Tag Archives: Daniel Pipes

Islam Vs. Islamism: A Case for Wishful Thinkers

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By Walid Shoebat:

“Our killer question is ‘How do you propose to defeat Islamism?’ Those who make all Islam their enemy not only succumb to a simplistic and essentialist illusion but they lack any mechanism to defeat it.”

This is what historian and Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes asks [1] in his recent Washington Times article.

To support his argument, Pipes makes an unsubstantiated claim [2] that a majority of Muslims are moderate and that Islamism is only,

supported by 10-15 percent [2] of Muslims…

So how and why did he come up with such numbers? Pipes uses different studies and surveys about which he himself confesses [2]: “These ambiguous and contradictorypercentages lead to no clear, specific count of Islamists.” Why then use such statistics? It is only to serve the major argument he made in my first paragraph.

And there are more “confessions.” Pipes writes: “Out of a quantitative mish-mash, I suggested just three days after 9/11 [3] that some 10-15 percent of Muslims are determined Islamists.” This is in itself contradictory and is even absolutely nonsense mathematically as he clearly admits. To further support this conservative number, Pipes adds:

 Indonesian survey and election results led R. William Liddle and Saiful Mujani [4] in 2003 to conclude that the number of Islamists “is no more than 15 percent of the total Indonesian Muslim population.”

He did this while he ignored his other statement:

In contrast, a 2008 survey of 8,000 Indonesian Muslims by Roy Morgan Research [5] found 40 percent of Indonesians favoring hadd criminal punishments (such as cutting off the hands of thieves) and 52 percent favoring some form of Islamic legal code.

So here we have 52% of Indonesians are extremists, not 15%.

DanielPipes

Yet even that doesn’t determine the correct percentages to separate Muslims from Islamists. To say that “views on 9/11″ or “supporting Hadd” (Islamic punishment) is the yardstick to measure the percentages is also absurd and mathematically false. What if a Muslim doesn’t support 9/11 or Hadd but supports the idea that it takes two women in a court of law to equal the testimony of a man? Will Pipes count him as a moderate Muslim or an extremist Islamist? If he chooses “moderate,” then Pakistan got it right. No matter what Pipes chooses, it debunks all his unsubstantiated claims about moderate Islam.

What if a Muslim couldn’t care less about Sharia, jihad, and 9/11, yet he kills his sister for marrying a Jew? Is he a “Muslim” or is he an “Islamist”?

And what if we even use terrorism as a yardstick as Pipes prefers; in Saudi Arabia and across the Muslim world, you have many who do not support al-Qaeda. Are these then counted as moderates? In Pipes’ view the answer is “yes.” But this is false. Last week I had an exchange with Sheikh Faisal Al-Harbi, who chastised me on such issues,stating that his clan (Al-Harbi) would not support terrorism. Indeed, on his clan’s official website [7] they denounce al-Qaeda, adding:

Jihad for the sake of Allah is to go to war with the infidels and the polytheists to remove these and enforce Unitarianism. That is after inviting them to Islam and they reject the invitation (Da’wa). This Jihad is then organized and supervised by the Imam.

That cannot be placed in the moderate Islam camp. In light of this and my other arguments, Pipes’ percentages are escalating dramatically.

The true number for Islamists is 100%. Here, let me add more beef to my claim. What if a Muslim denounces today’s jihad, sharia, Islamic state and all? Is he then moderate?

Read more at PJ Media

 

The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch weighs in on the debate:

As made clear in our FAQ, the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch was created as part of an ongoing effort to track and an analyze the activities of the Global Muslim Brotherhood that we define as “global network of individuals and organizations that developed as Muslim Brotherhood members dispersed to other countries while fleeing the periodic crackdowns on the organization in Egypt.” The GMBDW considers the Muslim Brotherhood, in all its manifestations, to be both the wellspring as well the most important ongoing influence on Islamism in the world today. Therefore, in line with what Dr. Pipes has written, we want to reassert that the GMBDW also makes the distinction between Islam the religion and Islamism which we would characterize as even a greater threat to Muslim-majority nations than it is in the West.

That said, the GMBDW does take issue with one passage in Dr. Pipe’s otherwise salutary article.

He writes:

Those who make all Islam their enemy not only succumb to a simplistic and essentialist illusion but they lack any mechanism to defeat it. We who focus on Islamism see World War II and the Cold War as models for subduing the third totalitarianism. We understand that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution. We work with anti-Islamist Muslims to vanquish a common scourge. We will triumph over this new variant of barbarism so that a modern form of Islam can emerge.

We are not convinced that that World War II and/or the Cold War are appropriate models for taking on modern Islamism as we do not believe that Islamism can productively be analyzed in these terms. Therefore, those that adopt such models run the risk of advocating inappropriate strategies for taking on the problem. Further elaboration of this theme involves a degree of complexity and will have to wait for future analysis.

 

Related articles

Islam vs. Islamism, again

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4262329508_45b1258d1b_zBy Robert Spencer:

This is a familiar controversy to longtime Jihad Watch readers; in November 2011 I published an article in National Review responding to a piece by Andy McCarthy and criticizing the Islam/Islamism distinction for obscuring the fact that doctrines of warfare and subjugation are found in Islam’s core texts.

