Daniel
Pipes, a conservative academic and über-pundit on all things Middle Eastern,
will be speaking April 14 at the Rochester Institute of Technology, as part of
the school’s Gannett Lecture Series. And back in December, Pipes was declaring
on his website that his appearance was “already generating more heat than
light.”
Pipes’ shtick relies heavily on his
reputed prediction abilities (he was one of only a few voices warning about
militant Islam before the 9/11 terrorist attacks). But this time he may be
wrong.
If he is, it will be because of the
proactive steps taken by RIT students.
It’s no easy
task to try introducing Pipes in a sentence or two. In addition to his gigs as a
talking head on shows like the O’Reilly Factor, he’s written regular columns
for the Jerusalem Post, the New York Post, and currently the New York Sun, among others. He’s
director at the Middle East Forum, which describes its mission as being “to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East.” That think tank
recently launched Campus Watch, a project to monitor academic activity in
Middle East Studies departments on North American campuses; opponents call it a
“blacklist” of academics with opposing views. He’s also written a dozen books
and sits on numerous boards, including, through presidential appointment, the
US Institute of Peace.
That last one struck more than a few
people as a bit incongruous when it was announced nearly two years ago. After
all, Pipes was quoted at the time in Mother
Jones as giving this prescription for Middle East peace at a Zionist
conference: “How is a change of heart achieved? It is achieved by an Israeli
victory and a Palestinian defeat.”
“The Palestinians need to be
defeated even more than Israel needs to defeat them.”
Pipes has also raised eyebrows by
calling for religious profiling — and writing favorably about World War
II-era Japanese-American internment camps — and for stating that American
Muslim groups are actively seeking to take over the United States. In an
article titled “The Islamic States of America?” and reprinted on his website,
he says: “That goal is to apply the Islamic law (the Shari’a) globally. In US
terms, it intends to replace the Constitution with the Qur’an.”
With statements like that on record,
it’s not difficult to see why his RIT speaking engagement is evoking
consternation from the campus Muslim Student Association.
On March 23 the MSA, along with several
other groups, sponsored a teach-in featuring local Christian Peacemaker Teams
activist Kathleen Kern and Muslim Public Affairs Council National Director
Ahmed Younis in response to the Pipes appearance. The event was billed as a
discussion of academic freedom, but it was really more a protest of Pipes’
views.
“The whole talk was about
extremism,” says Younis, who flew to Rochester from Washington, DC, to speak.
“The mistake that the students were
making is [thinking] that it’s all about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he
says. “It’s about extremism.”
Younis, like many American Muslims,
sees Pipes’ views as among the most extreme.
Although Pipes contends that he
targets only certain violent elements within Islam, Younis says “he’s painting
in broad-brush strokes to vilify the whole Muslim community.”
But despite such objections to
Pipes’ message, Younis’s own message to the students was clear: “I was very,
very adamant that they should not be disrupting his speech,” he says. “They
should let the man speak and they should then address his message, not attack
him.”
Ammar Abbas Naqvi, the president of
RIT’s Muslim Student Association, says his group hadn’t planned to disrupt the
speech
“Our intentions weren’t and will
never be to ‘block’ or ‘dis-invite’ Pipes,” he says. “We need to make a
distinction between protesting Pipes and protesting his ideas and the negative
consequences of his ideas. We will try to add the balance to the talk, since he
has no other speaker with him with an opposing viewpoint.”
Still, Naqvi says he was pleased
with the protest event.
“I think the teach-in went pretty
well,” he says. “We were enlightened and encouraged to be more open to dialogue
and reason. We learned a great deal, and the event was a success.”
Younis agrees. “I don’t want to fly
to places just to protest Daniel Pipes speaking, because I have more important
things to do,” he says. “But I do want to go to places where Daniel Pipes’
presence creates the opportunity for informed, intelligent discussion of issues
affecting American Muslims.”
Dr. AJ
Caschetta, a professor in RIT’s language and literature department who was instrumental in
bringing Pipes to the campus, shares Younis’s desire for such discussion, but
not his views of Pipes.
