This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3159

Dr. Daniel Pipes on the Council on American Islamic Relations dissembling "CAIR's Dirty Tricks Against Me"

September 7, 2007

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, North America's foremost Islamist group, bills itself as a "civil rights organization," suggesting it maintains high standards of decency and morality. But, as I personally can attest, it fails abysmally to do so. Its seven-year-long campaign against me has included misappropriation, misrepresentation, misquotation, defamation, and inaccuracy, prompting one writer recently to compare its propaganda with that of Nazi Germany.

Consider several dirty-trick episodes:

DanielPipes.com: On December 15, 2000, simultaneous with the debut of my website, www.DanielPipes.org, John Michael Janney registered the domain www.DanielPipes.com. Janney was both a member of CAIR and an employee at InfoCom Corporation in Richardson, Texas (a firm subsequently shuttered by the U.S. government and its owners found guilty of illegal transactions with Hamas, Libya, and Syria). Shortly thereafter, his rogue "com" website automatically redirected visitors to a page on CAIR's site defaming me. After I threatened a lawsuit, Janney failed to renew www.DanielPipes.com and I took hold of it in early 2002.

Cybercast News Service article: A cub reporter from CNSNews.com attended a talk I gave on July 24, 2003, at the Young America Foundation conference in Washington. She mangled what I'd said in a report the next day, ascribing to me terms I never use ("militaristic Islam," "Palestine"), sentiments I do not espouse (that Middle Easterners are reluctant to "go the Christian way"), and policy recommendations I vehemently reject ("We should be saying to the state of Israel to integrate [the Palestinian refugees] and let them become citizens").

Worst of all, she stated that "Pipes added that he doesn't perceive the Islamic people as divided into two groups: the radical terrorists and those who are not." In fact, I said that I don't perceive Islamists dividing into two groups but see them all as totalitarians. Using this faulty report, CAIR "action alert" number 390, dated July 27, trumpeted the headline "Daniel Pipes Compares ‘Islamic People' to ‘Nazis'."

I pointed out to the CNSNews.com editors the mistakes their reporter had made. They listened to a tape of my talk, acknowledged their journalist's errors, and retracted her article, pulling it from the website and sending letters, both electronic and paper, to CAIR to inform it of this action. CAIR, however, refused to acknowledge the retraction, and its calumny against me remains on its website to this day.

Shi‘ite endorsement: On August 20, 2003, a group calling itself "American Muslims of the Shia tradition" sent me a letter endorsing President Bush's nominating me to the U.S. Institute of Peace board, which I promptly posted. Leading the charge against my nomination, CAIR pressured the signatories to withdraw their endorsement, which some did. CAIR then accused me, in its "American Muslim News Briefs," dated September 15, of having "misrepresented" their support.

In response, the Shi'ites favoring my nomination issued a second statement exposing CAIR's methods: "On August 20, 2003, a group of Shia organizations endorsed Mr. Pipes. However, on September 13, 2003, few members of this group withdrew their endorsement stating that they had no knowledge of that endorsement. Also, they alleged that Mr. Pipes misrepresented the issue by listing their names as the endorsees. That was not so. He acted in good faith on the statement that was made available to him. We regret this action on their part." In short, the Shi'ites accused CAIR, not me, of misrepresentation.

Edward Kennedy letter: In a letter to the Boston Herald on August 29, 2003, Sen. Edward Kennedy explained his opposition to my USIP nomination earlier that month. He also praised me, writing that "Pipes is a serious scholar, and I would support him for another post." In its distribution of this letter (American Muslim News Briefs, August 30, 2003), CAIR reprinted Kennedy's letter, omitting the above sentence.

Hijabs: Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR's "national communications director," stated in January 2007 that I think "that if a woman wants to wear a headscarf, it's the beginning of the end of Western civilization." It's witty but it's wrong; I oppose the wearing of niqabs and burqas but accept hijabs as a matter of self-expression.

Giuliani campaign: As PipeLineNews.org showed in its article, "CAIR Continues Its Campaign of Deceit against Daniel Pipes," when the news came out in August 2007 of my connection to Rudy Giuliani's campaign for the presidency, CAIR sent out an attack piece, "Muslim-Basher Joins Giuliani Campaign," that thrice twisted my words. For example, CAIR quoted me telling the American Jewish Congress in late 2002:

I worry very much from the Jewish point of view that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims...will present true dangers to American Jews.

Ah, but as with the Kennedy letter, watch out for those slippery ellipses. Here is the full quote:

I worry very much, from the Jewish point of view, that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims, because they are so much led by an Islamist leadership, that this will present true dangers to American Jews.

"Because they are so much led by an Islamist leadership" - i.e., I worry about American Muslims because they are led by CAIR and other groups with an extremist agenda. Mysteriously, that phrase dropped out. My statement takes on a different meaning with it back in.

This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3159