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Articles and Blog Posts by Daniel Pipes
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For those who follow international politics, the days following Israel's June 13 attack on Iran meant an addictive check of the smartphone every few hours to learn the latest twist. From that avalanche of surprises, twelve stand out, one marking each day of the Twelve-Day War. A question about the future follows each historical snippet.
For starters, the American side:
1. The White House cowboy succeeded
An uninhibited, reckless, norm-breaking egomaniac dominates American public life as no politician in 236 years. Yes, Donald Trump served as president once before, but he then felt relatively constrained. Four years out of power, some of it sitting humiliated in a dingy courtroom, meant a return to the presidency raring to do things his way, ignoring customs, caution, and propriety. This initially played out domestically, with an unprecedented assertiveness vis-à-vis the executive branch, Congress, and the courts. The Israel-Iran War took it to the world stage, with Trump apparently solo extemporizing his own rules, strategies, and communications, startling even his own aides. To a remarkable extent, his efforts worked. Is this a one-time fluke or a sign of things to come?
Continue ReadingIs it true that Israel 'stole Palestine'? No, it is false
Attempts to undermine Israel's legitimacy with claims of land theft' are ironic ... and wrong
by Daniel Pipes • June 14, 2025 • Australian
How best to undermine Israel's legitimacy as a country? Simple, argue that it came into existence through "the theft of Palestine" and the expulsion of its people.
Thus does a learned book carry the title The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and the Palestinian Authority (PA) holds that "Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people," then "established their state upon the ruins of the Palestinian Arab people." In all, this caused a catastrophe "unprecedented in history," no less.
International organizations, newspaper editorials, and faculty petitions pick up these accusations and spread them worldwide. For example, Independent Australia bemoans the historic "theft of Palestine" and the Australasian Muslim Times goes further, complaining about the "wholesale land theft of Palestine and Australia."
Trump's Travel Ban Protects Jews
The Boulder attack is part of a long history of antisemitic violence by immigrant Muslims
by Daniel Pipes • June 9, 2025 • Wall Street Journal
It's no coincidence that President Trump's decision fully to restrict the entry of nationals from 12 countries, including six Muslim-majority ones, and review the screening practices of Egypt, immediately followed the June 1 antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colo.
That day Mohamed Sabry Soliman—a migrant from Egypt who overstayed his visa—taped himself telling his family "Jihad for God's sake is more beloved to me than you," as translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute. Mr. Solimon packed a Quran and 18 Molotov cocktails into his car, then threw incendiaries at people marching for the hostages in Gaza, injuring 15.
Updates on the Persecution of Alawites
by Daniel Pipes • June 4, 2025
My article "'Are you Alawite?': A Call to Prevent Genocide in Syria" covers the experience of Alawites under the Sunni regime that came to power in December 2024. This blog continues coverage of that topic.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, members of security checkpoint for sectarian reasons executed eight civilians and injured five others — all Alawite, traveling in bus in the Hama countryside. (June 4, 2025)
June 5, 2025 update: A BBC podcast, "The Future of the Alawites," contains much interesting information, especially on the Alawite practice of taqiya, or religious dissimulation. The interviewer quotes "a local Alawite cleric" named Ali Asi:
The local Alawite cleric, Ali Asi, tells me he feels the international community is not supporting these Syrians because they are accused of being remnants of the Assad regime. I am also struck by how often Alawites have emphasized to me that they are Muslims. I asked cleric Asi how their practices differ from Sunni and Shia Islam.
"Are you Alawite?"
A Call to Prevent Genocide in Syria
by Daniel Pipes • Summer 2025 • Middle East Quarterly
No one knows how many unarmed Alawites were killed in Syria between March 6 and 10, 2025, but Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma estimates more than three thousand. While Alawites constitute but a small religious community, perhaps 10 percent of Syria's 15 million resident population, they suffer from a position of unique prominence and vulnerability.
In brief, throughout the centuries, the Alawites stood out as Syria's most isolated, impoverished, despised, and oppressed ethnicity. Only when generals from their community seized power in Damascus in 1966 did the power balance change in their favor. But the Alawites' ruthless domination of Syria for the next 58 years caused the country's majority Sunni Muslim population to rebel, leading to a full-scale civil war that began in 2011 and ended in December 2024, when Sunnis overthrew Alawite rule and returned to power. Recent events point to an ominous Sunni desire for retribution.
by Daniel Pipes • April 7, 2025
I published an article on April 4, "Gazans, 'The Bravest People on Earth,' Confront Hamas" about the activities that peaked in late March. The protests continue but the media tends to ignore them, so X provides much of the information. Here are some captions of recent videos:
Ariel Oseran: "Thousands of Gazans are out in the streets of Jabalia, Northern Gaza, in renewed anti-Hamas protests. Crowds are chanting, 'Hamas are scum, Hamas are terrorists!'"
