US is not only a military and economic superpower to the rest of the world but also a hope to fight and defeat the evil forces trying to enslave the entire humanity. US should declare a war on Islam and not on the "Radical Islam". (True) Islam is worse than any other radical ideology. Islam is the greatest organized crime ever committed against humanity, only wonderful thing about it is that it has survived for fourteen centuries. Time has come to annihilate Islam from our planet.

Posted by: iqbal at October 11, 2005 11:41 AM

Hi Robert,

I know you want to get along with your eminent colleague Daniel Pipes, and you should. However, I think you might have taken the opportunity to point out a fundamental difference you two have. He believes that 'radical Islam' is an aberration and you do not. Why not take the opportunity to discuss this a bit? Gentlemen can disagree on some issues...

Posted by: Benjamin at October 11, 2005 12:56 PM

As Benjamin pointed out, Mr. Pipes shares the U.S. Administration view that "radical Islam" is distinct from "Islam".

Mr. Pipes provides a good analysis, but if the Administration could come to the realization that the source of the jihadists fury is contained in the Qur'an itself, then we can do more than just "take Islam into account when deciding whom to let enter the country or whom to investigate for terrorism offences".

Bush took a first baby step in the right direction. But if the Administration can realize that the support for jihad comes not just from a few pockets of radicals, but from the entire ummah, then the strategy can be even more precisely formulated. Currently, our foreign policy is a mish-mash of conflicting priorities and loyalties. If they face the truth, everything becomes much simpler and clearer. We would do well to return to the clarity of WWII or the Cold War.

Posted by: special_guest at October 11, 2005 1:32 PM

LOL... so the first things he's going to do is help build a Sharia theocracy clone of Iran? Okay, then.

Pipes, you look great in brown lipstick. I liked you better when you had respect for yourself.

Posted by: kj at October 11, 2005 1:47 PM

kj, islamists cheer whenever you knock the people working to expose them.

In answer to your previous statement to me:

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/Ldotvets/Bubba_99_6.html

http://kerry-04.org/about/teresa.php

http://www.featuregroup.com/fgarchive/nysun.com/nysun.com5/

Has Bush made a big mistake with faith-based? Yes.

It is just another of a series of mistakes regarding islam made by every administration in the last 30 years.

Posted by: Gary at October 11, 2005 2:12 PM

Pipes has a mantra. He began chanting that mantra a few years ago: "“Militant Islam is the problem, moderate Muslims are the
solution.” One wonders if he can still possibly believe that. After a recent trip to accommodating Turkey, for example, he appeared to reconsider his growing disenchantment with the"moderate Muslims" who are strongest, if they are strong anywhere, instead of forthrightly announcing that Mustafa Akyol, a favorite "moderate Muslim," has not shown exactly how either the Hadith or Sira could be jettisoned and Muslims led to the sun-lit uplands of what Akyol, assimilating himself to Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, likes to call "sola scriptura" -- i.e. limiting Islam to the Qur'an alone, when the Qur'an alone is plenty to make Infidels everywhere most unhappy and most insecure. Furthermore, Turkey is a perfect example of the permanent powere of Islam, compared to the transient power, or power that needs constant reinforcement, so that the "moderate Muslims" can continue to exist, for they will always be outnumberd by the other kind, the primitives, the Deep Believers. Pipes appeared to beleive in the presentation of self that Turkey has successfully been offering to the Western world, and of which Erdogan, though to some of us he is transparent, has apparently been a past master -- judging by the way he gets the American government to do his bidding in the corridors of E.U. power.

But curiously, while the Americans press Turkey's case, the behavior of Muslims within Europe is so disturbing that the European Recording Studio has, in the nick of time, began to distribute the new digitally-remastered version of that classic, "I Hear You Knocking, But You Can't Come In."

Politics makes strange bedfellows, even or perhaps especially when the sheets are by Porthault or Bassetti. Who could be stranger than a sufferer from Weiss-Schwartz Syndrome, put in charge of a made-up group of "moderate" Muslims who are supposed to lead the effort by "moderate Muslims" against the "immoderate" Muslims. Though Pipes is aware of some of the difficulties in defining a "moderate" Muslim, the basic problem is his refusal to see that if all the perfectly reasonable demands to be made on Muslims for them to earn that slippery sobriquet "moderate" were to be met, this still would not deal with the "Hawash" problem of the "moderate" who out of any of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, changes from outwardly well-integrated "moderate" Muslim into the other kind, and furthermore, the potentially even larger problem of, down the line, those children and grandchildren of the plausible and smiling "moderates" who might not, and have proven again and again in France, Germany, England, and Spain that they might not, remain as "moderate" as those who came mainly as economic migrants.

