Contributors
Bruce S. Thornton - Contributor

Bruce Thornton is a professor of Classics at Cal State Fresno and co-author of Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished Age and author of Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization (Encounter Books). His most recent book is Searching for Joaquin: Myth, Murieta, and History in California (Encounter Books). [go to Thornton index]

THE RIGHT BOOKS: Equipping the Conservative
Warnings
A Right Books Review: Miniatures. Views of Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics by Daniel Pipes
[Bruce S. Thornton] 5/28/04

Of all the causes behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11, our failure to understand Islam and the Middle East has played a significant role. The various intellectual pathologies that have corrupted scholarly work in America -- cultural relativism, the "all history is interpretation" delusion, and the politicizing of scholarship into advocacy for various victimized peoples -- all have compromised Middle Eastern studies in America, with the continuing popularity of literary critic Edward Said and his thesis of "orientalism" a primary example of this phenomenon.

"Orientalism" is the false notion that everything the West has said about Islam and the Middle East is a fictive caricature designed to validate colonial and imperial oppression. In other words, the West and its outpost Israel are to blame for the Middle East's failure to come to terms with the modern world, and so have some legitimate payback coming.

Daniel Pipes has been one of the most important exceptions to this degradation of history by politics and multicultural victimology. In more than a dozen books, numerous newspaper columns, and his web site Middle East Forum, Pipes has brought a clear-eyed evaluation of Islamic culture and politics, one that combines knowledge, respect for Islam's good qualities, and a willingness to identify the various pathologies that have delivered the Middle East to authoritarian regimes, economic backwardness, ignorance, and a toxic Islamist ideology that, if successful, promises to degrade the Islamic world even more.

The current book collects dozens of columns Pipes has written for the popular press, particularly the New York Post and the Jerusalem Post. They are grouped conveniently by four themes: The war on terrorism, Islam and Muslims, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and American views. One important point evident from these columns is that, long before 9/11, Pipes was sounding the alarm about radical Islam and the consequences of our failure to respond vigorously to its threat.

In 1998 Pipes warned us that the chants of "Death to America" were not rhetorical, for the radicals "viscerally hate the United States. Americans -- individualistic, hedonistic, and democratic -- challenge all they represent, and the United States stands as the single greatest obstacle to fulfilling their vision. They hate Americans for who they are, not for what they do; short of giving up the American way of life, the United States cannot please or appease them."

These are home truths, ones unfortunately that we still appear not to have understood, given the current desperate attempts to "please" and/or "appease" the radicals in Iraq and those who support them. As Pipes wrote in the same column, America must understand that it is at war: "Seeing acts of terror as battles, not crimes, changes and improves" our response to such acts.

Just as in war, "if the perpetrator is not precisely known, then punish those who are known to harbor terrorists. Go after governments and organizations that support terrorism." Bomb "missile installations, airfields, navy ships, and terrorist camps. In every case, the punishment should be disproportionately greater than the attack, so that it stings." Retribution should be "certain and nasty." Rather than provoking a cycle of violence, such an approach would prove that the Islamist estimation of America as "morally flabby and militarily incompetent" was false: "Showing their teeth, Americans are far more likely to intimidate their enemies than to instigate further violence."

Such a response, however, never happened before 9/11. A few token cruise missiles were fired at targets in the Sudan and Afghanistan, but the regimes known to promote and harbor terrorists were never punished. As Pipes wrote in May of 2001, Iranian government officials helped train Al Qaeda terrorists in Lebanon, yet the U.S. responded with bluster and sanctions. Terrorist organizations such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas were allowed to run web sites from the West and solicit funds under the guise of various fronts. Over two hundred Marines were blown to bits in Beirut--again with Iranian collusion--and we did nothing. We rescued our troops in Mogadishu, then simply left instead of returning to annihilate the thugs who killed our citizens. Time and time again, the sort of response Pipes called for was conspicuous by its absence, until we paid the grisly price for our appeasement on 9/11.

Even after 9/11, however, the mischaracterization of radical Islam, whether out of propagandistic design or sheer ignorance, continues to befuddle our thinking. Remember all those apologists telling us not to worry about "jihad," that it really just means the struggle for spiritual development? Remember the Harvard commencement speaker in June 2002, a person who had raised money for a terrorist front, who told his audience that "Jihad is not something that should make someone feel uncomfortable"?

Pipes sets the record straight: jihad in fact refers to "the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims." Jihad is thus nakedly expansionist and offensive, and "has always been a central aspect of Muslim life." Yet despite this truth, American professors and other apologists redefine jihad to mean everything from fighting against evil to "resisting apartheid and working for women's rights," as one
Islamic professor from Auburn seminary put it.

