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Abba Eban Speaks on Israel's 10th Anniversary
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 8 May 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7)
Excerpt: On the occasion today of Israel's 60th anniversary, going back fifty years and watching a television interview on April 12, 1958, with the country's then-ambassador to the United States, Abba Eban, offers both an insight into what has changed and what ...
Responding to Joshua Muravchik about "Moderate Islamists"
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 1 May 2008 | Permalink | Comments (35)
Excerpt: Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute began a debate with me on the subject of lawful Islamists in a June 2007 piece titled "Pipes v. Gershman," to which I responded on July 6, 2007 at "When Conservatives Argue about Islam." Muravchik ...
Laurie Mylroie's Shoddy, Loopy, Zany Theories – Exposed
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 30 Apr 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: Andrew McCarthy, the U.S. prosecutor who successfully put away Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, has finally written the piece that many of us have long intended to do but never got around to doing – exposing the work of Laurie Mylroie.I met Mylroie ...
Predicting the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 23 Apr 2008 at 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (29)
Excerpt: In March 2004, I took a risk and in a blog titled "Predictions about the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election" stated that "I expect the U.S. presidential election in 2004 will be a Bush blow-out, reminiscent of 1984." Today, I took a similar trip out on a ...
Exposed: A University Grovels for Saudi Money
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 22 Apr 2008 at 4:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Excerpt: Richard Kerbaj, the Australian's extraordinary young reporter, has himself another scoop, one that reveals the inner workings of Brisbane-based Griffith University's efforts to win A$1.37 million in Saudi funding for its "Islamic Research Unit." ...
Mecca Mean Time?
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 21 Apr 2008 | Permalink | Comments (10)
Excerpt: That Greenwich Mean Time became universally accepted resulted from centuries of British cultivation of the maritime sciences. Although replaced by the technically more advanced Coordinated Universal Time, GMT remains in place; more importantly, perhaps, ...
Those Gentle Humanitarians at Fatah
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 17 Apr 2008 | Permalink | Comments (5)
Excerpt: In addition to Fatah clearly and explicitly wanting to eliminate Israel; for a fresh example see the statement on April 9 by the Palestinian Authority representative in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, about the Israelis: the PLO, he says, intends to "drive them out ...
Learning in Arabic about Jews and Judaism
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 10 Apr 2008 at 7:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: When I lived in Cairo in the 1970s, I conducted a little experiment: What, using only Arabic-language sources, could I learn about Jews, Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish culture, and the like? The paucity of resources stunned me; basically, the best way ...
Strange Sex Stories from the Muslim World
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 9 Apr 2008 | Permalink | Comments (40)
Excerpt: The deepest differences between Muslims and Westerners concern not politics but sexuality. Each side has a long history of looking at the other's sexual mores with a mixture of astonishment and disgust. Here are some examples from the Muslim side of the ...
SaveIsraelsChildren.com
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 3 Apr 2008 | Permalink | Comments (22)
Excerpt: The effort is the first time since World War II – when the Germans bombed London, and London children were sent off to families in the countryside to be cared for until the German assault ended – that a "people-to-people" campaign has been organized to ...
Middle Eastern Political Candor
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 1 Apr 2008 | Permalink | Comments (13)
Excerpt: Prince Hassan bin Talal, younger brother of the late King Hussein of Jordan and uncle to the current King Abdallah II, has long spoken his mind. He continued and extended this tradition today in an interview with Stephen Sackur on the BBC program ...
Pakistan Ties Iraq for Most Suicide Bombing Deaths
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 24 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Excerpt: Pakistan's Post compares numbers of incidents and numbers of deaths from suicide bombings in three Muslim countries and comes up with surprising results. In these first months of 2008, Pakistan had the most attacks (18 to Iraq's 13), while Iraq had the ...
An International Law to Respect Religion?
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 19 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (33)
Excerpt: There's a contradiction brewing among Muslim political leaders on the question of creating a global law to respect religion. On the one hand, the Muhammad cartoons and other episodes leave them intent to find a mechanism to suppress public anti-Islamic ...
Hijabs on Western Political Women
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 19 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (116)
Excerpt: For fun, how about collecting those instances when female political leaders, especially leftist ones, don the hijab (Islamic headscarf)? Oriana Fallaci, interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini in September 1979 in Qum, Iran. The interview lasted six hours and at ...
Churches in Saudi Arabia?
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 18 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (314)
Excerpt: For some years now, the Vatican has made reciprocity the key to its relations with Muslim-majority states. For example, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican equivalent of foreign minister, commented in 2003 that "There are too many majority Muslim ...
The Organization of the Islamic Conference Gets Feisty
By Daniel Pipes | Sat, 15 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (35)
Excerpt: Founded by the Saudis on the basis of a conspiracy theory (concerning the Aqsa Mosque fire of August 1969), the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference has always had a disreputable quality to it, a quality hardly purified by the recent decision ...
"America's Chickens are Coming Home to Roost"
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 13 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (62)
Excerpt: The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, and Barack Obama's pastor since 1988, told his congregation in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001, "The Day of Jerusalem's Fall," that U.S. terrorism had precipitated Al-Qaeda's attack. ...
Must U.S. Taxpayers Pay for Iraqi Electricity?
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 11 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: I have complained for five years now that the U.S. government assumed responsibilities in Iraq – constitution writing, school textbooks, inter-tribal relations, dam conservation – that rightfully belong to Iraqis. The purest symbol of this usurpation, ...
Is the Solution to Hire More Muslim Journalists?
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 4 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (40)
Excerpt: Philip Bennett, managing editor of the Washington Post, offered a franker set of views than perhaps he intended when he spoke on March 3 at the University of California-Irvine's Center for the Study of Democracy about media coverage of Islam, as reported ...
A Second Islamist Organization Apologizes to Me
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 3 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Excerpt: The Middle East Forum sent out a press release today, "Muslim Weekly Apologizes to Daniel Pipes," that provides details on the statement just issued by a London-based publication. This makes it the second Islamist organization that has apologized to me, ...