I’ve long rejected the term “Islamist” for reasons I explained in that piece: “…the distinction is artificial and imposed from without. There are not, in other words, Islamist mosques and non-Islamist mosques, distinguishable from one another by the sign outside each, like Baptist and Methodist churches. On the contrary, ‘Islamists’ move among non-political, non-supremacist Muslims with no difficulty; no Islamic authorities are putting them out of mosques, or setting up separate institutions to distinguish themselves from the ‘Islamists.’ Mevlid Jasarevic [a jihadist in Sarajevo] could and did visit mosques in Austria, Serbia, and Bosnia without impediment before he started shooting on Friday; no one stopped him from entering because he was an ‘Islamist.’”

And so to say we must work with ordinary Muslims while eschewing collaboration with Islamists is not precisely a distinction without a difference, but a distinction that is practically imperceptible and, in many cases, in fact not there at all.

This is not to say that Islam can never be reformed. Many strange things have happened in history: events that no one 100 or 50 or sometimes even 10 years before they happened would have or could have predicted. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, but in 1986 and 1987 there were still plenty of learned analysts all over the airwaves and in the corridors of power in Washington talking about how we were going to have to deal with the Soviet Bloc for generations to come. So I will never say that something can never happen. But we have to recognize fully and honestly the obstacles in the way of it happening so as to make a truly realistic assessment of the situation we’re in, and apply remedies that are most likely to work, as well as to accord with our own fundamental principles.

This piece by Daniel Pipes has stirred up some controversy already; Pamela Geller comments here; Andrew Bostom weighs in here; and Walid Shoebat here.

“Islam and its infidels,” by Daniel Pipes in the Washington Times, May 13:

What motives lay behind last month’s Boston Marathon bombing and the would-be attack on a Via Rail Canada train?Leftists and establishmentarians variously offer imprecise and tired replies — such as “violent extremism” or anger at Western imperialism — unworthy of serious discussion. Conservatives, in contrast, engage in a lively and serious debate among themselves: some say Islam the religion provides motive; others say it’s a modern extremist variant of the religion, known as radical Islam or Islamism.

As a participant in the latter debate, here’s my argument for focusing on Islamism.

Those arguing for Islam itself as the problem (such as Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali) point to the consistency from Muhammad’s life and the contents of the Koran and Hadith to current Muslim practice. Agreeing with Geert Wilders’ film “Fitna,” they point to striking continuities between Koranic verses and jihad actions. They quote Islamic scriptures to establish the centrality of Muslim supremacism, jihad and misogyny, concluding that a moderate form of Islam is impossible. They point to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s deriding the very idea of a moderate Islam. Their killer question is “Was Muhammad a Muslim or an Islamist?” They contend that we who blame Islamism do so out of political correctness or cowardliness.

To which, we reply: Yes, certain continuities do exist, and Islamists definitely follow the Koran and Hadith literally. Moderate Muslims exist, but lack Islamists’ near-hegemonic power. Mr. Erdogan’s denial of moderate Islam points to a curious overlap between Islamism and the anti-Islam viewpoint. Muhammad was a plain Muslim, not an Islamist, for the latter concept dates back only to the 1920s. And no, we are not cowardly but offer our true analysis.

 

Not only do moderate Muslims “lack Islamists’ near-hegemonic power”; they also lack the justification in the Qur’an and Hadith that Islamic jihadists always point to in order to gain recruits among peaceful Muslims, as well as to justify their actions. And this is a key point: if Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (both, not incidentally, ex-Muslims) are right that there is a “consistency from Muhammad’s life and the contents of the Koran and Hadith to current Muslim practice,” and they most certainly are, as Daniel Pipes apparently acknowledges when he says that “certain continuities do exist, and Islamists definitely follow the Koran and Hadith literally,” then attempts to prescind from Qur’anic literalism in order to reform Islam and create a more peaceful version of the faith will always be challenged by the literalists (who are and have always been the mainstream in Islam) as heretics and apostates.

Read more at Jihad Watch

Bin Laden’s Death is a Dangerous Anniversary

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Bin Laden DeathBy Alan Caruba:

Thursday, May 2, is a day to be especially watchful. Jihadists are particularly fond of celebrating anniversaries and on that day in 2011 Seal Team Six found and killed Osama bin Laden. September 11. 2001 is now an indelible part of U.S. history and on September 11, 2012, jihadists attacked and killed an American ambassador and three others.

The threat that Islam presents to America in particular and the world in general is beginning to influence what non-Muslims think of this death cult.

In a recent commentary, the Dr. Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, referred to the process by which opinion in democratic nations turns against Islam as “education by murder.”

Dr. Pipes was sanguine regarding the American response to the Boston Marathon attack. He did not foresee any increase in security measures or a greater preparedness for what he called “sudden jihad syndrome” violence. Even so, he said “High profile terrorism in the West—9/11, Bali, Madrid, Beslan, London—moves opinion more than anything else.”

A new report about the Islamist terrorist threat, “Al Qaeda in the United States”, issued by the Henry Jackson Society, a British-based think tank, noted that, of the 171 al Qaeda related or inspired acts of terrorism from 1997 to 2011, 54% were by American citizens, some naturalized, but more than a third (36%) were born in the U.S., concluding that this statistic dispels the myth that the terrorist threat is primarily external.”

I keep wondering how long it will be before Americans will begin to take seriously the threat that Islam represents. The list of attacks is a long one such as the 1982 attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut and the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine Barracks after Reagan sent them there as peacekeepers. The first attack on the World Trade Center was in 1993. In October 2000, the USS Cole was attacked. On September 11, 2001, the second attack killed 3,000 Americans. When George W. Bush came into office, he told his national security advisor, Condoleeza Rice, that he was “tired of swatting flies.”