The mantra that "Militant Islam is the problem, and moderate Islam is the solution" is something Pipes still s, but eventually he will have to drop it. What will be interesting is how suavely this will be done, in a manner scarcely understood or discernible by the non-connoisseur. And what will then happen to assorted sufferers from Weiss-Schwartz syndrome?

In fact, he will not be alone. Victor Davis Hanson, still avoiding criticizing the Light Unto the Muslim Nations Project, and still singing the praises of Democratic Warriors when in fact the Germans fought well for Hitler (when they weren't massacring innocents) and Americans are democratically not signing up for the armed services nor democratically finding much that connects this dream of Iraq the Model with the necessary goal of dividing or demoralizing Islam, will ultimately have to curb his enthusiam and forthrightly come round to a much more ruthless view of how the situation in Iraq can best be exploited by Infidels.

Advances in technology allow one to now check on the pundits and pandits. What did Fareed Zakaria predict a year ago? And what did Charles Krauthammer write last February on the theme of Democracy Is On the March All Over the Middle East? And what did Paul Wolfowitz argue would be a good reason for settling Saddam's hash -- that we couldn't keep waiting and waiting because in the years of sanctions and waiting, nearly $40 billion had been spent, and the expenditure of huge sums like that was simply intolerable? And what did Bernard Lewis co-sign with James Woolsey about a "Hashemite monarch" for Iraq as a plausible suggestion that the Shi'a would accept? And then there is the special case, the case that has become a National Embarrasssment, not least because he apparently is still able to command those $40,000-a-shot lecture fees from some very gullible people, Tom Friedman, he of the hand-semaphoring, droopy-mustache, his face radiationg self-satisfied stupidity and bland self-assurance (the self-assurance of the man who has never been subject to real criticism, and permitted every sort of idiocy to go unchallenged, for years and decades).

We can now discover what Tom
Friedman, that simple-minded enthusiast, had to say about this and this. And we can find as well the opinions, observations, prognostications, strategies, ways of phrasing things that are supposedly artfully calculated, by all sorts of people. Now they are dated, and on the web, and the history of error, or lack of it, is there for all to see. Find out what so-and-so said about Islam, or Iraq, two months ago, a year ago, four years ago. What did so-and-so write about Oslo? About Kemalism in Turkey? About Bat Ye'or and Ibn Warraq? Who saw through things at once, though starved of support, and who, though a smashing success financially, on the lecture-tour circuit, didn't, or didn't quite, or didn't enough?

Historians in the future will no doubt wish to offer a taxonomy of the Western commentators on Islam, in the initial First Stage (c. 1990-2006) of the Active World-Wide Jihad. One can imagine this or that diplomat, inteligence agent, army general, politician, reporter, television mezzobusto, newspaper pundit, or blogger will be assigned to one of the following categories: the Traitors from Belief, the Traitors from Cupdity, the Misunderstanders from Cupidity, the Misunderstanders from Respect for Religion, the Misunderstanders from Simple Ignorance, the Misunderstanders from Incomplete or Imperfect Understanding of the Texts, the Misunderstanders from Incomplete Knowledge of the Psychology of Muslims, the Misunderstanders Who Admired Bernard Lewis Too Much, The Misunderstanders Who Simply Had Too Many Personal and Professional Ties to Muslims, the Misunderstanders Who Had Gotten Off on the Wrong Foot in Their Analysis and It Was Their Story and They Were Sticking With It, the Misunderstanders Who, Making a Great Living as Experts on Islam, Were Not About to Change Their Spiel and Anyway Were Too Embarrassed to Take Back Or Modify Their Original Analysis.

Constructing that taxonomy will be a Big Job -- but someone will have to do it. I've provided a running jump-start in the previous paragraph. Filling it in, and extending it, should be fun for the whole family -- the whole academic family.

Posted by: Hugh at October 11, 2005 3:11 PM

Hugh,

This is great! Luxurious, detailed and precise as usual. Please post a bank routing number so I can wire you some money ASAP!

(Well, even if I don't, please rest assured that the sentiment is genuine.)

Posted by: Benjamin at October 11, 2005 4:17 PM

Hugh, thanks to the modern marvel of electronic memory, even my own earlier posts here are available for analysis, rebuttal, and, uh, ridicule.

And the pawn shops in my neighborhood have wedding rings inscribed with the unimpeachable evidence that "love forever" lasts only three or four years.

