Who is Daniel Pipes?

Well, having lived in Tripoli, Libya, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,and Karachi, Pakistan,and having visited Afghanistan, Iran, Dubai,Q'atar, Jordan and Turkey, I would have to again disagree with you. Once again, I wonder where you get your information. To be honest, I think that you are a troll, albeit an unsuccessful one. This forum is wonderfully free of animosity.
I wonder if perhaps you are merely noticing what may be the decline of Christianity in general?

'S funny, this kind of thing, isn't it? I mean, like i said, i'd never even heard of the guy. The krauthammer article was probably the first thing you read about him, too. Yet here we are, all of us, with google and a webforum in our hands, and within a day we know more about him than about most other people of his stature, & are reasonably able to make some kind of considered conclusion about him. How did we even cope before internet, huh? Just imagine the time you would have had to spend in 1990, to find out even just the above - the trip to libraries, requesting back issues of newspapers and magazines, asking for leaflets from campus-watch, cair ...

Anyway, you seem a changed man - you just admitted changing your opinion! Don't remember you ever did on your previous stay here. I'll remember that next time I turn out to be blatantly wrong or conspicuously misguided ... ;-)

Nimh wrote:

I'll remember that next time I turn out to be blatantly wrong or conspicuously misguided ...

In your world you would never be blatantly wrong or conspicuously misguided-----it must be wonderful to be amply endowed with wisdom at such a young age.

Perception=Troll

Ignorance is being blissfully blind. Therefore, you can never be wrong.

Hobit - and, if I remember, the crusades were also a way to get second and third sons off somewhere else, since primogeniture was what ruled. And all the fiefdoms fighting for power. Looking for riches. Religion was sort of an excuse, but the bloody wars and massacres and slayings that took place along the route to Jerusalem. All in the name of Christianity.

Over in Portugal and Spain, where I've spent a lot of time, there are historical reminders of the Moors all over. And so much of the real cruelty, the bloodshed, seems to date from the time of the Spanish Inquisition, which succeeded in driving out the Jews and the Muslims.

I think, too, Hobit, it was you who mentioned early 20th century German reading. Mein Kampf is illuminating.

Which is a short way of saying that I think almost anything having to do with organized religion is based first on fear, which then becomes the prime tool for power. And no religion has a monopoly. The early pantheistic animalism religions may even have offered more, in the end.

Perception - the acquisition of knowledge and understanding doesn't have age boundaries. Sometimes people who are older haven't gotten there yet, and may never.

Hatred and bigotry never seem far away. this is why it is the duty of an informed citzenry to keep track of what its government is doing, and whom it appoints to what councils. Having been the victim of a racially motivated attempted attack following 11th September, I am particularly concerned about this issue.

Well, we certainly welcome you here, hobit, and I, for one, am enlightened by what you share with us.

I am concerned about this issue, too, and learned so much about the history and influence of the Moors from a European look. My particular interest was the ceramics, and through that, many other fields. We have always had narrow-minded people, and always will. I have five grandsons, and feel it is my bounden duty to broaden their horizons as much as possible. Which I do at every available opportunity (usually a dinner table). Since we are a loud family, there's a lot of noise, but my grandsons' friends are many and varied, and all are welcome. And education - the only true gift ever.

Keep going.

Oy! I've often enough expressed where I changed my mind or where I thought my "opponent" had a really good point. Or where I made a stupid mistake (I remember accusing georgeob1 about saying something he never even did ... <blush>). That's why I was pleasantly surprised to see you do it, this time, too. I wished more people around here did ...

<grumbles> try to pay someone a bleedin' compliment ...

hobitbob, thank you for posting that reading list. Most of us here are just ordinary folk, and with day jobs at that, so i'm afraid you cant really expect us to work through this "short reading list". But it does clearly show that you know a lot about the subject, and your expertise will be extremely helpful here. There's been a number of threads about Islam and the Middle East going on here, might be worth to use the search page to find some back!

What do you know about Mr. Pipes?

