A chance to clear the air

DANIEL PIPES

Etiquette called on me, as a nominee of the president of the United States, not to talk about my nomination to the board of the United States Institute of Peace while it was in process.

During five months of enforced quiet, I endured Senator Edward Kennedy calling me someone not "committed to bridging differences and bringing peace," a Washington Post editorial criticizing me as "a destroyer" of cultural bridges and other slings.

My months of silence finally came to an end Aug. 22, when President Bush invoked his constitutional authority to recess-appoint me and eight other persons.

As someone who has spent two-thirds of his life studying the Middle East, these public accusations remain painful to me. I have learned the Arabic language, traveled the Muslim world, taught courses on the region at Harvard, and specialized on it at the State and Defense Departments. My career has been devoted to "bridging differences and bringing peace."

So, how did it come to be that some people discern me as hostile to Islam?

Distortion: My political opponents cherry-pick through my record to find snippets, then triumphantly brandish these to embarrass me.

Consider the following sentence, from a 1990 article. Although I pooh-poohed the idea of a Muslim threat, I acknowledged there could be problems in Western Europe relating to Muslim immigration because Europeans "are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene."

On its own, this would seemingly confirm my hostility to Muslims. But my opponents:

Ignore my having explained that "brown-skinned peoples" and "strange foods" were quotes of then-current European views, not my own sentiments.
Never quoted two subsequent sentences: "The movement of Muslims to Western Europe creates a great number of painful but finite challenges; there is no reason, however, to see this event leading to a cataclysmic battle between two civilizations. If handled properly, the immigrants can even bring much of value, including new energy, to their host societies."

Confusion: I strenuously draw a distinction between the religion of Islam and the ideology of militant Islam. But these are novel and complex ideas. As a result, my enmity toward militant Islam sometimes gets misunderstood as hostility toward Islam itself.

I believe the Islam vs. militant Islam distinction stands at the heart of the war on terror and urgently needs to be clarified for non-specialists. The most effective way of achieving this, I expect, is by giving voice to the Muslim victims of Islamist totalitarianism.

Come to think of it, that sounds like the sort of activity that the USIP might wish to consider undertaking as part of its mission to "promote the prevention, management, and peaceful resolution of international conflicts."

Daniel Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. Controversy surrounded his nomination to the United States Institute of Peace.

Home