I would rather see a pundit (or a president) change an analysis that has been inaccurate, or an opinion that has been proven wrong, than to see that person steadfastly maintain his or her "integrity" by defending the obsolete.

Posted by: texan at October 11, 2005 6:17 PM

Texan -

Not only should presidents and pundits be quick to own up to error, once that error is clear, but they should never be allowed to make a seeming virtue out of refusal to take in new information or greater understanding, and act upon it. Flexibility, adaptability, being able to hold not two but two hundred things in your head at the same time, low cunning and diabolical cleverness thank god put in the service of Good, and not necessarily a Nice Guy in all the obvious crowd-pleasing ways -- that's what I would wish for in a President at this particular point, that's what a leader rather than someone taking a "leadership role" should possess. And otherwise who cares about his (or her, if television shows are to be believed -- and aren't they?) or their quodlibets and quillities, that don't necessarily correspond to what Tom, Dick or Harry, what Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov, or what Tizio, Caio, Sempronio, would necessarily think is the right way to behave. Whatever they are, that's his, her, their business. I want someone able to protect and instruct those whose duty it is to protect and instruct. That means, in 2005 and from here on out, someone who can learn about Islam, grasp the nature of the doctrine, learn the history of how that doctrine has been acted out in time and space, and can think of ways to check and constrain it at the least human and financial cost to Infidels everywhere, who did nothing to deserve this.

As to your other observation, one finds inscribed copies of books, in used or charity bookshops, with the same sentiments --"To X, with undying love from Y" -- often dated just a few months, and sometimes even just a few weeks, before that volume is snapped up, for a song, by the unfeeling Z.

My advice, and not only to the lovelorn, would be that in composing those ring-and-the-book inscriptions, unless you are Robert Browning penning a little something to Elizabeth, of the grow old along with me, the best is yet to be variety (i.e., when everyone concerned is old and grey and full of years), be as laconic as you can.

Posted by: Hugh at October 11, 2005 7:39 PM

"Please post a bank routing number so I can wire you some money ASAP!"
-- from a posting by Benjamin above

1) Hold that sentiment.
2) Strike it rich, either by starting a hedge fund, or marrying the only granddaughter of someone who did, or in any other way that makes sense for you.
3) Contact me once your ship comes proudly into port.

Then we will discuss how, in the most dignified way possible, I can relieve you, and for that relief much thanks, of some of the cargo which, at that point in your prosperous Dick-Whittington's-cat-back-from-the-voyage existence, will seem de trop as your cup runneth over, and you swim like Scrooge through the decumans of dollars, and to stick to the extended nautical metaphor, at least some of that cargo will seem to you like a candidate for flotsam, or jetsam, or laban, and you can simply pass it to my outstretched hand.

Kahneman's research confirms what common sense tells us as to what constitute the sources of happiness and unhappiness. At the margin, when there are already so many other millions, another million will be meaningless or still worse, may increase its possessor's unhappiness, but in the hands of someone else, without that cushion, supply a good deal of mental well-being.

It is not easy to attempt to keep one's brain humming along in philosopher-prince style while living the life of a near-pauper, with no switcheroo at birth or happy Hollywood ending in the Trading Places manner, so I'm all for increasing to the greatest extent possible my visible or invisible means of support. It hardly matters which.

That flotsam. That jetsam. That laban.

Posted by: Hugh at October 11, 2005 10:26 PM

"Bush Declares War on Radical Islam"

Me thinks not.

Whilst ivory tower types so pleasantly posit theories and critique each other's writings, the truth is muslim terrorists operate openly here 24x365.

Bush hasn't declared war on anything but the truth.

One of our local AQ terror mosques grew so rapidly in the last several years they recently moved to a larger facility.

Bush hasn't declared war on anything but the truth.

Most of the these Eritrean, Somaili, and Ethiopian jihadis are fully employed - at the airport as baggage handlers and concessionaires, and as taxi cab drivers, parking lot attendants, and hospital workers. The money they earn funds their Jihadi activities.

Bush hasn't declared war on anything but the truth.

Four years, tens of billions of dollars, and thousands of dead later, and the (W)ahabbster makes an empty speech marginally edging toward the truth sideways and some are ready to announce "Bush Declares War on Radical Islam" ???

NO, IT'S ALL B*LLSH*T!

(W)ahabbster isn't going to declare war on radical Islam any more than he's going to secure our borders, put forth an energy independence policy as a matter of national security, or confront those countries who sponsor and fund and arm muslim terrorists.

Posted by: Itai at October 12, 2005 12:45 AM