Piping The Day
Contents:
1) Original and Excellent Article by Dr. Fouda on "Double Standard on Islam"
2) Letter from Daniel Pipes Threatening Legal Action
3) Dr. Fouda's letter documenting that Pipes is not telling the truth in his letter
4) The Day misleading "Correction" put out even after the above letter was sent to them
5) Article by Dan Levine on the subject of the Day's buckling to threat
6) Letter from Peter Viering Published in the Day
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1) Original and Excellent Article by Dr. Fouda on "Double Standard on Islam"
The Real Double Standard On Islam
By HASSAN FOUDA
Published on 7/24/2005
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=01FA6AB7-0B54-4AA3-B880-CC8808C00A76
The Day's recent July 20 editorial castigating the worldwide Muslim community for its failure to condemn the terrorist attacks in London was not surprising. Over the past week, The Day's editorial pages have been littered with similar sentiments expressed by the usual suspects demanding apologies from every Muslim in the world for the crimes of a
few.
Columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in your pages “it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst,” and insisted that “no major Muslim cleric or religious body has issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.” Like your editorial, Charles Krauthammer recounted in gory detail the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by Mohamed Bouyeri, a Moslem, concluding that Europe has “incubated ... an enemy within,” and demanding that Moslems denounce “not just...the terrorist attacks, but their source.”
Offering a spirited defense of torture of Muslim detainees and condemnation of any protests this might arouse, Cal Thomas accused “The MuslimWorld,” collectively, of a double standard. In the same vein, yet producing no examples or data, The Day accused Muslims around the world of “giving a wink and a nod” to terrorism.
As University of Michigan professor Juan Cole noted in a recent article (http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/friedman-wrong-about-muslims-again-and.html),
the worldwide Muslim community has in fact been unambiguous in its condemnation of terrorism. Every major Islamic authority including Sheik Mohamed Sayyid Tantawi of the Al-Azhar Seminary in Cairo, the highest moral authority on the Sunni branch of Islam, has issued repeated condemnations of Osama bin Laden.
At the other end of the spectrum of Islam, nearly all of the major Shiite clerics have condemned bin Laden, such as Ayatollah Muhamed Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon. And, putting the lie to Friedman's claims, the Islamic Council of Spain, a body representing about 250,000 Spanish Muslims, has issued a fatwa against bin Laden.
Yet, mimicking classic anti Semitic stereotypes, and in spite of any facts, Muslims are repeatedly accused of disloyalty and collective responsibility for crimes, and referred to as the enemies of civilization, incubators of evil forces which must be destroyed by the self anointed civilized world. Muslim women wearing traditional dress are routinely faced with cries of “terrorist” as they walk the streets, with a 1,600 percent increase in anti Muslim hate crimes in the pasts few years. A recent Washington Post article quotes Colorado congressman
Tom Tancredo as saying that “if this London bombing happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist,
fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites.”
Last year, without a thread of indiscretion, self proclaimed “terrorism expert” Daniel Pipes, who has in the past called the American Muslim community “a seditious conspiracy aimed at undermining American values” and warned Americans of “the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene,” suggested the possibility of detaining Muslims in internment camps like those used against Japanese Americans in World War II. Rather than publicly denouncing Pipes, President Bush appointed him to the United States Institute of Peace, calling him a “respected scholar.”
It is interesting to contrast the accusations against Muslims resulting from Theo Van Gogh's murder with the coverage of convicted killer Eric Rudolph, a Christian fundamentalist who called it his “moral duty” to kill abortion doctors. Where was The Day's editorial calling for swift denunciation by Christian leaders? Why are Muslims alone repeatedly called upon to repudiate violence by other Muslims when no other religion is collectively blamed for the actions of a few? Every act of malfeasance committed by Muslims is adduced as proof of the sinister nature of Islam, with every Muslim, perceived to now be a suspect, required to “speak up.” I defy Cal Thomas, who is an evangelical Christian, to cite even one example of his own past condemnation of violence committed by Christians.
I defy Charles Krauthammer to cite any instance in which he has condemned torture and ethnic cleansing practiced by Israel over the past 60 years against the rest of the Middle East. During Israel's two-decade-long occupation of southern Lebanon, Israeli forces murdered over 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, including more than 1,000 in a single day in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, overseen by none other than then Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. During this time, The Day did not write one editorial demanding an apology from the
Jewish community at large for Israel's crimes, and President Bush today has the audacity to call Ariel Sharon a “man of peace.”
Yet Muslims alone are burdened by a collective responsibility. Wherever there are Muslims, they are guilty until proven innocent, terrorists until they have sufficiently proven otherwise. This is the real double standard on Islam. And this is the reason The Day should diversify its commentary, rather than joining the onslaught of the anti-Muslim writers who regularly appear on its pages.
Hassan Fouda lives in Groton.
