The Harvard Magazine's sympathetic portrait of the gadfly head of The Middle East Forum, publisher of Middle East Quarterly, founder of Campus Watch, and board member of the US Insititute of Peace, http://www.harvard-magazine.com/on-line/010540.html Daniel Pipes: "How does it happen that this gentle-voiced scholar has become so controversial? Partly, of course, it comes with the territory: in an academic field known for heated, bare-knuckled controversy, Pipes, as a Jewish conservative working from the outside, has chosen to make himself one of the most vehement contributors, finding himself on the right, which is to say the wrong, side of every issue—at least in the eyes of much of the press and academia. And, not least, he is often tarred with the catchall brush of misattribution—accused of saying what he hasn't. Despite his endlessly repeated mantra—'Militant Islam is the problem and moderate Islam the solution'—he is charged with being an Islamophobe.
Another pull quote (from above): Pipes has not exactly endeared himself to academia, but, he maintains, it can't be helped. Trouble is, as this sample of his rhetoric from the New York Post asserts, "Middle East studies have become an intellectual Enron. Scholars of the Middle East" are "Incompetent: They consistently get the basics wrong. Militant Islam they portray as a democratizing force. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda they dismiss as irrelevant. The Palestinian Authority they predict to be democratic." I read one of John Esposito's (Georgetown) books on Islam, followed by a few of his articles. Unfortunately, the sum and substance confirmed Pipes' above critique, as this former president of MESA strained to reach any reasoned and informed evaluation of Islam. Instead, Esposito offered the slenderest scholarly rationales, dessing up his own wishful thinking.