Yes, the list of attacks is a long one: Terrorist Attacks in the U.S. or Against Americans

Daniel Pipes Speaks On The Obama Administration’s Middle East Policy

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Daniel Pipes1

Streamed live on Apr 16, 2013

(There were some sound issues in the beginning. Go to 0.13.45. Frank Gaffney starts at 0.16.59. Daniel Pipes begins at 0.24.21. 

Delivered by Dr. Daniel Pipes
“The Obama Administration’s Middle East Policy”

The Reserve Officers Association, in conjunction with the Center for Security Policy and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, hosted Dr. Daniel Pipes, President of the Middle East Forum, to give this year’s Jackson-Kyl Lecture on National Security, part of the living legacy of two our nation’s great practitioners in that portfolio: the late Senator Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson (D-WA) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ).

This event is sponsored by:

The Defense Education Forum of ROA
The Center for Security Policy

‘A Stew of Anti-Muslim Bile and Conspiracy-Laden Forecasts’

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Picture-10-450x295 (1)By :

At 11:20 a.m. on Feb. 5, Lars Hedegaard answered his door bell to an apparent mailman. Instead of receiving a package, however, the 70-year-old Danish historian and journalist found himself face to face with a would-be assassin about one third his age. The assailant shot him once, narrowly missing his head. The gun locked, Hedegaard wrestled with him, and the young man fled.

Given Hedegaard’s criticism of Islam and his even being taken to court on criminal charges of “hate speech,” the attack reverberated in Denmark and beyond. The Associated Pressreported this incident, which was featured prominently in the British press, including the Guardian, the Daily Mail, and the Spectator, as well as in Canada’s National Post. The Wall Street Journal published an article by him about his experience.

When the New York Times belatedly bestirred itself on Feb. 28 to inform its readership about the assassination attempt, it did not so much report the event itself but an alleged Muslim support for Hedegaard to express himself. As implied by the title of Andrew Higgins’ article, “Danish Opponent of Islam Is Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak,” he mainly celebrates Danish Islam: “Muslim groups in the country, which were often criticized during the cartoon furor for not speaking out against violence and even deliberately fanning the flames, raised their voices to condemn the attack on Mr. Hedegaard and support his right to express his views, no matter how odious [emphasis added].” This theme pervades the piece; for example, Karen Haekkerup, the minister of social affairs and integration, is quoted pleased that “the Muslim community is now active in the debate.”

(For a close dissection of this agitprop, see Diana West’s evisceration; and see Andrew Bostom’s analysis for a comparison of Higgins to Walter Duranty, the NYT reporter who whitewashed Stalin’s crimes.)

Secondarily Higgins delegitimizes Hedegaard, my topic here. In addition to the snarky “no matter how odious” reference, Higgins dismisses Hedegaard’s “opinions” as “a stew of anti-Muslim bile and conspiracy-laden forecasts of a coming civil war” and claims the Dane has “fanned wild conspiracy theories and sometimes veered into calumny.”

These characterizations of Hedegaard’s work are a vicious travesty. A few specifics:

1. What Higgins airily dismisses as Hedegaard’s “opinions” is in fact a substantial oeuvre in several academic books and articles laden with facts and references dealing with Islamic ideology, Muslim history, and Muslim immigration to Denmark. Those books include:

I krigens hus: Islams kolonisering af Vesten [In the House of War: Islam’s colonization of the West] (with Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen). Aarhus, Hovedland, 2003

1400 års krigen: Islams strategi, EU og frihedens endeligt [The 1400 Year War: Islam’s strategy, the EU and the demise of freedom] (with Mogens Camre). Odense, Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek, 2009

Muhammeds piger: Vold, mord og voldtægter i Islams Hus. [Muhammad’s girls: Violence, murder and rape in the House of Islam] Odense, Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek, 2011

Hedegaard’s major articles include:

“Den 11. september som historie” [September 11 as history] in Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen (eds.), Islam i Vesten: På Koranens vej? Copenhagen, Tiderne Skifter, 2002.

“The Growth of Islam in Denmark and the Future of Secularism” in Kurt Almqvist (ed.), The Secular State and Islam in Europe. Stockholm, Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, 2007

“Free Speech: Its Benefits and Limitations” in Süheyla Kirca and LuEtt Hanson (eds.), Freedom and Prejudice: Approaches to Media and Culture. Istanbul, Bahcesehir University Press, 2008

“De cartoon-jihad en de opkomst van parallelle samenlevingen” [The cartoon jihad and the emergence of parallel societies] in Hans Jansen and Bert Snel (eds.), Eindstrijd: De finale clash tussen het liberale Westen en een traditionele islam. Amsterdam, Uitgiverij Van Praag, 2009

To the best of my knowledge, no one has claimed these writings contain sloppy scholarship or wrong references. As Hedegaard puts it, “I am a university-trained historian and take my craft seriously.” The real criticism of Hedegaard is not about his scholarship – but that he raises difficult and even unpleasant questions.

Read more at Front Page

Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum.

Islamist Assassinations in the West

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by Daniel Pipes
Gatestone Institute
February 25, 2013

Terrorism broadly takes two forms: against random individuals who happen to be at a market place or on a bus at the wrong time; or against specific individuals because of who they are. The latter in turn divides into two: against broad categories of people (the military, Jews, people who wear eyeglasses) and against specific public figures, either individuals or institutions. In effect, these last are assassinations (defined by Merriam-Webster as “to murder (a usually prominent person) by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons”).

