Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes is an internationally known American expert on militant Islam (or Islamism). He is a controversial figure, both praised and condemned by other commentators. The author or co-author of 18 books, his work has been translated into 19 languages.

Pipes is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum, a former member of the presidentially-appointed board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and a columnist for the New York Sun and The Jerusalem Post. He is frequently invited to discuss terrorism and Middle East affairs on American network television, has appeared on the BBC and Al-Jazeera, has had articles published in many newspapers across North America, including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, and has lectured in 25 countries. He is a regular contributor to David Horowitz's online publication FrontPageMag.com.

Background

Pipes was born on September 9, 1949, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Jewish Polish American Harvard historian Richard Pipes. Growing up he attended the (now-defunct) Harvard pre-school, then received a private-school education, partly abroad. He enrolled in Harvard University in the fall of 1968; for his first two years he studied math, but states "I wasn't smart enough. So I chose to become a historian." He cites visits to the Sahara Desert in 1968 and the Sinai Desert in 1969 with piquing his interest in Arabic; for the following two years he studied the Middle East. Pipes obtained a B.A. in history in 1971; his senior thesis was titled A Medieval Islamic Debate: The World Created in Eternity, a study of Al-Ghazali, one of the greatest jurists, theologians and mystical thinkers in the Islamic tradition.

Pipes returned to Harvard in 1973 and obtained a Ph.D. in medieval Islamic history in 1978. His Ph.D. dissertation eventually became his first book, Slave Soldiers and Islam, in 1981. He studied abroad for six years, three of which were spent in Egypt, where he wrote a book on colloquial Egyptian Arabic which was published in 1983. He speaks French and English and can read Arabic and German. He taught world history at the University of Chicago from 1972 to 1982, history at Harvard from 1983 to 1984, and policy strategy at the Naval War College from 1984 to 1986.

Pipes has served in various capacities at the Departments of State and Defense, and has testified to the United States Congress . He has been awarded honorary doctorates from universities in Switzerland and the United States.

Pipes has been married twice, and has three daughters.

Praise and controversy

The Wall Street Journal has called Pipes "an authoritative commentator on the Middle East." MSNBC described him as one of the best-known "Mideast policy luminaries" [1]. CNN referred to him one "of the country’s leading experts" on the Middle East. The Boston Globe wrote, "If Pipes's admonitions had been heeded, there might never have been a 9/11." [2]

A 1984 Business Week book review by Ronald Taggiasco stated that "Pipes has handled his subject well. It is difficult these days to address the question of Islam, the Arabs, and their relations with Israel and remain nonpartisan. Pipes has managed to do just that. He has wended his way through that minefield unscathed" (Business Week, 1/30/84).

On the other hand, a 1983 Washington Post book review by Thomas W. Lippman stated that Pipes displays "a disturbing hostility to contemporary Muslims ... he professes respect for Muslims but is frequently contemptuous of them". It said his book "is marred by exaggerations, inconsistencies, and evidence of hostility to the subject" while admitting that "[f]ew other writers have explained so lucidly such complex developments in Muslim history" and that his "book is a valuable contribution to our understanding" (Washington Post, 12/11/83). Left Turn magazine, a radical left-wing publication, described Pipes as a "leading anti-Muslim hate propagandist". [3]

Pipes's Middle East Forum sparked controversy in September 2002 when it established a website called Campus Watch that claimed to identify five problems in the teaching of Middle Eastern studies at American universities: "analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students". Students were encouraged to submit reports regarding teachers, books and curricula. The project was accused of "McCarthyesque intimidation" of professors who criticized Israel, when it published a "blacklist" of professors. In protest, more than 100 academics demanded to be listed as well. Campus Watch subsequently removed the list from their website. [4] [5] [6]

In August 2003, news leaked of Pipes's imminent appointment to the U.S. government-sponsored U.S. Institute of Peace. Soon afterwards, a broad array of Arab-American, American Muslim, and other groups, vehemently denounced the appointment, claiming that Pipes was an "anti-Islamic extremist". An editorial in The Washington Post described his nomination as a "cruel joke". The Arab American Institute, headed by James Zogby, stated "For decades Daniel Pipes has displayed a bizarre obsession with all things Arab and Muslim. Now, it appears that his years of hatred and bigotry have paid off with a presidential appointment. One shudders to think how he will abuse this position to tear at the fabric of our nation." Juan Cole wrote in his blog "I urge academics and others to boycott the United States Institute for Peace this year, as long as extremist ideologue Daniel Pipes serves on it."

