Obama Wins, Muslims Divided

Posted by Daniel Pipes - November 12, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments Ali ibn Abi-Talib, the seventh-century figure central to Shiite Islam, is said to have predicted when the world will end, columnist Amir Taheri points out. A "tall black man" commanding "the strongest army on earth" will take power "in the west." He will carry "a clear sign" from the third imam, Hussein. Ali says of the tall black man: "Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us." An Iranian in Tehran sports a badge of Barack Obama. (AP: Hasan Sarbakhshian) Barack Hussein in Arabic means "

 


Foreword

Posted by Daniel Pipes - November 11, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments From Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestineby Jonathan SchanzerPalgrave Macmillan, 2008. 256pp. $26.95 Divisions among Palestinians generally do not receive their due attention, Jonathan Schanzer correctly points out, in the immense academic and journalistic coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead, an official, propagandistic, and inaccurate party line holds sway. To quote Rashid Khalidi, a former Palestine Liberation Organization employee now teaching at Columbia University,[i] a "

 


Obama’s Mansion, Saddam’s Money

Posted by Daniel Pipes - October 29, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments Barack Obama appears to have personally benefited from funds originating in Saddam Hussein's regime. It's a complicated connection, but one that deserves the consideration of Americans voters. Nadhmi Auchi (left) with Illinois' governor, Rod Blagojevich, in 2004. Two similar figures, Nadhmi Auchi and Antoin S. "Tony" Rezko, served as the intermediaries.

 


PLO Acknowledges: Still at War with Israel

Posted by Daniel Pipes - October 28, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments Yasir Arafat may have shook Yitzhak Rabin's hand in 1993 and signed solemn declarations about ending the war to eliminate Israel, but late last month, in a New York City courtroom, the Palestine Liberation Organization formally confirmed that it still sees terrorism against Israelis as legitimate acts of war. The lawsuit, Sokolow v The Palestine Liberation Organization, brought by the intrepid David Strachman, alleges that the PLO carried out two machine-

 


Counting Islamists

Posted by Daniel Pipes - October 8, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments The recent distribution of some 28 million copies in the United States of the 2005 documentary Obsession has stirred heated debate about its contents. One lightening rod for criticism concerns my on-screen statement that "10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam." "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" (2005) The Muslim Public Affairs Council declared this estimate both "utterly unsubstantiated" and "completely without evidence."

 


Must Counterinsurgency Wars Fail?

Posted by Daniel Pipes - September 14, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments [WT title: "Can Counterinsurgency Win?"] When it comes to a state fighting a nonstate enemy, there is a widespread impression the state is doomed to fail. In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy concluded that victory in Vietnam was "probably beyond our grasp," and called for a peaceful settlement. In 1983, the analyst Shahram Chubin wrote that the Soviets in Afghanistan were embroiled in an "unwinnable war." In 1992, U.S. officials shied away from involvement in Bosnia, fearing entanglement in a centuries-

 


The West’s Islamist Infiltrators

Posted by Daniel Pipes - August 12, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments [Bulletin title: "Examples Of How The West's Islamist Infiltrators Proceed"] Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is a Pakistani mother of three, an alumna of MIT, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University. She is also accused of working for Al-Qaeda and was charged last week in New York City with attempting to kill American soldiers. Her arrest serves to remind how invisibly most Islamist infiltration proceeds. In particular, an estimated forty Al-

 


May an American Comment on Israel?

Posted by Daniel Pipes - July 28, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments May I, an American citizen living in the United States, comment publicly on Israeli decision making? Yoram Schweitzer wants me not to judge decisions made by the Israeli government. I recently criticized the Israeli government for its exchange with Hizbullah in "Samir Kuntar and the Last Laugh" (The Jerusalem Post, July 21); to this, the eminent counterterrorism expert at Tel Aviv University, Yoram Schweitzer challenged the appropriateness of my offering views on this subject. In "

 


Will Washington Betray Anti-Regime Iranians?

Posted by Daniel Pipes - July 17, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments As the United Nations mandate that legitimizes the presence of U.S forces in Iraq expires on December 31, 2008, a humanitarian and strategic disaster is coming into view. The fate of about 3,500 anti-regime Iranians will be decided in the course of status-of-forces negotiations between Washington and Baghdad. MEK members display their flag as they pass through a U.S. checkpoint in Iraq in 2003 (AFP). They are members of the Mujahedeen-

 


Which Has More Islamist Terrorism, Europe or America?

