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Articles and Blog Posts by Daniel Pipes
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 Comment (20) |
The Republic of Turkey, long a democratizing Muslim country solidly in the Western camp, now finds itself internally racked and at the center of two external crises, the civil war in next-door Syria and the illegal immigration that is changing European politics. The prospects for Turkey and its neighbors are worrisome, if not ominous.
The key development was the coming to power of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2002, when a fluke election outcome gave him total control of the government, which he then brilliantly parlayed into a personal dominion. After years of restraint and modesty, his real personality – grandiloquent, Islamist, and aggressive – came out. Now, he seeks to rule as a despot, an ambition that causes his country incessant, avoidable problems.
Initially, Erdoğan's disciplined approach to finance permitted the Turkish economy to achieve China-like economic growth and won him increasing electoral support while making Ankara a new player in regional affairs. But then conspiracy theories, corruption, short-sightedness, and incompetence cut into the growth, making Turkey economically vulnerable.
Continue Readingby Daniel Pipes • March 13, 2016 • Washington Times
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No, it's not ISIS or rampaging Shi'i militias. It's the Mosul Dam, Iraq's largest, and its possible collapse, perhaps leading to millions of deaths. Those in the know worry catastrophe could strike this spring, as snows melt and build an uncontrollable water pressure.
Hastily built in wartime for the dictator Saddam Hussein by a German-Italian consortium, the Mosul Dam was located where it is because one of Hussein's cronies came from the area and used his pull, despite the fact that engineers knew from the start that its porous gypsum base could not sustain such a huge structure.
What was then called the Saddam Dam opened in 1984 and within two years needed constant grouting, that is, day and night infusions of microfine cement, lots of it – 200 million pounds over the decades – to keep it from collapsing. The grouting keeps the foundational problem from worsening but does not solve it.
India-West Asia Relationship Can Swing Either Way
by Daniel Pipes • February 24, 2016 • Hindustan Times (New Delhi)
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NEW DELHI – Although it's been a quarter-century since India came out from its era of socialist economics and pro-Soviet foreign policy, recent discussions I held with intellectuals in New Delhi and elsewhere suggest to me that foreign policy specialists in this ascending power are still fundamentally thinking through their role in the world, especially vis-à-vis the United States, China, and what they call West Asia (i.e., the Middle East).
Although the first two countries rightly attract most attention, the Middle East presents acute challenges to India – plus a dash of opportunity. Here's a review of principal connections to that volatile region:
Can Egypt and Ethiopia Share the Nile?
by Daniel Pipes • February 18, 2016 • Washington Times
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Oil is the Middle East's glamor product, sought after by the entire world and bringing the region wealth beyond the dream of avarice. But water is the mundane resource that matters even more to locals for, without it, they face the horrible choice of leaving their homes or perishing within them.
That choice may sound hyperbolic, but the threat is real. Egypt stands out as having the largest population at risk and being the country, other than Iraq and Yemen, with the most existential hydrologic problem.
As every schoolchild learns, Egypt is the gift of the Nile and the Nile is by far the globe's longest river. Less well known is that most of the Nile's volume, 90 percent, comes from the highlands of Ethiopia and that the river passes through 11 countries. For uncounted eons, its water flowed to Egypt in uncounted quantities.
Assessing Obama's Mosque Speech on Islam
by Daniel Pipes • February 8, 2016 • Investigative Project on Terrorism
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Wishing to address growing anti-Islamic sentiments among the American public, Barack Obama ventured on Feb. 3 to the Islamic Society of Baltimore (sadly, a mosque with unsavory Islamist associations) to talk about Islam and Muslims. The 5,000-word speech contains much of interest. Here's an in-depth assessment of its key points:
OBAMA: a lot of Americans have never visited a mosque. To the folks watching this today who haven't — think of your own church, or synagogue, or temple, and a mosque like this will be very familiar. This is where families come to worship and express their love for God and each other. There's a school where teachers open young minds. Kids play baseball and football and basketball — boys and girls — I hear they're pretty good. Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts meet, recite the Pledge of Allegiance here.
PIPES: All true, but what about the dark side, the unique and repeated role of mosques in parlaying totalitarian ideas and fomenting violence? That goes unsaid in the president's rose-colored presentation.
