A cri de guerre in which the noted scholar (Conspiracy, 1997, etc.)
again urges that militant Islam is an enemy and must be treated as
such. The fundamentalist, ahistorical (but not anachronistic), and
uncompromising face of Islam does not have much to do with the
faith of Muhammad, writes Pipes. By far the great majority of
Muslims reject the "Islamicist" program, which resembles fascism
and communism more than any flavor of religion, and which, though
cloaked in populist garb, is the ideological offspring of "money,
education, and privilege"; though it rejects westernizing cultural
tendencies, what Pipes brands "Islamicism" in fact is oddly reliant
on the West, if only because the West provides a convenient
bogeyman. Islamicist regimes, Pipes writes, are far more dangerous
than are the "odd shipwrecks" of leftist regimes in the Arab world
and, for this reason, must be combated at every turn. Pipes urges
that the overarching goal of US foreign policy in the Islamic world
be to prevent Islamicist parties such as Hezbollah and, for that
matter, the Taliban from coming to power. Echoing Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak, Pipes also urges that the West simply
refuse to engage in dialogue, private or public, with any militant
Islamic group, and that it shun any action that might be construed
as giving in to or appeasing any Islamicist power or party.
Although not all Muslims hate the West, Pipes allows, and although
militant Muslims constitute perhaps only 10% of the Muslim
population worldwide, he suggests that the US government keep a
watchful eye on immigrant Muslims-for, though "American politicians
from George W. Bush on down have tripped over themselves to affirm
that the vast majority of Muslims living in the United States are
just ordinary folks," that population still harbors a significant
body of people who despise America and intend it harm. Highly
controversial, at times inflammatory-but worthy of attention and
debate in a time of crisis. (Kirkus Reviews)
One of the most far-reaching examinations of militant Islam written to date. "Unnoticed by most Westerners," Daniel Pipes wrote in 1995, referring to militant Islam, "war has been unilaterally declared on Europe and the United States." Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, was one of the very few Americans to understand the significance of what to many appeared to be no more than isolated cases of violence. Long before September 11, 2001, Pipes publicly warned Americans that militant Islam had gone to war against America. Now Americans are listening to him.
Pipes presents here the results of his research, dividing his work into two key subjects. First, he explains what militant Islam is and stresses the large and crucial difference between Islam, the faith, and militant Islam, the ideology. He demonstrates that it is not a clash of civilizations underway, but a battle for the soul of Islam among Muslims themselves. He shows that militant Islam is not caused mainly by poverty and that its adherents, far from being the dispossessed, tend to include the more talented and Westernized elements. Militant Islam strikingly has much in common with fascism and communism. Pipes also demonstrates how, at variance with our traditional separation of church and state, high officials of both the Democratic and Republican parties have had the effect of endorsing Islam.
Secondly, Pipes takes up the relatively new subject of Islam in the United States, and how it has rapidly developed in the last decade. Significant elements within American Islam, for example, seek to replace the Constitution with the Qur'an. Americans can write far more candidly now about Jesus than about Muhammad, as various writers and journalists have learned to their surprise. Despite widespread claims that American Muslims face discrimination, they enjoy a higher socioeconomic standing than the national average. Jamil Al-Amin (the former H. Rap Brown), despite being sentenced to life without parole for murdering a black police officer, has been celebrated by many of the country's leading Muslim organizations.
Pipes concludes that, like it or not, the United States is now party to the difficult task of modernizing Islam globally; he argues that this is the ultimate aim of the war on terrorism. Militant Islam Reaches America is one of the most important and readable books about the great issues that now confront America.
"Unlike other Middle-East experts, Daniel Pipes did not need to reinvent himself or revise his opinions after September 11th. Like so many other events in the Middle East over the years, September 11th bore out the truth of his earlier analyses. Few have been less embarrassed by events than Pipes." —Robert Kaplan, author of Warrior Politics and Balkan Ghosts
"Daniel Pipes has been warning us for years that militant Islam has declared war on the West and that its legions are already present in the West. Militant Islam Reaches America brilliantly demonstrates how Pipes knows his subject, providing us with a rarely seen window into a subterranean world that poses a clear and present danger to us all." —Steven Emerson, author of American Jihad
"An original work on an important subject." —John Keegan, on Slave Soldiers and Islam
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