Russia's Demographic Revolution

The growth of an increasingly confident Muslim population is the source of major tension. 

By Daniel Pipes

http://www.nationalreview.com/

October 22, 2013

The stabbing murder on October 10 of an ethnic Russian, Yegor Shcherbakov, 25, apparently by a Muslim from Azerbaijan, led to antimigrant disturbances in Moscow, vandalism and assaults, and the arrest of 1,200. It brought a major tension in Russian life to the fore.

Not only do ethnic Muslims account for 21–23 million of Russia’s total population of 144 million, or 15 percent, but their proportion is fast growing. Alcoholism-plagued ethnic Russians are said to have European birth rates and African life-expectancy, with the former just 1.4 per woman and the latter 60 years for men. In Moscow, ethnic Christian women have 1.1 children.

In contrast, Muslim women bear 2.3 children on average and have fewer abortions than their Russian counterparts. In Moscow, Tatar women have six children and Chechen and Ingush women have ten on average. In addition, some 3 to 4 million Muslims have moved to Russia from ex-republics of the USSR, mainly Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan; and some ethnic Russians are converting to Islam.

These trends mean that Christians are declining in numbers by 0.6 percent a year and Muslims increasing by that same amount, which will have dramatic effects over time. Some analysts foresee Muslims becoming a majority in the 21st century — a demographic revolution that would fundamentally change the country’s character. Paul Goble, an expert on Russian minorities, concludes that “Russia is going through a religious transformation that will be of even greater consequence for the international community than the collapse of the Soviet Union.” A Russian commentator he quotes envisions a mosque on Red Square in Moscow. The facile assumption that Moscow is and will remain Western-oriented “is no longer valid,” he argues. In particular, he predicts that the Muslim demographic surge “will have a profound impact on Russian foreign policy.”

Within a few years, Muslims will make up half the conscripts in the Russian army.Joseph A. D’Agostino of the Population Research Institute asks: “Will such a military operate effectively given the fury that many domestic Muslims feel toward the Russian military’s tactics in the Muslim region of Chechnya? What if other Muslim regions of Russia — some of which contain huge oil reserves — rebel against Moscow? Will Muslim soldiers fight and kill to keep them part of the Russian motherland?”

Russia’s increasingly confident Muslims, who constitute the majority of 57 of the country’s 182 ethnic groups, have started to use the term “Muslim Russia” to signal their ambitions. According to Muslim analyst Daniyal Isayev, this term affirms that Islam is “an inalienable part of Russia” and that “Russia as a state and civilization could not exist without Islam and the Muslims.” He notes that Muslims preceded ethnic Russians in much of the territory that is now Russia. His sweeping claims for Muslims include the exaggerations that they made critical contributions to Russia’s culture and its military victories.

Such talk can cause ethnic Russians to shudder over the country’s population lossof at least 700,000 people a year. Some have returned to their faith and some have turned against Muslims. The reactions against a “Muslim Russia” include biased media portrayals of Muslims, attacks on mosques and other crimes, efforts to block Muslim immigration, and the rise of extreme Russian nationalist groups such as Alexander Belov’s “Movement against Illegal Immigration.”

The Kremlin has responded to the issue in contradictory ways. Then-president Dmitri Medvedev tried appeasement in 2009 by stressing the importance of Islam to Russia, noting that “Muslim foundations are making an important contribution to promoting peace in society, providing spiritual and moral education for many people, as well as fighting extremism and xenophobia.” He also announced that, because of its large Muslim population, “Russia does not need to seek friendship with the Muslim world: Our country is an organic part of this world.”

But, as Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council points out, “the Kremlin has discriminated against its Muslim minority and ignored (even abetted) the rise of corrosive xenophobia among its citizens. This has bred resentment and alienation among Russia’s Muslims — sentiments that radical Islamic groups have been all too eager to exploit.” Added to existing Islamic-supremacist attitudes, this results in an increasingly restive Muslim minority.

Discussions of Islam in Europe tend to focus on places like Britain and Sweden, but Russia, the country with the largest Muslim community in both relative and absolute terms, is above all the place to watch. The antimigrant violence this week will surely be followed by much worse problems.

— Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2013 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

Obama's Anti-Zionism

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.nationalreview.com
January 22, 2013

Were Barack Obama reelected, Ipredicted two months before the November 2012 presidential vote, “the coldest treatment of Israel ever by a U.S. president will follow. Well, the election is over and that cold treatment is firmly in place. Obama has signaled in the past two months what lies ahead by:

Choosing three senior figures — John Kerry for State, John Brennan for the CIA, and Chuck Hagel for Defense — who range fromclueless about Israel to hostile toward it.

Approving a huge gift of advanced weapons — 20 F-16 fighter jets and 200 M1A1 Abrams tanks — to the Islamist government in Egypt despite the fact that its president, Mohamed Morsi, has become increasingly despotic and in 2010 calledJews “blood-suckers . . . warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”

Ignoring evidence that Cairo is importing Scud missile parts from North Korea.

Reiterating the patronizing 35-year-old tacticrelied upon by anti-Israel types to condemn Israeli policies while pretending to be concerned for the country’s welfare: “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are,” as Obama said“repeatedly and privately” to Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg.