Islamic Hotels, Forwarding Islamic Law
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 3 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (13)
Excerpt: Abdulla Mohamed Almulla, chairman of the Dubai-based company, Almulla Hospitality, has plans to invest US$2 billion in as many as 90 hotels operating under a Shar'i supervisory board that will follow Islamic laws in banning alcohol and serving only halal ...
Why was Abdullah Muhammad al-Ahdal Killed in 1989?
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 2 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: I concluded my survey in The Rushdie Affair of the effects of the Khomeini edict against Salman Rushdie in the winter of 1989 with an account of a double homicide: Just when the incident appeared to have abated, two Muslims living in Brussels were ...
Yossi Klein Halevi: Israel's Withdrawal from Gaza a "Disaster"
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 2 Mar 2008 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Excerpt: I called the Ariel-Sharon orchestrated retreat from Gaza at the time it happened "one of the worst errors ever made by a democracy" but have generally refrained from refrains of "I told you so" in the 2½ years since. Yossi Klein Halevi's analysis in the ...
Winston Churchill Compares "Mein Kampf" to the Koran
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 21 Feb 2008 | Permalink | Comments (43)
Excerpt: As the Dutch politician Geert Wilders nears the release of his film expected to present the Koran as analogous to Hitler's Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), a point he has already made, it is worth recalling who else has made this comparison. Yes, in recent ...
Applying Philip Salzman's Theory to Gaza
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 24 Jan 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: I provide today, at "The Middle East's Tribal Affliction," a summary of Philip Carl Salzman's new book, Culture and Conflict in the Middle East, with its over-arching explanation of what makes the Middle East distinctive. Here is a summary of the summary ...
Mirror Image: Palestinians Continue to Mimic Zionism
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 10 Jan 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: At "Mirror Image: How the PLO Mimics Zionism," I document how Palestinians have repeatedly imitated the Zionist movement. Here follow updates on that theme. Birthright Israel came into existence in 2000. It provides the gift of first time, peer group, ...
"Saudi Arabia to End Wheat Growing"
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 9 Jan 2008 | Permalink | Comments (12)
Excerpt: So reads an apparently routine Reuters story – ah, but what drama lies behind it! Shortly after the first oil-price run-up of 1973-74, the Saudi rulers decided that they needed to protect themselves against a reverse boycott by the farming superpowers, ...
Sudden Jihad Syndrome – It's Now Official
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 2 Jan 2008 | Permalink | Comments (43)
Excerpt: The attempt by Mohammed Taheri-azar in March 2006 to drive a rented Jeep Cherokee onto a plaza at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and kill as many students as he could prompted me to coin the term Sudden Jihad Syndrome to describes cases ...
Bibliography – My Writings on Arabs Appreciating Israel
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 2 Jan 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: Amid the fury and violence of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a not-insignficant number of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims maintain a high regard for the Jewish state. They represent the potential solution to this problem, so their views are more important ...
Will Geert Wilders Show His Film on the Koran?
By Daniel Pipes | Sat, 29 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (180)
Excerpt: By my count, there have been six major episodes in modern times in which Muslims rioted and killed in protest to some Western-based person making comments about Islam: 1989 – Salman Rushdie publishes his novel, The Satanic Verses. 1997 – The U.S. ...
Did Divine Intervention Fell Ariel Sharon?
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 27 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (31)
Excerpt: In January 2006, when Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon had a stroke, permanently incapacitating him, the American evangelical leader Pat Robertson attributed Sharon's medical condition to divine intervention resulting from Sharon's withdrawal from ...
Israeli Leftists Plead for U.S. Pressure on Their Government
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 26 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (25)
Excerpt: David Landau, editor of Ha'aretz newspaper, said something to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that is raising eyebrows. After a dinner at the American ambassador's residence on Sep. 10, but only reported today, Landau offered his thoughts on the ...
Mike Huckabee's Unique Foreign Policy
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 24 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (22)
Excerpt: Mike Huckabee's article in Foreign Affairs has come in for much deserved ridicule, for such statements as these two: "Much like a top high school student, if [the United States] is modest about its abilities and achievements, if it is generous in ...
U.S.-Israel Tensions, Post-Annapolis
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 23 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Excerpt: Before the Annapolis meeting took place in late November, I warned of the danger that a joint U.S.-Palestinian position might emerge that the Israelis would resist, thereby leading to "a possible crisis in U.S.-Israel relations of unprecedented ...
The Latest about Mosul Dam
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 17 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Excerpt: A truck bomb has blown up about 1 kilometer away from the Mosul Dam, killing one policeman, injuring a second, and damaging a section of the main access bridge connecting the dam's two shores, announced Brigadier-General Abdul-Kareem al-Jubouri, the ...
Assessing the American-Led Effort in Iraq
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 16 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: The surge is working, which is great news. But is that reason to conclude that the whole American-led effort in Iraq is working? I think not. The reduction in fatalities of both Iraqis and multi-national force members is important but hardly the only ...
Guilty Pleas By Would-Be Los Angeles Terrorists
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 14 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: After the arrest of terrorist suspects, the case often goes silent for so long that one forgets about them. I published a column on "L.A.'s Thwarted Terror Spree" over two years ago. Now, suddenly, Levar Haley Washington, 28, and Kevin James, 31, have ...
NIE News: Nearly 2/3s of Americans Say It Leaves Them Less Safe
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 13 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: My column this week, "That NIE Makes War against Iran More Likely" seems to reflect how a very sizeable majority of Americans feel, according to a brand-new poll by the Israel Project. Here is its eighth question, asked of 800 likely voters during the ...
Israeli Breakthrough at the United Nations!
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 9 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: After nearly sixty years of membership at the United Nations, the Israeli government passed its first-ever resolution at the General Assembly's Second Committee, which deals with development issues, on a topic unconnected to the Arab-Israeli conflict or ...
