Daniel Pipes says not all Muslims are radicals. Several members of the audience attending his speech, which was sponsored by the Malibu Republican Women, Federated, did not agree with that idea.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
Daniel Pipes, a distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine University, spoke about the dangers of radical Islam last week at a meeting of the Malibu Republican Women, Federated.
“There is not much I can point out that is a source of good cheer in the Middle East,” Pipes said. “Radical Islam has been around for some decades, but hasn’t been a player on the world stage until the last 25 years or so. With 9/11, Americans saw what radical Islam can do.”
Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum, a think tank designed to promote American interests in the Middle East, a historian, author, prize-winning columnist and consultant for many American corporations with ties throughout the Middle East. Pipes wrote about radical Islam back in 1995, saying, “War has unilaterally been declared on Europe and the United States.”
The problem, as Pipes sees it, is not Islam itself and the peaceful principals followed by moderate Muslims around the world, but is “a radical Islamic movement that seeks to take over states, dominate everything in those states and provoke a cosmic confrontation with the West.”
Pipes explained the difference between Muslims, people who follow the religious beliefs of Mohammed, and Islamists, those who believe that Islam is also a political system.
“Like the Fascists we defeated in 1945 and the Communists we disempowered in ’91, radical Islamists draw from the best of their society in terms of good families, wealth and education,” he said. “Their frustration now is with their position in the world. They used to be at the forefront of world society in scholarship, money and respect. And they believe that the only way they can achieve that again is to impose Sharia law across the world.”
Sharia law is the body of Islamic jurisprudence that governs all aspects of day-to-day Islamic life, based on the Koran and Hadith traditions.
Saying that Muslims make up only 1 percent of the American population and that only a small percentage of those are Islamists, Pipes said that “creeping Islamization” is coming more slowly to American society than that of Europe.
“In the U.K.,” he said, “schools can no longer tell the fairy tale of the ‘Three Little Pigs’ and banks don’t promote piggy banks any more because swine are dirty to Muslim eyes.
“There is a Muslim cemetery where all the graves are oriented towards Mecca and hospitals offer burkas,” Pipes continued. “Taken individually, these trends are trivial. As an aggregate, they are menacing.”
In this country, the solution to the spread of Islamic radicalism is to court moderate Muslims and to promote a version of moderate Islam, Pipes said.
“I worry about a leading radical Islamist thinker or scholar coming to L.A.,” he said.
But, giving a nod to polemics from differing religions, Pipes acknowledged that radicalism is a problem no matter what God you worship.
“The U.S. government has done a poor job of promoting nonviolence, and well connected professionals of radical stripe, from David Duke to Louis Farrakhan, have gone far in influencing American society,” he said.
“Totalitarian ideologies are the enemy,” Pipes said. “And the only way to fight radical Islam is to render it moot.”
Though he claims to worry about “political correctness” and “not understanding who the enemy really is,” Pipes said that “there are a lot of good Muslims who stand up to radical Islam in this country and they are usually the greatest victims of radicalism. We must convince them that Sharia is a losing strategy and that a moderate version of Islam is what will protect American values while still respecting their religious tenets.”
Not everyone in the audience agreed with Pipes’ approach to cultural integration. Malibu resident Ron Stackler is an attorney and believes that there are no “moderate” Muslims. “Sharia law states that Jews and Christians are second class citizens and that good Muslims are obligated to commit jihad against the infidels. There is no middle ground. Their practice has not advanced. They won’t give up polygamy. At least Christians and Jews have made accommodations to changing civilization over the years.”
Lorraine Stalberg, MRWF vice president, said, “People in this country don’t understand that we are at war.”
Another woman asked, “If we are to crush radical Islam, will it require military action?”
One woman said, “The Koran says it is OK to lie to infidels. They’re having 10 kids while we only have one. How shall we counter this?” Pipes replied, “My advice is not to read the Koran.”