Rebuffing the 239 House members who calledfor closing the PLO office in Washington in response to the PLO’s drive for state-observer status at the United Nations.
Asked about Obama’s nomination of Hagel, Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor who despite his astringent criticism of Obama nonetheless endorsed him for reelection, offeredan astonishing response: “I thought that there would come a time when [Obama] would renege on . . . his support of Israel [but this] comes a little earlier than I thought.” Even Obama’s pro-Israel supporters expected him to turn against the Jewish state.
These anti-Israel steps raise worries because they jibe with Obama’s early anti-Zionist views. We lack specifics, but we know that he studied with, befriended, socialized with, and encouraged Palestinian extremists. Take, for example, anti-Israel theorist Edward Said. A picture from 1998 shows Obama listening raptly to Said as he delivered the keynote speech at an Arab community event in Chicago. Or consider former PLO public-relations operative Rashid Khalidi, then Obama pal. In 2003, at an event to honor Khalidi, Obama sat idly by as speakers accused Israel of waging a terrorist campaign against Palestinians and compared “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden. Ali Abunimah, an anti-Israel agitator, commended Obama in 2004 for “his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” code words for distancing the U.S. government from Israel. In turn, Obama praised Abunimah for his obsessively anti-Israel articles in the Chicago Tribune, urging him to “keep up the good work!”
Abunimah also reveals that, starting in 2002, Obama toned down his anti-Israel rhetoric “as he planned his move from small-time Illinois politics to the national scene.” Obama made this explicit two years later, apologizing to Abunimah: “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.”
And Obama dutifully tacked in the pro-Israel direction, if in a cramped and reluctant manner (“I have to deal with him every day,” he complainedabout Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu). He supported Israel in its 2008–2009 and 2012 wars with Hamas. His administrationcalled the Goldstone Report “deeply flawed” and backed Israel at the United Nations with lobbying efforts, votes, and vetoes. Armaments flowed. The Israeli exception to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remained in place. When Ankara canceled Israeli participation in the 2009 “Anatolian Eagle” air-force exercise, the U.S. government pulled outin solidarity. If Obama created crises over Israeli housing starts, he eventually allowed these to simmer down.
Returning to the present: Netanyahu’s likely reelection as Israeli prime minister this week will mean continuity of leadership in both countries. But that does not imply continuity in U.S.-Israel relations; after a decade of political positioning, Obama is now freed from reelection constraints and can finally express his early anti-Zionist views. Watch for a markedly worse tone from the second Obama administration toward the third Netanyahu government.
Recalling what Obama said privately in March 2012 to then-president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev (“This is my last election, and after my election, I have more flexibility”), there is every reason to think that, having won that reelection, things have now “calmed down” and, after a decade of caution, he can “be more up front” in advancing the Palestinian cause against Israel.
I also predicted in September that “Israel’s troubles will really begin” should Obama win a second term. These troubles have begun; Jerusalem, brace for a rough four years.
— Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2013 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

Philadelphia: The Key

Nov 27, 2012 

By Daniel Pipes

http://www.nationalreview.com

The Second Hamas–Israel War, of November 10 to 21, inspired a mighty debate over rights and wrongs, with each side appealing to the large undecided bloc (19 percent of Americans according to CNN/ORC, 38 percentaccording to Rasmussen). Is Israel a criminal state that has no right to exist, much less to deploy force? Or is it a modern liberal democracy with the rule of law that justifiably protects innocent civilians? Morality drives this debate.

To any sentient person, it is obvious that Israelis are 100 percent justified in protecting themselves from wanton attacks. A cartoon from the First Hamas–Israel War, of 2008 to 2009, symbolically showed a Palestinian terrorist shooting from behind a baby carriage at an Israeli soldier in front of a baby carriage.
The tougher question is how to prevent further Hamas–Israel wars. Some background: If Israelis are 100 percent justified in protecting themselves, their government also bears complete responsibility for creating this crisis. Specifically, it made two misguided unilateral withdrawals in 2005.
From Gaza: Ariel Sharon won reelection as prime minister in January 2003 in part by mocking a rival who called for the unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli residents and soldiers from Gaza; then,inexplicably, he adopted this same policy in November 2003 and put it into effect in August 2005. I dubbed this at that time “one of the worst errors ever made by a democracy.”
From the Philadelphi Corridor: Under pressure from the U.S., especially from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sharon signed an agreement in September 2005, called “Agreed Arrangements,” that withdrew Israeli forces from the Philadelphi Corridor, a 14-kilometer-long and 100-meter-wide area between Gaza and Egypt. The hapless “European Union Border Assistance Mission at the Rafah Crossing Point” (EUBAM Rafah) took their place.
Trouble was, the Egyptian authorities had promised in their 1979 peace treaty with Israel(III:2) to prevent “acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence” but in fact permitted massive smuggling of armaments to Gaza via tunnels. According to a former head of Israel’s Southern Command, Doron Almog, writing in early 2004, “smuggling has a strategic dimension” because it involves sufficient quantities of arms and materiel “to turn Gaza into launching pad for ever-deeper attacks against Israel proper.”
Almog considered these policies “a dangerous gamble” by the Mubarak regime and a “profound strategic danger” that could “endanger the Israeli-Egyptian peace accord and threaten the stability of the whole region.” He attributed the lax Egyptian attitude to a mix of anti-Zionist views among officialdom and a readiness to vent the Egyptian public’s anti-Zionist sentiments.
Sharon arrogantly signed the “Agreed Arrangements,” contrary to the strong opposition of Israel’s security establishment. Of course, by removing this layer of Israeli protection, an “exponential increase” in the Gaza arsenal predictably followed, culminating in the Fajr-5 missiles that reached Tel Aviv this month.
To permit Israeli soldiers effectively to prevent armaments from reaching Gaza, David Eshel of Defense Update argued in 2009 for the IDF taking back the Philadelphi Corridor and increasing its size to “a fully sterile security line of about 1,000 meters,” even though this would mean having to relocate about 50,000 Gaza residents. Interestingly, the Palestinian Authority’s Ahmed Qurei privately endorsed similar steps in 2008.
Almog goes farther: Noting deep Iranian involvement in Gaza, he advocates making the Philadelphi Corridor into a no-man’s-land by widening it to about ten kilometers. Ideally, he writes me, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will build this anti-smuggling obstacle and the American military will have a continued role policing the border. Second best, Israelis do this alone. (The still-operational Gaza-Jericho Agreement of May 1994 establishes a “Military Installation Area” under Israel’s full control — in effect, the Philadelphi Corridor — that provides Jerusalem with the legal basis to take back this crucial border.)
In contrast, Michael Herzog, formerly a high-ranking official in Israel’s defense ministry, tells me it is too late for Israel to take back the Philadelphi Corridor, that international pressure on Egypt to stop the flow of arms to Gaza is the solution. Likewise, former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Dore Gold backs joint U.S.-Israel “arrangements” to keep out new weaponry.
I am skeptical about an effective American role, whether military or diplomatic; Israelis alone have the incentive to close down the arms transfers. Western governments should signal Hamas that they will encourage Jerusalem to respond to the next missile attack by retaking and enlarging the Philadelphi Corridor, thereby preventing further aggression, humanitarian tragedy, and political crises.
— Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2012 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

A Model of Efficacy

The NYPD is our most effective counterterrorism agency.

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.nationalreview.com
September 13, 2011

U.S. law-enforcement agencies have generally responded to 9/11 with a pretend counterterrorism policy. They insist that calling the enemy “Islamism” causes terrorism, that Islamist violence is just one of many co-equal problems (along with neo-Nazis, racial supremacists, et al.), and that counterterrorism primarily involves feel-good steps, such as improving civil rights, passing anti-discrimination laws, and displaying goodwill to Islamists.