Horrific as the first two genres are, assassinations are the most terrifying and effective. Whereas the first two can happen to anyone and have the effect of creating a universal but vague dread, the third focuses on a small pool of targets and sends a specific signal to others not to follow in their footsteps. In general, therefore, assassinations inspire the most consequential fear, intimidate the most, and have the greatest consequences.

Actual public Western victims of Islamist violence have included:

  • 1980: Ali Akbar Tabataba’i, Iranian dissident, in the United States*
  • 1980: Faisal Zagallai, Libyan dissident, in the United States
  • 1990: Rashad Khalifa, Egyptian religious innovator, in the United States*
  • 1990: Meir Kahane, Israel politician of American origins, in the United States*
  • 1991: Hitoshi Igarashi, Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses*
  • 1991: Ettore Capriolo, Italian translator of The Satanic Verses
  • 1993: William Nygaard, Norwegian publisher of The Satanic Verses
  • 2004: Theo van Gogh, Dutch artist*
  • 2010: Kurt Westergaard, Danish cartoonist
  • 2010: Lars Vilks, Swedish artist
  • 2010: Jyllands-Posten, Danish newspaper
  • 2012: Charlie Hebdo, French satiric magazine
  • 2013: Lars Hedegaard, Danish historian and political analyst

Notes: * indicates a fatality. Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi, head of the Libyan government, was an Islamist in 1980. I do not list here victims of Muslim but non-Islamist assassinations, such as Malcolm X in 1965 or the attempt on the pope in 1981. For the record, a Palestinian Christian killed Robert Kennedy in 1968.

Statistical comments:

(1) Other than one isolated attack in 2004, this listing of 13 inexplicably divides into two distinct periods, seven in 1980-93 and five in 2010-13.

(2) Listed by their identity, the victims include 8 connected to culture and the arts, 3 political figures, 1 religious one, and 1 analyst. Of the eight cultural attacks, 4 involved cartoons, 3 Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, and one a movie, Submission.

(3) Geographically, 8 took place in Europe, 4 in the United States, and one in Japan. Of the European cases, three took place in tiny Denmark. Britain and Germany are conspicuously missing from this list. Oddly, the 4 American instances took place in either 1980 or 1990.

(4) State involvement can be discerned only in the first 3 cases (Iranian, Libyan, and Saudi, respectively).

(5) In terms of deadliness, 5 attacks led to a fatality, 8 did not.

Lars Hedegaard presented Daniel Pipes with the Danish Free Press Society award in March 2007.

 

And a personal note by way of conclusion: the Feb. 5 attack on Hedegaard – a friend and colleague at the Middle East Forum – inspired me to compile this listing in the hopes that aggregating these loathsome crimes will help wake more Westerners to the danger within.

Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum.

Islam and Islamism in the Modern World: An interview with Daniel Pipes

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by Tom Bethell
The American Spectator
February 2013

Daniel Pipes1Daniel Pipes, one of our leading experts on Islam, established the Middle East Forum and became its head in 1994. He was born in 1949 and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, Richard Pipes, was a professor of Russian history, now emeritus, at Harvard.

Daniel studied Arabic and Islamic history and lived in Cairo for three years. His PhD dissertation became his first book, Slave Soldiers and Islam (1981). Then his interest in purely academic subjects expanded to include modern Islam. He left the university because, as he told an interviewer from Harvard Magazine, he has “the simple politics of a truck driver, not the complex ones of an academic.”

His story of being harassed through the legal system by a Muslim who later committed suicide was recently told in The American Spectator (“A Palestinian in Texas,” TAS, November 2012). He has been personally threatened but prefers not to talk about specifics except to note that law enforcement has been involved.

I interviewed Pipes shortly before Christmas, when the Egyptians were voting on their new constitution. I started out by saying that the number of Muslims in the U.S. has doubled since the 9/11 attacks.

DP: My career divides in two: before and after 9/11. In the first part I was trying to show that Islam is relevant to political concerns. If you want to understand Muslims, I argued, you need to understand the role of Islam in their lives. Now that seems obvious. If anything, there’s a tendency to over-emphasize Islam; to assume that Muslims are dominated by the Koran and are its automatons—which goes too far. You can’t just read the Koran to understand Muslim life. You have to look at history, at personalities, at economics, and so on.

TB: Do you see the revival of Islam as a reality?

DP: Yes. Half a century ago Islam was waning, the application of its laws became ever more remote, and the sense existed that Islam, like other religions, was in decline. Since then there has been a sharp and I think indisputable reversal. We’re all talking about Islam and its laws now.

TB: At the same time you have raised an odd question: “Can Islam survive Islamism?” Can you explain that?

DP: I draw a distinction between traditional Islam and Islamism. Islamism emerged in its modern form in the 1920s and is driven by a belief that Muslims can be strong and rich again if they follow the Islamic law severely and in its entirety. This is a response to the trauma of modern Islam. And yet this form of Islam is doing deep damage to faith, to the point that I wonder if Islam will ever recover.

TB: Give us the historical context.

DP: The modern era for Muslims began with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. Muslims experienced a great shock at seeing how advanced the blue-eyed peoples from the north had become. It would be roughly analogous to the Eskimos coming down south and decimating Westerners, who would uncomprehendingly ask in response, “Who are these people and how are they defeating us?”

TB: So how did they respond?

