Jim Lobe

Despite the decision by President Bush against re-nominating him to the board of the US Institute of Peace (USIP), “anti-Islamist” activist Daniel Pipes is working as diligently as ever to protect the US and the Western world from the influence of radical Islamists. He has proposed the creation of a new “Anti-Islamist Institute” (AII) designed to expose legal “political activities” of “Islamists”, such as “prohibiting families from sending pork or pork by-products to US soldiers serving in Iraq”, which in his view, serve the interests of radical Islam. Pipes is also working with Stephen Schwartz on a new “Centre for Islamic Pluralism” (CIP) whose aims are to “promote moderate Islam in the US and globally” and “to oppose the influence of militant Islam, and, in particular, the Saudi-funded Wahhabi sect of Islam.”

The CIP proposal also boasts “strong links” with Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other notable neo-conservatives, such as former Central Intelligence director James Woolsey and the vice president for foreign policy programming at the American Enterprise Institute, Danielle Pletka, as well as with Pipes himself. Pipes, who created Middle East Forum (MEF) in 1994, has long campaigned against “radical” Islamists in the US, especially the Council on American-Islamic Relations and several other national Islamic groups. Long before the 9/11 attacks, he also raised alarms about the immigration of foreign Muslims, suggesting that they constituted a serious threat to the political clout of US Jews, as well as a potential “fifth column” for radical Islamists. In addition, Pipes has been a fierce opponent of Palestinian nationalism.

In 2002, Pipes launched “Campus Watch”, a group dedicated to monitoring and exposing alleged anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian and/or Islamist bias in teachers of Middle Eastern studies at US colleges and universities. The group, which invites students to report on offending professors, has been assailed as a McCarthyite tactic to stifle open discussion of Middle East issues.

Pipes’ nomination by Bush in 2003 to serve as a director on the board of the quasi-governmental USIP, a government-funded think tank set up in 1984 to “promote the prevention, management and peaceful resolution of international conflicts”, moved the controversy over his work from academia into the US Senate where such appointments are virtually always approved without controversy.

Pipes’ nomination, however, offered a striking exception. Backed by major Muslim, Arab-American, and several academic groups, Democratic senators, led by Edward Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, and Tom Harkin, opposed the nomination as inappropriate, particularly in light of some of his past writings. Several Republican senators warned Bush that they would oppose the nomination if it came to a vote, and, in the end, the president made a “recess appointment” that gave him a limited term lasting only until the end of 2004.

It appears now that, despite the enhanced Republican majority in the Senate, Bush does not intend to re-nominate him. Indeed, both the USIP and Bush now probably regret having nominated him in the first place. During his board tenure, Pipes blasted USIP for hosting a conference with the Centre for the Study of Islam and Democracy, charging that it employed Muslim “radicals” on its staff. Pipes also criticised Bush for “legitimising” various “Islamist” groups by permitting their representatives to take part in White House and other government ceremonies and for failing to identify “radical Islam” as “the enemy” in the war on terror. — IPS