Pipes finally admits the problem is Islam, not "radical" Islam

Pipes finally admits the problem is Islam, not "radical" Islam

by Lawrence Auster at View from the Right

In his article Tuesday at FrontPage Magazine, Daniel Pipes has given up the ghost on his long-held fantasy that the "real" Islam is "moderate" Islam and that the bad Islam is only the creation of modern ideological movements. Over and over, he describes our Islamic adversary, not as "radical" Islam, but as "Islam," not as "Islamists," but as "Muslims." Here are excerpts from the article:

"The key issue at stake in the battle over the twelve Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad is this: will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? ..."

"More specifically, will Westerners accede to a double standard by which Muslims are free to insult Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, while Muhammad, Islam, and Muslims enjoy an immunity from insults? Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more offensive than the Danish ones; are they entitled to dish it out while being insulated from similar indignities?..."

"The deeper issue here, however, is not Muslim hypocrisy but Islamic supremacism. The Danish editor who published the cartoons, Flemming Rose, explained that if Muslims insist "that I, as a non-Muslim, should submit to their taboos ... they're asking for my submission."..."

"... Western governments should take a crash course on Islamic law and the historically-abiding Muslim imperative to subjugate non-Muslim peoples.They might start by reading the forthcoming book by Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale)."


Of course, Pipes, as he always does, will soon contradict himself and go back to saying that Islam is historically a peaceful, non-coercive, spiritual religion and that only modern "Islamism" is a danger. But he can no longer take back what he's said so plainly here.

Also, while it's great that Pipes has at long last unambiguously stated the truth about Islam, we must sadly note his pettiness. Let me explain. Though known as an Islam scholar, Pipes has never written about Islamic law in any serious way in his columns. He's avoided the subject, for two reasons. First, Islamic law has never been his area of study (his doctoral thesis was on Islamic slave-soldiers), and second, because Pipes has a romantic attachment to Islam (which I discuss at length here), and even a superficial knowledge of Islamic law shows that historical Islam is in fact that selfsame "radical" and "militant" Islam that Pipes says only began in the twentieth century. Thus he has virtually ignored the work of writers like Bat Ye'or and Andrew Bostom who have focused on historical Islamic doctrine and practice, though he has complimented Bat Ye'or's work.

And now, when he finally is ready to acknowledge the importance of Islamic law and the historically-abiding Muslim imperative to subjugate non-Muslim peoples, what does Pipes do? Instead of referencing Bostom's extraordinary book The Legacy of Jihad, which just happens to be the most complete critical compilation ever published of Islamic law and the historically-abiding Muslim imperative to subjugate non-Muslim peoples, he references a book that hasn't even been published yet and may not be published for months. (It reminds of how Pipes a couple of years ago advised his readers not to read the Koran, since it is too hard for the uninitiated to understand, but to rely on experts' interpretations of it. The problem with this approach is that the experts will never tell you what you can only find out by reading the Koran yourself: that it is an almost continuous call, full of sadism and vindictiveness, for the violent death and eternal torture of everyone who declines to acknowledge Muhammad as the prophet of God.)

In the initial draft of this blog entry, I said: "Of course, Pipes, as he always does, will soon contradict himself and go back to saying that Islam is historically a peaceful, non-coercive, spiritual religion and that only modern Islamism is a danger." When I said, "soon," I was thinking, maybe later this week or next week. In fact, Pipes has outdone his own Whitmanesque record: he's contradicted himself in a different article on the same day. In an NRO symposium today on Islam, he writes:

"It is a tragic mistake to lump all Muslims with the forces of darkness. Moderate, enlightened, free-thinking Muslims do exist. Hounded in their own circles, they look to the West for succor and support. And, however weak they may presently be, they eventually will have a crucial role in modernizing the Muslim world."

This position is what we might call the Pipes Islam Thesis Number Two. In order to understand it, we first need to discuss Pipes Islam Thesis Number One. Pipes Islam Thesis Number One says that Islam has always been moderate and enlightened and never coercive; has always been culturally rich and pluralistic; has always been kinder to Jews than that nasty Christendom; and that Islam only went off the tracks in modern times because of various social pathologies and the rise of totalitarian ideologies, which were combined with Islam to create Islamism. Accordingly, all that's needed to make things right is to restore the true Islam that has existed for 1,300 years.

By contrast, Pipes Islam Thesis Number Two says that Islam has always been warlike, and that there has never been a moderate Islam, but that there are a tiny number of powerless, harassed, moderate Muslims who, if America wages war against and defeats the dominant radical Islam, can be nurtured into the leadership of a new, moderate Islam. In the past, Pipes has always made his proposal to transform Islam seem less implausible by shading his descriptions of the actual, historical Islam, not describing it so categorically as I have done in this paragraph. For example, he has discussed Islamic law and doctrine (the very thing that makes Islam eternally what it is) extremely rarely and briefly, if at all, as I noted above.

