An innacurate review of Mr.Pipes

Submitted by Alex (United States), Jul 3, 2009 at 12:58

Essentially, this article does nothing more than berate Pipes for his anti-Sharia views, certain statements he has made in the past, and in general his differentiation from the academic world. Which, for the most part, might I add, refuses to analyze the motivation of radical Islamic terrorism. One criticism is this, "He has called for religious profiling of Muslims in America..."

I would be interested in knowing where the author ascertained the idea that Pipes actually believes this. I'm not certain if he has myself, but no critic of fundamentalist Islam I am familiar with has stated such an idea from what I have read or seen. "described the global battle with Islamists—those Muslims who strive for a society governed by their interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law—as 'a cosmic battle over the future course of human experience.'" Perhaps I can understand the criticism of his wording in this regard.

However, Sharia law is no fair and just law system. If anything, it is precisely the opposite, an abomination of justice which has begin to infect the west. There is even a new report which now suggests since the advent of Sharia in Britain, there are now 58 Sharia courts operating from within it. "Pipes has just finished hammering out a piece for the New York Sun, where he has a regular column, concerning a group of Muslim taxi drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport who have demanded the right to refuse to pick up passengers carrying alcohol. Instead of simply canceling the drivers' licenses or asking them to forfeit booze-laden fares, airport authorities are considering a compromise: Drivers will be allowed to place an extra light on their roofs signaling their willingness to ferry the offending cargo.

"From the airport point of view, this is completely satisfactory," explains Pipes. 'Passengers are not stranded. Taxi drivers are content. But from the larger point of view, this has incredible implications: The sharia is now in effect in Minneapolis airport with two different lights. … Think of all the people the drivers might not want to take: Hindus, homosexuals, unmarried couples. … I mean, where does one stop?'"

And who is to say Pipes is wrong? I, and many others who recognize the brutality of Sharia, would agree. Muslims should be given no special accommodation, they aren't a special class of citizenry. I'm certain that there would be public outrage if Christian taxi's in New York started rejecting homosexuals. No foot-baths, no special taxis, no prayer rooms, Muslims should live like everyone else. Their religion is a private endeavor, not a public one which they can force upon others.

"The extended riff is delivered in a tone that blends muted outrage with boyish infectiousness, and for a moment it dusts Pipes, 57, with the manner of an adolescent. It also captures the Pipesian method: the placement of the seemingly trivial in a broader political context, the effortless accretion of detail building up toward a crescendo, the conclusion that teeters on the edge of hyperbole and yet appears perfectly logical. By the time he's finished, you may be forgiven for fretting that the Twin Cities are on their way to resembling Tehran."

So pointing out that the discriminatory law system of Sharia has started to come to the West is somehow trivial? What you see as trivial, many see as a slippery slope towards a state in which Muslims are first class citizens, being accommodated everywhere and in every way they wish, and non-Muslims being second class citizens.

"When the Mohammed cartoons roiled much of the world last year, the leftist newsletter CounterPunch went so far as to lay some of the responsibility for a Danish paper commissioning the cartoons at Pipes's door." Never mind that it wasn't the Danish Newspapers fault in the first place. The whole ordeal was the fault of violent fundamentalist Muslims who couldn't stop themselves from rioting and murder because someone in a little-known country published a cartoon which insulted their religion.

Since when is ANY religion or ideology above criticism? "He is still quick to pounce on any special exceptions for Muslims—women demanding the right to wear the headscarf in driver's license photos, those Minnesota cabdrivers—as examples of Islamic law slipping through the backdoor, but he also decries the view of 40 percent of Americans who believe Muslims should carry special identity cards. It's 'illegal, immoral, inefficient, you name it,' he says."

Again, being a Muslim doesn't make you a special class of citizen. Just like everyone else, you must to conform with secular standards whether Allah decrees it or not. You don't see baptismal fountains being installed in airports do you? Separation of Church and State does not allow "exceptions" or "accommodations".

"Pipes may live and work in Philadelphia, but he is not really of the city. He doesn't count himself a regular at any local restaurants, and he tends to spend his downtime indoors—with a book (P.G. Wodehouse) or on the treadmill at home. This isn't surprising. Pipes has built a life around propagating a certain view of the world; the view itself, as well as its real-world consequences, resonates most loudly among a thin slice of the terminally wonkish. And though he spends much of his life on the road, traveling to various speaking engagements—and has been in the public eye almost constantly since 9/11—he has managed to maintain a nearly hermetic seal between his public persona and private life. He declines to share the names of his three daughters or what they do. He prefers not to reveal his home phone number or where he lives, except to say that it's in the city and he hasn't moved since he first came to Philly. For security reasons, he doesn't use his own name when calling a cab or limousine to his home. When traveling overseas, he occasionally checks in at a hotel under a different name."

Daniel Pipes actually reads indoors and prefers not to reveal his location?!?! How dare he! "Pipes is impressive in such forums. He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of Islamism with a polemicist's talent for pithiness. In the Pipes lexicon, Westerners who submit to Muslim restrictions on free speech, as he believes most American and British newspapers did by refusing to reprint the Danish Mohammed cartoons, are playing by the 'Rushdie rules,' a reference to the famous Iranian fatwa on the author of The Satanic Verses. " And they were, the only reason they didn't reprint the was because of fear. I should be able to criticize Islam in any way I wish. The only obvious restriction on the principle of free speech is that one cannot call for the murder or harm of others.

"It's a view that, five years after September 11th, has put him in a new position; no longer is he the bad boy of Middle East punditry. The discussion has changed, and the man once considered the most hard-line anti-Islamist finds himself worried about critics holding a darker view: that Islam is an inherently evil religion. Pipes doesn't have to look far to see how much the conversation has changed; by a five-to-one margin, readers of his own website now disagree with him about his take.

'I find myself in the middle now between these two views,' he says, 'saying Islam is irrelevant to the issues and Islam the religion is the key.' Even CAIR backhandedly recognizes Pipes's new place on the ideological spectrum. 'Daniel Pipes had his day in the sun as the nation's premier Islamophobe,' Hooper says. "In a strange way now, he's almost on the B-team of Islamophobes. The real attacks are coming from those who say that Islam itself is evil and must be challenged as a faith.'" I certainly hope the author realizes that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator for funding the terrorist group Hamas. Again, this is a wholly inaccurate review of Mr.Pipes. Hopefully this will help correct the record.

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