DP: Muslims over the past 200 years have made many efforts to figure out what went wrong. They have experimented with several answers. One was to emulate liberal Europe—Britain and France—until about 1920. Another was to emulate illiberal Europe—Germany and Russia—until about 1970. The third was to go back to what are imagined to be the sources of Islamic strength a millennium ago, namely the application of Islamic law. That’s Islamism. It’s a modern phenomenon, and it’s making Muslims the center of world unrest.

TB: But it is also creating discomfort?

DP: It has terribly deleterious effects on Muslims. Many of them are put off by Islam. In Iran, for example, one finds a lot of alienation from Islam as a result of the Islamist rule of the last 30-odd years.

TB: Has it happened anywhere else?

DP: One hears reports, especially from Algeria and Iraq, of Muslims converting to Christianity. And in an unprecedented move, ex-Muslims living in the West have organized with the goal of becoming a political force. I believe the first such effort was the Centraal Comité voor Ex-moslims in the Netherlands, but now it’s all over the place.

Read more at DanielPipes.org

Turkey, Closest to Leading the Middle East

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by Şenay Yıldız Akşam January 7, 2013

http://www.danielpipes.org/12459/turkey-leading-middle-east

Translation of the original text: Ortadoğu liderliğine en yakın ülke Türkiye Translated by Elif S. Gürbey

N.B.: This translation from Turkish includes numerous changes in the text by Daniel Pipes to improve the presentation and to make it more accurate.

Founder and president of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes is well known for his work on the Middle East and political Islam. Pipes, an award-winning columnist for the National Review and Jerusalem Post, writes commentaries and articles about the Middle East in leading media organizations such as the BBC, Al Jazeera, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. After visiting Turkey last month, Pipes, who has 12 books and numerous articles on Islam, Syria, and the Middle East, published an article in National Review Online titled “Talking Turkey.” We talked with him [in mid-December] about his impressions of Turkey and his expectations from the Middle East.

- When were you in Turkey the last time? I was in Turkey two weeks ago. I visited in 2007 as well. My first visit to Turkey was in 1972. I spent the summer of 1973 trying to learn Turkish while living in Istanbul’s Üsküdar quarter … but I was not very successful at it.

- How long did you stay in Turkey before writing your last article, “Talking Turkey”? Did you meet anyone from the government? I stayed in Turkey for 5 days. My request to meet members of the AKP did not succeed. However, I was able to meet with representatives of the CHP (Republican People’s Party) and the Gülen movement.

- Considering your visits to Turkey, what kind of difference do you see between now and then? Two major changes occurred in the last 40 years. First, economic development, especially in Istanbul: there are so many new buildings, businesses, and global brands. This differs completely from the Turkey I saw 40 years ago, which was quite separated from international business. Second, Islam. The religiosity of people in Turkey was semi-visible then. If it was necessary to go to mosques or other places to see them, now they are everywhere.

- Do you mean women who wear headscarf? Yes, the turban [headscarf] symbolizes this phenomenon. Many observers used to see Turkey as a European country with a different language. As someone interested in the history of Muslims, I always saw Turkey as a Muslim Middle Eastern country. The Atatürk revolution impressed me and I began writing a book comparing it with the Meiji transformation in Japan. I find it strange to see Turkey as European just because a small part of its territory is in Europe. Would Morocco controlling Gibraltar make it a European country? I think not.

2055- Does Turkey fit exactly into the Middle East? Yes, Turkey is historically, culturally, religiously, commercially, and politically a part of the Middle East.

- Do you think Islam’s visibility is negative? I have no opinion if people want to pray, fast, and on pilgrimage to Mecca. I do, however, have an opinion on attempts to implement the Shari’a. The Shari’a causes great suffering, sorrow, and pain. In the past [Necmettin] Erbakan and now [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan is moving toward Islamic law and I think this a terrible development.

- Do you really think Erdoğan is heading toward Sharia? Almost everybody I spoke to in Turkey told me, “Turkey will never be a country where hands are cut off, of burqas or jihad. Erdoğan, Gül, Davutoğlu, Arınç, and Gülen all know that and accept the order Ataturk implemented 80-90 years ago. They are only trying to create a more religious environment within that order.” Among those I spoke to, only an Alevi person did not subscribe to this opinion. According to him, Erdoğan and Gül aspire to apply Islamic law. “It will take a very long time,” he noted, “but it is their objective.” I agree with this view.

- As someone who lives in Turkey, I am having hard time to understand how you can see implementation of Shari’a. What makes you so skeptical about the AK Party’s goals? Gül and Erdoğan were members of Erbakan’s Virtue Party in the 1990s; and although he failed to achieve his objectives because he was removed from power by the military, Erbakan clearly intended to apply the Shari’a. The question now is: Did Gül and Erdoğan only change their tactics to maneuver better than him – or did they really abandon his objectives? I do not believe they altered their goals. I grant that I am speculating here because I cannot read their minds but it makes more sense to conclude that they only changed tactics.

As I see it, these lieutenants of Erbakan learned a lesson from his mistakes and are now implementing his policies more intelligently. Erdoğan is a more capable and sophisticated version of Erbakan. Should the AKP stay in power, the implementation of Islamic law will begin. The result will not look like Afghanistan under the Taliban, the Islamic Republic of Iran, or Saudi Arabia but the Shari’a will give direction to the social order.