But in his FrontPage article today, he has, for the first time that I'm aware of, laid out in categorical terms the real nature of historical and actually existing Islam:

"The deeper issue here, however, is not Muslim hypocrisy but Islamic supremacism.... Western governments should take a crash course on Islamic law and the historically-abiding Muslim imperative to subjugate non-Muslim peoples."
Unfortunately for Pipes, this beefed-up version of his Thesis Number One has contradictions that even the most enthusiastic of his fans could not fail to notice. If Islam has a historically abiding imperative, based in Islamic law, to subjugate non-Muslim peoples, how can we Americans imagine that we have the ability to change Islam into a peaceful, liberal, tolerant civilization, the opposite of what it's always been? The heart of the confusion, which allows Pipes to get away with this contradiction (and I'm not saying it's conscious on his part), is the confusion between the phrase "moderate Muslims," which carries the sense of an obligation to help the moderate Muslims as individuals, and the phrase "moderate Islam," which carries the sense of an obligation to transform Islam as whole.

There is a great difference between saying, "Let's welcome into the West those individual moderate Muslims and apostates whose spirits long for release from the oppressions of Islam," and saying, "Let us reform the entire Islamic world into a liberal society, which we can only do by militarily defeating and then remaking the Muslim world." Pipes, probably without even realizing it, allows the plausible idea, of helping individual Muslims to escape from Islam, to be conflated with the utopian and insane idea, of transforming Islam itself. But now that Pipes has for the first time categorically described the sacred imperative of historical Islam to subdue the world, the impossibility of the latter scenario, in which a 1,400-year-old warlike totalitarian religion is turned into something amenable to liberal democracy, becomes too evident to ignore.

Here's the bottom line: With the open declaration of civilizational war by the Muslims in the Cartoon Jihad, and Pipes's honest response to it, the internal contradictions of Danielpipesism have reached the breaking point.

Posted by Jerry Gordon at February 8, 2006 10:17 AM

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Comments

1. Ted Belman said:

Great observations.

Posted by: Ted Belman on February 8, 2006 11:00 AM

2. Jeff said:

Sam Harris on the Reality of Islam
Email Print


Posted on Feb. 7, 2006


From Wikipedia.org
This fragment of the Koran (Sura 33,
Verse 73-74) translates in part as
“...That God may chastise the
hypocrites, men and women alike,
and the idolaters, men and
women alike...” (A.J. Arberry
translation). Idolatry is at the
center of the Muslim outrage over
the satirical Muhammad cartoons.
(Hat tip in the translation: Truthdig’s
resident Arabic scholar Tyler Golson.)

By Sam Harris

Verses from the Koran

Pop Up: Quotations instructing observant Muslims to despise nonbelievers.

In recent days, crowds of thousands have gathered throughout the Muslim world—burning European embassies, issuing threats, and even taking hostages—in protest over 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper last September. The problem is not merely that the cartoons were mildly derogatory. The furor primarily erupted over the fact that the Prophet had been depicted at all. Muslims consider any physical rendering of Muhammad to be an act of idolatry. And idolatry is punishable by death. Criticism of Muhammad or his teaching—which was also implicit in the cartoons—is considered blasphemy. As it turns out, blasphemy is also punishable by death. So pious Muslims have two reasons to “not accept less than a severing of the heads of those responsible,” as was recently elucidated by a preacher at the Al Omari mosque in Gaza.

The religious hysteria has not been confined to the “extremists” of the Muslim world. Seventeen Arab governments issued a joint statement of protest, calling for the punishment of those responsible. Pakistan’s parliament unanimously condemned the drawings as a “vicious, outrageous and provocative campaign” that has “hurt the faith and feelings of Muslims all over the world.” Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while still seeking his nation’s entry into the European Union, nevertheless declared that the cartoons were an attack upon the “spiritual values” of Muslims everywhere. The leader of Lebanon’s governing Hezbollah faction observed that the whole episode could have been avoided if only the novelist Salman Rushdie had been properly slaughtered for writing “The Satanic Verses.”

Let us take stock of the moral intuitions now on display in the House of Islam: On Aug. 17, 2005, an Iraqi insurgent helped collect the injured survivors of a car bombing, rushed them to a hospital and then detonated his own bomb, murdering those who were already mortally wounded as well as the doctors and nurses struggling to save their lives. Where were the cries of outrage from the Muslim world? Religious sociopaths kill innocents by the hundreds in the capitols of Europe, blow up the offices of the U.N. and the Red Cross, purposefully annihilate crowds of children gathered to collect candy from U.S. soldiers on the streets of Baghdad, kidnap journalists, behead them, and the videos of their butchery become the most popular form of pornography in the Muslim world, and no one utters a word of protest because these atrocities have been perpetrated “in defense of Islam.” But draw a picture of the Prophet, and pious mobs convulse with pious rage. One could hardly ask for a better example of religious dogmatism and its pseudo-morality eclipsing basic, human goodness.

