President Bush’s recent appointment of Muslim-basher Daniel
Pipes to the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace has
some critics wondering whether the White House is actively working
to enrage, rather than engage, the Muslim community. Director of
the Middle East Forum, a right-wing think tank, Pipes is notorious
for his anti-Islam writings, notes Salim Muwakkil in In These
Times. In1995, for instance, he called the Oklahoma City
bombing ‘just the beginning’ of a reign of terror by Islamist
fundamentalists. ‘Pipes has repeatedly demonstrated hostility
toward Arabs and toward Islam as a religion,’ says Mitchell
Plitnick of Jewish Voice for Peace, one of many Jewish
organizations opposing the appointment. ‘Of equal concern is that
Pipes has often espoused the view that force is the most
appropriate solution to the problems in the Middle East and the
Muslim world.’ That the Bush administration would appoint such a
polarizing force to its Institute of Peace makes almost no sense,
writes Muwakkil, unless you accept the neoconservative view that a
‘class of civilizations’ between Christians and Muslims is an
inevitable phase through which the U.S. must pass on its way to
building a global empire.
— Craig Cox
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