Daniel Pipes, one of our leading experts on Islam, established
the Middle East Forum and became its head in 1994. He was born in
1949 and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, Richard
Pipes, was a professor of Russian history, now emeritus, at
Harvard.
Daniel studied Arabic and Islamic history and lived in Cairo for
three years. His PhD dissertation became his first
book, Slave Soldiers and Islam (1981). Then his
interest in purely academic subjects expanded to include modern
Islam. He left the university because, as he told an interviewer
from Harvard Magazine, he has “the simple politics of
a truck driver, not the complex ones of an academic.”
His story of being harassed through the legal system by a Muslim
who later committed suicide was recently told in The
American Spectator (“A Palestinian in
Texas,” TAS, November 2012). He has been
personally threatened but prefers not to talk about specifics
except to note that law enforcement has been involved.
I interviewed Pipes shortly before Christmas, when the Egyptians
were voting on their new constitution. I started out by saying that
the number of Muslims in the U.S. has doubled since the 9/11
attacks.
DP: My career divides in two: before and after 9/11. In the
first part I was trying to show that Islam is relevant to political
concerns. If you want to understand Muslims, I argued, you need to
understand the role of Islam in their lives. Now that seems
obvious. If anything, there’s a tendency to over-emphasize Islam;
to assume that Muslims are dominated by the Koran and are its
automatons—which goes too far. You can’t just read the Koran to
understand Muslim life. You have to look at history, at
personalities, at economics, and so on.
TB: Do you see the revival of Islam as a
reality?
DP: Yes. Half a century ago Islam was waning, the application of
its laws became ever more remote, and the sense existed that Islam,
like other religions, was in decline. Since then there has been a
sharp and I think indisputable reversal. We’re all talking about
Islam and its laws now.
TB: At the same time you have raised an odd
question: “Can Islam survive Islamism?” Can you explain
that?
DP: I draw a distinction between traditional Islam and Islamism.
Islamism emerged in its modern form in the 1920s and is driven by a
belief that Muslims can be strong and rich again if they follow the
Islamic law severely and in its entirety. This is a response to the
trauma of modern Islam. And yet this form of Islam is doing deep
damage to faith, to the point that I wonder if Islam will ever
recover.
TB: Give us the historical
context.
DP: The modern era for Muslims began with Napoleon’s invasion of
Egypt in 1798. Muslims experienced a great shock at seeing how
advanced the blue-eyed peoples from the north had become. It would
be roughly analogous to the Eskimos coming down south and
decimating Westerners, who would uncomprehendingly ask in response,
“Who are these people and how are they defeating us?”
TB: So how did they respond?
DP: Muslims over the past 200 years have made many efforts to
figure out what went wrong. They have experimented with several
answers. One was to emulate liberal Europe—Britain and France—until
about 1920. Another was to emulate illiberal Europe—Germany and
Russia—until about 1970. The third was to go back to what are
imagined to be the sources of Islamic strength a millennium ago,
namely the application of Islamic law. That’s Islamism. It’s a
modern phenomenon, and it’s making Muslims the center of world
unrest.
TB: But it is also creating
discomfort?
DP: It has terribly deleterious effects on Muslims. Many of them
are put off by Islam. In Iran, for example, one finds a lot of
alienation from Islam as a result of the Islamist rule of the last
30-odd years.
TB: Has it happened anywhere else?
DP: One hears reports, especially from Algeria and Iraq, of
Muslims converting to Christianity. And in an unprecedented move,
ex-Muslims living in the West have organized with the goal of
becoming a political force. I believe the first such effort was the
Centraal Comité voor Ex-moslims in the Netherlands, but now it’s
all over the place.
TB: Nonetheless, Islam has lasted for 1,500
years.
DP: Yes, but modern Islamism has been around only since the
1920s, and I predict it will not last as a world-threatening force
for more than a few decades. Will Muslims leave the faith or simply
stop practicing it? These are the sort of questions I expect to be
current before long.
TB: What about Islam in the United
States?
DP: In the long term, the United States could greatly benefit
Islam by uniquely freeing the religion from government constraints
and permitting it to evolve in a positive, modern direction. But
that’s the long term. Right now, American Muslims labor under Saudi
and other influences, their institutions are extreme, and things
are heading in a destructive direction. It’s also distressing to
see how non-Muslim individuals and institutions, particularly those
on the left, indulge Islamist misbehavior.
TB: How do they do that?
DP: Well, turn on the television, go to a class, follow the work
of the ACLU or the Southern Poverty Law Center, and you will see
corporations, nonprofits, and government institutions working with
the Islamists, helping promote the Islamist agenda. The American
left and the Islamists agree on what they
dislike—conservatives—and, despite their profound differences, they
cooperate.
TB: Presumably some Muslims here deconvert,
right?
