy, however. Which explains my delight on finding that the RAND Corporation’s Cheryl Benard has done just this, publishing her results in...

The global war on terror cannot be won through counterterrorism alone; it also requires convincing the terrorists and their sympathizers that their goals and methods are faulty and failing. But how is this to be done? By focusing on the ideological and religious sources of the violence, say I: "The immediate war goal must be to destroy militant Islam and the ultimate war goal the modernization of Islam." I have not worked out the detailed implications of this policy, however. Which explains my delight on finding that the RAND Corporation's Cheryl Benard has done just this, publishing her results in...

Critiques of the global academic march to the left tend to focus on classroom antics, silly statements to the press, articles with incomprehensible titles, and efforts to punish students who have the temerity to disagree with their radical professors. But books are more important than all of this. Books make up the heart of the scholarly enterprise. Articles disappear, media analyses vaporize, and classroom lectures effervesce; books endure. They build the edifice of knowledge and potentially acquire an influence across the generations. What sorts of books, then, are being written by today's top scholars? For a representative sample, I looked...

Osama bin Laden's capture or death, the focus of renewed American military attention, would greatly help the war on terror — but not in the way you might expect. It would not do that much to prevent jihadist violence. True, in some cases, seizing a terrorist leader leads directly to a reduction in threat or even to the decomposition of his organization. Consider these examples : Abimael Guzman, head of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) gang in Peru, was captured in 1992 and his Maoist organization went into a tailspin, ending its threat to overturn the government. A rump force...

There is a new breed of Islam bashers that were at one point part of the Muslim community itself. Muslims already have to contend with people like Daniel Pipes making statements such as "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". Now beyond Daniel Pipes, Muslims are seeing a new stream of attacks against their faith by individuals that were born Muslim and being promoted by media. These particular bashers have...

Last week, I became a whistleblower. (According to Merriam-Webster, a whistleblower is someone "who reveals wrongdoing within an organization to the public or to those in positions of authority.") This is not a role I expected or sought, but I felt compelled to go public when the U.S. Institute of Peace, in Washington, D.C., the taxpayer-funded organization to whose board President Bush appointed me, insisted on co-hosting an event with a group closely associated with radical Islam. That group is the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy; the event was a workshop that took place — over...

Our Islamist "Allies"By Daniel PipesFrontPageMagazine.com | March 23, 2004 Last week, I became a whistleblower.(According to Merriam-Webster, a whistleblower is someone “who reveals wrongdoing within an organization to the public or to those in positions of authority.”)This is not a role I expected or sought, but I felt compelled to go public when the U.S. Institute of Peace, in Washington, D.C., the taxpayer-funded organization to whose board President George W. Bush appointed me, insisted on co-hosting an event with a group closely associated with radical Islam.That group is the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy; the event...

Published in Conspiracy Theories in American History: An EncyclopediaSanta Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2003 Vol. 2, pp. 547-50 The October Surprise conspiracy theory holds that in October 1980, Ronald Reagan conspired with the Islamic Republic of Iran to beat Jimmy Carter in the U.S. presidential elections on 4 November . The deal: in return for the Khomeini government keeping its U.S. hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran until after the election, damaging the Carter's candidacy, Reagan would reward it with armaments. The conspiracy theory endured for over a decade, from 1980-93, but has since disappeared. The idea originated with Lyndon...

U.S. allows Muslim 'fox in the henhouse' Guest panelist threatened America, openly supported terror groups Posted: March 20, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern Editor's note: WorldNetDaily is pleased to have a content-sharing agreement with Insight magazine, the bold Washington publication not afraid to ruffle establishment feathers. Subscribe to Insight at WorldNetDaily's online store and save 71 percent off the cover price. By Kenneth R. Timmerman © 2004 Insight/News World Communications Inc. The congressionally funded United States Institute of Peace hosted an event yesterday in Washington on reforming Islam, with a guest panelist who has threatened the United States and openly supported...

