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Daniel Pipes (born September 9, 1949) is an American Conservative in the United States, a journalist, polemicist, historian, author, counter-terrorism analyst, and columnist on the Middle East. He has written or co-written 18 books and keeps a widely read blog site. Some of his work has attracted controversy because of his view that aspects of Islamism are incompatible with democracy, freedom, multiculturalism, and other values he associates with the liberal Western tradition. Pipes critics have attacked him for what they believe is his aggresively negative depiction of the Islamic world, his misrepresentation of Islamic history and his extreme pro-Israeli views.

Pipes is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and Campus Watch, a former member of the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and a regular columnist for the New York Sun and The Jerusalem Post. He contributes regularly to David Horowitz's online publication FrontPageMag.com, and has had his work published by many newspapers across North America, including the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. He is frequently invited to discuss the Middle East on American network television, as well as by universities and think tanks, has appeared on the BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in 25 countries.

Pipes is also the founder of Campus Watch, an organization and website that supports ideological diversity in the academic world and opposes what it sees as anti-U.S. and anti-Israel bias. Pipes and the organization were accused of attacking academic freedom in 2002 by publishing a list of academics critical of Israel and U.S. foreign policy.

Background

Pipes was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Harvard historian Richard Pipes and his wife Irene (née Roth). Both Pipes' parents were from assimilated Polish Jewish families that escaped from Poland in 1939. The couple met in the United States in 1944, and married two years later. Daniel was their first child.

Pipes attended the 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 mathematics, but has stated: "I wasn't smart enough. So I chose to become a historian." He credits visits to the Sahara Desert in 1968 and the Sinai Desert in 1969 for piquing his interest in Arabic, and 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.

He 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 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. He speaks French and English and can read Arabic and German.

He has been married twice, and has three daughters.

As of January 2007, Pipes held the position of Distinguished Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University teaching a course titled "International Relations: Islam and Politics."

Praise, criticism and controversy

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

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, January 30 1984).

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 "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, December 11 1983).

Pipes' 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.

Peace Institute appointment

In April 2003, President Bush nominated Pipes for the board of the federally sponsored U.S. Institute of Peace, on which Douglas Feith was already serving. 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". A The Washington Post editorial suggested that many Muslims viewed Pipes' nomination as a "sort of 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."

Christopher Hitchens, who is also a prominent critic of Islamists, also expressed "bafflement" at this appointment in a critical essay entitled "Daniel Pipes is not a man of peace" in Slate. Hitchens claimed that Pipes "employs the fears and insecurities created by Islamic extremism to slander or misrepresent those who disagree with him" and that this contradicted the USIP's position as "a somewhat mild organization devoted to the peaceful resolution of conflict." Hitchens concluded his opposition to Pipes' nomination by claiming that Pipes "confuses scholarship with propaganda" and pursues "petty vendettas with scant regard for objectivity."

Others, including Muslims, defended the appointment. Akbar Ahmed, 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 senators, including Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut), expressed opposition to the nomination and stalled a vote in Chairman Judd Gregg's (R-NH) committee, and President Bush was forced to bypass the Republican-led Senate and proceeded with a recess appointment on August 23, 2003. Pipes served until January, 2005.

Continued friction

In January 2004, Left Turn magazine described Pipes as a "leading anti-Muslim hate propagandist". In a publication of Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in a May 2, 2004 Pipes, in The End of American Jewry's Golden Era foresees the end of the golden era for Jews in the United States.

Pipes has had a series of confrontations with various U.S-based Islamic groups, especially the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR has described him as "an Islamophobe," 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 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 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.

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. 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".

In May 2006, Pipes received the Guardian of Zion Award.

Opinions

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 "he scope of the radical fundamentalist's ambition poses novel problems; and the intensity of his onslaught against the United States makes solutions urgent." 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." 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."

Support for Japanese Internment during World War II

Pipes expressed his support of "the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II because...given what was known and not known at the time...the U.S. government made the correct and sensible decisions." (See also his article Japanese Internment: Why It Was a Good Idea--And the Lessons It Offers Today.) Pipes does not "advocate the internment of anyone today."

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."

Policy toward Iraq

In 1987, Pipes encouraged the United States to provide Saddam Hussein with upgraded weapons and intelligence , ostensibly to counterbalance Iran's successes in the Iran-Iraq War. 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."

In a New York Post article published April 8 2003, Pipes expressed his opposition to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's concerned prediction that " war will have horrible consequences...Terrorism will be aggravated...Terrorist organizations will be united...Everything will be insecure." Though this concern was echoed by various other politicians and academics cited by Pipes in his article, Pipes argued that "the precise opposite is more likely to happen: The war in Iraq will lead to a reduction in terrorism."

