US Institute of Peace appointee Daniel Pipes has just published an attack on the Islamic scholar Khaled Abou el Fadl. This attack, even by his standards, is despicable.
This attack is of a piece with other attempts to deny the existence of moderate Islamism. In the past I've argued here with Martin Kramer (about Yusuf al Qaradawi) and with Lee Smith (about Tariq Ramadan) about moderate Islamism. [I've also written before about Abou el Fadl here.] With Kramer and Smith, there was a legitimate intellectual disagreement, and I respect their views even if I disagree. But Pipes does not even pretend to engage with anything that Abou el Fadl has written, said, or done. This is irresponsible, ugly work.
How does Pipes attack Abou el Fadl? First, he simply smears him by association by naming a series of American Islamic institutions and then linking him to them, however tenuously. Abou el Fadl's other offences? He has spoken out and written forcefully against Wahhabism... but apperently not forcefully enough for Pipes. He has defended American Muslims and argued against demonizing them - in no small part because he fears their radicalization. How dare he defend American Muslims, who are obviously guilty of so many things? And he predicted a wave of hate crimes against Muslims shortly after September 11, which according to Pipes didn't materialize. Pipes might want to be careful about using 'poor predictions' as an evaluative tool, given the neo-con record with regard to Iraq; and Pipes seems to have missed more recent reports which do, in fact, show an upsurge in reports of such harrassment of Muslims and Arabs. Leave it do Daniel Pipes to unfairly attack someone for making predictions which don't come true, while also failing to present the evidence that the predictions did in fact come true.
But those attacks, while tendentious and weak, pale in comparison to the main line of attack. Abou el Fadl's interpretation of Sharia is not radical enough for Pipes, so Pipes substitutes his own reading of Sharia for Abou el Fadl's, and then attacks Abou el Fadl for this (Pipesian) vision of Islam. Abou el Fadl has written lengthy, learned treatises about the meaning of jihad from the position of an Islamic scholar, with the express aim of rejecting extremist and Wahhabi doctrines. But Pipes will have none of that. Like a good Wahhabi, Pipes insists that his - and only his - concept of jihad is true, and that all of Abou el Fadl's scholarly efforts are nothing but an elaborate ruse to hide this ugly reality from American eyes.
And then, this conclusion: "The case of Abou El Fadl points to the challenge of how to discern Islamists who present themselves as moderates. This is still possible to do with Abou El Fadl, who has left a long paper trail; it is harder with those who keep their opinions to themselves. In either case, the key is old-fashioned elbow grease: reading, listening, and watching. There is no substitute for research. It needs to be done by White House staffers, district attorneys, university search committees, journalists, Jewish defense agencies, and churches. Failing proper research, Islamists will push their way through Western institutions and ultimately subvert them." [Jewish defense agencies? I dunno - Pipes wrote it, not me.]
This conclusion is deeply ironic, given that Pipes appears to have done no actual research, in the sense of reading or quoting from any of Abou el Fadl's many books and articles. Pipes's idea of research seems to be simply collecting rumours, spreading insinuations and guilt by association, while selectively quoting and ignoring countervailing data. And people wonder why Pipes couldn't get an academic job.
Pipes denies the existence of moderate Islamists, and when he sees them he must attempt to destroy them, to deny their moderate credentials. Sounds like Pipes and bin Laden have pretty much the same agenda here. And both should be opposed by anyone who cares about the future of America's relations with the Muslim world.
UPDATE: here's what I wrote about Abou el Fadl last December: "Abou al-Fadl is a US based Muslim who has written extensively on Islamic jurisprudence, and whose intellectual trajectory is one of a serious Islamist trying to grapple with how to reconcile Islam with modernity. Abou el-Fadl's books include "And God Knows the Soldiers," which carefully and critically reconstructs the concept of authority and authoritarianism in Islamic discourse - attacking Wahhabi and Salafi puritanism and arguing instead for a richly diverse interpretive methodology; "Speaking in God's Name," which also explores the concept of authority in Islam, with a particular emphasis on the question of women; and "Islam and the Question of Tolerance," based on a Boston Review essay, which argues for the need for a genuinely democratic Islam to combat the authoritarian impulse which he sees degrading the Islamist trend. In short, all of Abou el-Fadl's work revolves around the critique of authoritarianism in Islamism and a critical impulse towards democracy, toleration, and freedom of interpretation. If there are moderate Islamists, Abou el-Fadl is one. And that is precisely the problem that some people have with him. For Pipes, moderate Islamists are far more threatening than radical Islamists. Pipes has consistently argued that moderate Islamists do not exist (although moderate secular Muslims might), and that the US should abstain from dialogue with them in favor of an extremely tough approach. Radicals like bin Laden fit well into his worldview, and strengthen his arguments for a tough American approach to the Arab and Muslim world. But where moderate Islamists can gain a public voice - as has Abou el-Fadl to some degree, it undermines the claim that no such creatures exist. And if such creatures do exist, then it requires considerable acrobatics to reject calls for a dialogue with them, given America's obvious need to find support from such moderates if it hopes to achieve its vision of democratizing the Middle East." I'll stand by that.
Could you provide a link to a good FAQ on Daniel Pipes? Or perhaps, in your spare time (irony), write one?
The little shit comes up frequently among my acquaintance and I'd like to have fingertip reference as to who he really is. Folk in Berkeley are exercised that other folk in Berkeley were going to protest his recent visit. When a friend used the impending protest as an example of raging anti-semitism (in her view) breaking out all over the Bay Area, I really wished I could say more to expose who Pipes really is. That bastard.
Posted by: Leila | June 08, 2004 at 01:57 AM