Pipes is very good at documenting the other misinformation and outright lies that have distorted some Americans' understanding of Islam and the Middle East. His review of a widely used junior high textbook, Across the Centuries, reveals the distortions and biases that corrupt the education of unsuspecting children. Contrary to the treatment of other religions, especially Christianity, this book ignores the violence and massacres that have attended the spread of Islam, paints a rosy picture of Islamic culture by ignoring its defects, presents half-truths (such as claiming that Islam gives women rights they don't have in other societies), invites children to identify with Muslims (including imagining that they are soldiers on their way to conquer Syria), and "endorses key articles of Islamic faith," presenting as fact what are actually myths. If any textbook taught Christianity this way the ACLU would call for jihad against the publisher.

Public television committed the same sin against historical truth and complexity in a show from 2002 called Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet. Again, not one word of criticism mars the hagiographical depiction of one of history's most brutal conquerors. As Pipes notes, "PBS has betrayed its viewers by presenting an airbrushed and uncritical documentary . . . Its patronizing film might be fine for an Islamic Sunday school class, but not for a national audience." And he rightfully chastises the American government for using taxpayer dollars to fund a film that glorifies a religion, particularly when usually a whole host of monitors pounces on even the slightest hint of positive attention given to Christianity, despite the fact that it is the religion of the majority of U.S. citizens.

As important as Pipes' work on radical Islam has been his defense of Israel. By attending carefully to Arafat when he speaks to fellow Moslems rather than when he dissimulates for the Western media, Pipes demonstrates the Palestinian leader has been the greatest force of conflict and turmoil in Arab-Israeli crisis, and that the record of his PLO "has consistently been one of an avaricious, self-serving leadership living by a non-democratic ethos."

Despite his pledge in the Oslo agreement to promote the acceptance of Israel, for example, a few months after signing the accord in 1993 Arafat orated in Gaza, "We will go on with the jihad, a long jihad, a difficult jihad, an exhausting jihad, martyrs, battles." After analyzing over two hundred of Arafat's statements to Westerners and fellow Arabs, Pipes concludes, "He condemns terrorism to those who do not engage in it, while avoiding the issue for those who do. He proclaims Israel's permanency to those who themselves accept this fact but hides behind legalism when addressing those who still reject it."

No wonder, then, that Arafat turned down Israel's offer at Camp David in July 2000 and promptly launched the second intifada in September, sending suicide bombers to slaughter Israelis. He was delivering on what he promised his fellow Arabs: a jihad that would create a reality that matched the Palestinian maps, one without Israel.

Pipes is particularly good on tracing the connection between appeasement and further violence -- concession is interpreted as a sign of weakness and moral exhaustion. At Camp David, despite being the victors in every war, the Israelis offered everything while the Arabs gave nothing: "Issues that would benefit Israel -- normalizing relations, changing school textbooks, the Arab League declaring a formal end to the conflict -- were not even on the table."

Yet even still, the main Palestinian groups rejected the Camp David discussions. Why? "Palestinians have, over the seven years of the Oslo process, grown accustomed to taking from Israel and offering very little by way of compensation . . . . As [they] have become the beneficiaries of Israeli largesse, their earlier fear of Israel has been replaced with a disdain that borders on contempt."

In other words, rather than accept 90%, they can use violence to get everything. The lesson is clear: "The more that the Israelis are reasonable and flexible, the less likely Palestinians are to accept a compromise with them," for the simple reason that despite all the propaganda to the contrary, the ultimate strategic aim is not the "Palestinian homeland" but the destruction of Israel. Those disturbed by the wall the Israelis are building around the West Bank or by their killing of Hamas ringleaders should keep this fact in mind.

The Israelis are fighting for their survival against a people who make cults of murderers and whose religious leaders are given to preaching sermons with sentiments such as "God willing, this unjust state Israel will be erased," as the imam of the Gaza mosque said in June 2001.

One would think that 9/11 awakened us to the truths Pipes has been telling for nearly twenty years. Yet the same old bad habits are still on display, indulged in even by an administration that seemingly understands the nature of the struggle. From Bush's proclamation that Islam is really a religion of "peace," to the current unwillingness to deal definitively with the terrorists and insurgents in Falluja and Najaf, our conduct sends to our enemies one message: We do not believe in our values and principles as much as they believe in theirs.

Thus we confirm the Islamist analysis of the West: rich, powerful, but committed more to comfort and pleasure than to values, an estimation validated every time we apologize, tolerate, and appease those who should be destroyed. Until we accept this hard truth--that our enemies will not be talked or negotiated out of their beliefs, but only compelled by a devastating display of the destructive wages of such beliefs--we will risk losing this war and confirming the justice of the Islamist's contempt. If that happens, we won't be able to say that Daniel Pipes didn't warn us. CRO

copyright 2004 Bruce S. Thornton

Searching for Joaquin by Bruce S. Thornton

Greek Ways by Bruce S. Thornton

Bonfire of the Humanities by Victor Davis Hanson, John Heath, Bruce S. Thornton

Plagues of the Mind by Bruce S. Thornton

Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality by Bruce S. Thornton

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