Turkey as Rival
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 6 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: I argue today with the consensus view in Washington that things are going wonderfully in Ankara in "Turkey, Still a Western Ally?" Here are just a few of the articles out concurrent with mine that argue partially or entirely the opposite: The American ...
Riyadh Reorients to Moscow
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 5 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (10)
Excerpt: The Saudi government has just made a major military move away from the United States and toward Russia, reports Geostrategy-Direct, a private intelligence service offered by the somewhat clandestine East West Services, Inc. In a report titled "Fears of U ...
Recidivist Palestinian Terrorists
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 4 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: News yesterday about the Israeli authorities releasing 429 Palestinian prisoners in a "confidence-building measure" for Mahmoud Abbas (leaving, by the way, 8,800 Palestinian security prisoners in Israel's jails) brings a report on Palestinian recidivism ...
Not Child's Play: The Teddy-Bear Intifada
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 3 Dec 2007 | Permalink | Comments (50)
Excerpt: National Review Online asked a group of experts: "There is rioting in Sudanese streets calling for the death of a woman over a teddy bear named Mohammed. What can we in the West possibly do with this — nationally, individually? How do we help? What must ...
Recognizing Israel as the Jewish State: Updates
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 29 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Excerpt: As Arab-Israeli diplomacy revives, it becomes increasingly clear that diplomatic relations with Jerusalem is not the same as accepting Zionism, as I note today in a column, "Accept Israel as the Jewish State?" This weblog entry pursues that theme, ...
"Dawah Kit for Mobile Phones"
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 28 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Excerpt: The e-mailman brought today an ad from "Guided Ways" for a way to spread Islam via a "Dawah Kit with references from the bible" that is now available for Java-enabled phones, Smartphones, Pocket PCs, Blackberry devices and Symbian OS." Here are the ...
What's Wrong With Annapolis
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 27 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (20)
Excerpt: I have written at some length against the "meeting" at Annapolis today, but George W. Bush summed up the problem more succinctly when he read to the gathered worthies from some 40 states this sentence from the Palestinian-Israeli "Joint Understanding": ...
Mr. Palestine?
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 26 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (46)
Excerpt: Some thoughts on the eve of the Annapolis meeting: Called the best friend Israel ever had in the White House, George W. Bush is, in my view, worrisomely over-confident. He believes he has discovered the solution to a highly complex and subtle century-old ...
Moshe Ya'alon: "To Be Coddled, Go Left"
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 25 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: The former chief of staff of Israel's defense forces, Moshe Ya'alon, has come out and said explicitly what everyone knows about politicians and what no one normally dares say. As Arutz Sheva sums up his advice in its headline: "To Be Coddled, Go Left." ...
Muslim Populations in European Cities
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 23 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (10)
Excerpt: Which European cities have the highest percentages of Muslim residents. The "Islam in Europe" blog compiled the following statistics, with sources marked by an asterisk and some edits by me. Marseilles - 25 percent (200,000 of 800,000) (*) Malmö - ~25 ...
The Unthinkable Consequences of an Iran-Israel Nuclear Exchange
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 21 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (27)
Excerpt: Anthony Cordesman, a strategist at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, has estimated the consequences if Tehran gets the bomb and a nuclear exchange with Israel ensues. He expects, writes Martin Walker of United Press ...
"We Hope You Will Wear Your Hijab to School"
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 20 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: A hijab-clad student at Seaside High School in Seaside, California, was told by a campus supervisor in June 2007 that she had either to remove the head covering or provide a doctor's note. Angela Chan, a staff attorney for the Asian Law Caucus in San ...
Arab State Envoys Insult PLO Observer at the United Nations
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 18 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: Here's an interesting sentence to ponder, from today's Ha'aretz: "The Arab lobby at the United Nations, backed by Russia, foiled a Palestinian Authority initiative to include a condemnation of Hamas' seizure of the Gaza Strip in a UN resolution against ...
More CAIR Dirty Tricks against Me
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 15 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: Judging by its MSM press clippings, one would think the Council on American-Islamic Relations is an innocuous civil-rights group along the lines of the Catholic League or the Anti-Defamation League. To take one example of many, in "Muslim Civil Rights ...
And Now, CAIR Plagiarizing?
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 15 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is by day an associate professor of finance at the University of North Florida, so he's someone who knows the rules of sourcing, referencing, and attribution. But, as reader Ron Polland ...
The Collapse of Palestinianism
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 15 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: Danny Rubinstein of Ha'aretz wrote the best biography of Yasir Arafat and tends to see further than others when it comes to the Palestinians. His article today, "Deserting a sinking ship," is original and important. If a scholar were to write a book on ...
Foiled Terrorist Plots in the United States
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 13 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: James Jay Carafano of the Heritage Foundation has rounded up some instances of U.S. terrorist conspiracies thwarted since 9/11, either by law enforcement or alert individuals. I have edited the list a bit for clarity and consistency: Richard Reid, ...
The American University in Cairo v. Israel
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 11 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (10)
Excerpt: The American University in Cairo, founded in 1919, has gone through its share of vicissitudes as an American institution in Egypt. Based throughout its existence in a cramped campus in the heart of modern Cairo, at Tahrir Square, the university is ...
The day after Annapolis
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 7 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "Which scenarios do you think would unfold in the event that the Annapolis parley fails?" For all replies, see "Burning Issues #43: The day after Annapolis" The consequences of Annapolis failing depend on ...
Is Kenny Gamble Building a Muslim-only Enclave in Philadelphia?
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 1 Nov 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: An article in Philadelphia magazine, "King Kenny," looks at music producer efforts by Kenny Gamble, via a corporation called Universal Companies, to revitalize his community in South Philadelphia and mentions that "some people fear Gamble wants to build ...
Parodying Khalil Gibran
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 29 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (18)
Excerpt: In the seriousness of battling pan-Arabism and Islamism at New York's Khalil Gibran International Academy, I never took up the subject of Khalil Gibran (also spelled "Kahlil Gibran") himself, other than to note that the "Friends of Gibran Council" ...