Arafat's intentions at Oslo

Writing in The Forward within days of the signing of the Oslo Accords, Pipes said: "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."

On Muslims

Daniel Pipes political views have been in general critical of many of the cultures which have adopted forms of Islam, as well a as general critism of many streams of the Muslim faith as expressed and practiced around the world. His emphasis has been on a his perception of a clash of civilizations between the West and even what many think are mainstream Muslim groups. He has also concerned himself with the problem of integration between various cultures within the Muslim dominamated world into European countries and the United States. He has outlined obstructing factors which are intrinsic to Muslim faith and as well as those within the many different cultures which have adopted Islam and which makes integration difficult, and even at times violent. He has equally been critical of European efforts with regard to integrating these foriegn nationals in their countries. Pipes outlines and exposes many Islamistist elements within general "Muslim society" and believes that the strain between follows of Islam, and the West require rational scrutiny.

This has lead to many controversal opinions on the topic of Muslims as expressed by Mr Pipes throughout his career which include:

"There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim 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, January 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, November 19 1990)

On his website, Daniel Pipes notes that the above quote "has over the years attracted considerable attention. My goal in this article () was to characterize the thinking of Western Europeans, not give my own views. In retrospect, I should either have put the words "brown-skinned peoples" and "strange foods" in quotation marks or made it clearer that I was explaining European attitudes rather than my own. By way of example of those attitudes, here are some quotations from top French politicians from that era" Following this are quotes from Jacques Chirac, François Mitterrand and Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

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

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

An article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs written by Sister Elaine Kelley, Chair of "Friends of Sabeel—North America" (a support group for the Palestinian Christian anti-Zionist groupSabeel), July 2001, claims that 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); according to Kelley he added "The Palestinians are a miserable people, and they deserve to be" but Pipes denies ever saying this.

"The bombing on February 22 of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq, was a tragedy, but it was not an American or a coalition tragedy. ... hen Sunni terrorists target Shi'ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. ... Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one." (New York Sun, February 28 2006 )

On the current population trends of Muslims in Europe: "...the continent could be majority-Muslim within decades. When that happens, grand cathedrals will appear as vestiges of a prior civilization — at least until a Saudi style regime transforms them into mosques or a Taliban-like regime blows them up. The great national cultures — Italian, French, English, and others — will likely wither..." (New York Sun, May 11 2004 )

In a speech to the American Jewish Congress in October 2001, he said: "I worry very much, from the Jewish point of view, that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims, because they are so much led by an Islamist leadership, that this will present true dangers to American Jews."

On Europe

Pipes has been heavily critical of European welfare states, which he views as a consequence of America 'taking over' the defence of Europe during the Cold War.

Books and policy papers

  • Miniatures: Views of Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics (2003), Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0-7658-0215-5
  • Militant Islam Reaches America (2002), W.W. Norton & Company; paperback (2003) ISBN 0-393-32531-8
  • with Abdelnour, Z. (2000), Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role Middle East Forum, ISBN 0-9701484-0-2
  • In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power (2002), Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0-7658-0981-8
  • Muslim immigrants in the United States (Backgrounder) (2002), Center for Immigration Studies
  • The Long Shadow : Culture and Politics in the Middle East (1999), Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0-88738-220-7
  • The Hidden Hand : Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (1997), Palgrave Macmillan; paperback (1998) ISBN 0-312-17688-0
  • Conspiracy : How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From (1997), Touchstone; paperback (1999) ISBN 0-684-87111-4
  • Syria Beyond the Peace Process (Policy Papers, No. 41) (1995), Washington Institute for Near East Policy, ISBN 0-944029-64-7
  • Sandstorm (1993), Rowman & Littlefield, paperback (1993) ISBN 0-8191-8894-8
  • Damascus Courts the West: Syrian Politics, 1989-1991 (Policy Papers, No. 26) (1991), Washington Institute for Near East Policy, ISBN 0-944029-13-2
  • with Garfinkle, A. (1991), Friendly Tyrants: An American Dilemma Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 0-312-04535-2
  • 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 0-7658-0996-6
  • Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition (1990), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-506021-0
  • An Arabist's guide to Colloquial Egyptian (1983), Foreign Service Institute
  • Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System (1981), Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-02447-9

Video interviews

Documentaries

See also

External links

Audio and video

References

  1. "The War on Academic Freedom", The Nation, November 11, 2002.
  2. "School of Public Policy Announces 2007 Distinguished Visiting Professor: Daniel Pipes", University of Pepperdine.
  3. Steigerwald, Bill, "Pipes calls war a success", Pittsburgh Tribune Review, April 1, 2006
  4. Moran, Michael, "The evolution of peacemaking", MSNBC, November 21, 2001
  5. Hitchens, Christopher, "Daniel Pipes is not a man of peace", Slate, August 11 2003

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