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2) Letter from Daniel Pipes Threatening Legal Action
From: Meqmef@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2005 12:44 AM
To: McGinley, Morgan
Subject: from Daniel Pipes to Morgan McGinley
July 26, 2005
Dear Mr. McGinley:
I write in response to the mention of me in "The Real Double Standard On Islam" by Hassan Fouda in The Day ,July 24, 2005 .
Fouda writes:
self proclaimed "terrorism expert"? Daniel Pipes, who has in the past called the American Muslim community "a seditious conspiracy aimed at undermining American values" and warned Americans of "the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene,� suggested the
possibility of detaining Muslims in internment camps like those used against Japanese Americans in World War II.
There are two remarkable things about this passage. The first is the falsehood of every single assertion.
• I am not a self-proclaimed terrorism expert but a historian of the Middle East and Islam; I have never proclaimed an expertise on terrorism, a quite different field.
• I never uttered the words "a seditious conspiracy aimed at undermining American values," much less applied them to the American Muslim community. This is rank fabrication.
• I did not warn Americans of "the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene." This is a half-fabrication; for what I did say, go to "Reply to CAIR's Attack on Daniel Pipes" on my website, www.DanielPipes.org .
• I never suggested detaining Muslims in internment camps but to the contrary have denied this explicitly (see Department of Corrections (of Others Mistakes about Me) a blog entry on my website) and even won an apology and retraction from someone who wrote this about me (on which see "An Islamist Apology" also on my website).
I now demand an apology and correction for this passage. If one is not swiftly provided, I will consider legal remedies.
The second remarkable thing about this passage is that The Day would print an article by the chair of the Connecticut chapter of Al-Awda, "the Palestine Right to Return Coalition" If you are not familiar with it, this organization (as described by Alyssa A. Lappen and Jerry Gordon at FrontPageMag.com ) seeks Israel political destruction. At a Wesleyan University conference last year, the Connecticut Jewish Ledger reports , Al-Awda distributed antisemitic literature bearing swastikas. Fouda wrote for The Day on Dec. 7, 2003 (and available on Al-Awda's website ) the obnoxious statement that "To deny Israel 's role in the dispossession of the Palestinians is the moral equivalent of denying the holocaust."
Mr. Fouda clearly has some problems. I am appalled that you publish this extremist, and do so repeatedly.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Pipes
Director
Middle East Forum
1500 Walnut Street, Suite 1050
Philadelphia ,Pennsylvania 19102 ,USA
1-215-546-5406, ext. 15
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3) Dr. Fouda's letter documenting that Pipes is not telling the truth in his threats
Dear Morgan and Maura
Thank you for forwarding Daniel Pipes letter of July 26 threatening legal action. I am happy to reply and expose his lies. Let me first focus in the 4 items from my Op Ed and address his charge of falsehood.
1. Self proclaimed terrorism expert:
Pipes own web site http://www.danielpipes.org/cair.php makes it very clear he considers himself an expert on Terrorism. See the statement below from the site
“when it CAIR needed an authority to discuss a staff member of the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, whom did it turn to? Me… In other words, for all its defamation of my character and knowledge, CAIR itself acknowledges my expertise”
Furthermore Pipes speak widely and appear regularly on TV as an expert on Islam and terrorism. He never challenged any of his hosts for identifying him as such.
To provide one example: Daniel Pipes was a guest of the Greater Hartford Jewish Federation on November 2003. The program advertisement describes him as “visionary expert on Islam and terrorism”. See the Hartford Courant article below:
http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-pipes1105.artnov05,1,6376731.story?coll=hc-headlines-
Pipes Doesn't Speak For All Jews
November 5, 2003
Liz Aaronsohn, and Fatma Antar
As members of We Refuse To Be Enemies, an interfaith coalition of Jews, Muslims and Christians, we wish to voice our profound concern over the inclusion of Daniel Pipes in the two-week Jewish Book Festival sponsored by the Greater Hartford Jewish Community Center.
Pipes, who is scheduled to speak at the festival Thursday, is celebrated by the event's organizers as a "visionary expert on Islam and terrorism." . . .
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2. Daniel Pipes has indeed described American Moslems as a “seditious conspiracy aimed at undermining American values”. The link below document this quote
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=23221POLITICS-U.S.:
From Nation-Building to Religion-Building by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 7 (IPS) - One thing that can be said about U.S. neo-conservatives is they do not lack for ambition. . . Pipes is currently seeking funding for a new organization, tentatively named the ''Islamic Progress Institute'' (IPI), which ''can articulate a moderate, modern and pro-American viewpoint'' on behalf of U.S. Muslims and that, according to a grant proposal by Pipes and two New York-based foundations obtained by IPS, can ''go head-to-head with the established Islamist institutions'' . . . ''This situation is fraught with dangers for moderate Muslims as well as for non-Muslims'', the proposal continues, adding, ''Islam in America must be American Islam or it will not be integrated; there can be no place for an Islam in America that functions as a seditious conspiracy aimed at wiping out American values, undermining American inter-faith civility, and, in effect, dictating the form of Islam that
will be followed in America'' . . .
