We have a visitor today who once said,"Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most."
I speak for all of Al-Nur, the Muslim student association on this campus, and for other concerned students when I say that it is troublesome that Daniel Pipes, to whom the above quote is attributed, is visiting Dartmouth. He is the nation's leading Islamophobe and he is not welcome. He has exploited the Japanese internment laws of the 1940s to justify his views advocating racial profiling and he promotes an extensive infringement on the civil rights of Arab-American and Muslim-American citizens. Today, Pipes is slated to speak to the Dartmouth community, an event that was only recently publicized, it seems, because of the controversial character of the speaker's inflammatory views.
In an institution that prides itself on fostering dialogue on aspects of individual and social identity such as race and religion, it is disturbing that any college organization or academic department heeding to this creed, under the guise of promoting discussion, would invite someone who has been identified by many as a hatemonger. Pipes' bigoted views will marginalize and breed suspicion and distrust toward students, faculty, and administrators who are Arab or Muslim; his visit will do little to foster dialogue.
In pursuing his crusade to focus security measures on Muslims, Pipes resorts to defending rampantly racist author Michelle Malkin's views in her book "In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror." In support of Malkin, Pipes outlines her arguments as she calmly compares concentration camps in Japan to American "relocation camps" for the Japanese and declares that the latter were in comparison to the former: "Spartan facilities that were for the most part administered humanely."
Pipes continues to delineate other baseless and humiliating comments from Malkin including a claim that the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians of 1981-83 was biased in its conclusions and that the Presidential apology and reparations awarded to former internees resulted from faulty logic. Pipes chimes echoing Malkin's vitriolic tune, concluding that in wartime, "threat profiling" based on nationality, ethnicity and religious affiliation is expedient and necessary. Pipes has also warned against the enfranchisement of American Muslims, as this would "present true dangers to American Jews."
He contends Islam should not be portrayed in a good light in our schools and in our media. With claims of possessing a mental "filter" with which he can detect all those who want to "create a Muslim state in America," Pipes has also labeled 10 to 15 percent of all Muslims as "potential killers." Each of these claims is crudely based on anecdotal evidence. On the issue of Israel and Palestine, Pipes has said that "The Palestinians are a miserable people and they deserve to be."
In an attempt to dismiss criticism for his unwillingness to share the stage with other eminent academics, Pipes declares that his focus on audience interaction is sufficient in providing balance to his lectures. This stipulation seems more like a meager attempt to avoid being questioned by other accomplished scholars in the field of Middle Eastern studies who arguably are more qualified to comment on Islam and the Arab world, simply due to their lack of personal bias or for the respect they have garnered for their scholarship in the field.
Furthermore, the portrayal of Pipes in advertisements for his talk as an "expert" on Islamic politics is even more baffling and misleading. Anyone who reads his writings would know that his rhetoric promotes Islamophobia, encourages racial stereotyping and inspires mass hysteria. Incidentally, Pipes himself is not really recognized or taken seriously as much of a scholar within Middle Eastern studies circles. Campus-Watch.org, a smaller project of Pipes' under his Middle East Forum, is notorious for jeopardizing the careers of any academics who are perceived to have critical views of U.S. foreign policy or the Israeli state.
The website vehemently denies parallels to McCarthyism, but there is no doubt that it aims to pressure academics to censor their views and submit to the less tolerant, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab views that are perpetuated by Pipes and other Islamophobes such as Ann Coulter and Michael Savage.
The website disreputably encourages students to spy on their professors and "report" back to its annals and has been criticized by a large number of professors and academics who represent the full spectrum of American academic circles. Critics include prominent Jewish professors such as Zachary Lockman of NYU and Judith Butler of Berkeley, to mention just two.
The appointment of Daniel Pipes to the Board of the U.S. Institute of Peace by President Bush in 2003 proved to be a controversial one. The honorary appointment, a product of presidential good-favor, circumvented the natural course of a congressional vote. Instead, Pipes was conveniently selected during the summer recess, muffling the myriad of opposing voices, including senators and eminent academics united in condemning his bigoted and oxymoronically militant approach to addressing issues of peace.
Today, we must build bridges between our diverse racial and spiritual communities in America in an effort to promote peace, security and tolerance. There is no room for intolerant extremists. Describing American Muslims as the enemy within and aggressively campaigning for the unrestricted racial profiling and monitoring of American Muslims is eerily reminiscent of the dehumanization of Jewish communities in Nazi Germany. By purporting his bigoted and unfounded views Pipes is himself creating "islands of repression in a sea of tolerance."
