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Western Civilization on Trial: Why We Should Be Watching Geert Wilders

As the Geert Wilders case goes into pre-trial, National Review Online asked our experts: Is there any legitimate reason he's in court? What are the implications of such a trial being held, never mind its outcome? (For replies by Bat Ye'or, Paul Marshall, Clifford D. May, Nina Shea, and Robert Spencer, click here.)

Pro-Wilders demonstrators outside the Amsterdam courthouse where he is to be tried.

Wilders is in court because the Netherlands has no First Amendment and so, endlessly, tries to figure out what speech to permit or prohibit. Wilders is hardly the only victim of this predicament; the arrest and jailing in 2008 of a cartoonist who goes by "Gregorius Nekschot" notoriously symbolized the state's incoherence.

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By Daniel Pipes | February 8, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (11)

Wasting U.S. Taxpayer Money in Afghanistan

A 2009 critique found that the taxpayer has invested some $53 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq since 2003, or about $9 billion a year. Most or all of it has been or will be wasted.

Nonetheless, here we go again, this time in Afghanistan, at least on a small scale. "Marines Invest in Local Afghan Projects" reads the New York Times headline and it provides details of American soldiers making nice, starting with an anecdote from Bograbad, described as an impoverished Afghan village, where American soldiers provided $1,200 for a mosque's new concrete floor and two windows. (Beside the inutility of this gesture, I have severe doubts about its constitutionality, as I elaborate at "The U.S. Government Builds Mosques and Madrassahs.")

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By Daniel Pipes | January 30, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Why Did Nidal Hasan Read the Middle East Forum?

Nidal Malik Hasan.

A startling fact just emerged in the course of some routine maintenance work on the mailing lists for www.DanielPipes.org: One "Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan" has been subscribed as nidalhasan@aol.com since March 2009 to all the Middle East Forum mailing lists, including my own. He opened some but not many of the mailings.

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By Daniel Pipes | December 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (37)

"An Arabist's Guide to Egyptian Colloquial" Now Online

Here is my "Preface,", dated June 1982, to a brief book I wrote titled An Arabist's Guide to Egyptian Colloquial:

Arriving in Cairo for the first time in June 1971, I had two years of Arabic study to my credit, yet I was unable to say anything or understand more than a word here and there. Like so many other students of modern Written Arabic, I was unprepared to deal with the language that Arabs actually speak. To master the Cairene dialect, I acquired a battery of grammars and attended classes at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad [at the American University of Cairo]. Despite excellent teachers, I found the task a frustrating one, for all the manuals assumed no knowledge at all of Arabic and started at the beginning. But I already knew Written Arabic and needed only to learn what adjustments to make to speak the Egyptian colloquial.

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By Daniel Pipes | December 29, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (12)

Janet Napolitano's Mentality

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab smuggled 80 grams of PETN in his underwear on a Northwest flight on Christmas Day from Amsterdam to Detroit and almost killed 288 passengers and crew.

How did the geniuses in the Obama administration respond? Janet ("man-caused disasters") Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, concluded that the system "worked really very, very smoothly."

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By Daniel Pipes | December 28, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (8)

Sheikh Obama and His Two Wars

A visibly embarrassed Barack Obama shows off his Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama's Nobel "lecture" offers critics the usual cornucopia of opportunities for criticism but I shall focus on just two statements:

"I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars." And here I thought there were three wars. Obama's two are Iraq and Afghanistan; missing is what George W. Bush termed the "war on terror" and I call the "war on radical Islam." Obama apparently reduces that third one to Al-Qaeda and counts it as just part of the Afghan war. His mistake has real consequences; long after American troops have left Iraq and Afghanistan, Islamists will be attacking and subverting us. If we don't see their efforts as a war, we lose.

"Religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam." Here, Obama follows his predecessor in presenting himself as an interpreter of Islam. I ridiculed "Imam Bush" for telling Muslims about true Islam and its distortion, and now I must ridicule "Sheikh Obama" for the same. He's a politician, not a theologian. He's now a Christian, not a Muslim. He should steer completely clear from the topic of who are good or bad Muslims. (December 10, 2009)

By Daniel Pipes | December 10, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (60)

Islamists in the West and Public Transportation

Just as Islamists aspire to transform religious symbols, marriage, schools, medical facilities, and other institutions in the West, so they are gunning for public transportation. I have covered two aspects of the taxi wars – liquor and dogs; this weblog entry notes other interesting developments, in reverse chronological order:

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A bus on London's route 24.

Bus driver locks passengers and prays: Noting it was prayer time, a Muslim bus driver on route 24 in Gospel Oak, north London, silently and abruptly stopped his bus, locked the doors, removed his shoes, laid his jacket down in the aisle as a prayer mat facing Mecca, and for five minutes prayed audibly. On finishing, and he wordlessly resumed driving. The passengers, trapped on the bus, unable to get on or off, witnessed this event in stunned silence. One passenger, Gayle Griffiths, 33, recounts what happened:

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By Daniel Pipes | December 10, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Niqabs or Burqas Banned at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Tarek Mehanna.

Tarek Mehanna, 27, was arrested on Oct. 21, 2009, in Sudbury, Massachusetts and charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. He allegedly planned to launch terrorist attacks both inside and outside the United States, specifically planning to attack a shopping mall with automatic weapons. Mehanna was a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS), where his father Ahmed teaches chemistry.

Today, the dean of students at MCPHS issued a directive to students that "any head covering that obscures a student's face may not be worn, either on campus or at clinical sites, except when required for medical reasons." (The full memorandum follows below.)

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By Daniel Pipes | December 8, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (25)

Middle East Studies – A Dangerous Profession

Richard T. Antoun, professor emeritus of anthropology at Binghamton University.

Richard T. Antoun, 77, a professor emeritus of anthropology at Binghamton University, was murdered in his office yesterday, stabbed four times with a 6-inch kitchen knife. This atrocity recalls that, in addition to the figurative brickbats that go with the subject, Middle East studies has a lethal edge.

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By Daniel Pipes | December 6, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (14)

My Words Mangled by Leftists and Islamists - A Bibliography

What is it about Leftists and Islamists that they cannot read straight? Is it the influence of post-modernism or plain old shoddy habits? In any case, I – like so many conservatives – find myself consistently having my words or my intent distorted and having to correct the record.

I have brought together dozens of such instances at a weblog entry titled "Department of Corrections (of Others' Factual Mistakes about Me)." In addition, I wrote up some of the particularly colorful and demonstrably distorted cases in a listing that will be updated as needed (and needed, sadly, it will be needed):

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By Daniel Pipes | November 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (15)

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