Identifying Islamists through Interrogations
Skillful questions can distinguish enemy from friend among Muslims
by Daniel Pipes • January 13, 2016 • Washington Times
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When Donald Trump in December called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," I replied that changing just one word – "Islamists" instead of "Muslims" – would transform his outrageous and dead-end effusion into a politically feasible and operationally viable policy idea.
In response, came this valid question from readers: And how does one distinguish between Muslims who are Islamist from those who are not? This is a very doable task, though an expensive, time-consuming one demanding great skill.
By Islamists (as opposed to moderates), I mean those approximately 10-15 percent of Muslims who seek to apply Islamic law (the Shari'a) in its entirety. Islamists, not all Muslims, are the modern barbarians; they, not all Muslims, must urgently be excluded from the United States and other Western countries.
2015's Hits at DanielPipes.org
by Daniel Pipes • January 10, 2016
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Which articles, blog posts, speeches, and interviews on my web site, DanielPipes.org, fared best in the year recently concluded? In ascending order, here are 2015's ten most widely read, listened-to, and watched pages:
10. Middle East Provocations and Predictions (Sep. 9)
A survey of critical Middle East issues: the Iranian nuclear buildup, ISIS, Erdoğan's Turkey, the Saudi monarchy, Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Islamism, and Israel.
9. What Actually Causes American Fear of Islam and Muslims? (Feb. 13)
Two Weaknesses Could Undo the Islamist Movement
by Daniel Pipes • January 4, 2016 • Boston Globe
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The Islamist movement may appear stronger than ever, but a close look suggests two weaknesses that might doom it, and perhaps quickly.
Its strengths are obvious. The Taliban, Al-Shabaab, Boku Haram, and ISIS take Islamism – the ideology calling for Islamic law to be applied in its entirety and severity – to unbearable extremes, rampaging and brutalizing their way to power. Pakistan could fall into their hands. The ayatollahs of Iran enjoy a second wind thanks to the Vienna deal. Qatar has the highest per capita income in the world. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is becoming Turkey's dictator. Islamist operatives swarm the Mediterranean toward Europe.
But weaknesses within, especially squabbling and disapproval, could undo the Islamist movement.
Infighting became vicious in 2013, when Islamists abruptly stopped their prior pattern of cooperation among themselves and instead began internecine fighting. Yes, the Islamist movement as a whole shares similar goals, but it also contains different intellectuals, groups, and parties with variant ethnic affiliations, tactics, and ideologies.
Paris' Eerily Familiar 1930s Immigrant Problem
by Daniel Pipes • January 4, 2016
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The world's most prolific author, the Belgian writer Georges Simenon, published a mock-memoir in 1951, Les Mémoires de Maigret (Paris: Les Presses de la Cité; English: Maigret's Memoirs, London: Heinemann, 1978), which featured the ostensible recollections of his fictional character, Inspector Maigret. The sixth chapter, titled in the English translation "One Staircase after Another!" (and brought to my attention by C. Paul Barreira) describes the pro-fascist uprising in Paris on Feb. 6, 1934. It reminds one eerily of today's North African immigration and Islamist alienation.
Simenon begins by noting that during political upheavals, human elements commonly appear in wealthier districts of Paris "whose very existence is generally unknown there, who seem to have emerged from some haunt of beggars and whom the inhabitants watch from their windows as they might watch ruffians and cutthroats suddenly appearing from the depths of the Middle Ages." These elements proceed to "spread as much terror around them as a pack of wolves."
He then asks if it is known that a single police squad is
Can the Dubai Model Inspire Arabs?
by Daniel Pipes • December 31, 2015 • Asia Times
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DUBAI – At a time of civil war, anarchy, extremism, and impoverishment in the Middle East, the city-states of Dubai and Abu Dhabi stand out as the places where Arabic speakers are flourishing, innovating, and offering a model for moving forward.
But can it last? I recently visited the United Arab Emirates to seek answers.
To begin with, some basic facts: Once called the Trucial States by British imperialists, the UAE consists of seven small monarchies bordering the Persian Gulf. They banded together in 1971, as the British retreated, to form a single federation.
The country has been doubly blessed: oil and gas abundance along with a smart and commercially-minded group of leaders. The former gives the country immense resources, the latter keeps it out of harm's way, free of ideological extremism, with a focus on the economy. The result looks and feels like a basically happy place, especially as the lot of immigrant laborers is improving.