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3 Pipes claim that he did not warn of the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene.
Below is his own article in his own web site http://www.danielpipes.org/article/198
The Muslims are Coming! The Muslims are Coming!
by Daniel Pipes
National Review
November 19, 1990
“Responding to Immigration
Fears of a Muslim influx have more substance than the worry about jihad. West European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene. * Muslim immigrants bring with them a chauvinism that augurs badly for their integration into the mainstream of the European societies. The signs all point to continued clashes between the two sides; in all likelihood, the Rushdie affair was merely a prelude to further troubles; already it has spawned a Muslim political party in Great Britain. Put differently, Iranian zealots threaten more within the gates of Vienna than outside them. “
I admit that I erred in saying Pipes was warning Americans while in fact he warned West European societies. I would be happy to write a correction with Pipes full exact quote.
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4. Notwithstanding Daniel Pipes denial, I was correct in writing that he “suggested the possibility of detaining Muslims in internment camps like those used against Japanese Americans in World War II” Again this is well documented in Pipes own web site
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2309
Why the Japanese Internment Still Matters
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
December 28, 2004
In this article Pipes was clearly nostalgic at the internment of Japanese-Americans and hinted that we ought to consider similar steps in the context of the current war on terrorism. Professor Paul Campos of the University of Colorado law school was alarmed at Pipes racist suggestion and he slammed Pipes in the following article
http://www.archives2005.ghazali.net/html/a_dangerous_argument.html
Rocky Mountain News - January 4, 2005
A dangerous argument: Colorado Prof. slams Daniel Pipes on internment
By Paul Campos
Daniel Pipes, the well-known neoconservative intellectual and director of the Middle East Forum, has just published an opinion piece in which he implies that the wholesale relocation of American citizens of the Muslim faith to internment camps might be a good idea. . . .
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I realize that we live in litigates society and that the Zionists intending in maintaining their framing complain all the time. Every thing I write for the Day is well documented and I continue to be happy to provide references to every point I raise.
Daniel Pipes is a propagandist and hate monger. His attack on me is badge of honor. He libeled Noam Chomsky and many other Jewish and non-Jewish professors in his article "Professors who hate America" which was published in several Newspapers (Jerusalem Post, New York Post, etc). Another version of which appears in the following link under the title: Let's Blow the Whistle on Professors Who Hate America
http://www.jewishjournal.org/archives/archiveNov22_02.htm
Pipes "Assault on Truth" and on Al Awda, and his fictitious claim of swastikas at a Wesleyan University conference etc. are addressed in the following link.
http://www.qumsiyeh.org/assaultontruth/
Let me know if I could provide any other documentation. Thank you again for making room for my view. Naturally, I am quite interested in your response to Daniel Pipes
Hassan Fouda
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4) The Day misleading "Correction" put out even after the above letter was sent to them
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=c83e2599-b0dc-4ba0-ae2c-5232de7d94cf
Featured in Corrections
Published on 8/9/2005, (p A8)
Hassan Fouda's July 24 column inaccurately claimed that Israeli forces murdered 1,000 people in a single day in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Southern Lebanon in 1982. In fact, no Israelis were directly involved and the murders were carried out by Lebanese Christian militiamen. Israel's Kahan Commission later concluded that Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was indirectly responsible since he should have taken stronger steps to prevent the violence.
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=e66985b2-ed10-4ffe-addb-293eb8eea826
Featured in Corrections
Published on 8/10/2005 (p
A clarification
An op-ed article by Hassan Fouda published July 24 contained some misleading statements and incorrect quotes regarding Daniel Pipes,
director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia. Following are parts of a statement by Mr. Pipes responding to Mr. Fouda's piece:
I write in response to the mention of me in “The Real Double Standard on Islam,” by Hassan Fouda in The Day, July 24, 2005.
• I am not a self-proclaimed terrorism expert but a historian of the Middle East and Islam. I have never proclaimed an expertise on
terrorism, a quite different field.
• I never uttered the words “a seditious conspiracy aimed at undermining American values,” much less applied them to the American
Muslim community. This is rank fabrication.
• I did not warn Americans of “the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of
hygiene.” This is a half fabrication; for what I did say, go to “Reply to CAIR's Attack on Daniel Pipes,” on my Web site, www.DanielPipes.org
.
• I never suggested detaining Muslims in internment camps, but to the contrary have denied this explicitly (see “Department of Corrections (of Others' Mistakes about Me)),” a long entry on my Web site, and even won an apology and retraction from someone who wrote this about me (“An Islamist Apology”), also on my Web site.