I expect the AKP to rule for a long time, in part because the opposition in Turkey is so weak. It is reduced to hoping for divisions between Gül and Erdoğan, or Gülen and the AKP. The intellectual base of the CHP and the other parties is weak.

- Can you clarify your comment in your last article, that you heard that the AKP aspires “to create a post-Atatürk order more than an anti-Atatürk order”? Does the AKP leadership really accept the order established by Atatürk? I have my doubts. I think, deep in the leaders’ hearts, they want step by step to erase Ataturk’s accomplishments. In this sense, Erdoğan is the anti-Atatürk. Let me add that I have no problem with the removal of Atatürk from walls, quotations, and celebrations. It seems odd that a person who died 75 years ago remains ubiquitous. In the United States, I would not welcome seeing George Washington everywhere.

- Turkey is in leadership struggle for the Middle East. Do you think that Turkey can be the greatest power in the Middle East? Turkey absolutely is the best candidate right now for Middle East leadership. Given its population, the ruling party’s vision, its economic strength, and its intellectual capacity, Turkey is the country closest to leading the Middle East.

- What do you think of highly controversial Gülen movement? I never met Gülen, though he lives near me in Philadelphia. I know a number of people from the movement. It is highly sophisticated, intellectual, and impressive, especially the hundreds of schools. In my opinion, its objective is to make Islam the primary component that regulates people’s lives, and it works for this very carefully and cleverly.

Islamism in Turkey is far more intellectual than, for example, in Egypt. Take a look at Mohamed Morsi: in a few months, he tried to do more than the AKP has attempted in ten years, and for that reason, he is in great danger. Egypt faces so many problems, from a sinking economy to violent protests on the streets. In contrast, Gülen builds schools and has a media empire, which is much more impressive than Muslim Brotherhood, Khomeini, or the Taliban. For me, the most powerful feature that separates Islam in Turkey from other countries is capable leadership.

- The Arab Spring began with high hopes; at this point, do you think it brought spring to the Arabs? I never call it “Arab Spring”; the term Arab uprising is much more accurate. The Arab Middle East was surprisingly stable between 1970 and 2010, with little change of the dictators in charge. These regimes lacked an ideology or vision, so they—except for Syria—established good relations with the U.S. government. Following the incident in Tunisia in December 2010, the Islamists have increased their power. I believe this worsens things for the people of the region: dictators are bad enough but Islamists are even worse. Dictators kill tens of people; Islamists kill hundreds or thousands.

- Why are you contrasting Islamists and Americans? Islamism is the third totalitarian movement. We beat the fascist and communist threats; now we have to defeat the Islamists.

- Saudi Arabia is very close partner of the United States. No, Canada is a close partner. Saudi Arabia is only a tactical partner. The U.S. and Saudi governments work together but differ in everything from ways of life to long-term ambitions.

- Do you criticize Saudi Arabia? Yes, the government in Saudi Arabia is horrible. I am uncomfortable with the extent of privileges given to Saudi Arabia in Washington.

- You have a very negative, inflexible position about Islam? No, I am not negative about Islam, but I am negative about Islamism. A government, a movement, or a people who seek ways to implement Islamic law fully are rather a small minority in nearly every country. They are not the majority, and yes, I am negative about them. My motto is; radical Islam is a problem moderate Islam is the solution.

- Which countries you can think of in the Middle East that can implement a moderate version of Islam? Governments such as Iran, Turkey, and Tunisia that followed a moderate version of Islam are gone. Nowadays, the closest example is Algeria. The AKP and Gülen movement try to look like moderate, but they are not because both want to implement Shari’a.

- In the mission statement of the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project, of which you are the founder, it says, you “work to protect the right in the West to freely discuss Islam, radical Islam, terrorism, and terrorist funding..” But Islam is not the only religion in the Middle East, so why do you not show same concern about Christianity and Judaism? I do not see Islamism is comparable to anything in Judaism or Christianity. As I mentioned earlier, I see it comparable to Communism and Fascism. I see Islamism as far more a bigger threat than Jewish nationalism or a fundamentalist Christianity. You can criticize Jews and Judaism, Christians and Christianity without facing danger. However, you risk your life criticizing Islam.

Meet the first Muslim president

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first muslim presidentby David Kupelian

Excerpt:

‘My Muslim President Obama’

For a president whose policies over the past four years, both at home and  abroad, have been passionately and relentlessly pro-Muslim, one wonders how the  elite media could somehow have missed the camel in the living room: Barack Obama  is the “first Muslim president.”

This is not breaking news. As American Muslim writer Asma Gull Hasan wrote in  a widely read Forbes article titled “My  Muslim President Obama”: “I know President Obama is not Muslim, but I am  tempted nevertheless to think that he is, as are most Muslims I know. In a very  unscientific oral poll, ranging from family members to Muslim acquaintances,  many of us feel … that we have our first American Muslim president in Barack  Hussein Obama.”

“Since Election Day,” Hasan confesses, “I have been part of more and more  conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama  is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, ‘I have to support my fellow Muslim brother,’ would slip out of my mouth before  I had a chance to think twice.”

But another aspect of having elected our “first Muslim president” is much  more consequential, as veteran CIA officer and intelligence expert Clare  Lopez chronicles. Under Obama, she writes:

“America’s involvement in the global jihad against Western civilization – on  the side of the jihadis – is accelerating. Instead of standing firm as leader of  the free world and defender of inalienable human rights, U.S. policy is shifting  demonstrably to the defense of those who systematically deny such rights to  their own people and seek to suppress them everywhere.”