Rice Pudding
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 26 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: Here's an unintentionally hilarious Reuters news report datelined Washington, D.C.: Anxious not to repeat mistakes of past Middle East peace-making, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has turned to former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter for ...
Bibliography – My Writings on Islamic and Arabic Schools in the West
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 23 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: As the controversy over the Khalil Gibran International Academy, a New York City public school, continues too simmer, it may be useful to bring together my writings on Islamic and Arabic pre-collegiate educational institutions in the West. "What Are ...
The Most Amazing Book Editing Error?
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 22 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (6)
Excerpt: I seem to be making a speciality of catching editors' mistakes these days. A week ago, I ridiculed a weekly's ability to get five out of six captions wrong at "Newsweek's Jaw-Dropping Erratum." Today, the subject is book editors, specifically those at ...
Bibliography – My Writings on George W. Bush and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 17 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Excerpt: Today's column, "Giuliani's Fresh Start," notes that "My writings and spoken statements over the past seven years have criticized the [Bush administration's] handling of Iraq, the war on terror, democratization, and (especially) the Arab-Israeli conflict ...
Islamic Law in the United States?
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 17 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (34)
Excerpt: Senator Sam Brownback had an interesting exchange with Michael Mukasey in the course of the latter's committee hearings to become attorney general. BROWNBACK: I want to take you to the trial of—the blind sheik trial of 1993, the World Trade Center ...
My Disrupted Talk at Wayne State University
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 17 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: Jonathan Schwartz of Anti-Racist Blog has provided full documentation of the incitement, disruption, and lack of administration response at Wayne State University. The blog includes flyers, still pictures, audio, and video. · "Breaking News: Daniel ...
Newsweek's Jaw-Dropping Erratum
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 15 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (24)
Excerpt: The editor of Newsweek has added a remarkable erratum to the sidebar to a nasty article by Michael Hirsh about the Giuliani campaign, "Would You Buy a Used Hawk From This Man?" First, here is the sidebar: The subsequent correction warrants a place in ...
Knights Templar Trial Records Made Public – After Seven Centuries
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 12 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (16)
Excerpt: In a sensational bit of sleuthing, Barbara Frale, a medievalist at the Vatican's Secret Archives, stumbled in 2001 on Processus Contra Templarios, a compilation of original documents dating from 1307-12 on the French trial of the Knights Templar and the ...
Dreaming of Al-Andalus
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 11 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (12)
Excerpt: The Islamic religion contains within it a deep assumption that a land conquered and settled by Muslim becomes part of an inalienable Islamic patrimony, a waqf; should it then fall under non-Muslim rule, that is an unnatural and intolerable circumstance ...
Will Annapolis Renew the "Peace Process"?
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 10 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (14)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "Do you believe that a significant renewed peace process has begun? Who do you think will make a significant concession at Annapolis: Israel, the Palestinians, both or neither?" For all replies, see "Burning ...
Bush Returns to the "Religion of Peace" Formulation
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 4 Oct 2007 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Excerpt: "I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace," George W. Bush told an Arabic-language television station today, recalling the "religion of peace" phrasing he used in the aftermath of 9/11. Comment: (1) This statement comes as a keen ...
Group Think in the Academy
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 20 Sep 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: In an article published today, "Five Years of Campus Watch," I refer to the fact that professors often enjoy the unusual privilege of going through their careers without facing criticism. "Students must suppress their views to protect their careers; ...
Has Israeli Deterrence Been Restored?
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 20 Sep 2007 | Permalink | Comments (18)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "Do you think comments made earlier this week by OC Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin by which Israel's deterrence had been restored were premature?" For all replies, see "Burning Issues #40: Israeli ...
John Esposito and Me
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 10 Sep 2007 | Permalink | Comments (13)
Excerpt: On August 18, Georgetown University professor John Esposito spoke in Dallas for a Council on American-Islamic Relations fundraiser intending, as he put it, "to show solidarity not only with the Holy Land Fund [sic, Holy Land Foundation], but also with ...
Learning from the Mearsheimer-Walt Fiasco
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 9 Sep 2007 | Permalink | Comments (10)
Excerpt: Several publications have invited me to respond to The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, but I have desisted (other than to correct the record about myself), for three minor reasons and one major one. The ...
Cut Gaza's power?
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 6 Sep 2007 | Permalink | Comments (42)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "As Kassam rockets continue to pound Sderot, Minister Haim Ramon has suggested responding to the salvos by cutting off vital infrastructure such as water, electricity and gasoline to Gaza for a specific time ...
Foxbats Did Fly over Dimona
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 24 Aug 2007 | Permalink | Comments (17)
Excerpt: In their sensational historical detective work, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (Yale University Press, 2007), Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez have challenge the widely-accepted idea that the Six Day War happened ...
Might Europe's Muslims Hide Their Identity?
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 21 Aug 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: Future relations between peoples of Christian and Muslim origins in Europe is one of the great questions of our age; I have speculated (in "Europe's Stark Options") that the continent can look forward to just three possible scenarios – Eurabia, rejection ...
Surfboards to Reduce Arab-Israeli Tensions?
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 21 Aug 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: There's something about the Arab war on Israel that inspires cockamamie "peace" ideas. It seems like anyone with an expertise or avocation thinks that his special interest might help reduce Arab-Israeli tensions. Architects, physicians, musicians – they ...
The Worst Book of 2007?
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 15 Aug 2007 | Permalink | Comments (16)
Excerpt: Gene W. Heck has an impressive biography, being "a senior business development economist operating in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Mideast. Prior to joining the private sector, he was a member of the United States Diplomatic Corps, with postings to ...
Will the Nation of Islam Disappear?