It is time we recognized—and obliged the Muslim world to recognize—that “Muslim extremism” is not extreme among Muslims. Mainstream Islam itself represents an extremist rejection of intellectual honesty, gender equality, secular politics and genuine pluralism. The truth about Islam is as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all fringe and no center. In Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into our world.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe. The demographic trends are ominous: Given current birthrates, France could be a majority Muslim country in 25 years, and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow. Throughout Western Europe, Muslim immigrants show little inclination to acquire the secular and civil values of their host countries, and yet exploit these values to the utmost—demanding tolerance for their backwardness, their misogyny, their anti-Semitism, and the genocidal hatred that is regularly preached in their mosques. Political correctness and fears of racism have rendered many secular Europeans incapable of opposing the terrifying religious commitments of the extremists in their midst. In an effort to appease the lunatic furor arising in the Muslim world in response to the publication of the Danish cartoons, many Western leaders have offered apologies for exercising the very freedoms that are constitutive of civil society in the 21st century. The U.S. and British governments have chastised Denmark and the other countries that published the cartoons for privileging freedom of speech over religious sensitivity. It is not often that one sees the most powerful countries on Earth achieve new depths of weakness, moral exhaustion and geopolitical stupidity with a single gesture. This was appeasement at its most abject.

The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion hijacked by extremists” is a dangerous fantasy—and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge. It is not at all clear how we should proceed in our dialogue with the Muslim world, but deluding ourselves with euphemisms is not the answer. It now appears to be a truism in foreign policy circles that real reform in the Muslim world cannot be imposed from the outside. But it is important to recognize why this is so—it is so because the Muslim world is utterly deranged by its religious tribalism. In confronting the religious literalism and ignorance of the Muslim world, we must appreciate how terrifyingly isolated Muslims have become in intellectual terms. The problem is especially acute in the Arab world. Consider: According to the United Nations’ Arab Human Development Reports, less than 2% of Arabs have access to the Internet. Arabs represent 5% of the world’s population and yet produce only 1% of the world’s books, most of them religious. In fact, Spain translates more books into Spanish each year than the entire Arab world has translated into Arabic since the ninth century.

Our press should report on the terrifying state of discourse in the Arab press, exposing the degree to which it is a tissue of lies, conspiracy theories and exhortations to recapture the glories of the seventh century. All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the Earth. Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with their coreligionists. Otherwise, we will have to win some very terrible wars in the future. It is time we realized that the endgame for civilization is not political correctness. It is not respect for the abject religious certainties of the mob. It is reason.

Posted by: Jeff on February 8, 2006 12:17 PM

3. scott said:

Islam is the Trojan Horse that conceals Islamists.

Posted by: scott on February 8, 2006 01:56 PM

4. Ed D said:

Congratulation, Jeff, for that great explanation of Islam. If only citizens of the free world would be more concious of the dangerous world we face instead of how much their stocks and bonds increase in value.

Posted by: Ed D on February 8, 2006 02:36 PM

5. Bill Narvey said:

Reading Lawrence Auster's current attack on Daniel Pipes and his previous attacks first appearing I gather on Frontpage Magazine several weeks ago, I am getting the impression that Lawrence Auster is seeking to displace Pipes as one of the leading Western voices on Islam and replace him with himself.

Much of what Asuter contends regarding contradictions on Daniel Pipes' writings seem to be well founded or at least points fairly made. It does call for a response from Pipes' failing which Auster's unchallenged assertions will gain greater credibility.

Auster is contending that Islam is a religion of war which seeks to destroy all non-Muslims, claim their territory as Islamic territory, to convert all surviving non-Muslims or dominate and subjugate those non-Muslims who will not convert. Auster also contends that it is the nature of Islam that prevents it being reformed.

One of the problems I have had with Daniel Pipes' writings is his repeated reference to Moderate Islam or Moderate Muslims, without including a definition of the word moderate. Obviously Pipes would not include those radical Islamists who are fanatical homocidal maniacs in the cause of Islam. He likely also would not include those who give radical Muslims safe haven or directly supply or facilitate the supply of these radicals with weapons.

The meaning of the adjective "moderate" starts getting fuzzy after that. We know that Saudi Arabia has spread the radical Wahabii version of Islam throughout the world. It has also been complicit in indirect funding of terrorism. The Saudis a number of years back held a telethon to raise money for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and to that extent gave direct encouragement for such terrorism to continue.