DP: There are some conversions out of Islam, yes. And the Muslim
establishment in this country is quite concerned about that. But
numerically it is not a significant number.
TB: The ones who convert don’t talk about it very
much?
DP: In some cases they do; they take advantage of Western
freedoms to speak their minds. They are the exceptions, though.
TB: I suspect that the decline of Christianity has
encouraged Islam.
DP: Very much so, as the contrast between Europe and the United
States reveals. The hard kernel of American Christian faith, not
present in Europe, means that Islamists are far better behaved in
the United States. They see the importance of a Christian
counterforce.
TB: Earlier, you mentioned Algeria. It is a big
Muslim state that we don’t hear about today.
DP: Twenty years ago Algeria was a major focus of attention.
That long ago ended, although in France coverage is still
significant. Algeria is ripe for the same kind of upheaval that we
have seen in other North African states, such as Tunisia, Libya,
and Egypt. I think it is likely to happen before too long.
TB: What about Syria?
DP: Assad’s power is steadily diminishing and I cannot see how
his regime will remain long in power.
TB: Should the United States get involved
there?
DP: No, Americans have no dog in this fight and nothing in the
U.S. Constitution requires us to get involved in every foreign
conflict. Two wretched forces are killing each other; just look at
the ghastly videos of the two sides torturing and executing the
other. Listen also to what they are saying. It’s a civil war
involving the bad and the worse. I don’t want the
U.S. government involved. That would mean bearing some moral
responsibility for what emerges, which I expect to be very
unsavory.
TB: So you are supporting the Obama
position?
DP: Yes, though he reaches it with far more angst. Also, there
appears to be some serious, clandestine U.S. support for the rebel
forces. The September 11 meeting in Benghazi between the Turkish
and the American ambassadors was very curious. They are both based
in Tripoli, hundreds of miles away. What were they doing in
Benghazi? Arranging for American arms going via Turkey to Syria, it
appears.
TB: How important has Israel been to the revival of
Islam?
DP: It is a major factor in the neighboring states. But
elsewhere, in Morocco, Iran, Malaysia, it has minor importance.
TB: Since the “Arab Spring,” Israel seems
increasingly beleaguered.
DP: Not really, not yet, though I agree that it will be more
beleaguered with time. Its neighbors are so consumed with their own
affairs that they hardly pay Israel attention. But once the
neighbors get their houses in order, Israel will most likely face
new difficulties.
TB: You have questioned U.S. support for Islamic
democracy, which does seem naïve.
DP: The U.S. has been the patron for democracy for a century,
since Wilson’s 14 Points, and a wonderful heritage it has been.
When an American travels the world, he finds himself in country
after country where his country played a monumentally positive
role, especially in democratizing the system. We naturally want to
extend this to Muslim-majority countries. Sadly, these for some
time have offered an unpleasant choice between brutal and greedy
dictators or ideological, extreme, and antagonistic elected
Islamists. It’s not a choice we should accept.
TB: So what should we do?
DP: I offer three simple guidelines. One, always oppose the
Islamists. Like fascists and Communists, they are the totalitarian
enemy, whether they wear long beards in Pakistan or suits in
Washington.
Two, always support the liberal, modern, secular people who
share our worldview. They look to us for moral and other
sustenance; we should be true to them. They are not that strong,
and cannot take power soon anywhere, but they represent hope,
offering the Muslim world’s only prospect of escape from the dreary
dichotomy of dictatorship or extremism.
Three, and more difficult, cooperate with dictators but
condition it on pushing them toward reform and opening up. We need
the Mubaraks of the world and they need us. Fine, but relentlessly
keep the pressure on them to improve their rule. Had we begun this
process with Abdullah Saleh of Yemen in 1978 or with Mubarak in
1981, things could have been very different by 2011. But we
didn’t.
TB: Egypt might be the test case.
DP: Well, it’s a bit late. Mohammed Morsi is not a greedy
dictator but he emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood, and his
efforts since reaching power have been purely Islamist.
TB: What about the recent
elections?
DP: I do not believe that a single one of the elections and
referenda in Egypt was fairly conducted. It surprises me that
Western governments and media are so gullible on this score.
TB: You could say we were supporting the democracy
element in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Were we not?
DP: Yes and rightly so. The initial demonstrations of early 2011
were spearheaded by the liberals and seculars who deserve U.S.
support. But they got quickly pushed aside and Washington barely
paid them further attention.
TB: We gave foreign aid to Mubarak. Was that a bad
idea?
DP: That aid dates back to the utterly different circumstances
of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979 and became progressively
more wrong-headed. It should long ago have been discontinued. More
broadly, I believe in aid for emergencies (soup and blankets) and
as a bribe, but not for economic development. That the Obama
administration is contemplating aid, including military hardware,
to the Morsi government outrages me.