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 10 Aug 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: The historic role of the Nation of Islam was to introduce African-Americans to Islam; that role accomplished, I already predicted in 2000, in "How Elijah Muhammad Won," that it will go out of business before long in favor of normative Islam (the sort ...
Bibliography – My Writings on Burqas, Niqabs, Jilbabs, Chadors, Hijabs, and other Islamic Coverings
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 1 Aug 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: How to respond to Muslim women who cover their head and face? I take up this spiraling topic in the West from time to time – including an article today, calling for the banning of certain extreme headgear. Here's a bibliography, to be updated as needed. ...
Papal Aide Warns against Islamization
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 27 Jul 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: It's the sort of statement that must be routine behind closed doors in the Church but rarely gets articulated in public, and when it does, it deserves attention: Pope Benedict XVI's private secretary, Msgr. Georg Gänswein, said in an interview with ...
Suicide Reversal? Polling the Muslim world
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 26 Jul 2007 | Permalink | Comments (20)
Excerpt: National Review Online asked a group of experts: "On Tuesday, Pew released a poll indicating that support for suicide bombings is on the decline in the Muslim world, among other things. How encouraging is this poll? What can we do — as a government, as ...
More on the "Nile-to-Euphrates" Calumny
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 12 Jun 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Excerpt: The Arab enemies of Israel have been repeating for decades that Zionists wish to conquer the central Middle East, more specifically from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq. I reviewed this subject in depth in 1994 in "Imperial Israel: ...
The Catholic Church Demands Reciprocity from Muslims
By Daniel Pipes | Sat, 9 Jun 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: Already in late 2003, the Vatican equivalent of foreign minister, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, demanded reciprocity: "Just as Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well." ...
Israel and Syria going to war?
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 7 Jun 2007 | Permalink | Comments (30)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "Both Jerusalem and Damascus say they want to prevent war, and yet are preparing for an attack by the other side and escalating their rhetoric. What are the chances that a war nobody claims to want would ...
New Frontiers in Counterterrorism Incompetence
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 31 May 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: Some examples, in reverse chronological order, of spectacular incidents of bungling. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Terrorists Claim to Seize CIA Files": In its takeover of Gaza, Hamas have seized ...
A Christian Caught in Mecca; What Fate Awaits Him?
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 21 May 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Excerpt: Nirosh Kamanda, a Christian from Sri Lanka, had a visa to work as a truck driver in Dammam, a town on the Persian Gulf. But after a short time, he illegally left his job and even more illegally entered Mecca – strictly forbidden to non-Muslims – where he ...
Jewish and Arab Demographics in Jerusalem
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 9 May 2007 | Permalink | Comments (32)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "The capital's Arab population has increased at more than twice the rate of its Jewish inhabitants over the last decade, a recent survey has found. Another study predicts that if Jerusalem's borders remain ...
Jihad in Jersey
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 9 May 2007 | Permalink | Comments (103)
Excerpt: National Review Online asked a group of experts: "What's the most important lesson we should take from the averted terrorist attack on Fort Dix?" For all replies, see "Symposium: Jihad in Jersey" I draw two lessons. First, that immigrants seeking ...
What will the future political landscape look like in Israel in the aftermath of the Winograd report?
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 2 May 2007 | Permalink | Comments (10)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "What will the future political landscape look like in Israel in the aftermath of the Winograd report?" For all replies, see "Burning Issues #31: Winograd fallout" One week after Kadima came into existence ...
Lodi's Pakistani Community
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 27 Apr 2007 | Permalink | Comments (5)
Excerpt: Since the first news came from Lodi, California, of the Hayat terrorism case, I have been fascinated by the town's Pakistani community, which resembles those of the British Midlands than the United States: isolation from the rest of the population, ...
My Disrupted Talk at UCLA
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 13 Apr 2007 | Permalink | Comments (46)
Excerpt: Along with Yaron Brook (head of the Ayn Rand Institute) and Wafa Sultan (of Al-Jazeera fame), I participated yesterday evening in a panel on "Totalitarian Islam's Threat to the West" at the University of California at Los Angeles. The hall was filled ...
One-Quarter of Israeli Arabs Deny the Holocaust
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 18 Mar 2007 | Permalink | Comments (20)
Excerpt: A poll by Sami Smoocha, sociologist at the University of Haifa, finds that 28 percent of Israel's Arab citizens believe the Holocaust never happened. Among high school and college graduates the figure is 33 percent. (With 721 Arabs interviewed, the ...
Raleb Majadele - Israel's First Muslim Arab Minister of State
By Daniel Pipes | Sat, 17 Mar 2007 | Permalink | Comments (21)
Excerpt: It took 59 years, but Israel has a Muslim Arab minister in its government, its first. That would be Raleb Majadele, 53, a member of the Labor party and since January 28, 2007, a minister without portfolio. But he said in an interview that he refuses to ...
Islamist Advice to Jews
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 14 Mar 2007 | Permalink | Comments (15)
Excerpt: The title raises one's curiosity – "Islamic leader urges Jews be wary of fundamentalists" but it is the quotes in the Boston Globe story that takes one's breath away. Ingrid Mattson, apologist for Wahhabism and president of the Islamic Society of North ...
Israeli Arabs: An Existential Danger to Israel
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 13 Mar 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: I see three complementary efforts to eliminate Israel. The states, from Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran, using either conventional armies or weapons of mass destruction. The external Palestinians, from Yasir Arafat to Hamas, ...
Majority-Muslim Governments Press for Islamic Law in the West
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 8 Mar 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Excerpt: When the French government in 2004 banned the hijab from classrooms, a slew of Muslim-majority governments made it their business to argue against this step, including those of Egypt, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, plus Al-Qaeda, the Islamic Army ...
Other Taxpayer-Funded American Madrassas
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 8 Mar 2007 | Permalink | Comments (42)
Excerpt: The Khalil Gibran International Academy is not the only taxpayer-funded Arabic-language school in the United States and not the only such school with Arabist or Islamist proclivities that need to be watched. This weblog entry will explore those other ...
Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy – An Islamist Charter School in Minnesota?
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 8 Mar 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Excerpt: Of the several problematic Arabic-language schools in the United States, the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy stands out as the outstanding example of a taxpayer-funded Islamic school. Not being a traditional public school but a charter school, it has more room ...
On New York's "Khalil Gibran International Academy"
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 7 Mar 2007 | Permalink | Comments (136)
Excerpt: Sarah Garland reports in the New York Sun about Brooklyn's soon-to-be-established Khalil Gibran International Academy: A new public secondary school that is to include Middle Eastern studies in its curriculum will focus on culture, not the region's ...
Dinesh D'Souza Walks on the Dark Side
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 6 Mar 2007 | Permalink | Comments (22)
Excerpt: I have admired the spirited and patriotic writing of Dinesh D'Souza and even blurbed one of this books, What's So Great About America. But, along with many other former admirers of his writing, I have been appalled by the thesis of his new book, The ...
The West's First Niqab-Covered Public Official?
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 23 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Excerpt: Ouafaa Abrazi, a Muslim woman of Moroccan origins who teaches in the Muslim Yunus Emre primary school in The Hague, is running for public office. Specifically, she is on the Islam Democraten ticket in municipal elections in the Zuid-Holland region. Her ...
My Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 20 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (68)
Excerpt: The Subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on February 14, 2007, titled "Next Steps in Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process." Three witnesses appeared before the subcommittee: Martin Indyk of ...
Explaining the Murder Rampage atop the Empire State Building
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 18 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Excerpt: As one of the many instances when the authorities refuse to recognize terrorism when it stares them in the face, I briefly recounted in 2002 the Empire State Building murder rampage that had taken place five years earlier: Ali Hasan Abu Kamal, a ...
Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz and I Exchange Letters
By Daniel Pipes | Sat, 17 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: Two days after my article, "[Brandeis University President Jehuda] Reinharz, Israel and Me," appeared, Dr. Reinharz contacted me. We have agreed to exchange letters. Here is his letter to me: Dear Dr. Pipes, I am pleased we had an opportunity to speak ...
Pope Benedict XVI Changes His Tone
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 16 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (19)
Excerpt: "Pope Benedict XVI's publicly stated view of Islam has undergone a remarkable transformation in less than five months." That's the conclusion reached by Russell Shaw in "Papal transformation - Benedict uses softer touch to dialogue with Islam" in Our ...
Hilton Hotel's "Pilgrimage to Makkah"
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 15 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (15)
Excerpt: As a silver member of "Hilton HHonors," I receive the odd discount from the hotel chain but today's offer really caught my eye. It was not to swing in Las Vegas or spend April in Paris, but to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. I've posted the webpage here. Some ...
Jehuda Reinharz of Brandeis University Replies to Me
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 14 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (6)
Excerpt: In response to my article yesterday, "[Brandeis University President Jehuda] Reinharz, Israel and Me," President Jehuda Reinharz sent this form letter today to those who wrote him on my behalf: Dear XX: I am writing in response to your email concerning ...
Canadian Islam Is Healthier
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 14 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (13)
Excerpt: American and British Islam are dominated by extremists, but Canadian Islam is "different, in a promising and heartening way." So argues Stephen Schwartz of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in "Canada is Different, Even in Its Muslims." That's because ...
Washington to Rescue Europe's Muslims?
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 13 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Excerpt: Daniel Fried, assistant U.S. secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, has expressed concern about a "nativist surge" in Western Europe and created a senior advisor position to report to him for coordinating efforts to reach out to European ...
May Zulhaidi Omar Convert to Buddhism?
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 6 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: The Islamic prohibition on apostasy – either becoming an atheist or converting to another religion – leads to many painful circumstances. Richard Lloyd Parry of the London Times tells the poignant and strange story now taking place in the town of Batu ...
UK Security Forces Disrupt Terror Plot Every Six Weeks
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 4 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: The director-general of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, revealed in November 2006 that My officers and the police are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1,600 identified individuals (and there will be many we don't ...
My Disrupted Talk at the University of California-Irvine
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 1 Feb 2007 | Permalink | Comments (85)
Excerpt: My talk last night at the University of California-Irvine, on the topic of "The Threat to Israel's Existence," was disrupted just over 15 minutes into my lecture by what appear to be goons of an Islamist persuasion. Three videos on the internet document ...
Bethlehem Christians Speak Out
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 25 Jan 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: As I noted in "Christianity Dying in Its Birthplace," a campaign of persecution against the Christians of the West Bank and Gaza has succeeded. "Even as the Christian population of Israel grows, that of the Palestinian Authority shrinks precipitously. ...
London's Police: Share Intelligence with Muslim Leaders?
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 24 Jan 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Excerpt: London's Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, Sir Ian Blair, announced (at a conference on "Islamophobia," no less) that his force is considering the idea of sharing intelligence and information with Muslims before launching anti-terror operations, ...
My Debate with London Mayor Ken Livingstone
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 22 Jan 2007 | Permalink | Comments (99)
Excerpt: It all began with a faxed letter from Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, arriving out of the blue on April 4, 2006: I will be hosting a conference to discuss the thesis of the "clash of civilizations" first popularized by Professor Samuel Huntington's ...
How the Niqab Will Enter British Schools
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 22 Jan 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Excerpt: A court has banned details from being published, so Neil Sears's report in London's Daily Mail, "Muslim father gets legal aid to fight school over veil ban," has only the outlines of the case: A Muslim Pakistani father wishes his 12-year-old daughter to ...
Is the road map still relevant?
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 17 Jan 2007 | Permalink | Comments (22)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "Do you believe the road map is still relevant? Is there a need for a new plan?" For all replies, see "Burning Issues #21 Is the road map still relevant?" The question implies that once upon a time, the ...
"Palestinian Authority Enjoys New Media Center"
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 14 Jan 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: Some news reports are so absurd in themselves, they need barely any comment. Glenn Kessler article today with this title in the Washington Post fits the description. He explains that until recently, whenever Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with ...