And then there is the New York Police Department, an institution uniquely spurred by 9/11 to abandon its former laxity and get serious. The department that had mishandled prior terrorist incidents (e.g., the assassination of Meir Kahane) quickly transformed itself into a serious counterterrorist agency under the remarkable leadership of Raymond Kelly. (Andrew McCarthy calls him “a godsend.”) Unlike other agencies, the NYPD names the enemy, acknowledges the predominant threat of Islamist violence, and has built a robust intelligence operation.

The public first saw hints of these changes in 2006 during the Shahawar Matin Siraj trial. The government obtained a conviction of Siraj, an illegal Pakistani immigrant intending to blow up a subway station, on the basis of information from two NYPD Muslim spies: a paid police informant, Osama Eldawoody, and a pseudonymous undercover detective, “Kamil Pasha.” The latter testified about his serving as a “walking camera” among Muslims living in Brooklyn — to “observe, be the ears and eyes” for the NYPD.

Christopher Dickey provided the fullest picture of the department’s achievement in a 2009 book, Securing the City: Inside America’s Best Counterterror Force — the NYPD. Now, just in time for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the Associated Press has published a series of breathless investigations by Adam Goldman on the department’s methods, focusing on NYPD cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency and bringing the department under intense and critical scrutiny.

Goldman reports that the department dispatched officers to Pakistani neighborhoods and “instructed them to look for reasons to stop cars: speeding, broken tail lights, running stop signs, whatever. The traffic stop gave police an opportunity to search for outstanding warrants or look for suspicious behavior. An arrest could be the leverage the police needed to persuade someone to become an informant.” It established the Terrorist Interdiction Unit to handle these informants, who included “mosque crawlers,” “café crawlers,” shopkeepers, and nosy neighbors.

It established the Special Services Unit to handle operations in areas outside New York City — despite the NYPD’s lack of jurisdiction — including several American states and eleven foreign countries. The effort has had its share of successes. For example, an Egyptian NYPD officer undercover in New Jersey had a major role in Operation Arabian Knight, the June 2010 arrest of two New Jersey Muslims who pled guilty to planning to join the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab and kill American troops.

It established the Demographics Unit to “map ethnic residential communities within the Tri-State area [New Jersey, Connecticut, New York State]” and to send undercover police officers, or rakers, to monitor Muslims in this region. Made up of 16 officers speaking among them Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu, the unit lists 29 “ancestries of interest,” all of them predominantly Muslim, including one described as “American Black Muslim.” In all, the NYPD identified 263 “ethnic hot spots” in the city, plus 53 “mosques of concern.”

Rakers filed daily reports on life in New York’s Muslim neighborhoods. Goldman and co-author Matt Apuzzo note that they “visited Islamic bookstores and cafés, businesses and clubs. Police looked for businesses that attracted certain minorities, such as taxi companies hiring Pakistanis.” They got personal, Goldman goes on: “If a raker noticed a customer [in an ethnic bookstore] looking at radical literature, he might chat up the store owner and see what he could learn. The bookstore, or even the customer, might get further scrutiny.”

Goldman and the Associated Press clearly disdain NYPD tactics and hope to get them watered down. But these tactics have protected New York from 13 failed or thwarted terrorist plots, Commissioner Kelly stands by them, and they garner wide political support. New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the NYPD for a “very good job,” and John Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, lauded its “heroic job.” U.S. representative Peter King (R., N.Y.) rightly commended its methods as a model for the federal government.

King is right: The methods adopted by the country’s most effective counterterrorism force should spread to every other Western law-enforcement agency.

— Mr. Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum and the Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2011 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserv

Assessing Qaddafi

Libya's long decline will take years to ameliorate.

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.nationalreview.com
August 30, 2011

On September 1, Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi (the proper transliteration of his name) would have been ruler of Libya for exactly 42 years, making him the world’s longest-ruling non-royal head of state. As he leaves the scene, his wretched reign deserves an appraisal.

Qaddafi took power at the age of 27 in the waning days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the immensely influential pan-Arab leader of Egypt, and saw himself as Nasser’s acolyte but with a greater ambition: Whereas Nasser dreamed of a single Arab nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf as an end in itself, Qaddafi saw Arab unity as the first step to Muslim unity. Although Qaddafi failed to achieve any sort of unity, and his “Third International Theory” detailed in the 1975 Green Book proved a total bust, he did have an early and marked impact on two major developments.

First, he had a key role in the increase in energy prices that began in 1972 and continues to this day. By challenging the international oil companies’ control over petroleum production and pricing, he began the transfer of power from Western boardrooms to Middle Eastern palaces. Specifically, the chances Qaddafi successfully took helped bring about the four-fold increase in oil prices in 1973–74.

Second, Qaddafi kicked off what was then known as the Islamic revival. At a time when no one else was ready to do so, he proudly and provocatively advanced Islamic causes by applying aspects of Islamic law, calling on Muslims worldwide to do likewise, and assisting any Muslims in conflict with non-Muslims.

Qaddafi’s long rule can be divided into four eras. The first and most significant, 1969–86, consisted of frenetic activity on his part, meddling in issues and conflicts from Northern Ireland to the southern Philippines. An incomplete listing would include the near crippling of Jimmy Carter’s 1980 reelection campaign by making payments to his brother Billy; declaring political union with Syria; aiding Iran militarily versus Iraq; threatening Malta over oil exploration in contested waters; bribing the Cypriot government to accept a Libyan radio transmitter; sending troops to southern Chad to control the country and impose a political union on it; and helping a Muslim group in Nigeria whose violence left over 100 dead.

But these efforts led nowhere. As I wrote in a 1981 assessment, “Not one of Qaddafi’s attempts at coups d’état has toppled a government, not one rebellious force has succeeded, no separatists have established a new state, no terrorist campaign has broken a people’s resolve, no plan for union has been carried through, and no country save Libya follows the ‘third theory.’ Qaddafi has reaped bitterness and destruction without attaining any of his goals. Greater futility can scarcely be imagined.”

That first era ended with the U.S. bombardment of 1986 in retaliation for the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin, which seemed to affect Qaddafi’s psyche. His rabid adventurism dramatically declined, accompanied by a turn toward Africa and an ambition to build weapons of mass destruction. As his presence on the world stage shriveled, he was dismissed as a nut-job.

A third stage began in 2002, when a tamed Qaddafi paid reparations for the Libyan role in the 1988 downing of a Pan Am plane and gave up his WMD. Although the fundamentals of his regime remained in place, he became persona grata in Western countries, while the British prime minister and American secretary of state even paid their respects to him in Libya.

