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The internal contradictions of Pipesism are coming to a head
Another article from early last year worth a re-read concerns Daniel Pipes’s astonishing admission that it is Islam itself, not “Islamism” or “radical Islam,” that threatens us. Yet this past month, as I’ve previously written, Pipes called for a return of Islamic power and greatness (the challenge, he approvingly quoted his mentor Wilfred Smith, is to “rehabilitate” Muslims’ past history, “to set it going again in full vigour, so that Islamic society may once again flourish as a divinely guided society should and must”), while in another piece in December he said that if the Muslims make the right moves and cover up their jihadism, we will have no ability to stop them from taking us over. Thus Pipes’s long-time amazing confusions about Islam seem to be coming to a head. His various statements that Islam, not radical Islam, seeks to subjugate us; and that a return of historic Islamic power is desirable; and that if the Muslims get smart we cannot stop them, suggest an increasingly feverish contradiction—indeed, two contradictions—as well as their possible resolution. The two contradictions are (1) between Pipes’s romantic affection for Islam, and his growing realization that Islam seeks to conquer us; and (2) between his calls for the defeat of radical Islam with the help of moderate Muslims, and his fears that we will be helpless before radical Muslims if they pretend to be moderate. While the contradictions seem unbearable, Pipes can resolve them very simply—by surrendering to Islam. After all, if you love Islam, and if you think Islam ought to grow in power, and if Islam is growing in power, and if Islam wants your obedience, you will tend to obey it. Similarly, if you insist that radical Islam, not Islam per se, is the enemy, and if you are devoutly convinced that moderate Islam is the only solution to radical Islam, and if moderate Islam turns out to be radical Islam’s most irresistible weapon, then the war is over and there’s nothing to do but give up. What I’ve said here is only a guess, and I hope it is wrong, but the dynamics of Pipes’s ever unfolding positions make it at least a reasonable likelihood. The guess is further fortified by the fact that Pipes has never opposed Islam as such, and that to this day he still favors the chimera of a historically “tolerant” and “culturally rich” Islam over intolerant and anti-Semitic Christendom.
Nota bene: As I’ve said before, I single out Pipes for all this dissection, not because I want to hurt him as a person, but because he is America’s best known commentator on Islam, and because his fascinating and fateful contradictions on this subject express, in concentrated form, the contradictions of America as a whole as it comes face to face with its ultimate Other. Email entry |