Others, including Muslims, defended the appointment. Akbar Ahmed, professor of international relations and Ibn Khaldun chair of Islamic studies at American University, asked "Who is better placed to act as a bridge than the scholar of Islam?" Pakistani-American Tashbih Sayyed, editor of the Muslim World Today and the Pakistan Times, called Pipes "a Cassandra. He must be listened to. If there is no Daniel Pipes, there is no source for America to learn to recognize the evil which threatens it. Historians will write later that Pipes saved us. There are Muslims in America that are like Samson; they have come into the temple to pull down the pillars, even if it means destroying themselves." Sheikh Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour, a former visiting fellow in the human-rights program at Harvard Law School stated "We Muslims need a thinker like Dr. Pipes, who can criticize the terrorist culture within Islam, just as I usually do."

Several Democratic senators, including Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut), expressed opposition to the nomination and delayed a committee vote on it, though President Bush bypassed the Senate and proceeded with a recess appointment.

This incident was the latest in the series of confrontations Pipes has had with various U.S-based Islamic groups, especially the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR maintains that Pipes is an anti-Islamic bigot and has described him as "an Islamophobe",[7] while Pipes in turn charges that CAIR is an apologist for Islamist terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Robert Spencer described the campaign against Pipes on the CAIR website as a "lynching."

Pipes is also controversial in academia, where his conservative positions, — especially his strong support for Israel and his argument that Islamism is a threat to the West — conflicts with the views of some Middle East scholars, such as John Esposito, who describes Islamist movements as political forces leading to democratic progress. Pipes was also criticized by Palestinian activist Edward Said.

Pipes was invited to speak at the University of Toronto in March 2005 by a new student group at the University called The Middle East Forum at U of T. The announcement sparked the following response: more than 80 professors and former graduate students wrote an open letter in which they claimed that Mr. Pipes had a "long record of xenophobic, racist and sexist [speeches] that goes back to 1990". The letter went on to say that "Genuine academic debate requires an open and free exchange of ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect and tolerance. We, the undersigned - professors, librarians and students - are committed to academic freedom and we affirm Pipes' right to speak at our university. However, we strongly believe that hate, prejudice and fear-mongering have no place on this campus." Pipes responded by stating "I've been criticized plenty, as this suggests. I'm being criticized today. I grant my critics the right to criticize me. And I retain the right to criticize them. None of us have police powers. Freedom of speech is freedom of speech for those one disagrees with, as well as those one does agree with." University officials said they would not interfere with Pipes' visit to the campus. [8] [9]

On April 29, 2005 Wahida Valiante, the Vice President of the Canadian Islamic Congress, published on its website's regular "Friday Bulletin" the article Worth Repeating: Media Propaganda: Hitler, Bush and the "Big Lie", which suggested Pipes was a follower of Hitler and/or used tactics like Hitler, and that he wanted to ethnically cleanse Muslims from the United States.[10] In its June 10 edition of the Friday Bulletin is issued an "Apology and Retraction", stating "The Canadian Islamic Congress and Ms. Valiante apologize without reservation and retract remarks in the column that suggest that Dr. Daniel Pipes is a follower of Hitler or that he uses the tactics of Hitler or that he wants to ethnically cleanse America of its Muslim presence".[11][12] The Canadian Islamic Congress subsequently removed the apology and retraction from its website.

Examples

Radical Islam

Pipes has long expressed concern about the danger, as he sees it, of radical Islam to the Western world. In 1985, he wrote in Middle East Insight that "[t]he scope of the radical fundamentalist's ambition poses novel problems; and the intensity of his onslaught against the United States makes solutions urgent." [13]. In the fall 1995 issue of National Interest, he wrote: "Unnoticed by most Westerners, war has been unilaterally declared on Europe and the United States." [14] Four months before the September 11, 2001 attacks, Pipes and American investigative journalist Steven Emerson wrote in the Wall Street Journal that al Qaeda was "planning new attacks on the U.S." and that Iranian operatives "helped arrange advanced ... training for al Qaeda personnel in Lebanon where they learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings." [15]

Arab-Israeli conflict

He wrote in Commentary in April 1990: "There can be either an Israel or a Palestine, but not both. To think that two states can stably and peacefully coexist in the small territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is to be either naïve or duplicitous. If the last seventy years teach anything, it is that there can be only one state west of the Jordan River. Therefore, to those who ask why the Palestinians must be deprived of a state, the answer is simple: grant them one and you set in motion a chain of events that will lead either to its extinction or the extinction of Israel." [16]