The fourth and final era began earlier this year, with the Benghazi rebellion, when Qaddafi in retreat reverted to the explicit brutality of his earlier rule, casting aside the carefully constructed image of someone newly paying attention to international expectations. With his regime in the balance, his viciousness and delusion took center stage and the results were devastating, with Libyans in great numbers rejecting him, his family, his regime, and his legacy.

After decades of repression and deceit, Libyans now face the challenge of discarding that foul legacy. They must struggle to free themselves of paranoia, depravity, and contortion. As Andrew Solomon of the New Yorker summed up the problem, Libyans “may recover from the Qaddafis’ embezzlement and brutality, but the falseness of life in the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya will take a long time to fade.”

Indeed it will.

— Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2011 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

White House Mischief

The Obama administration’s sleazy sleights of hand expose it to ridicule.

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.nationalreview.com
August 16, 2011

US President Barack Obama speaks at an Iftar meal, the breaking of the Ramadan fast, at the White House in Washington on August 13, 2010. Muslims all over the world abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex from sunrise to sunset during the month of Ramadan in order to purify themselves and concentrate on Islamic teachings. (Getty Images)

The White House engaged in two puerile gambits last week that exposed the Obama administration’s amateurish and deceitful Middle East policies in a painfully obvious manner.

The first case concerned the thorny issue of Jerusalem’s legal status in American law. In 1947, the United Nations ruled the holy city to be a corpus separatum (Latin for “separated body”) and not part of any state. All these years later and despite many changes, U.S. policy continues to hold this to be Jerusalem’s status. This ignores that the government of Israel declared western Jerusalem to be its capital in 1950 and the whole of Jerusalem in 1980. The executive branch even ignores U.S. laws from 1995 (requiring a move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem) and 2002 (requiring that U.S. documents recognize Americans born in Jerusalem to be born in Israel). Instead, it insists that the city’s disposition must be decided through diplomacy.

In a challenge to this policy, the American parents of Jerusalem-born Menachem Zivotofsky demanded on his behalf that his birth certificate and his passport list him as born in Israel. When the State Department refused, the parents filed a lawsuit; their case has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

Things started to get interesting on August 4, when Rick Richman of the New York Sun noted that “the White House acknowledges on its own website that Jerusalem is in Israel — as does the State Department and the CIA on theirs,” undermining the government’s case. Richman pointed to three mentions of “Jerusalem, Israel” in captions to pictures on the White House website in connection with a trip by Joe Biden in March 2010: “Vice President Joe Biden laughs with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, Israel”; “Vice President Joe Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Israel”; and “Vice President Joe Biden has breakfast with Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair . . . in Jerusalem, Israel.” Richman deemed this wording to be potentially “pivotal evidence” against the government’s case.

At 3:22 p.m. on August 9, Daniel Halper of The Weekly Standard reiterated Richman’s point by posting the first of those pictures. Two hours and four minutes later, at 5:26 p.m., Halper reported that “the White House has apparently gone through its website, cleansing any reference to Jerusalem as being in Israel.” The new caption read, “Vice President Joe Biden laughs with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem.” Someone on the White House staff hoped to pull a fast one. As James Taranto noted in the Wall Street Journal, the Supreme Court does not take kindly to such pranks.

The second deceit concerns the iftar dinner (breaking the Ramadan fast) at the White House on August 10. The White House published a guest list “of some of the expected attendees” that included four members of Congress, 36 diplomats, and eleven “community members.” To the relief of those of us who watch these matters, the list mentioned no American Islamists.

But “some” was a weasel word. Research by the Investigative Project on Terrorism and others established that the published list did not mention the American Islamists attending that dinner, including Haris Tarin of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Mohamed Magid of the Islamic Society of North America, and Awais Sufi of Muslim Advocates.

(Also noteworthy: The White House invited not a single representative of the twelve-member anti-Islamist group the American Islamic Leadership Coalition, whose mission statement proclaims the goal “to defend the U.S. Constitution, uphold religious pluralism, protect American security and cherish genuine diversity in the practice of our faith of Islam.”)

In combination, these two deceits in two days make one wonder about the morality and even sanity of the White House staff under Barack Obama. Do his munchkins really think they can get away with such sleazy sleights of hand?

Separately, each of these deceits warrants condemnation; together, they symbolize the tenor of a failed administration in panic over its lowest-ever poll ratings (43.3 percent approval according to RealClearPolitics.com’s aggregation of surveys) and trying to revive its fortunes by whatever means necessary, even if its dishonest efforts expose it to ridicule.

More specifically, the two incidents point to the bankruptcy of the administration’s Middle East and Muslim-outreach policies. The arrogance of 2009 remains in place, but now it is tempered by failure and desperation.

— Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2011 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

Not Stealing Palestine but Purchasing Israel

by Daniel Pipes
http://www.humanevents.com
06/21/2011

Zionists stole Palestinian land: that's the mantra both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas teach their children and propagate in their media. This claim has vast importance, as Palestinian Media Watch explains: "Presenting the creation of the [Israeli] state as an act of theft and its continued existence as a historical injustice serves as the basis for the PA's non-recognition of Israel's right to exist." The accusation of theft also undermines Israel's position internationally.

But is this accusation true?

No, it is not. Ironically, the building of Israel represents about the most peaceable in-migration and state creation in history. To understand why requires seeing Zionism in context. Simply put, conquest is the historic norm; governments everywhere were established through invasion, nearly all states came into being at someone else's expense. No one is permanently in charge, everyone's roots trace back to somewhere else.

Germanic tribes, Central Asian hordes, Russian tsars, and Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors remade the map. Modern Greeks have only a tenuous connection to the Greeks of antiquity. Who can count the number of times Belgium was overrun? The United States came into existence by defeating Native Americans. Kings marauded in Africa, Aryans invaded India. In Japan, Yamato-speakers eliminated all but tiny groups such as the Ainu.

The Middle East, due to its centrality and geography, has experienced more than its share of invasions, including the Greek, Roman, Arabian, Crusader, Seljuk, Timurid, Mongolian, and modern European. Within the region, dynastic froth caused the same territory – Egypt for example – to be conquered and re-conquered.

The land that now makes up Israel was no exception. In Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel, Eric H. Cline writes of Jerusalem: "No other city has been more bitterly fought over throughout its history." He backs up that claim, counting "at least 118 separate conflicts in and for Jerusalem during the past four millennia." He calculates Jerusalem to have been destroyed completely at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The PA fantasizes that today's Palestinians are descended from a tribe of ancient Canaan, the Jebusites; in fact, but they are overwhelmingly the off-spring of invaders and immigrants seeking economic opportunities.