The Danger of Partial No-go Zones to Europe
by Daniel Pipes • December 29, 2015 • Washington Times
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Partial no-go zones in majority-Muslim areas are a part of the urban landscape from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, with the French government alone counting 751 of them. This shirking of responsibility foreshadows catastrophe and calls for immediate reversal.
I call the bad parts of Europe's cities partial no-go zones because ordinary people in ordinary clothing at ordinary times can enter and leave them without trouble. But they are no-go zones in the sense that representatives of the state – police especially but also firefighters, meter-readers, ambulance attendants, and social workers – can only enter with massed power for temporary periods of time. If they disobey this basic rule (as I learned first-hand in Marseille), they are likely to be swarmed, insulted, threatened, and even attacked.
This situation needs not exist. Host societies can say no to the poor, crime-ridden, violent, and rebellious areas emerging in their midst. But, if governments need not abdicate control, why do they do so? Because of a fervent, slightly desperate hope to avoid confrontation. Multicultural policies offer the illusion of sidestepping anything that might be construed as "racist" or "Islamophobic."
by Daniel Pipes • December 23, 2015 • Washington Times
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The police and press did an impressive job of sleuthing into the lives and motives of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the married couple who massacred 14 people on Dec. 2, in San Bernardino, California.
We know about their families, their studies and employment histories, their travels, their marriage, their statements, and their preparations for the assault. Most importantly, the cascade of background work means we know that the pair had jihadi intentions, meaning, they attacked in their role as pious Muslims spreading the message, law, and sovereignty of Islam.
We are all better off for knowing these facts, which have had a powerful impact on the body politic, making Americans far more concerned with jihadi violence than at any time since just after 9/11, as they should be. For example, in 2011, 53 percent told a pollster that terrorism was a critical issue; that number has now reached 75 percent.
An Israeli Gas Pipeline to Turkey? Bad Idea
by Daniel Pipes • December 20, 2015 • National Review Online, The Corner
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News that the Turkish and Israeli governments are about to renew full diplomatic relations after years of tensions causes me to smile cynically – and to worry again about Israeli gullibility.
The two states enjoyed close relations in the 1990s, when a common world outlook led to a strong military bond, growing trade, and exchanges of people and culture. Writing in 1997, I characterized this bilateral as having "the potential to alter the strategic map of the Middle East, to reshape American alliances there, and to reduce Israel's regional isolation."
It flourished for another five years, until the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP) won the Turkish elections of 2002 and proceeded to move Turkey in an Islamist direction. Among many implications, this meant distancing Ankara from Jerusalem and, instead, warming relations with Hamas in Gaza.
Trump: You Should Ban Islamists, Not Muslims
by Daniel Pipes • December 11, 2015 • Washington Times
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Donald Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, called on Dec. 7 for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." Replace one word in this formulation and it goes from outrageous to brilliant.
Reacting to massacres by Muslims in Paris and San Bernardino, Trump pointed to a Muslim hatred "beyond comprehension" for the West. Therefore, he concluded, "Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad."
The negative responses, domestic and international, Muslim and non-Muslim, came in fast and furious – and rightly so, as Trump's crude blast is unconstitutional, unacceptable, unworkable, and unstrategic.
Unconstitutional: Every Western basic law is secular, disallowing a religious test for immigration, rendering Trump's statement less an exercise in practical policy making than a gadfly provocation.
by Daniel Pipes • December 5, 2015
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U.N. Security Council Resolution 2249, passed unanimously on Nov. 20, sums up the consensus that the Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL Daesh), poses a mortal danger to civilization by calling it an "unprecedented threat to international peace and security." There's also a widespread sense that ISIS will be around for a long time; for example, Barack Obama has predicted that the fight against it will be "a long-term campaign." Permit me to disagree strenuously on both counts.
On the first: ISIS is not exactly the equivalent of Nazi Germany. It's a little bug that the powers could quash at will if they put their minds to it. It survives only because no one really takes it seriously enough to fight with ground troops, the only gauge of an intention to prevail.
On the second: Between its alienation of its subject population and its gratuitous and unrestrained violence toward foreign countries, ISIS has made enemies of nearly everyone. Recent days alone have seen attacks on three powerful states: Turkey (the bombing in Ankara), Russia (the airliner over Sinai), and France (the attacks in Paris). This is not a path for survival. Friendless and despised, its every success shortens its life.
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