Noting that since 2009, “U.S. foreign policy has backed al-Qaida and Muslim  Brotherhood power plays in Libya, Egypt and now Syria, too,” Lopez reports that  our State Department “is working closely with the Organization of Islamic  Cooperation, whose top objective is the criminalization of the criticism of  Islam.”

Meanwhile, adds Lopez, here in the U.S. “the White House cultivates  relationships with CAIR/Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood leadership figures and  associates,” while “instructors, trainers and any curriculum that would describe  accurately the link between Islamic doctrine, law and scripture and Islamic  terrorism have been methodically purged from U.S. government, intelligence and  law enforcement classrooms.”

So, according to the established cultural norm of what constitutes a “first something president,” Obama qualifies as “Muslim” at least as much as  Bill Clinton qualifies as “black.”

But let’s go a little further: How much literal truth might there be  to this honorary title no one in the establishment press sees fit to confer on  Barack Obama?

Respected Islam expert Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle  East Forum, has exhaustively documented “Obama’s  Muslim childhood.” Here are just a few of the dozens of non-disputable  evidentiary facts cited by Pipes:

  • “In Islam, the father passes his faith to the children; and when a Muslim  male has children with a non-Muslim female, Islam considers the children Muslim.  Obama’s grandfather and father having been Muslims – the extent of their piety  matters not at all – means that, in Muslim eyes, Barack was born a Muslim.
  • “Arabic forenames based on the H-S-N trilateral root … (Husayn or Hussein,  Hasan, Hassân, Hassanein, Ahsan, and others) are exclusively bestowed on Muslim  babies. … Obama’s middle name, Hussein, explicitly proclaims him a born  Muslim.
  • “Obama was registered at a Catholic school in Jakarta as ‘Barry Soetoro.’ A  surviving document lists him as born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961; in addition,  it lists him having Indonesian nationality and Muslim religion.
  • “He was also registered as Muslim at SD Besuki: Although Besuki … is a  public school, Obama curiously refers to it in ‘The Audacity of Hope’ (p. 154)  as ‘the Muslim school’ he attended in Jakarta. Its records have not survived,  but several journalists (Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star, Paul Watson of the  Los Angeles Times, David Maraniss of the Washington Post) have all confirmed  that there too, he was registered as a Muslim.
  • “Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s younger half-sister, said her father (Barack’s  stepfather) attended the mosque ‘for big communal events,’ and the Chicago  Tribune’s foreign correspondent Kim Barker found that ‘Obama occasionally  followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers.’
  • “Muslim clothing: Zulfin Adi, among Obama’s closest childhood friends,  recalls about Obama, ‘I remember him wearing a sarong.’ Likewise, [the  Washington Post’s] Maraniss found not only that ‘His classmates recalled that  Barry wore a sarong’ but had written exchanges indicating that he continued to  wear this garment in the United States. This fact has religious implications  because, in Indonesian culture, only Muslims wear sarongs.
  • “Obama says that in Indonesia, he ‘didn’t practice [Islam],’ an assertion  that inadvertently acknowledges his Muslim identity by implying he was a  non-observant Muslim. But several of those who knew him contradict this  recollection. Rony Amir describes Obama as ‘previously quite religious in  Islam.’ A former teacher, Tine Hahiyary, quoted in the Kaltim Post, says the  future president took part in advanced Islamic religious lessons: ‘I remember  that he had studied mengaji.’ In the context of Southeast Asian Islam, mengaji Quran means to recite the Koran in Arabic, a difficult task  denoting advanced study.”

“The record,” concludes Pipes, “points to Obama having been born a Muslim to  a non-practicing Muslim father and having lived for four years in a fully Muslim  milieu under the auspices of his Muslim Indonesian stepfather. For these  reasons, those who knew Obama in Indonesia considered him a Muslim.”

All right, that was then. But what about today?

Even as president, observes Pipes:

“… when addressing Muslim audiences, Obama uses specifically Muslim phrases  that recall his Muslim identity. He addressed audiences both in Cairo (in June  2009) and Jakarta (in November 2010) with ‘as-salaamu alaykum,’ a greeting that  he, who went to Koran class, knows is reserved for one Muslim addressing  another. In Cairo, he also deployed several other pious terms that signal to  Muslims he is one of them:

  • “The Holy Koran” (a term mentioned five times): an exact translation from  the standard Arabic reference to the Islamic scripture, al-Qur’an al-Karim.
  • “The right path”: a translation of the Arabic as-sirat al-mustaqim, which  Muslims ask God to guide them along each time they pray.
  • “I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it  was first revealed”: Non-Muslims do not refer to Islam as “revealed.”
  • “The story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed … joined in prayer”: This Koranic tale of a night journey establishes the leadership of Muhammad over  all other holy figures, including Jesus.
  • “Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them”: a translation of the  Arabic ‘alayhim as-salam, which pious Muslims say after mentioning the names of  dead prophets other than Muhammad. (A different salutation, sall Allahu alayhi  wa-sallam, “May God honor him and grant him peace,” properly follows Muhammad’s  name, but this phrase is almost never said in English.)

Beyond all these things, what honest conclusion – other than that the  president has a tremendous hidden attachment to Islam – could one possibly draw  after reading Obama’s March 2007 interview  with the New York Times’ Nicholas D. Kristof, who wrote:

“Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting  them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated  (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to  prayer as ‘one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.’”