Against this tableau of unceasing conquest, violence, and overthrow, Zionist efforts to build a presence in the Holy Land until 1948 stand out as astonishingly mild, as mercantile rather than military. Two great empires, the Ottomans and the British, ruled Eretz Yisrael; in contrast, Zionists lacked military power. They could not possibly achieve statehood through conquest.

Instead, they purchased land. Acquiring property dunam by dunam, farm by farm, house by house, lay at the heart of the Zionist enterprise until 1948. The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine "to assist in the foundation of a new community of free Jews engaged in active and peaceable industry," was the key institution – and not the Haganah, the clandestine defense organization founded in 1920.

Many wars over Jerusalem: Emperor Titus celebrated his victory over the Jews in 70 A.D. with an arch showing Roman soldiers carrying off a menorah from the Temple Mount.

Zionists also focused on the rehabilitation of what was barren and considered unusable. They not only made the desert bloom but drained swamps, cleared water channels, reclaimed wasteland, forested bare hills, cleared rocks, and removed salt from the soil. Jewish reclamation and sanitation work precipitously reduced the number of disease-related deaths.

Only when the British mandatory power gave up on Palestine in 1948, followed immediately by an all-out attempt by Arab states to crush and expel the Zionists, did the latter take up the sword in self defense and go on to win land through military conquest. Even then, as the historian Efraim Karsh demonstrates in Palestine Betrayed, most Arabs fled their lands; exceedingly few were forced off.

This history contradicts the Palestinian account that "Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people" which led to a catastrophe "unprecedented in history" (according to a PA 12^th-grade textbook) or that Zionists "plundered the Palestinian land and national interests, and established their state upon the ruins of the Palestinian Arab people" (writes a columnist in the PA's daily). International organizations, newspaper editorials, and faculty petitions reiterate this falsehood worldwide.

Israelis should hold their heads high and point out that the building of their country was based on the least violent and most civilized movement of any people in history. Gangs did not steal Palestine; merchants purchased Israel.

---

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).

Is Saudi Arabia Opening Up?

The fight between Islamic reformers and hardliners deserves our full attention.

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.nationalreview.com
January 4, 2011 12:00 A.M.

The Breakwater Beacon at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. Photo: Lehva

On Jan. 1, 1996, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz became regent and effective ruler of Saudi Arabia. His 15th anniversary this week offers an opportunity to review the kingdom’s changes under his leadership and whither it now heads.

His is perhaps the most unusual and opaque country on the planet, a place without a public movie theater, where women may not drive, where men sell women’s lingerie, where a single-button self-destruct system can perhaps destroy the oil infrastructure, and where rulers spurn even the patina of democracy. In its place, they have developed some highly original and successful mechanisms to keep power.

Three features define the regime: controlling the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, subscribing to the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, and possessing by far the world’s largest petroleum reserve. Islam defines identity; Wahhabism inspires global ambitions; and oil wealth funds the enterprise.

More profoundly, wealth beyond avarice permits Saudis to deal with modernity on their own terms. They shun jacket and tie, exclude women from the workspace, and even aspire to replace Greenwich Mean Time with Mecca Mean Time.

Not many years ago, the key debate in the kingdom was that between the monarchical and Taliban versions of Wahhabism — an extreme reading of Islam versus a fanatical one. But today, thanks in large part to Abdullah’s efforts to “tame Wahhabi zeal,” the most retrograde country has taken some cautious steps to join the modern world. These efforts have many dimensions, from children’s education to mechanisms for selecting political leaders, but perhaps the most crucial one is the battle among the ulema, the Islamic men of religion, between reformers and hardliners.

The arcane terms of this dispute make it difficult for outsiders to follow. Fortunately, Roel Meijer, a Dutch Middle East specialist, provides an expert’s guide to arguments in the kingdom in his article, “Reform in Saudi Arabia: The Gender-Segregation Debate.” He demonstrates how gender mixing (“ikhtilat” in Arabic) inspires a debate central to the kingdom’s future and how that debate has evolved.

Current stringencies about gender separation, he notes, reflect less age-old custom than the success of the Sahwa movement in the aftermath of two traumatic events in 1979: the Iranian revolution and the seizure of the Grand Mosque of Mecca by Osama bin Laden–style radicals.

When Abdullah formally ascended to the monarchy in mid-2005, he ushered in an easing of what critics call gender apartheid. Two key recent events toward greater ikhtilat took place in 2009: a change of high government personnel in February and the September opening of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (known as KAUST), with its ostentatiously mixed-gender classes and even dances.

Debate over ikhtilat ensued, with jousting among royals, political figures, ulema, and intellectuals: “Although the position of women has improved since 9/11, ikhtilat demarcates the battle lines between reformists and conservatives [i.e., hardliners]. Any attempt to diminish [the] enforcement [of gender separation] is regarded as a direct attack on the standing of conservatives and Islam itself.”

Meijer concludes his survey of the debate by noting that “it is extremely difficult to determine whether reforms are successful and whether the liberals or conservatives are making gains. Although the general trend is in favor of the reformists, reform is piecemeal, hesitant, equivocal and strongly resisted.”

The state under Abdullah has promoted a more open and tolerant Islam but, Meijer argues, “it is obvious from the ikhtilat debate that the battle has not been won. Many Saudis are fed up with the inordinate interference of religious authorities in their lives, and one can even speak of an anti-clerical movement. The liberals, however, speak a language that is alien to the world of official Wahhabism and the majority of Saudis and is therefore hardly likely to influence them.”

In brief, Arabians are still deciding, with the future course of reform as yet unpredictable. Not only do elite and public opinion play a role, but, complicating matters, much hangs on the quirks of longevity and personality — in particular, how long Abdullah, 86, remains in charge and whether his ailing half-brother crown prince, Sultan bin Abdulaziz, 82, will succeed him.

Saudi Arabia being one of the world’s most influential Muslim countries, the stakes are high, not just within the kingdom, but for Islam and Muslims generally. This debate deserves our full attention.

— Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2011 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

How Islamists Came to Dominate European Islam

Western governments have a history of ignoring the Islamists’ repulsive ideology and working with them; the results have never been good.

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.nationalreview.com
May 25, 2010 12:00 A.M.

The 7/7 bombings in London, in which Islamists killed 52 and injured 700, prompted British authorities to work with Muslims to avoid future violence.