In Jabalia, Gazans are flooding the streets chanting:
"No siege and no destruction — we want to live with dignity and stability."
"Spread the message: Hamas is garbage."
"Hamas is a terrorist organization."
"Osama Hamdan is a spy."
"Sami Abu Zuhri is a collaborator."
Awdeh TV: "Demonstrations have renewed in the Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip that demand an end to the war and the departure of Hamas." (April 7, 2025)
Apr. 8, 2025 update: Bassam Eid:
Gazans, 'The Bravest People on Earth,' Confront Hamas
by Daniel Pipes • April 5, 2025 • Australian
Events
Starting on March 25, crowds of overwhelmingly young male Gazans have marched by the thousands through streets flanked by destroyed buildings, bellowing out slogans and carrying signs. Proceeding peacefully with uncovered faces in broad daylight, speaking angrily into close-up video cameras, they assail not Israel but Hamas, their jihadist overlords. If Jerusalem pays them attention, their protest could mark a positive turning point in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
This spontaneous, unforeseen event began with mourners at a funeral in the Beit Lahiya district of the Gaza Strip, then spread. Their slogans including the following, which I personally witnessed in videos:
"Do Not Leave Any Alive"
Sunnis vs. Alawites in Syria
by Daniel Pipes • March 22, 2025 • Australian
No one knows how many unarmed Alawites were killed in Syria between March 6 and 10, but University of Oklahoma Middle East studies professor Joshua Landis estimates more than 3000.
While Alawites constitute but a small religious community in Syria, perhaps 10 per cent of the country's 15 million resident population, they suffer from a unique prominence and vulnerability.
Through a millennium, they stood out as Syria's most isolated, impoverished, despised and oppressed ethnicity. Only when generals from their community seized power in Damascus in 1966 did the power balance change.
But the ruthless domination of Syria by Alawites for the next 58 years caused the country's majority Sunni Muslim population in 2011 to rebel, leading to a full-scale civil war that ended in December 2024 when Sunnis overthrew Alawite rule and returned to power.
Recent events point to an ominous Sunni desire for retribution. To understand its sources and implications requires a look at the past.
review of Slavery, Abolition, and Islam: Debating Freedom in the Islamic Tradition
by Daniel Pipes • Spring 2025 • Middle East Quarterly
Bashir signals his outlook in the first paragraph: "Let us for a moment imagine a world in which Muslim seminaries are training scholars to actively challenge 'modern slavery' across the globe." Having established that, he poses a first question, one derived from Muhammad Abduh: Given that Islam "eagerly anticipates the liberation of slaves, why have Muslims spent centuries enslaving the free?" Then comes a second question: How did it come to be that "In the contemporary world, Muslim nations have unanimously rejected the institution of slavery on numerous occasions"?
Despite his requisite fashionable academic signaling, invoking Edward Said and bashing Bernard Lewis, Bashir offers a sophisticated analysis that reviews classic Qur'anic exegesis and classic legal rulings, then looks at reform ideas generally before focusing on two main schools of interpretation: what he calls Qur'anic abolition and Qur'anic gradualism. The final section attempts to reconcile these many contradictions, exploring "why there remain such clear differences among scholars."
review of Possessed by the Right Hand: The Problem of Slavery in Islamic Law and Muslim Cultures
by Daniel Pipes • Spring 2025 • Middle East Quarterly
Recalling Muhammad's apocryphal last words about Muslims needing to take care of their slaves, Freamon, a Black American Muslim and professor emeritus at Seton Hall Law School, argues that they "have not lived up to this admonition" either in law or in practice. Writing with anguish in his large, rambling, and original study, he calls these "vexing problems ... that have never been solved." Possessed by the Right Hand explains this discrepancy and then offers a remedy.
Freamon expresses dismay at Islamic scholars' endorsement of slavery: That they "would ignore and sometimes give their imprimatur to the horrific practices of slave raiders and slave dealers for over 1,300 years raises profound and deeply disturbing questions about the viability of Islamic law as an effective legal tool for reform and progress, particularly in the colonial and post-colonial eras."
Thus, while "Hindu and Buddhist slavery eventually died out ... slavery and slave trading in Muslim communities in the region [of South Asia] did not." Rather, "the illusion of abolition occurred across much of the Muslim world." Indeed, "the abolition of slavery in the Muslim world has been an illusion and will remain illusory if Muslims do not come to grips with the problem." Worse, "attitudes toward [slaves] in the Muslim world have not improved and perhaps have even gotten worse."
review of Reform and Its Perils in Contemporary Islam
by Daniel Pipes • Spring 2025 • Middle East Quarterly
In her interesting and significant book, Oweidat, a historian at Kansas State University, focuses for three reasons on the life and work of Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943-2010).