Admitting Israel's Unilateral Withdrawals a Mistake
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 9 Jan 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: In an interview with the Chinese news agency Xinhua, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has acknowledged that Israel's unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza did not work, and that the summer's violence out of these regions has convinced him not to repeat ...
Canberra Leads the Way, Vetoes Saudi Funds for Mosque
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 9 Jan 2007 | Permalink | Comments (7)
Excerpt: In a possibly unprecedented move in any Western country, Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer turned down a Saudi request to send funds to help the Islamic Society of South Australia build a new mosque in Park Holme, a southern suburb of ...
The U.S. Department of Defense Woos Muslims
By Daniel Pipes | Sat, 6 Jan 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: The Pentagon has taken quite a series of steps to attract Muslims into the services, Richard Whittle documents in "Uncle Sam wants U.S. Muslims to serve." Various military installations, including West Point and the other service academies, have opened ...
The Middle East and Islam Dominate U.S. Public Life
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 31 Dec 2006 | Permalink | Comments (19)
Excerpt: It's about as official as can be: in the words of an Associated Press end-of-year story, "Events in the Mideast shaped much of how we [Americans] viewed 2006." As voted by AP members, only one of the top 10 news stories of 2006 (#5, Congressional ...
Islamists in the Hospital Ward
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 29 Dec 2006 | Permalink | Comments (92)
Excerpt: A number of incidents are showing the incompatibility of radical Islam with modern medicine. Here are a trio to get this blog going, with more examples to be listed, in reverse chronological order, as they occur: _________ British female Muslim doctors ...
Mosque in Cordoba, Church in Damascus
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 26 Dec 2006 | Permalink | Comments (50)
Excerpt: Spain's Islamic Board wrote a letter to Pope Benedict XVI to be allowed to pray in Cordoba Cathedral, on the grounds that the building was originally a mosque before being transformed into a church in the thirteenth century. "What we wanted was not to ...
Bibliography – My Writings on Iraq Policy
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 12 Dec 2006 | Permalink | Comments (6)
Excerpt: With some consistency, I have been arguing since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein that coalition forces should have limited strategic purposes, leaving Iraq in the hands of Iraqis. In addition to an automated listing by category, here is a listing of my ...
El Al, "Goy" Airline?
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 11 Dec 2006 | Permalink | Comments (28)
Excerpt: Given the many restrictions on observant Jews during the sabbath, they have need of someone not Jewish to undertake necessary tasks to keep households and the society going. The idea behind the "Shabbos goy" (as he is known in Yiddish) is that activities ...
What Went Wrong with James A. Baker, III?
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 5 Dec 2006 | Permalink | Comments (65)
Excerpt: Back in his glory days as secretary of state, James A. Baker, III, was widely seen as hostile to Israel, a charge I defended him from, once in the Washington Post ("This Administration is Good for Israel") and once in Commentary magazine ("Bush, Clinton, ...
Does Rumsfeld Favor Getting U.S. Troops out of Iraqi Inhabited Areas?
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 3 Dec 2006 | Permalink | Comments (13)
Excerpt: In a November 6, 2006, memo by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, "Iraq — Illustrative New Courses of Action," he provides a range of options that could contribute to a "major readjustment" in United States policy. Two of his "above the line" ...
Muslims "Lagging Behind"
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 29 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (41)
Excerpt: The book that most shaped my understanding of modern Muslim life was Wilfred Cantwell Smith's Islam in Modern History (Princeton, 1957). To reduce Smith's nuanced thesis to a few sentences, he argues that Muslim military, economic, and cultural success ...
Gaza cease-fire
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 28 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (31)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "While many argue that the cease-fire in Gaza has no chance of holding, some believe it can, arguing that it is in the best interests of all sides involved (Israel, Abbas, Hamas) to reach a more comprehensive ...
Alwaleed Bin Talal Denies the First French Intifada
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 24 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: On Dec. 12, 2005, the Guardian reported what the investor Alwaleed Bin Talal claimed he had done about altering the Fox News coverage of the just-passed French riots. he had telephoned Mr Murdoch after seeing a strapline on the news channel describing ...
Iraq and Kuwait Have a Recognized Border
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 23 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: There's so much going on in Iraq, it's easy to miss a momentous development that just took place: the Iraqi and Kuwaiti governments have just signed a border agreement. Why momentous? Because it was the lack of a mutual-agreed-upon border in 1990 that ...
CAIR's Los Angeles Fundraiser
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 23 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (5)
Excerpt: On November 18, 2006, the Council on American-Islamic Relations held its annual southern California banquet at the Anaheim Hilton in Anaheim with the theme "American Muslims: Connecting and Sharing." One of the nearly 2,000 guests sent me a report on the ...
The Future of Kadima
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 21 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (6)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "Exactly one year ago former prime minister Ariel Sharon announced that he was quitting the Likud and forming a new political party - Kadima (forward in Hebrew). Despite Sharon's stroke, Ehud Olmert still led ...
Paul Goodman, MP, Analyses Radical Islam
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 15 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (36)
Excerpt: Paul Goodman, the Conservative member of the British parliament from Wycombe, gave what is perhaps the strongest-ever speech by a politician concerning Islamism. His stem-winder is worth quoting at length. In the debate surrounding the Queen's Speech, he ...
American Muslims – Perpetual Swing Voters?
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 14 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: "Democrats' wins hinged on Muslims" reads the headline of an article by Eric Pfeiffer in the Washington Times, and one wonders how anyone could write such a title with a straight face. In 2000, year of the Palm Beach hanging chads, it was Muslims who ...
The 751 No-Go Zones of France
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 14 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (108)
Excerpt: They go by the euphemistic term Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones, with the even more antiseptic acronym ZUS, and there are 751 of them as of last count. They are convienently listed on one long webpage, complete with street demarcations ...