However, rather than turn to anti-Islamist Muslims who reject the triumphalist goal of applying Islamic law in Europe, they promoted non-violent Islamists, hoping these would persuade coreligionists to express their hatred of the West in lawful ways. This effort featured Tariq Ramadan (b. 1962), a prominent Islamist intellectual. For example, London’s Metropolitan Police partially funded a conference that Ramadan addressed, and Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed him to an official “working group on tackling extremism.”

Deploying an Islamist may have seemed like an original and clever idea, but it was neither. Western governments have been allying without success with Islamists for decades. Indeed, they have been allying with Ramadan’s own family.

In 1953, Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower hosted a group of foreign Muslims that included Said Ramadan (1926–95), a leader of arguably the most influential Islamist organization of the twentieth century, the rabidly anti-West Muslim Brotherhood — and also Tariq’s father. The Eisenhower-Ramadan meeting took place in the context of sustained U.S. government efforts to rally Muslims against Soviet Communism, in part by putting Said Ramadan on the CIA payroll. Talcott Seelye, an American diplomat who met with him about that time, explains: “We thought of Islam as a counterweight to communism.”

Then there was Hasan al-Banna (1906–49), Tariq’s grandfather, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and recipient of Nazi funding. American diplomats in Cairo in the late 1940s had “regular meetings” with al-Banna, found him “perfectly empathetic,” and perceived his organization to be a “moderate” and even a “positive” force. The British apparently offered al-Banna money.

In other words, Western governments have a history of ignoring the Islamists’ repulsive ideology and working with them, even strengthening them.

In a stunning piece of investigative historical research, Ian Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist formerly with the Wall Street Journal, reveals new twists and turns of this drama in his just-released book, A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West.

Johnson opens with a review of the systematic Nazi efforts to recruit Soviet Muslims from among their prisoners of war. Many Muslims loathed Stalin, and between 150,000 and 300,000 of them fought for the Axis in World War II. In other words, over and above their unfulfilled propaganda effort directed at Arabs, the Nazis actually fielded a substantial force of mainly Turkic Muslims under the leadership of a scholarly Nazi enthusiast named Gerhard von Mende.

After the German defeat in 1945, Johnson follows von Mende as he continued his anti-Communist work with ex-Soviet Muslims, now in a Cold War context. But his network of former soldiers proved not very competent at the task of arousing Muslim hostility against the Soviet Union. Their leading intellectual, for example, had served as the imam of an SS division that helped suppress the Warsaw uprising of 1944. Islamists quickly proved themselves far more competent at this political and religious challenge. Johnson explains that they “wear suits, have university degrees, and can formulate their demands in ways that a politician can understand.”

The heart of his fascinating study lies in tracing the evolution, much of it in Munich, from old soldiers to new Islamists. It’s a classic tale of 1950s intrigue, complete with rehabilitated Nazis, CIA front organizations, and dueling Soviet and American ambitions.

Johnson shows how, without anyone quite planning it, the Americans usurped von Mende’s network and handed it over to Said Ramadan. This early U.S. boost to the Muslim Brotherhood, Johnson argues, gave it the means to establish an Islamist framework just in time to welcome the surge of Muslim immigration to Europe in the 1970s.

Thus did the Islamist domination of European Muslims have two hidden facilitators, Nazi and American. Its origins in Operation Barbarossa reveal the ugly pedigree of today’s Islamist strength. Hitler and his thugs could not have foreseen it, but they helped set the stage for Eurabia.

American backing for Islamists prompts Johnson to warn against the futility of allying with the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk — as Tony Blair once again recently attempted. However tempting, it invariably harms the West. The lesson is simple: Be cognizant of history and do not assist the Islamists.

— Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2010 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

America’s Shiny New Palestinian Militia

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.nationalreview.com/
March 16, 2010

No matter how events play out, this story ends with U.S.-trained soldiers pointing their guns at Israel.

‘The stupidest program the U.S. government has ever undertaken” — last year that’s what I called American efforts to improve the Palestinian Authority (PA) military force. Slightly hyperbolic, yes, but the description fits because those efforts enhance the fighting power of enemies of the United States and its Israeli ally.

First, a primer about the program, drawing on a recent Center for Near East Policy Research study by David Bedein and Arlene Kushner: Shortly after Yasir Arafat died in late 2004, the U.S. government established the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator to reform, recruit, train, and equip the PA militia (called the National Security Forces or Quwwat al-Amn al-Watani) and make them politically accountable. For nearly all of its existence, the office has been headed by Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton. Since 2007, American taxpayers have funded it to the tune of $100 million a year. Many agencies of the U.S. government have been involved in the program, including the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the Secret Service, and branches of the military.

The PA militia has in total about 30,000 troops, of which four battalions, totaling 2,100 troops, have passed scrutiny for lack of criminal or terrorist ties and undergone 1,400 hours of training at an American facility in Jordan. There they study subjects ranging from small-unit tactics and crime-scene investigations to first aid and human-rights law.

With Israeli permission, these troops have deployed in areas of Hebron, Jenin, and Nablus. So far, this experiment has gone well, prompting widespread praise. Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) calls the program “extremely encouraging.” and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times discerns in the U.S.-trained troops a possible “Palestinian peace partner for Israel” taking shape.

Looking ahead, however, I predict that those troops will more likely be a war partner than a peace partner for Israel. Consider the troops’ likely role in several scenarios.

No Palestinian state: Dayton proudly calls the U.S.-trained forces “founders of a Palestinian state,” a polity he expects to come into existence by 2011. What if — as has happened many times before — the Palestinian state does not emerge on schedule? Dayton himself warns of “big risks,” presumably meaning that his freshly minted troops would start directing their firepower against Israel.

Palestinian state: The PA has never wavered in its goal of eliminating Israel, as the briefest glance at documentation collected by Palestinian Media Watch makes evident. Should the PA achieve statehood, it will certainly pursue its historic goal — only now equipped with a shiny new American-trained soldiery and arsenal.

The PA defeats Hamas: For the same reason, in the unlikely event that the PA prevails over Hamas, its Gaza-based Islamist rival, it will probably incorporate Hamas troops into its own militia and then order the combined troops to attack Israel. The rival organizations may differ in outlook, methods, and personnel, but they share the overarching goal of eliminating Israel.

Hamas defeats the PA: Should the PA succumb to Hamas, it will absorb at least some of “Dayton’s men” into its own militia and deploy them in the effort to eliminate the Jewish state.

Hamas and PA cooperate: Even as Dayton imagines he is preparing a militia to fight Hamas, the PA leadership participates in Egyptian-sponsored talks with Hamas about power sharing — raising the specter that the U.S.-trained forces and Hamas will coordinate attacks on Israel.