“Clearly, I disagree with the
premise that Pipes is an extremist,” he says. Caschetta says he’s read much of
Pipes’ work and has assigned one of his books, Militant Islam Reaches America, to classes since 2002.
“Out of roughly 450 students, none
has found any traces of racism, bigotry, or Islamophobia there,” he says, “and
this includes not a small number of Muslim students, by the way.”
“I have found that those who
criticize Daniel Pipes are those who have not read his work, but rather who
follow the talking points of the Anti-War group or the Socialist Club or some
other entity which tries to control debate and thought,” he says.
The issue of
balance is at the heart of the discussion surrounding Pipes’ appearance. The evening
after the MSA event, as part of the Gannett series, Dr. Ali Mazrui of SUNY
Binghamton and Cornell University delivered a lecture on whether a “clash of
civilizations” really exists between Islam and the West.
RIT had hoped to have Mazrui and
Pipes on the same program, but at his campus appearances, Pipes refuses to be
“balanced” by other speakers. “My major purpose in going to universities like
UW-Madison and RIT,” he says on his website, “is to offer a different point of
view from what students usually hear.”
“I dislike the idea of balance,” he
wrote, “because, 1) it cuts into my time, and 2), it implies that my views need
to be wrapped and controlled. Or, as Rush Limbaugh puts it, ‘I don’t need equal
time, I am equal time!'” At RIT, Pipes will give his lecture and then entertain
questions from the audience.
Prof. Paul Grebinger, who organizes
the lecture series, defends the arrangement; the Q-and-A session will allow for
plenty of dialogue and debate, he says.
“The potential still exists for a
pretty good exchange,” he says. “I’m particularly interested in how the
students respond.”
As to acceding to Pipes’ unusual
requirement that no one else share the stage, Grebinger says it’s not unique.
“You generally try to accommodate the individual who is the focus of the
event,” he says.
Caschetta is also happy with final
arrangement of the lectures.
“In my opinion,
the way things have worked is perfect: Mazrui had his say, and now Pipes will
have his,” he says. “Our students are bright enough to hear both sides and
decide for themselves which man is the credible historian and which is the
extremist.”
And while Pipes has critics at RIT,
Caschetta has his concerns about Mazrui. He went to the Mazrui lecture, he
says, and “found it to be an embarrassment.”
“Among other things,” says
Caschetta, “he defended suicide bombings,” compared the United
States to Nazi Germany, and claimed that “the
culture of Islam has liberated and empowered women to a greater degree than the
Western world.” Mazrui didn’t mention “dramatic realities such as female
genital mutilation and temporary wives,” says Caschetta.
A broad gamut
of groups — from Rochester’s Muslim community to RIT’s Hillel chapter — is cautiously
awaiting Pipes’ speech.
“I don’t agree with a lot of what he
has to say,” says Hillel president AJ Siegel. “I think he tends to generalize
so much.”
Siegel, who says his group and the
Muslim Student Association are beginning to plan events together, wishes the
school would book more moderate speakers.
“It’s a matter of finding them
that’s really the challenge,” he says, adding: “The two extremes won’t get [us]
anywhere.”
That’s a sentiment shared by Dr.
Mohammed Shafiq. The executive director and imam of the Rochester Islamic
Center, and executive director of the Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue
at Nazareth College, where he teaches, says he is disappointed with the
publicity generated by such polarizing figures as Pipes.
“When you speak a divisive language,
people write about you; when you speak a language of humanity, they don’t,” he
says. “People who work for peace and community understanding don’t get covered
by the media.”
The divisive language that generates
coverage for Pipes and his views both harms society and undermines genuine
efforts by these unheralded community builders, he says.
“Every sane person knows that this
is not the language we should be using,” Shafiq says. “We must reach more
harmony between religions as we become a more pluralistic society. What we need
is not to confirm these extreme views but to heal them.”
Daniel
Pipes will deliver his talk, “Militant Islam and the War on Terror,” at 7:30
p.m. April 14 in the Webb Auditorium in Building 7A, Room 1350.
It is free and open to the public. Information: 475.2057 or
www.rit.edu/~gannett/.
This article appears in Apr 6-12, 2005.
