Earlier this year, U.S. President George Bush nominated Daniel Pipes to the board of directors of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), and with the Senate on summer recess, confirmed his appointment.
The USIP was established by the U.S. Congress in 1984, to help Americans "support the development, transmission and use of knowledge to promote peace and curb violent international conflict."
Pipes' credentials on the Middle East are impressive. He received his doctorate from Harvard, and has lectured in history at Harvard and the University of Chicago.
He lived in Egypt, knows Arabic, has published 11 books and innumerable papers in academic journals, writes frequently for the media and is a director of the Middle East Forum.
Contemporary scholarship on Islam and Muslims regarding the Mideast and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a minefield of contentions almost as perilous as the violence-filled politics of the Arab-Muslim world.
Two schools of thought compete about the general malaise of that world.
One, recent in origin, views the West, in particular America, as largely responsible for its ills. The other, older and richer in traditional scholarship and more circumspect of cultures, points to the internal conditions of the Arab-Muslim world as reasons for its incapacity and failure to engage constructively with the modern world of science and democracy.
Pipes belongs to the latter school, and has contributed much to the controversy surrounding the study of the Middle East - indeed he has generated a lot of it - in part because of his unapologetic stance against those who berate America endlessly for problems in the Arab-Muslim world.
Since 9/11 and the war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, this controversy in America has become more heated and Pipes' views have been subjected to closer scrutiny.
His unconditional support for Israel while monitoring academics in universities for being critical or hostile to America, Israel, or both, has generated outrage from critics. He has been accused of carrying out a McCarthy-type witchhunt,
But Pipes has been more right than mistaken.
His analyses of Muslim fanatics and their opposition to Israel - carrying all the animus of European anti-Semitism, combined with their nihilism, sectarianism and misogyny that found full-blown expression in Afghanistan under Taliban rule - are now irrefutable.
Pipes' writings have challenged Muslim moderates in America and elsewhere to come out and isolate Muslim fanatics.
Consequently, those mosques and Arab-Muslim organizations in America subsidized by Saudi Arabia or funded by rich Saudis pulled their resources together to oppose Pipes' appointment. Some congressional Democrats, ever ready to defeat any proposal coming from the Bush White House, made common cause with this effort.
The opposition to Pipes serving on the board of the USIP was neither surprising nor frivolous.
American Muslims, however, are at a critical juncture in modern history and can become the vanguard in assisting the reformation of Islam by showing Muslims elsewhere how to embrace modernity and democracy.
American Muslims cannot, if they are to succeed, remain intimidated by those Muslim fanatics who have perverted and pulverized the moderate, humane and civilizing tradition of Islam. They need to engage themselves in frank and open discussion within mainstream American - and North American - society, recognizing fully that, as Muslims, they are as much a faith minority within America as is Islam globally.
American Muslims supporting Pipes have indicated that while they may not agree with his views and methods, they welcome his appointment to USIP.
They know he will contribute greatly to the debate about the urgency of combatting Muslim fascists. Those fascists are similar to their European counterparts between the two world wars of the last century and today pose a global threat.
In fighting Muslim fascism, to which America is now committed, an understanding of this phenomenon and an appreciation of Islam and Muslim history are essential weapons for success. Daniel Pipes, possessing both, is a strategic ally and friend of Muslims in America.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario.