Iraq: "Could a New Strongman Help?"
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 12 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (17)
Excerpt: That's the title of an article by John F. Burns in the New York Times today, reporting from Baghdad, and it recapitulates themes I have been arguing for since April 2003 – that Iraq needs stability before it can make moves to build democracy. Burns ...
Hizbullah Rearms in South Lebanon
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 12 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Excerpt: As Israel's war versus Hizbullah wound down last summer, the idea of an international force in Lebanon won near-universal approval, including even from the Olmert government, which announced its agreement "to consider stationing a battle-tested force ...
Gordon Kromberg and "The Attempted Islamization of the American Justice System"
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 10 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (7)
Excerpt: No U.S. prosecutor has a more valiant and courageous record of opposing radical Islam than Gordon Kromberg, assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. I have mentioned him in a couple of weblog entries for his work in putting away ...
Impact of US elections in Mideast
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 9 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "What impact, if any, will the results of the US midterm elections have on US policy towards Israel and the Middle East?" For all replies, see "Burning Issues #11: Impact of US elections in Mideast" In every ...
Saddam on death row
By Daniel Pipes | Sun, 5 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (14)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "Your thoughts on this historic day in which former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging." For all replies, see "Burning Issues #10: Saddam on death row" What to do with captured ...
The Niqab and Burqa as Security Threats
By Daniel Pipes | Sat, 4 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (38)
Excerpt: I wrote a week ago, in a blog for National Review Online, that the niqab and burqa should both be banned on security grounds, "as one cannot have faceless persons walking the streets, driving cars, or otherwise entering public spaces." Although a problem ...
"Six Arab States Join Rush To Go Nuclear"
By Daniel Pipes | Sat, 4 Nov 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: Those six states are Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In all six cases, they are talking only of developing civilian nuclear energy programs, as ...
The Lieberman factor
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 31 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "What effect, if any, will the entry of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party into the government have on the peace process and the prospects of renewing negotiations with the Palestinians?" For all ...
NATO and Israel – New Friends
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 26 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: In his call to adapt the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the problem of radical Islam, former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar deems bringing Israel into the alliance "an extremely important step." To some, it might also seem an extremely ...
President Bush Replies to My Iraq Critique
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 25 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (23)
Excerpt: Well, not exactly, but at a news conference today, George W. Bush in effect answered the argument I presented yesterday at "In Iraq, Stay the Course - but Change It," that coalition forces should be redeployed to the uninhabited regions of Iraq. He ...
Should Israel invade Gaza?
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 25 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "In light of the rampant weapons smuggling between Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the one hand but also the delicate situation involving kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who is held in Gaza, should Israel ...
An Unveiling: Separate, but Acceptable?
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 25 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (39)
Excerpt: National Review Online asked a group of commentators — including Bill Bennett, Mona Charen, Phyllis Chesler, Andrew McCarthy, Emanuele Ottolenghi, and Daniel Pipes, to weigh in on the nikab: "Muslim women veiling has become the subject of intense ...
Palestinians Leaving the West Bank and Gaza
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 24 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Excerpt: "What the Israelis were unable to do – try to push the Palestinian out of the country – the internal strife is achieving," observes Birzeit University pollster Nader Said, who has monitored emigration attitudes among Palestinians for 12 years. Without ...
"Cairo and the Age of the Hedonists"
By Daniel Pipes | Thu, 12 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (5)
Excerpt: Cairo has a reputation these days for fundamentalism, anger, hatred, and the like, symbolically summarized by the 1994 stabbing in the neck of a Nobel-prize winning novelist for political reasons. So it was with mild shock that I took in the title of a ...
More on Those Alcohol-shy Minnesota Taxi Drivers
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 10 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (184)
Excerpt: In an article today, "Don't Bring That Booze into My Taxi," I take up the issue of hacks at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) and their unwillingness to transport passengers who visibly carry alcohol. Here are some additional points of ...
Should Israel change its system of gov't?
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 9 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "In a meeting held Friday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman agreed to push for electoral change in the winter Knesset session as well as the creation of a ...
The United States Government, Still the Patron of Islam
By Daniel Pipes | Fri, 6 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Excerpt: In early 2002, I revealed (with co-author Mimi Stillman) the surprising history of U.S. government statements favorable to Islam in "The United States Government: Patron of Islam?" I noted there that this approach has "four main elements, each of which ...
Should Israel support Abbas against Hamas?
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 4 Oct 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "As Fatah-Hamas tensions reach a boiling point, should Israel be supporting Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah in its conflict with Hamas? If so, in what way?" For all replies, see "Burning Issues #4: Should Israel ...
The Pentagon Looks at the Koran
By Daniel Pipes | Wed, 27 Sep 2006 | Permalink | Comments (107)
Excerpt: A recent Pentagon briefing paper titled, "Motivations of Muslim Suicide Bombers," points to the Koran as the source of the motivation of Islamist bombers, according to an article today in WorldNetDaily.com. This runs quite contrary to the usual U.S. ...
American Students Get Dumber at College
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 26 Sep 2006 | Permalink | Comments (8)
Excerpt: Recent decades have witnessed no end of surveys indicating the appalling ignorance of high school or college students. But a study just released by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, "‘The Coming Crisis in Citizenship' Survey Results," breaks new ...
Should Israel initiate talks with Syria?
By Daniel Pipes | Tue, 26 Sep 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excerpt: Question asked of Jerusalem Post columnists: "Syrian President Bashar Assad told Der Spiegel that he was interested in peace and had no desire to wipe Israel off the map. Do you agree with Israeli officials who dismissed the peace overture as 'double ...
It Takes a Ph.D. in Political Science …
By Daniel Pipes | Mon, 25 Sep 2006 | Permalink | Comments (17)
Excerpt: John J. DiIulio Jr., then a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, wrote an article in 1995, "Tougher Law Enforcement Is Driving Down Urban Crime," that explained the drastic decline of serious crime in many big American cities ...
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