By Jamie Glazov FrontPageMagazine.com | September 16, 2002

As the United States enters its new Cold War against Islamic extremism, the scholar Daniel Pipes has come forward to crystallize for Americans what the new threat of militant Islam represents and what Americans can do — specifically — to defeat it.

In his recent book, Militant Islam Reaches America, Pipes provides a priceless “policy briefing” to the American administration and to all Americans in general about what this new Cold War entails and what it will take to win it.

Few individuals are better qualified than Dr. Pipes to give advice on this issue. Pipes, after all, was among the handful of Americans who warned, long before September 11, that militant Islam had gone to war against the United States. Back in the mid-1990s, he was already setting off alarm bells about the unilateral declaration of war that Islamic fanatics had pronounced against America. Few Americans, let alone the Clinton administration, took heed. In this post 9/11 reality, however, indifference to what Dr. Pipes has to say is a luxury Americans, as well as all Westerners, can ill afford.

For Americans, who are now at war with a new enemy, but who just a year ago knew hardly anything about this enemy, Pipes’ Militant Islam Reaches America is essential reading.

Pipes makes the crucial distinction between militant Islam the ideology and Islam the faith. The former represents a threat; the latter does not. Militant Islam, whose adherents can be termed Islamists, aspires to subjugate the whole world under the authority of Sharia law (Islamic law). The new world conflict, therefore, is not between the West and the Muslim religion, but between the West and Islamism. Pipes also emphasizes that this conflict entails a struggle for the heart of Islam among Muslims themselves -- the great majority of whom, the author stresses, rejects the Islamist agenda.

In a clear and meticulous style, Pipes outlines the serious danger that militant Islam now poses for America. He demonstrates how, with utopianism and totalitarianism acting as its two key ingredients, the Islamist ideology is just another mutated carbon copy of nazism and communism. What makes this reality especially worrisome is that approximately one in every eight Muslims in the world is a devoted adherent of militant Islam. About 70,000 hard-core Islamist terrorists, meanwhile, are lingering — and pursuing their destructive program — in over fifty countries.

Pipes shows that militant Islam has already affected freedom in America. For instance, in U.S. literary culture, critical observations and interpretations of Jesus Christ are common place, whereas any negative comments about Mohammad are almost always avoided — as writers and scholars either fear a fatwa being issued against them or just hope to avoid breaking the codes of political correctness.

Militant Islam Reaches America reveals how there is no common ground whatsoever between Islamism and American freedom. Islamists have absolutely no interest in preserving the essentials of American democracy. Their main objective is to dismantle the U.S. Constitution and to replace it with Sharia law. No wonder, therefore, that Islamists see American music artists such as Michael Jackson and Madonna as enemies of Allah who need to be put on trial. One can only imagine what will occur in American culture if Islamists continue to gain power and influence.

Pipes discredits two popular myths that are perpetuated by the Liberal Left in connection to the new “war on terror.” First, he reveals that the widespread claims that American Arabs and Muslims are victims of “discrimination” in American society is simply a crock. In reality, when you look at the statistics, Arabs and Muslims in America are privileged to a far higher socio-economic standing than the national average.

The Liberal Left will also be very depressed about Pipes’ debunking of another essential anti-American myth: that poverty is the cause of militant Islam. Not at all. Pipes marshals the evidence proving that the distribution of wealth will not lessen militancy in the Islamic/Islamist paradigm. To the contrary, the empirical realities confirm that far from being engendered by poverty, militant Islam finds its breeding ground in prosperity and, paradoxically, Westernization.

Indeed, Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists, and anti-Western zealots almost never come from among the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden; they come from among the most educated, prosperous and Westernized Arab/Muslim elements in their society. Moreover, Pipes reveals that while they cling to displaying their pious beards and traditional turbans, these extremists have the most modern and cutting-edge organization and technology.

In other words, even if they think they have something constructive to teach America about how to deal with militant Islam, Marxists/Liberals might as well save their breath, for this new peril does not entail a class war.

After laying out the threat that militant Islam poses to America, Pipes gives an outline of what Americans can do to achieve victory over their new enemy.

First and foremost, the author emphasizes that Americans must never confuse Islam with militant Islam. He reminds his readers that Islamists are, after all, just as dangerous to their fellow Muslims as they are to non-Muslims. That is precisely why Americans must reach out to moderate Muslims, who are Islam’s silent majority, and convince them that it is just as much in their interest, as it is in the West’s, to defeat Islamic fundamentalism. Americans must also try to reassure their Muslim allies that a secular Islam, which can coexist peacefully with Western values, is the only viable form of Islam. This is why one of the main priorities in the U.S. war on terror has to be the effort to democratize and secularize Islam.

While Pipes makes it clear that the majority of Muslims are not a threat to America, he simultaneously warns that the U.S. government must keep a watchful eye on Muslim immigration, since Muslim immigrants harbour a large portion of the individuals who hate America and seek its destruction. This is why the author takes the position that profiling is an unfortunate but necessary tactic in the war on terror.

Pipes affirms that one of the main American objectives in the war on terror has to be preventing any militant Islamic parties (i.e. Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban etc.) from coming to power anywhere. The U.S. government also has to stop the funding of all Islamist groups, institutions and charities. After all, in its ignorance, the government has already funded the spread of the Islamist message in America by funding what it believed were moderate Muslim groups and charities.

This warning is connected to one of Pipes’ most important points, which has received little attention in America: that the violence of militant Islam actually represents only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the new terrorist threat. The author makes the crucial point that it is the relentless propagation and dissemination of the militant Islamic agenda in American schools, media, and courts, as well as in the rest of society, that represents the greatest long-term danger to American freedom and security.

One of the most important warnings/recommendations Pipes gives Americans, and Westerners in general, is that non-violent militant Islam groups must be ostracized and the violent ones must be defeated. While some communication is at times necessary, the government must simply never recognize or affirm the existence of any militant Islamic organization. It has to avoid any action that could be interpreted as accommodating any Islamist objective.

Overall, Militant Islam Reaches America is a fascinating and vital read. It ranks as one of the few comprehensive examinations of militant Islam in American scholarship, filling a significant gap in the present historiography of the war on terror. Finally, it provides answers to numerous questions that have not been answered in a simple and clear manner.

In this highly original and provocative interpretation of Islam's position in the new Cold War, the author succinctly defines not only who the new enemies are, but also what Americans have to do to defeat them. Pipes presents his case with fortitude and precision and without one ounce of fear in transgressing the rules of political correctness. In this regard, he succeeds in putting forth a set of unique and robust recommendations, which, in turn, makes his book a crucial contribution to America’s continuing struggle for freedom in a world of dangerous despots and totalitarian ideologies.

-- Anonymous, September 16, 2002