The ACLU disrupts my speeches; a French nutcase makes me the 3-of-Hearts in a deck of evil; and CAIR promotes a neo-Nazi. A Short BlogBy Daniel PipesDaniel Pipes Weblog | March 17, 2004The following items are taken from Daniel Pipes' weblog, which may be accessed here. -- The Editors.Did the ACLU Disrupt My Talk at American University? When I spoke at American University in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 2004, a number of those in the audience engaged in a variety of antics, as described by the school newspaper, the Eagle:As Pipes took the podium at approximately 8:15 p.m., almost...

"We are an Al-Qaeda family.” So spoke one of the Khadrs, a Muslim Canadian household whose near-single-minded devotion to Osama bin Laden contains important lessons for the West. Their saga began in 1975, when Ahmad Said al-Khadr left his native Egypt for Canada and soon after married a local Palestinian woman. He studied computer engineering at the University of Ottawa and engaged in research for a major telecommunications firm. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Khadr went to work for Human Concern International, an Ottawa-based charity founded in 1980 with the purported aim to “alleviate human suffering,” but with a...

Weblog Did the ACLU Disrupt My Talk at American University? March 15, 2004 Did the ACLU Disrupt My Talk at American University? When I spoke at American University in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 2004, a number of those in the audience engaged in a variety of antics, as described by the school newspaper, the Eagle: As Pipes took the podium at approximately 8:15 p.m., almost a third of the crowd of 150 took out black pieces of cloth and, in unison, wrapped the cloth around their mouths as a sort of "gag." This was apparently meant as a form...

Feldman was briefly retained by the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Baghdad to assist in the drafting of a new Iraqi constitution. The 32-year-old assistant professor at New York University Law School may well have landed this extraordinary job because of his optimistic views about Iraq. "A post-Saddam Iraq will inevitably become," he writes in After Jihad, "a laboratory for trying out the mobile idea of democracy in front of the whole world." He calls the United States a "midwife" for democratization. A review of his scholarship, however, reveals a simplistic and overly optimistic "why not?" approach to...

Osama bin Laden's capture or death, the focus of renewed U.S. military attention, would greatly help the war on terror -- but not in the way you might expect. It would not do that much to prevent jihadist violence. True, in some cases, seizing a terrorist leader leads directly to a reduction in threat or even to the decomposition of his organization. Consider these examples: *Abimael Guzman, head of the ''Shining Path'' gang in Peru, was captured in 1992, and his Maoist organization went into a tailspin, ending its threat to overturn the government. A rump force in turn continued...

Osama bin Laden's capture or death, the focus of renewed American military attention, would greatly help the war on terror — but not in the way you might expect.It would not do that much to prevent jihadist violence.True, in some cases, seizing a terrorist leader leads directly to a reduction in threat or even to the decomposition of his organization. Consider these examples : Abimael Guzman, head of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) gang in Peru, was captured in 1992 and his Maoist organization went into a tailspin, ending its threat to overturn the government. A rump force in turn...

Osama bin Laden's capture or death, the focus of renewed American military attention, would greatly help the war on terror — but not in the way you might expect. It would not do that much to prevent jihadist violence. True, in some cases, seizing a terrorist leader leads directly to a reduction in threat or even to the decomposition of his organization. Consider these examples : Abimael Guzman, head of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) gang in Peru, was captured in 1992 and his Maoist organization went into a tailspin, ending its threat to overturn the government. A rump force...

In Iraq, what ought to be the role of Islam and its legal system, called the Sharia? In theory, this topic should be the subject of a soul-searching debate in America and all the other countries whose forces are occupying Iraq, for how it is answered will likely influence Iraq's future in profound ways. Views on Islam's proper role reflect how one understands the purpose of the war in Iraq one year ago: Islamic law should be prohibited: The overthrow of Saddam Hussein was called Operation Iraqi Freedom for a reason: the American-led occupation forces must not become midwife for...

In Iraq, what should be the role of Islam and its legal system, called the Shari‘a? In theory, this topic should be the subject of a soul-searching debate in the United States and all the other countries whose forces are occupying Iraq, for how it is answered will likely influence Iraq’s future in profound ways. Views on Islam’s proper role reflect how one understands the purpose of the war in Iraq one year ago: · Islamic law should be prohibited: The overthrow of Saddam Hussein was called Operation Iraqi Freedom for a reason; the American-led occupation forces must not become...