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Crusader plants new
seeds
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Despite the apparent decision
by US President George W Bush against renominating
him to the board of the US Institute of Peace
(USIP), "anti-Islamist" activist Daniel Pipes is
working as diligently as ever to protect the
United States and the Western world from the
influence of radical Islamists.
He has
proposed the creation of a new "Anti-Islamist
Institute" (AII) designed to expose legal
"political activities" of "Islamists", such as
"prohibiting families from sending pork or pork
by-products to US soldiers serving in Iraq", which
nonetheless, in his view, serve the interests of
radical Islam.
"In the long term ... the
legal activities of Islamists pose as much or even
a greater set of challenges than the illegal
ones," according to the draft of a grant proposal
by Pipes' Middle East Forum (MEF) obtained by
Inter Press Service.
Pipes is also working
with Stephen Schwartz on a new "Center for Islamic
Pluralism" (CIP) whose aims are to "promote
moderate Islam in the US and globally" and "to
oppose the influence of militant Islam, and, in
particular, the Saudi-funded Wahhabi sect of
Islam, among American Muslims, in the America
media, in American education ... and with US
governmental bodies ..."
Schwartz, a
former Trotskyite militant who became a Sufi
Muslim in 1997, has received seed money from MEF,
which is also accepting contributions on CIP's
behalf until the government gives it tax-exempt
legal status, according to another grant proposal
obtained by IPS.
The CIP proposal, which
says it expects to receive funding from
contributors in the "American Shi'ite community"
and in "Sunni mosques once liberated from Wahhabi
influence", also boasts of "strong links" with
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other
notable neo-conservatives, such as former Central
Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey and the
vice president for foreign-policy programming at
the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Danielle
Pletka, as well as with Pipes himself.
Pipes, who created MEF in Philadelphia in
1994, has long campaigned against "radical"
Islamists in the US, especially the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and several
other national Islamic groups.
Long before
the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and
the Pentagon, he also raised alarms about the
immigration of Muslims, suggesting that they
constituted a serious threat to the political
clout of US Jews, as well as a potential "fifth
column" for radical Islamists.
In
addition, Pipes has been a fierce opponent of
Palestinian nationalism. He told Australian
television this month, for example, that Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza-disengagement
plan and his agreement to negotiate with the new
Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, were a
"mistake" because 80% of the Palestinian
population, including Abbas, still favor Israel's
destruction.
In 2002, Pipes launched
"Campus Watch", a group dedicated to monitoring
and exposing alleged anti-Semitic, anti-Israel,
pro-Palestinian and/or Islamist bias in teachers
of Middle Eastern studies at US colleges and
universities.
The group, which invites
students to report on offending professors, has
been assailed as a McCarthyite tactic to stifle
open discussion of Middle East issues.
Pipes' nomination by Bush in 2003 to serve
as a director on the board of the
quasi-governmental USIP, a government-funded
think-tank set up in 1984 to "promote the
prevention, management and peaceful resolution of
international conflicts", moved the controversy
over his work from academe into the US Senate,
where such appointments are virtually always
approved without controversy.
Pipes'
nomination, however, offered a striking exception.
Backed by major Muslim, Arab-American and several
academic groups, Democratic senators, led by
Edward Kennedy, Christopher Dodd and Tom Harkin,
strongly opposed the nomination as inappropriate,
particularly in light of some of his past
writings, including one asserting that Muslim
immigrants were "brown-skinned peoples cooking
strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic
standards of hygiene".
Several Republican
senators subsequently warned Bush that they would
oppose the nomination if it came to a vote, and,
in the end, the president made a "recess
appointment" that gave him a limited term lasting
only until the end of 2004. It appears now that,
despite the enhanced Republican majority in the
Senate, Bush does not intend to renominate him.
Indeed, both the USIP and Bush now
probably regret having nominated him in the first
place. During his board tenure, Pipes blasted USIP
for hosting a conference with the Center for the
Study of Islam and Democracy, charging that it
employed Muslim "radicals" on its staff.
That accusation was publicly refuted by
the USIP itself, which echoed the complaints of
his longtime critics, accusing him of relying on
"quotes taken out of context, guilt by
association, errors of fact, and innuendo".
Pipes also criticized Bush for
"legitimizing" various "Islamist" groups, such as
CAIR and the Arab-American Institute, by
permitting their representatives to take part in
White House and other government ceremonies and
for failing to identify "radical Islam" as "the
enemy" in the war on terror.
His own
disillusionment with Bush is made clear in the AAI
draft, which notes that "creative thinking in this
war of ideas must be initiated outside the
government, for the latter, due to the demands of
political correctness, is not in a position to say
what needs to be said".
AII's goal, it
goes on, "is the delegitimation of the Islamists.
We seek to have them shunned by the government,
the media, the churches, the academy and the
corporate world."
Pipes' complementary
goal - to enhance the influence of "moderate"
Muslims - is to guide the work of Schwartz's CIP,
which is "headed by one born Muslim [its
president] and a 'new Muslim', ie an American not
born in the faith, as its executive director. This
is the best combination for leading such an
effort."
The "extremists", according to
the CIP proposal, are mainly represented by the
"Wahhabi lobby", an array of organizations
consisting of CAIR, the Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust,
the Muslim Students Association of the US and
Canada, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, as well
as "secular" groups, including the AAI and the
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
"The first goal of CIP will be the removal
of CAIR and ISNA from monopoly status in
representing Muslims to the American public," the
proposal goes on. "So long as they retain a major
foothold at the highest political level, no
progress can be made for moderate American Islam."
In achieving its goal, CIP cites the help
it can expect from its "strong links" to
Wolfowitz, Woolsey and Pletka; as well as Senators
Charles Schumer and Jon Kyl, among others,
"terrorism experts" Steven Emerson of the
Investigative Project, Paul Marshall of Freedom
House, and Glen Howard of the Jamestown
Foundation; and journalists such as Fox News
anchors David Asman, Brit Hume and Greta van
Susteren, Dale Hurd of the Christian Broadcasting
Network; and editors at the New York Post, the Los
Angeles Times and the Globe and Mail.
Interviewed by phone, Professor Kemal
Silay, "president-designate" of the CIP who
teaches Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at the
Indiana University, told IPS he was not aware that
he was to be the group's president, but that he
had talked about the group with Schwartz and
agrees with both Pipes and Schwartz about the
dangers posed by "Wahhabi" groups in the US and
the world.
Ali al-Ahmed, director of the
Washington-based Saudi Institute and named as
CIP's research director in the grant proposal,
told IPS he had also talked with Schwartz about
the group and strongly supported its goals,
although he thought several of the groups listed
as part of the "Wahhabi" lobby were more
independent.
He also said that he did not
know that Pipes was involved with the group.
Pipes "sees all Arabs and Muslims the
same, because he has interest in the security of
the state of Israel", said al-Ahmed, who
publicizes human-rights abuses committed in Saudi
Arabia.
Schwartz refused to speak with
IPS.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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