Are the Saudis moderates? What of other Muslim states that put out vile and vicious hate filled cartoons and op-eds regarding Israel, Jews, America and the West? Even if they may not directly fund terrorism, their inciting their populations to hatred certainly gives the population reason to count radical Islamists as their heroes.

Are these other Muslim states moderate?

The OIC represents 56 Muslim states. They are the ones that sponsor the countless annual politicized anti-Israel U.N. Resolutions. Is the OIC and the 56 OIC member states moderate?

Just who is Daniel Pipes referring to when he speaks of moderate Islam and moderate Muslims? I have no idea and that is what has struck me as wanting in much of Daniel Pipes writings, as well informed and insightful as they have been.

As for Lawrence Auster, I find his self proclaimed right wing views fundamentally flawed as well. He fails to recognize that there are some Muslims who have spoken out about reforming Islam and who preach a gospel of peace, harmony and compatibility with the West. Most of these Muslims are Western voices and they are relatively few and far between. Still they exist as do a great many silent Muslims who go about their day to day lives in the West, probably influenced more by Western views and conventions than radical Islamist notions.

In the Koran as has been reported often, there are passages that speak to values and morals that are compatible with Western values, just as there are passages that are an anathema to Western values.

I can only imagine that reform of Islam to make it compatible with Western values would be for Muslims to ignore all the Koranic edicts that are inconsistent with Western values and which call for mayhem, death and domination of all non-Muslims and just follow the edits of Islam that are compatible with Western values.

While I do think there can be an Islamic reformation along these lines, I do not see it happening in my lifetime or that of my children.

The threat of Islam to the West is now, immediate and pressing. The West has faltered in defending itself from radical Islam for many reasons including fear of what 1.3 billion Muslims could do if they chose to align more with radical Islam and become more activist in the process.

The West does not have the luxury of time for Islam to reform. It must act now to stand up to and defeat the homicidal radical Muslims. After defeating radical Islam, Islam can take its own sweet time to reform, if it ever will, but until then the West will have taken steps now to ensure that Islam will not ever again threaten the West.

When considering Daniel Pipes writings and Lawrence Auster's views, including his taking Daniel Pipes to task, both Pipes and Auster are in the end advocating the same thing.

Both Pipes and Auster are saying that the West must unite and act decisively to thwart the intentions of radical Islam and completely disable radical Islam and all its radical Muslim adherents from ever pursuing their goals to destroy and dominate the West.

Posted by: Bill Narvey on February 9, 2006 09:54 AM

6. t said:

I must disagree in part with Mr. NArvey's comments.If you eliminate the megative from the Koran{which it mostly is), are you not destroying the true essence of Islam? Thus creating a new selective doctrine. I believe that the whole religion is tragically flawed. The Muslims of whom you speak are not true followers of Islam but rather a modified form based more on Judeo-Christian values. Let's call a spade a spade.

Posted by: t on February 9, 2006 02:41 PM

7. Bill Narvey said:

T,

I do not know the answer to your question for I am not learned enough about Islam to say that it is mostly negative.

I understand that the Koran is considered the literal and immutable word of God through Mohammed. While there are various interpretations of the passages, the Koran is the Koran.

I would expect that both the peaceful and warlike edicts in the Koran now make up the essence of the Koran.

A religion however is defined on the ground.

Early Christians were warlike and sadistically aggressive in their zeal to spread the word of Jesus, not unlike radical Islamists today.

Though Christianity has swum through rivers of blood it let loose, was deaf to the cries of anguish and pain it caused and gloating over the countless bodies it left in its wake, the essence of Christianity today is no longer the blood lust of days gone by. Anti-Semitism does survive in the minds and hearts of some Christians, but most I would like to think have put that in the past as well and stand against it.

Islam too is defined on the ground. No matter what Muslims say that it is a religion of peace and harmony, so long as radical Islam speaks loudest for Islam and the rest of the Muslim world is silent, Islam is what Islam does and what radical Islam says it is.

It does not always have to be this way.

If the radical Muslim leadership is replaced some time in the future with those of the opposite and peaceful view and it is they who speak for Islam, I can see Islam reforming.

One way that could happen is that the harsh aggressive, hateful and warlike edicts of the Koran, while still considered the word of Allah, would be viewed as having been necessary in the past to meet challenges to Islam, but those challenges are no more. In such case if the majority of practicing Muslims become peaceful and actively seek compatibility with the West, they would consider only those edicts of the Koran that further the objective of tolerance, peace and harmony with non-Muslims need be followed, for those are the edicts to meet the new challenges.

That would be one way Islam could reform. If and how Islam does reform is probably a few generations away at least. The West simply cannot wait for Islam to reform. The west is endangered now.

Posted by: Bill Narvey on February 9, 2006 06:47 PM

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