Daniel J. Pipes

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Russian Intentions in Syria; Explaining the Turkish Unrest
June 11, Sun News Network, The Arena with Michael Coren

Developments in Syria and Turkey
June 6, Secure Freedom Radio

Happy Israel
June 5, The Washington Times

When Sunni and Shiite Extremists Make War
June 5, National Review Online

The Good News in Turkey
June 4, Los Angeles Times

[Iran:] An Election in Name Only
May 27, Sun News Network, Battleground with David Akin

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Rooting for Jalili

June 14, 2013

Four years ago, almost to the day, I wrote a blog, "Rooting for Ahmadinejad," which explained why I wanted the worst of the candidates on Iran's election day in 2009 to win the election.

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Islamism's Decade of Spreading Polio

June 1, 2013

Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, the doctor who single-handedly kept polio alive.

The polio disease was on the verge of eradication when Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, president of the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria and a physician, suggested at about this time in 2003 that the vaccination program in his country was part of a Western conspiracy to render Muslim children infertile. His call for an end to the polio immunization campaign touched a nerve and spread to other Muslim religious leaders in Nigeria, causing the vaccination process to slow down and incidences of the disease to pick up.

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Hizbullah's Travails in a Graphic

May 27, 2013

The logo of Hizbullah, the Lebanese terror group, consists of a hand emerging from the Arabic spelling of the group's name ("Party of God") clutching an assault rifle, probably an AK-47.

But with the battle of Al-Qusayr underway near Homs, said to be a decisive confrontation in the Syrian civil war and the scene of significant loss of personnel by Hizbullah, a wit who goes by Aiham VAN Syria edited the organization's logo to fit the moment.

First, under a "Before" sign (on the right, Arabic reading from right to left), he shows the real logo.
Then, under an "After" sign (on the left), comes his version. It reads Mishan Allah ("God have mercy" in Syrian dialect) and shows a bandaged hand holding a crutch. (May 26, 2013)

Hizbullah's logo, edited to fit the moment.

Muslim Acts of Beheading in the West

May 23, 2013

Michael Adebolajo after murdering Lee Rigby on May 22, 2013, near London.

The gruesome murder yesterday of a soldier outside London by a Muslim convert, Michael Adebolajo, brings to mind that throat slitting and beheading are Islamically sanctioned forms of execution. Although these occur particularly often in the course of family-related crimes – think, for example, of the case of Aasiya Hassan in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., killed by her husband in 2009, stabbed with two hunting knives more than forty times in the face, back and chest, then beheaded – this monstrous form of violence is also used in non-family instances. Some of those that took place over the past decade in the West in chronological order include:

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Support the Syrian Rebels?

May 11, 2013

A Washington Post article today, "Assad forces gaining ground in Syria" by Liz Sly, argues that recent events suggest that the Assad regime is not just surviving but has gone on the offensive. Drawing on local analysts, she finds that in the civil war, "there is little doubt that the pendulum is now swinging in favor of Assad … bolstered by a new strategy, the support of Iran and Russia and the assistance of fighters with Lebanon's Hezbollah movement."

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Lessons from the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List

April 30, 2013

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's list of "Ten Most Wanted" fugitives dates back to 1950 but the list of "Most Wanted Terrorists" dates back to just after 9/11 and a sense that terrorism had become a strategic threat. Today, the list includes 31 individuals, all of them male and with a single exception (Daniel Andreas San Diego, an animal rights extremist), all of them Muslim:

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Viscount Samuel, Meet Secretary Hagel

April 25, 2013

Sir Herbert Samuel.

Emerging from intense controversy, the British politician Herbert Samuel (1870-1963) was appointed the first High Commissioner of Palestine, where he served 1920-25. A Jew and an influential Zionist, Samuel bent over backwards not to favor the Yishuv, to the point that he forwarded the interests of the Palestinians most hostile to the Jewish presence. Most notoriously, Samuel appointed Amin al-Husseini as mufti of Palestine, a position which Husseini used to become the most powerful figure in the mandate and the Palestinian who did the most-ever damage to Zionism (yes, even more so than his nephew Yasir Arafat).

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Boston Bombing Lesson: Ban Niqabs and Burqas

April 21, 2013

The Tsarnaev brothers pulled off their terrorist attack with great skill but made a fatal mistake in letting their faces and bodies be seen at a heavily photographed international sporting event. This meant that multiple images of them were available for a massive law enforcement squad to comb over and, after three days, identify them by name and appearance.

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"U.S. Fears Syria Rebel Victory, for Now"

April 17, 2013

The commentariat universally rejected my Apr. 11 column arguing that Western governments should "Support Assad" on the grounds that he is losing and we don't want the Islamist rebels to win in Syria but prefer a stalemate. An Arabic website in France threatened me.

Fine. But the Wall Street Journal today reports in "U.S. Fears Syria Rebel Victory, for Now" by Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes that the Obama administration is in fact following my counsel. To start with, the U.S. government fears "an outright rebel military victory":

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140,000 Canisters of U.S. Teargas to Egypt's Morsi

April 14, 2013

The Egyptian publication Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that the U.S. government has supplied five containers carrying 140,000 teargas canisters to Egypt's Interior Ministry. It further reports that this shipment left Wilmington, Delaware, on Mar. 14 aboard the SS Jamestown and that it has just arrived the port of Suez. They cost the Egyptian government just under US$2.5 million. According to ministry spokesperson Hani Abdel Latif, the ministry imported the grenades in order to protect state facilities.

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