The law of unintended consequences provides one temporary consolation: As Washington sponsors the PA forces and Tehran sponsors those of Hamas, Palestinian forces are more ideologically riven, perhaps weakening their overall ability to damage Israel.

Admittedly, Dayton’s men are behaving themselves at present. But whatever the future brings — state, no state, Hamas defeats the PA, the PA defeats Hamas, or the two cooperate — these militiamen will eventually turn their guns against Israel. When that happens, Dayton and the geniuses idealistically building the forces of Israel’s enemy will likely shrug and say, “No one could have foreseen this outcome.”

Not so: Some of us foresee it and are warning against it. More deeply, some of us understand that the 1993 Oslo process did not end the Palestinian leadership’s drive to eliminate Israel.

The Dayton mission needs to be stopped before it does more harm. Congress should immediately cut all funding for the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator.

— Daniel Pipes is Director of the Middle East Forum and Taube Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

© 2010 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

In Mideast, Bet on a Strong Horse

A new book on Arab politics has diagnosed a pathology.

By Daniel Pipes
Author Archive Latest
http://www.nationalreview.com/
February 16, 2010 12:00 A.M.

The violence and cruelty of Arabs often perplexes Westerners.

Not only does the leader of Hezbollah proclaim “We love death,” but so too does, for example, the 24-year-old man who last month yelled “We love death more than you love life” as he crashed his car on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge in New York City. As two parents in St. Louis honor-killed their teenage daughter with thirteen stabs of a butcher’s knife, the Palestinian father shouted “Die! Die quickly! Die quickly! . . . Quiet, little one! Die, my daughter, die!” — and the local Arab community supported them against murder charges. A prince from Abu Dhabi recently tortured a grain dealer whom he accused of fraud; although a video of the atrocity appeared on television internationally, the prince was acquitted while his accusers were convicted.

On a larger scale, one accounting finds 15,000 terrorist attacks since 9/11. Governments throughout the Arabic-speaking world rely more on brutality than on the rule of law. The drive to eliminate Israel still persists even as new insurrections take hold; the latest one has flared up in Yemen.

Several excellent attempts to explain the pathology of Arab politics exist; my personal favorites include studies by David Pryce-Jones and Philip Salzman. Now add to these The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (Doubleday, $26), an entertaining yet deep and important analysis by Lee Smith, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Smith takes as his prooftext Osama bin Laden’s comment in 2001, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” What Smith calls the strong-horse principle contains two banal elements: Seize power and then maintain it. This principle predominates because Arab public life has “no mechanism for peaceful transitions of authority or power sharing, and therefore [it] sees political conflict as a fight to the death between strong horses.” Violence, Smith observes is “central to the politics, society, and culture of the Arabic-speaking Middle East.” It also, more subtly, implies keeping a wary eye on the next strong horse, triangulating, and hedging bets.

Smith argues that the strong-horse principle, not Western imperialism or Zionism, “has determined the fundamental character of the Arabic-speaking Middle East.” The Islamic religion itself both fits into the ancient pattern of strong-horse assertiveness and actively promulgates it. Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, was a strongman as well as a religious figure. Sunni Muslims have ruled though the centuries “by violence, repression, and coercion.” Ibn Khaldun’s famous theory of history amounts to a cycle of violence in which strong horses replace weak ones. The humiliation of dhimmis daily reminds non-Muslims who rules.

Smith’s prism offers insights into modern Middle East history. He presents Pan-Arab nationalism as an effort to transform the mini-horses of the national states into a single super-horse and Islamism as an effort to make Muslims powerful again. Israel serves as “a proxy strong horse” for both the United States and the Saudi-Egyptian bloc in the latter’s Cold War rivalry with Iran’s bloc. In a strong-horse environment, militias appeal more than do elections. Lacking a strong horse, Arab liberals make little headway. The United States being the most powerful non-Arab and non-Muslim state makes anti-Americanism both inevitable and endemic.

Which brings us to the policies of non-Arab actors: Unless they are forceful and show true staying power, Smith stresses, they lose. Being nice — say, withdrawing unilaterally from southern Lebanon and Gaza — leads to inevitable failure. The George W. Bush administration rightly initiated a democratization project, raising high hopes, but then betrayed Arab liberals by not carrying through. In Iraq, the administration ignored advice to install a democratically minded strongman.

More broadly, when the U.S. government flinches, others (e.g., the Iranian leadership) have an opportunity to “force their own order on the region.” Walid Jumblatt, a Lebanese leader, has half-seriously suggested that Washington “send car bombs to Damascus” to get its message across and signal its understanding of Arab ways.

Smith’s simple and near-universal principle provides a tool to comprehend the Arabs’ cult of death, honor killings, terrorist attacks, despotism, warfare, and much else. He acknowledges that the strong-horse principle may strike Westerners as ineffably crude, but he correctly insists on its being a cold reality that outsiders must recognize, take into account, and respond to.

— Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2010 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

Why I Stand with Geert Wilders

He represents all Westerners who cherish their civilization.

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.nationalreview.com/
January 19, 2010, 0:00 a.m.

Who is the most important European alive today? I nominate the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. I do so because he is best placed to deal with the Islamic challenge facing the continent. He has the potential to emerge as a world-historical figure.


Geert Wilders

That Islamic challenge consists of two components: on the one hand, an indigenous population’s withering Christian faith, inadequate birthrate, and cultural diffidence, and on the other an influx of devout, prolific, and culturally assertive Muslim immigrants. This fast-moving situation raises profound questions about Europe: Will it retain its historic civilization or become a majority-Muslim continent living under Islamic law (the Shari’a)?

Wilders, 46, founder and head of the Party for Freedom (PVV), is the unrivaled leader of those Europeans who wish to retain their historic identity. That’s because he and the PVV differ from most of Europe’s other nationalist, anti-immigrant parties.

The PVV is libertarian and mainstream conservative, without roots in neo-Fascism, nativism, conspiricism, antisemitism, or other forms of extremism. (Wilders publicly emulates Ronald Reagan.) Indicative of this moderation is Wilders’s long-standing affection for Israel that includes two years’ residence in the Jewish state, dozens of visits, and his advocating the transfer of the Dutch embassy to Jerusalem.

In addition, Wilders is a charismatic, savvy, principled, and outspoken leader who has rapidly become the most dynamic political force in the Netherlands. While he opines on the full range of topics, Islam and Muslims constitute his signature issue. Overcoming the tendency of Dutch politicians to play it safe, he calls Muhammad a devil and demands that Muslims “tear out half of the Koran if they wish to stay in the Netherlands.” More broadly, he sees Islam itself as the problem, not just a virulent version of it called Islamism.