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5) Article by Dan Levine on the subject of The Day's buckling to threat
All In A Day’s Work
by Dan Levine
http://ctnewsjunkie.com/index.php/2005/08/16/all_in_a_lemgday_sl_emg_work
Faced with a legal threat from Daniel Pipes, one of America’s leading neo-con scholars, the New London Day backs away from an op-ed it printed two weeks ago by Groton resident Hassan Fouda, who had defended Muslims from attack after the London bombings.
Now it’s Fouda who says his credibility has been trashed.
After the New London Day ran an op-ed by Hassan Fouda, a Groton resident active in Al-Awda, an anti-Zionist group, the paper received an angry letter from Daniel Pipes. Pipes is a prominent Middle East scholar well known for defending racial profiling of Muslims.
The scholar threatened legal action unless the Day withdrew Fouda’s statements about Pipes, including his contention that Pipes supports interning Muslims, much like the Japanese during World War II (see Piping Up Against the Day, 8/3/05).
Editors at the Day showed Pipes’s letter to Fouda, who responded with a list of sources he says illustrates that he accurately attributed Pipes’s quotes.
Apparently the Day didn’t agree, because last week, it printed a clarification of Fouda’s op-ed, saying the piece contained “misleading statements and incorrect quotes” about Pipes. The paper then lifted passages from Pipes’s letter refuting Fouda.
“I am not a self-proclaimed terrorism expert but a historian of the Middle East and Islam,” Pipes wrote. “I have never proclaimed an expertise on terrorism, a quite different field.”
But Fouda pointed to a piece Pipes wrote for the New York Sun entitled “What Do the Terrorists Want?” along with a statement from Pipes on his own web site, trumpeting the fact that an Islamist group had recognized his “expertise” while discussing a House task force on terrorism.
Among other contentions, the Day also printed Pipes’s denial that he ever suggested putting Muslims in internment camps. Here the situation gets murky. Fouda referred to a piece Pipes wrote called “Why Japanese Internment Still Matters.” In this missive, however, Pipes does not explicitly suggest interning Muslims.
But Pipes does cite the internment of Japanese as the reason why a serious discussion of racial profiling cannot be had in this country, when it comes to Muslims. And Pipes does laud another columnist for providing alleged evidence that Japanese internment was based on valid national security grounds, and that the country had real reason to fear its Japanese-American citizens during World War II.
The Day’s editorial page editor Morgan McGinley declined to discuss the paper’s clarification. Asked if he could explain how the Day determined Fouda’s sourcing was not sufficient to prevent the clarification, McGinley rebuffed the question.
“I’m not going to do that,” he said, and then ended the conversation.
“I stand by every word in my op-ed,” Fouda said. “I have documented for the Day every statement regarding Mr. Pipes. I am disappointed that the Day published what it knew to be false, trashing my reputation in the process. I expected better from the Day.”
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6) Letter from Peter Viering Publish in the Day
You may send your email to
Letters@theday.com
Hassan
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=0C46BB8E-234F-4A3B-B3B2-90BEB52B223F0
Israel Complicit When It Comes To '82 Massacres
Published on 8/17/2005
Letters To The Editor:
Your Aug, 9 correction stating that “no Israelis were directly involved” in the 1982 Sabra-Shatila massacres in Lebanon is misleading and disturbing: misleading, because Israel's involvement was not limited to failing to control violence; disturbing, because The Day feels compelled to minimize Israel's culpability in those atrocities.
Hassan Fouda's op-ed titled “The real double standard on Islam,” published July 24, did not address the issue of direct vs. indirect responsibility, only Israel's well-documented complicity in these massacres by many reputable sources.
Former Undersecretary of State George Ball wrote that the Phalangist attack on the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, in which perhaps 2,000 men, women and children were slaughtered (death certificates were issued for 1,200), was arranged by the Israeli military command (“The Passionate Attachment,” 1992,). The New York Times' Beirut correspondent, Thomas Friedman, once an ardent Zionist, confirmed Israel's complicity (“From Beirut to Jerusalem,” 1989) and cites an eyewitness who saw Phalangist militia “being fed and provided
for by a group of Israeli soldiers” on the day of the massacre, and described other direct action by Israeli forces which kept the refugee
camps “illuminated through the night with flares” to aid the killers.
Sabra-Shatila was not an isolated incident in Israeli history: more direct, deliberate and systematic killing of civilians and children by Israel's occupying authority, enforcing the ongoing displacement of non-Jewish populations, fuels anti-American sentiment and endangers American servicemen and women abroad. For a study examining the failure
of American news outlets to accurately cover Israeli killings, see http://www.ifamericansknew.org.
In an age when American journalists pride themselves for having an awakened conscience for human rights, the need for The Day to protect the public image of a foreign country is puzzling.
Peter B. Viering
Stonington |