First, in a case that attracted international attention, a Cairo court in 1995 ruled that the writings of a mild-mannered and then-obscure professor of Arabic language and literature rendered him an apostate from Islam. For good measure, the court also nullified Abu Zayd's marriage, forcing him and his wife to flee to Europe. As such, he personifies the "peril" in the title.
Second, Abu Zayd claimed to be "among those few who have been trying to keep the Qur'an relevant to the modern age," and Oweidat agrees with him. She sees Abu Zayd as "a representative of modernist Islamic thought" and someone who "carved an exceptional place for himself in contemporary Islamic thought." His work is "uniquely rich." Indeed, "In some ways, his work is nothing short of revolutionizing the field of interpreting the Qur'an." She expects that "Abu Zayd will continue to shape the conversation into the future" about traditional Islam and modernity.
review of Oman's Transformation After 1970
by Daniel Pipes • Spring 2025 • Middle East Quarterly
Connoisseurs of improbable history will forever appreciate Oman in 1970. That is when the 59-year-old sultan of the world's most insular and backward-looking government, Sa'id bin Taimur, found himself deposed by his 29-year-old son, Qaboos, who turned out to be a relentless modernizer throughout his half-century reign.
Peterson's understated description of that palace coup d'état includes such memorable passages as: on the day of the event, Sa'id spent "his afternoon counting his money"; confronted by Qaboos's demand that he sign a letter of abdication, Sa'id "grabbed a pistol and started firing," killing one person and wounding another; after this, Sa'id "barricaded himself in his bedroom"; a British military ally of Qaboos, Edward Turnill, used a megaphone to call on Sa'id and two slaves to surrender, "but the only answer was several bursts of automatic fire"; Turnill ordered his troops to storm the sultan's bedroom; after an exchange of gunfire, Sa'id's "voice was heard from inside the bedroom, shouting that he had shot himself. Turnill persuaded the sultan to open the door. When he entered alone and unarmed, the sultan was behind his desk holding two pistols. Turnill asked him to hand them over and Sultan Sa'id did so, saying 'I don't think I will need these any more'."
review of Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East
by Daniel Pipes • Spring 2025 • Middle East Quarterly
Strangely, as the decades pass since the Nazi regime fell in 1945, historians assess its impact on the Middle East as greater and greater; Küntzel's excellent study adds significantly to that process. Coming out of a far-left background, for the past quarter century he has focused his great talents on antisemitism in general and the German role in particular.
This book, a fine translation of Nazis und der Nahe Osten: Wie der islamische Antisemitismus entstand (2019), views the Arab attack on the nascent Israeli state in 1948 as an "aftershock" of the Holocaust. The author explains:
the Nazis' antisemitic propaganda was one of the decisive factors that led to the Arab states going to war against Israel in May 1948. I show that there is an ideological link between the Nazi war against the Jews and the Arab war against Israel three years later so that the latter can be interpreted as a kind of aftershock of the great catastrophe of 1939–1945.
More broadly, "rather than antisemitism resulting from the exacerbation of the Middle Eastern conflict, it was the other way round: antisemitism exacerbated the conflict."
Angry Conservatives, Explained
by Daniel Pipes • March 1, 2025 • Boston Globe
The fiasco Friday, with President Trump bullying and insulting Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, is one of the worst diplomatic incidents in U.S. history. It mortifies me as an American and a conservative — and especially as someone who, reluctantly, voted for Trump in the 2020 and 2024 general elections.
I voted for Trump because he aspires to reverse lax border controls and to dismantle the administrative state (agencies of the executive branch that write, judge, and enforce their own laws), progressive educational institutions, racial preferences, and "woke" gender ideology.
But Trump 2.0 has in just over a month pushed me, a traditional conservative, to agree with Democrats on many key issues: that Russia began the war against Ukraine and must be defeated, that America needs free trade, a strong NATO alliance, anti-bribery laws, press freedom, an independent judiciary, and federalism. Additionally, I trust vaccines, mistrust cryptocurrencies, and respect the 2020 presidential election result.
The Genteel Martyrdom of Israel Haters
by Daniel Pipes • February 22, 2025 • Australian
Melbourne-based supporters of Hamas, the Palestinian jihadist organization, have engaged in puzzling acts of aggression since Oct. 7, 2023. Why did they break into the University of Melbourne's main library, cause damage on many floors, and destroy expensive book-scanning equipment? Why injure 24 police officers with rocks, acid, and manure outside a defense exposition? Why invade a Starbucks store, chant anti-Israel slogans, steal merchandise, and spit on a barista?
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