’The grand jihad’

Ironically, none of Obama’s documented Islamic background may matter very  much, since his demonstrated camaraderie with Islamists is typical of  far-leftists and doesn’t require a personal Muslim upbringing such as Obama  had.

In his bestselling book, “The  Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America,” former federal  prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explains how and why hardcore leftists and radical  Muslims – despite their obvious differences – work together.

“Like the neocommunist, the Islamist works to impose his version of ‘social  justice.’ It is a very specific Islamic prescription, and elements of it diverge  markedly from the neocommunist’s more amorphous utopia. But the essentials of  their visions coalesce: They are totalitarian, collectivist, and antithetical to  the core conceit of American constitutional democracy, individual liberty.  Today’s left-leaning, Islamophilic Obamedia consciously ignores the convergence,  but America’s 44th president and America’s enemies have a common  dream.”

Thus, while there is no evidence Obama is today a practicing Muslim, what is  far more important than his current religious affiliation is what his deep-down  sympathies, affinities and loyalties truly are – and what sorts of policies  those affinities lead him to pursue.

One final thought: Having lived through a tumultuous era in which the two  biggest geopolitical challenges to America’s very existence as a free nation  have been Marxism and Shariah Islam, it’s a testament to modern Americans’ advancing spiritual blindness that we have chosen – twice – a president in  thrall to both.

There’s a perfect logic to the “grand jihad” uniting these two ungodly forces  against the rare and exotic bloom of individual liberty. Both movements are  based on rejection of Christianity, Judaism and the “Judeo-Christian values” that comprise the moral foundation of Western Civilization. Both are fixated to  an ecstatic vision of a utopia that cannot exist in reality because it defies  all the laws of God and man and human nature and common sense.

And, although superficially incompatible with each other, both are on the  same side of the great war between good and evil, each intent on captivating as  many free people as possible in the process of imposing a deluded paradise that  never was, and never can be.

Read the entire article at WND

David Kupelian is an award-winning journalist, managing editor of WND, editor of  Whistleblower magazine, and author of the best-selling book, The  Marketing of Evil His newest book, How  Evil Works, released to much critical acclaim in the spring of 2010.

See also:

Obama’s ring: ‘There is no god but Allah’ (counterjihadreport.com)


Daniel Pipes: Islamists are worse than dictators

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Who is worse, President Mohammed Morsi,  the elected Islamist seeking to apply Islamic law in Egypt, or former President Hosni  Mubarak, the dictator ousted for trying to start a dynasty? More broadly,  will a liberal, democratic order be more likely to emerge under Islamist  ideologues who prevail through the ballot box or under greedy dictators with no  particular agenda beyond their own survival and power?

Mr. Morsi’s recent actions provide an  answer, establishing that Islamists are worse than dictators.

Intelligence Squared debate in New York City on Oct. 4, 2012.

Intelligence Squared debate in New York City on Oct. 4, 2012.

This issue came up in an interesting debate for Intelligence Squared U.S. in  early October when Reuel Marc Gerecht of the  Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Brian  Katulis of the Center for  American Progress argued, “Better elected Islamists than dictators,” while Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum  for Democracy and I made the counter-argument. Well, no one really argued “for” anyone. The other team did not endorse Islamists and we certainly did not  celebrate dictators. The issue, rather, was which sort of ruler is the lesser of  two evils, and can be cudgeled toward democracy.

Mr. Katulis blamed dictatorships for  fostering “the sorts of ideologies” that led to Sept. 11, 2001, and Mr.  Gerecht insisted that military juntas, not Islamists, generally are “the  real danger.  The only way you’re going to get a more liberal order in the  Middle East is through people of faith” who vote Islamists into office. Mr.  Katulis argued that elected Islamists change and morph, becoming less  ideological and more practical. They evolve in response to the rough and tumble  of politics to focus on “basic needs” such as security and jobs.

In Iraq, Mr.  Gerecht professed to find that “a tidal wave of people who were once  hard-core Islamists  have become pretty profound democrats, if not liberals.” As  for Egypt, he noted approvingly but inaccurately  that “the Muslim Brotherhood is having  serious internal debates because they haven’t figured out how to handle [their  success]. That’s what we want. We want them to fight it out.”

Mr. Jasser and I replied to this catalog  of inaccuracies (military juntas led to Sept. 11?) and wishful thinking (true  believers will compromise on their goals? a tidal wave of Iraqi Islamists became  liberals?) by stating first that ideologues are “dictators on steroids” who  don’t moderate upon reaching power but dig themselves in, building foundations  to remain indefinitely in office. Second, ideologues neglect the very issues  that our opponents stressed — security and jobs — in favor of implementing  Islamic laws. Greedy dictators, in contrast, short on ideology, do not have a  vision of society and so can be convinced to move toward economic development,  personal freedoms, an open political process and rule of law (for example, South  Korea).

Mr. Morsi and the Muslim  Brotherhood have followed our script exactly. Since taking power in August, Mr. Morsi sidelined the military, then  focused on entrenching and expanding his supremacy, most notably by issuing a  series of orders on Nov. 22 that arrogated autocratic powers to himself, and  spreading Zionist conspiracy theories about his opponents. Then he rammed  through an Islamist-oriented constitution on Nov. 30 and called a snap  referendum on it for Dec. 15. Consumed with these two tasks, he virtually  ignored the myriad issues afflicting Egypt,  especially the looming economic crisis and the lack of funds to pay for imported  food.

Read more at the Washington Times

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