A person calling himself Muhammad Rahuma announced on the Free Copts (Al-Aqbat Al-Ahrar) website (click here) that the three of us will be addressing a conference he will hold in Washington on May 1 on the subject of converting Muslims to Christianity.

None of us were informed about this conference, agreed to address it, nor plan to attend it. All three of us disassociate ourselves from it.

Nonie Darwish, Daniel Pipes, Wafa Sultan

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March 19, 2010 | Permalink

The Worst Crisis in 35 Years?

On the surface, that the Obama administration decided one fine day to pick a fight with the government of Israel looks like an unmitigated disaster for the Jewish state. What could be worse than its most important ally provoking the worst crisis (according to the Israeli ambassador to Washington) since 1975?

A closer look, however, suggests that this gratuitous little spat might turn out better for Jerusalem than for the White House.

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March 17, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (30)

On Biden in Israel

Joe Biden's trip to Israel fits neatly into the context of the Obama administration's internal struggle over Israel policy.

The far left prevailed initially, as evidenced by Hilary Clinton's May 2009 declaration that Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions." But this approach bombed, permitting the center left to take over in about September 2009.

The center left still rules the roost, as Biden's twin statements yesterday indicate. First, he offered his administration's "absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel's security." Then he slammed an Israeli decision to build new housing units in Jerusalem as a step that "undermines the trust we need right now."

The center-left approach is better than the far-left approach but neither has a chance of succeeding. What Israel needs is not hectoring about its residential housing policies but an American ally that encourages it to win its war against the irredentist Palestinians of both Fatah and Hamas. (March 10, 2010)

March 10, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (54)

Iraq's Cosmetic Election

"It takes a cynical mind not to share in the achievement of Iraq's national elections." So writes the Wall Street Journal editorial board today. I'm no cynic, but my mood about Iraq could variously be described as depressed, despairing, despondent, dejected, pessimistic, melancholic, and gloomy.

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March 9, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (22)

Should We Believe Rashad Hussain?

Rashad Hussain, Barack Obama's special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has run into a problem: He appears to be an Islamist. The evidence largely concerns a public statement he made six years ago, as Josh Gerstein reports in Politico:

Hussain, now a deputy associate White House counsel, was quoted back in 2004 decrying the prosecution of a Florida professor accused of ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian. However, the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report noted Sunday that the article quoting Hussain, published in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, was subsequently sanitized on the Web to remove the quotes and all other references to Hussain. The changes appear to have taken place in 2007 or later.

According to the original story, Hussain told a panel discussion at a Muslim Students Association conference in '04 that the criminal case against Al-Arian was one of a series of "politically motivated persecutions." Hussain also reportedly asserted that Al-Arian was being "used politically to squash dissent."

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February 17, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (22)

Reflections on Iran's Islamic Republic

As protesters prepare to gather and the regime flexes its muscle, where does Iran stand? The regime, its grip there, its place in the world? The democracy advocates'? National Review Online asked our experts to assess the situation in Iran and how the international community should react. (For replies by Peter Brookes, Jeff Fortenberry, Jamie M. Fly, Victor Davis Hanson, Peter Hoekstra, Michael Ledeen, Paul Marshall, Michael Rubin, and Benjamin Weinthal, click here.)

Today marks the Islamic Republic of Iran's 31st anniversary and so offers an appropriate moment both to reflect on its works and speculate about its future.

From Khomeini to Khamene'i - 31 years of Islamism and misery, with more to come.

Looking at achievements, the Khomeinist regime has survived great challenges — especially an eight-year war with Iraq — and succeeded in forwarding its Islamist agenda. By exploiting many tools — religion, subversion, terrorism, hydrocarbons, and potential WMD — it has become the world's foremost security threat.

Beyond this hard shell, however, one discovers deep vulnerabilities. Domestically, there's impoverishment, rampant inflation, drug addiction, and human trafficking, and what one analyst calls the country's "galloping demographic decline." These problems have inspired widespread alienation from Islamism and even from Islam itself, devastating street protests, and a split in the regime's leadership.

Internationally, the regime's bellicose stance has both split the Middle East and spawned enmity around the globe. In particular, its nuclear-weapons buildup could trigger an unprecedented world crisis.

Looking ahead, if the regime's days are indubitably numbered, the agency of its demise remains unclear: millions on Iranian streets, a Revolutionary Guards coup d'état, American aircraft, or an Israeli electromagnetic pulse bomb?

However it dies, Khomeini's creation has yet to deliver its full measure of death and destruction.

February 11, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (6)

Western Civilization on Trial: Why We Should Be Watching Geert Wilders

As the Geert Wilders case goes into pre-trial, National Review Online asked our experts: Is there any legitimate reason he's in court? What are the implications of such a trial being held, never mind its outcome? (For replies by Bat Ye'or, Paul Marshall, Clifford D. May, Nina Shea, and Robert Spencer, click here.)

Pro-Wilders demonstrators outside the Amsterdam courthouse where he is to be tried.

Wilders is in court because the Netherlands has no First Amendment and so, endlessly, tries to figure out what speech to permit or prohibit. Wilders is hardly the only victim of this predicament; the arrest and jailing in 2008 of a cartoonist who goes by "Gregorius Nekschot" notoriously symbolized the state's incoherence.

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February 8, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (42)

Wasting U.S. Taxpayer Money in Afghanistan

A 2009 critique found that the taxpayer has invested some $53 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq since 2003, or about $9 billion a year. Most or all of it has been or will be wasted.

Nonetheless, here we go again, this time in Afghanistan, at least on a small scale. "Marines Invest in Local Afghan Projects" reads the New York Times headline and it provides details of American soldiers making nice, starting with an anecdote from Bograbad, described as an impoverished Afghan village, where American soldiers provided $1,200 for a mosque's new concrete floor and two windows. (Beside the inutility of this gesture, I have severe doubts about its constitutionality, as I elaborate at "The U.S. Government Builds Mosques and Madrassahs.")

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January 30, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (7)

Why Did Nidal Hasan Read the Middle East Forum?

Nidal Malik Hasan.

A startling fact just emerged in the course of some routine maintenance work on the mailing lists for www.DanielPipes.org: One "Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan" has been subscribed as nidalhasan@aol.com since March 2009 to all the Middle East Forum mailing lists, including my own. He opened some but not many of the mailings.

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December 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (43)

"An Arabist's Guide to Egyptian Colloquial" Now Online

Here is my "Preface,", dated June 1982, to a brief book I wrote titled An Arabist's Guide to Egyptian Colloquial:

Arriving in Cairo for the first time in June 1971, I had two years of Arabic study to my credit, yet I was unable to say anything or understand more than a word here and there. Like so many other students of modern Written Arabic, I was unprepared to deal with the language that Arabs actually speak. To master the Cairene dialect, I acquired a battery of grammars and attended classes at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad [at the American University of Cairo]. Despite excellent teachers, I found the task a frustrating one, for all the manuals assumed no knowledge at all of Arabic and started at the beginning. But I already knew Written Arabic and needed only to learn what adjustments to make to speak the Egyptian colloquial.

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December 29, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (13)

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