Hi, Nimh. I'm afraid that most of what I know about Mr. Pipes has been culled from similar sources as those presented on this thread. The Rocky Mountain News re-ran an editiorial from the Washington Times calling for approval of his appointment , and praising his efforts to protect western civilization from the evil underbelly of the blah blah blah, etc... Anyway, the piece was horribly bigoted. I, and about ten otehrs that I know of, sent letters protesting the opinion to the Wash Times and the RMN, but they were never printed. Two letters to the RMN PRAISING the piece WERE published. This scares the living smurfiness out of me! It is beginning to look like anti-Islamic sentiment is the newly acceptable bigotry. It has had quite the headstart in Europe, in the Turkish/German interactions, and the N. African/French interactions. I don't know how things are in teh Netherlands. I know that Fortuyn was a fairly vocal anti-immigration politician, but I don't know how popular he was.

Here is the edictorial and the letter to the editor I wrote, which, of course, never saw publication.Newly Acceptable Bigotry

Very popular indeed, for the short while that it lasted. He got 17%, out of nowhere, with many more sympathisers among other parties.

The appearance of Islam as the xenophobes' new bugbear has allowed the far right here to cloak itself in the liberal language of defending tolerance, modernity, gay and women's rights. Against the "backward", conservative, intolerant Muslim fundamentalists, you see. <grins>. They're even up in arms about defending "our" Jews against them, now.

It's always heartwarming to see new recruits to the causes of cultural tolerance, women's emancipation and the fight against anti-semitism, of course (there were web-posters circulating in support of Fortuynist local councillor Michiel Smit that said, referring to the Somali/Ethiopian practice of female circumcision, "if you love your clit, vote Michiel Smit"). But this new twist to the profile of the extreme right has provided it with wholly new electoral horizons.

Back in the eighties / early nineties when it was Turks, Moroccans, etc, that politicians like Schoenhueber and De Winter railed against, their appeal seemed still restricted to certain "ceilings" of popular support, indicating the size of the xenophobic niche. Now that it's Muslims they're warning against - even though its still about the same people, of course - their re-branded market seems just that much bigger. It provides the petty anti-immigration agenda with a fearful global context (9/11) and the "big theory" (i.e., the 'Clash of Civilisations') it was lacking.

Right now the "List Fortuyn" is in the doldrums, but there could always be a follow-up. Anyway, I once posted a thread about all the Fortuyn stuff (Elections in the Netherlands (again)), and put the resulting narrative online as "from pillarisation to poldermodel to fortuyn: Dutch politics in three steps". Long read, tho.

That link doesnt seem to quite work.

On this forum alone there are three threads running using Pipes' articles as their base. The real problem is that, like many crazies, he seems legitimate at first, until you begin to dig. Then the full on bigot is exposed.

Diana West. Opinion writer for the townhall media group, a conservative group that includes newsmax.com, and frequently publishes stuff by Ann Coulter, too.

Here is another article by West from townhall, in which she defends the yellowcake-uranium-Iraq references as true.

ttp://www.townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/dw20030721.shtml

So always consider the source.

I like the Rocky Mountain News. Bring it up to read every so often.

In true monica fashion, the link function is....

Daniel Pipes is an imperialist through and through. His work reads like its straight out of the nineteenth century, especially in his defense of Israel. He is completely oblivious to the fact that Zionism is a feature of European colonialism and imperialism and--as the Revisionists took over the Zionist colonization of Palestine--fascism. He doesn't stop to question the legitimacy of Israel, and the arrogation of Palestine by the Zionists, and the arbitrary granting of "a Jewish homeland" to those Europeans by imperialist Great Britain. Who was Great Britain to grant anything in the Middle East to any European?

It is easier to deal with a demonization of the peoples one subjugates, than to own up to one's responsibility for the sty they had a direct hand in creating.

the "h" in the "http" is missing. just copy/paste her link into your address bar and insert h in the beginning, click enter, & presto.

Egads! I never noticed. I guess I see what I think I'm seeing. Thanks, nimh.

The Neo-cons must be desperate to haev this guy approbed. There was a reprint of yesterday's Wash Times Krauthammer peice in today's RMN. Certainly makes me wonder what is in the planning stage that they feel they have to have this guy on the council for.