The Dangers of Occupying Iraq

In 1987, Pipes encouraged the United States to provide Saddam Hussein with upgraded weapons and intelligence [17], ostensibly to counterbalance Iran's militarism. Years later, in April of 1991, when a debate was raging about the desirability of a U.S. intervention against the Saddam Hussein regime, Pipes wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the prospect of U.S. forces occupying Iraq, "with Schwartzkopf Pasha ruling from Baghdad": "It sounds romantic, but watch out. Like the Israelis in southern Lebanon nine years ago, American troops would find themselves quickly hated, with Shi'as taking up suicide bombing, Kurds resuming their rebellion, and the Syrian and Iranian governments plotting new ways to sabotage American rule. Staying in place would become too painful, leaving too humiliating." [18]

Arafat's Intentions at Oslo

Writing in the Forward within days of the signing of the Oslo Accords, Pipes alleged: "Mr. Arafat has merely adopted a flexible approach to fit adverse circumstances, saying whatever needed to be said to survive. The PLO had not a change of heart — merely a change of policy. . . . the deal with Israel represents a lease on life for the PLO, enabling it to stay in business until Israel falters, when it can deal a death blow." [19]

On Muslims

"There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military, and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces. Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks. Mosques require a scrutiny beyond that applied to churches, synagogues, and temples. Muslim schools require increased oversight to ascertain what is being taught to children." --The Jerusalem Post, Jan 22, 2003. p.9

"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)

Of African-American Muslims, Pipes wrote: "...black converts tend to hold vehemently anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic attitudes." (Commentary, 6/1/2000)

In an October 16, 1997 article in the Jewish Exponent, Pipes claimed that "as the population of Muslims in the United States grows, so does antisemitism." ("The New Anti-Semitism," [20])

According to an article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2001, Pipes told an audience at Portland State University that "Arab people live in some of the worse conditions in the world, without freedom to travel or modern media." He blamed those conditions on the Arabs’ "political obsession with Israel" (instead of their own societies). "The Palestinians are a miserable people," he added, "and they deserve to be." [21]

Books and policy papers

• Miniatures: Views of Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics (2003), Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0765802155
• Militant Islam Reaches America (2002), W.W. Norton & Company; paperback (2003) ISBN 0393325318
• with Abdelnour, Z. (2000), Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role Middle East Forum, ISBN 0970148402
• In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power(2002), Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0765809818
• Muslim immigrants in the United States (Backgrounder) (2002), Center for Immigration Studies, ASIN B0006RZI5Y
• The Long Shadow : Culture and Politics in the Middle East (1999), Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0887382207
• The Hidden Hand : Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (1997), Palgrave Macmillan; paperback (1998) ISBN 0312176880 *
• Conspiracy : How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From (1997), Touchstone; paperback (1999) ISBN: 0684871114 *
• Syria Beyond the Peace Process (Policy Papers, No. 41) (1995), Washington Institute for Near East Policy, ISBN 0944029647
• Sandstorm (1993), Rowman & Littlefield, paperback (1993) ISBN 0819188948
• Damascus Courts the West: Syrian Politics, 1989-1991 (Policy Papers, No. 26) (1991), Washington Institute for Near East Policy, ISBN 0944029132
• with Garfinkle, A. (1991), Friendly Tyrants: An American Dilemma Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 0312045352
• From a distance: Influencing foreign policy from Philadelphia (The Heritage lectures) (1991), Heritage Foundation, ASIN B0006DGHE4
• The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West (1990), Transaction Publishers, paperback (2003) ISBN 0765809966
• Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition (1990), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195060210 *
• An Arabist's guide to Colloquial Egyptian (1983), Foreign Service Institute, ASIN B0006ECVV6 *
• Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System (1981), Yale University Press, ISBN 0300024479
• How Nations Learn (publication date unknown), Free Press ISBN 0029253853

External links

• Daniel Pipes’s personal website
• Biography
• List of books
• Middle East Forum
• Campus Watch
• Controversy surrounding Pipes' appointment to the board of the US Institute of Peace
• Protests against Pipes' appointment to the USIP
• Washington Post: Middle East Studies Under Scrutiny in U.S.
• The Truth About Daniel Pipes, from the Muslim Public Affairs Council
• Los Angeles Times: “A Misdirected Attack”
• Financial Times: Islam's battle with a hostile world
• Pipes the Propagandist
• Truth on Terror in World Magazine
• WHO IS DANIEL PIPES? by CAIR
• Reply to CAIR's Attack on Daniel Pipes Pipes' response
• Harvard Magazine profile
• "In Defense of Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes", a letter from Shaykh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Root and Branch Information Service, September 19, 1999
• Eyal Press, Neocon Man, The Nation, May 10, 2004.
• Paul de Rooij, "Smear Mongers", CounterPunch, September 24, 2002.
• Michael Scherer, "Daniel Pipes, Peacemaker?", Mother Jones, May 26, 2003
• "This is not the way to tackle anti-Semitism.", The Age (Australia), February 8, 2005
• "Daniel Pipes Visits Hamilton College"