Posted by Daniel Pipes - July 3, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments "Since 9/11, there have been over 2,300 arrests connected to Islamist terrorism in Europe in contrast to about 60 in the United States." Thus writes Marc Sageman in his influential new book, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press). This one statistical comparison inspires Sageman, in a chapter he calls "The Atlantic Divide," to draw sweeping conclusions about the superior circumstances of American Muslims. "

 


The Enemy Has a Name

Posted by Daniel Pipes - June 19, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments If you cannot name your enemy, how can you defeat it? Just as a physician must identify a disease before curing a patient, so a strategist must identify the foe before winning a war. Yet Westerners have proven reluctant to identify the opponent in the conflict the U.S. government variously (and euphemistically) calls the "global war on terror," the "long war," the "global struggle against violent extremism," or even the "global struggle for security and progress."

 


Prepare to attack [Iran]

Posted by Daniel Pipes - June 11, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments In a declassified National Intelligence Estimate, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, the U.S. intelligence agencies announced last December, "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." This highly controversial conclusion encouraged the Iranian leadership to dismiss the possibility of an American attack, permitting Tehran to stake out an increasingly bellicose position and rendering further negotiations predictably futile.

 


Obama vs. McCain on the Middle East

Posted by Daniel Pipes - June 5, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments With the Democratic Party primaries over, American voters can focus on issues of political substance. For instance: How do the two leading candidates for U.S. president differ in their approach to Israel and related topics? Parallel interviews with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who spoke in early May with Democrat Barack Obama and in late May with Republican John McCain, offer some important insights. John McCain and Barack Obama, in close discussion.

 


Is Turkey’s Government Starting a Muslim Reformation?

Posted by Daniel Pipes - May 22, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments Accounts from Turkey suggest that the government is attempting a bold re-interpretation of Islam. Its unusually named ministry of religion, the "Presidency of Religious Affairs and the Religious Charitable Foundation," has undertaken a three-year "Hadith Project" systematically to review 162,000 hadith reports and winnow them down to some 10,000, with the goal of separating original Islam from the accretions of fourteen centuries.

 


Israel’s Predicament at 60: World’s worst neighbourhood

Posted by Daniel Pipes - May 6, 2008 on 10:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments Two religiously-identified new states emerged from the shards of the British empire in the aftermath of World War II. Israel, of course, was one; the other was Pakistan. They make an interesting, if infrequently-compared pair. Pakistan's experience with widespread poverty, near-constant internal turmoil, and external tensions, culminating in its current status as near-rogue state, suggests the perils that Israel avoided, with its stable, liberal political culture, dynamic economy, cutting-

 


Destroying Sculptures of Muhammad

Posted by Daniel Pipes - February 28, 2008 on 9:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments [J.P. title: "The power of ‘soft' versus violent Islamism"] This cartoon of Muhammad by Kurt Westergaard, published on September 30, 2005, along with eleven others, garned the most attention and anger.

 


Destroying Sculptures of Muhammad

Posted by Daniel Pipes - February 28, 2008 on 9:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments [J.P. title: "The power of ‘soft' versus violent Islamism"] This cartoon of Muhammad by Kurt Westergaard, published on September 30, 2005, along with eleven others, garnered the most attention and anger.

 


Resisting Islamic Law

Posted by Daniel Pipes - February 21, 2008 on 9:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments

Westerners opposed to the application of the Islamic law (the Shari‘a) watch with dismay as it goes from strength to strength in their countries – harems increasingly accepted, a church leader endorsing Islamic law, a judge referring to the Koran, clandestine Muslim courts meting out justice. What can be done to stop the progress of this medieval legal system so deeply at odds with modern life, one that oppresses women and turns non-Muslims into second-class citizens?

 


Winston Churchill Compares “Mein Kampf” to the Koran

Posted by Daniel Pipes Weblog - February 21, 2008 on 9:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments As the Dutch politician Geert Wilders nears the release of his film expected to present the Koran as analogous to Hitler's Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), a point he has already made, it is worth recalling who else has made this comparison. Yes, in recent years, it's become a quite common theme on the right – for example, Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly did so on his show in 2002. But the really interesting comparison is Winston Churchill's, though he did it the other way around. It comes on p.

 


Britain’s Encounter with Islamic Law

Posted by Daniel Pipes - February 13, 2008 on 9:00 am | In DanielPipes | No Comments

Beneath the deceptively placid surface of everyday life, the British population is engaged in a momentous encounter with Islam. Three developments of the past week, each of them culminating years’ long trends – and not just some odd occurrence – exemplify changes now underway. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith describes terrorism as “anti-Islamic.” First, the UK government has decided that terrorism by Muslims in the name of Islam is actually unrelated to Islam, or is even anti-Islamic.

 


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