Finally, the PVV benefits from the fact that, uniquely in Europe, the Dutch are receptive to a non-nativist rejection of Shari’a. This first became apparent a decade ago, when Pim Fortuyn, a left-leaning former-Communist homosexual professor began arguing that his values and lifestyle were irrevocably threatened by the Shari’a. Fortuyn anticipated Wilders in founding his own political party and calling for a halt to Muslim immigration to the Netherlands. Following Fortuyn’s 2002 assassination by a leftist, Wilders effectively inherited his mantle and his constituency.

The PVV has done well electorally, winning 6 percent of the seats in the November 2006 national parliamentary elections and 16 percent of Dutch seats in the June 2009 European Union elections. Polls now generally show the PVV winning a plurality of votes and becoming the country’s largest party. Were Wilders to become prime minister, he could take on a leadership role for all Europe.But he faces daunting challenges.

The Netherlands’ fractured political scene means the PVV must either find willing partners to form a governing coalition (a difficult task, given how leftists and Muslims have demonized Wilders as a “right-wing extremist”) or win a majority of the seats in parliament (a distant prospect).

Wilders must also overcome his opponents’ dirty tactics. Most notably, they have finally, after two and a half years of preliminary skirmishes, succeeded in dragging him to court on charges of hate speech and incitement to hatred. The public prosecutor’s case against Wilders opens in Amsterdam on January 20; if convicted, Wilders faces a fine of up to $14,000 or as many as 16 months in jail.

Remember, he is his country’s leading politician. Plus, due to threats against his life, he always travels with bodyguards and incessantly changes safe houses. Who exactly, one wonders, is the victim of incitement?

Although I disagree with Wilders about Islam (I respect the religion but fight Islamists with all I have), we stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the lawsuit. I reject the criminalization of political differences, particularly attempts to thwart a grassroots political movement via the courts.
Accordingly, the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project has worked on Wilders’s behalf, raising substantial funds for his defense and helping in other ways. We do so convinced of the paramount importance of talking freely in public during time of war about the nature of the enemy.

Ironically, were Wilders fined or jailed, it would probably improve his chances to become prime minister. But principle outweighs political tactics here. He represents all Westerners who cherish their civilization. The outcome of his trial and his freedom to speak have implications for us all.

— Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

© 2010 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

What the Near-Tragedy in Detroit Revealed

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.frontpagemag.com/
28 December 2009

The near-success of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, to set off an explosive on Christmas Day should open the American public’s eyes to the sad state of counterterrorism eight years after 9/11.

The incident involved a Nigerian in Seat 19A – ideally placed over the fuel tanks, atop the wing, and next to the exterior of the aircraft – of Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. As summarized by the Wall Street Journal, it

happened as the Airbus 330-300 carrying 289 people was approaching Detroit. Mr. Abdulmutallab went to the plane’s restroom for about 20 minutes, and upon returning to his seat he stated that his stomach was upset, and he pulled a blanket over himself, according to the Justice Department complaint. As the flight was heading for a landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport before noon, the complaint alleges, Mr. Abdulmutallab set off the device. Passengers heard popping noises similar to firecrackers, smelled an odor, and some observed Mr. Abdulmutallab’s pants leg and the wall of the airplane on fire.

Subsequent investigations learned that the plot was organized and launched by Al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen, who arranged for 80 grams of PETN (pentaerythritol) to be sewed into Abdulmutallab’s underwear. Investigators concluded that only a chance malfunction prevented the explosives from bringing down the Northwest plane.

Umar Farouk’s father, Umaru Abdulmutallab, former chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria and one of his country’s most prominent businessmen, recently went to the U.S. embassy in Abuja to warn about his son’s “radicalization and associations,” prompting American officialdom to place the son on a terror watch list of about 550,000 names, the Terrorist Screening Data Base. But they did not place him on the list of about 15,000 individuals who must go through additional screening, much less the list of about 4,000 people on the “no-fly” list, who are not allowed to fly to or in the United States. Nor did they revoke Abdulmutallab’s two-year, multi-entry tourist visa. Nor did an air marshal accompany his flight.

Despite these multiple failures, Janet Napolitano, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, astonishingly claimed that the system “worked really very, very smoothly” in Detroit. This myopia increases my worries about U.S. law enforcement. In fact, had the system worked, Abdulmutallab would never have entered the airplane, much less set off an explosive device.

Looking ahead, the Transportation Security Administration has issued an emergency order requiring travelers headed for the United States to undergo a “thorough pat-down” at the boarding gate, with a focus on the upper legs and torso and an inspection of carry-on baggage, with a focus on syringes. During the final hour on all U.S. flights, passengers must remain seated, may not access carry-on baggage or keep personal item in their laps.

More delights may follow, reports the New York Times: “Overseas passengers will be restricted to only one carry-on item aboard the plane. … On one flight, from Newark Airport, flight attendants kept cabin lights on for the entire trip instead of dimming them for takeoff and landing. … All carry-on items would be screened at security checkpoints and again at boarding. … In effect, the restrictions mean that passengers on flights of 90 minutes or less would most likely not be able to leave their seats at all.”

As Phyllis Chesler plaintively asks, “Are we all going to be subjected to underwear checks before boarding our flights? If so, Al-Qaeda will soon secrete explosives in body cavities. Will we all be searched there as well?”

In other words, because U.S. security agencies refuse to take the sensible precaution of concentrating their resources on the small target pool of suspects, namely Muslims, about 1 percent of the population, hundreds of millions of passengers must bear the burden of extra cost, inconvenience, and loss of privacy.

The Detroit abruptly renders invalid several aphorisms I honed over recent years:

* Had U.S. law enforcement devoted the attention to the 9/11 plotters that it has since given to counterterrorism, 9/11 would never have taken place.

* While Sudden Jihad Syndrome by isolated individuals remains beyond the abilities of American institutions to stop (viz., the Ft. Hood shooter last month), terrorists linked to Al-Qaeda are well under surveillance.

* Government authorities have terrorism under control, so we private analysts can focus instead on the non-violent forms of radical Islam known variously as “stealth jihad,” “creeping Shari‘a,” “lawful Islamism,” or “Islamism 2.0.”

The Northwest incident takes me back to 9/11 itself, when I wrote a bitter analysis how the U.S. government had “grievously failed in its topmost duty to protect American citizens from harm.” That failure continues.

What size disaster must occur to inspire a serious approach to counterterrorism?