Muslim Groups Protest Bush Peace Nominee Daniel Pipes

The Harvard-trained scholar has declared Islamic extremists are conspiring to replace the U.S. Constitution with the Koran, that one in 10 American Muslims are militants and suggested the government needs to monitor Muslims and mosques across the country.

“Militant Islam is comparable to Fascism and Communism,” he says. “It is a threat to our way of life.”

The statements have led to accusations of bigotry from groups such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Arab American Institute.

“For someone like that to be nominated to the Institute of Peace is astounding,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for The Council on American Islamic Relations.

If Pipes is actually appointed, Hooper said, it would confirm suspicions in that the war on Iraq and the war on terrorism “is really a war on Islam.”

The Institute of Peace was initially conceived in the aftermath of the Vietnam War as a counterbalance to the influence of the nation’s military schools. It has evolved into a centrist foreign policy think tank.

It received $16.2 million from Congress this year and its 15 board members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. By law, no more than eight can be a member of one political party. Institute spokesman John Brinkley declined to comment on Pipes’ nomination.

Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said Pipes would mark a substantial swing to the right for the Institute of Peace.

“He is perhaps the most extreme hawk that you could find,” Carpenter said. “This is really a barometer of the neo-conservative mood of this administration.”

Pipes, who reads and speaks Arabic, said Thursday that his criticism of militant Islam shouldn’t be confused with a condemnation of the religion.

“My view is that militant Islam is the problem, and moderate Islam is the answer,” Pipes said.

His definition of what constitutes militancy, though, is one of the things fueling his critics.

To Pipes, militant Muslims are those who favor a totalitarian ideology that considers other religions sinful and calls for the replacement of democratic and secular institutions with Islamic tradition.

One doesn’t have to be a terrorist, Pipes says, to be a militant.

He has accused liberal professors of fueling anti-American sentiments by claiming the Gulf wars have been fought over oil, or by suggesting the United States was partly to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks because it had pursued its economic growth at the expense of the developing world.

Last summer, the Middle East Forum started a Web site called Campus Watch to expose what Pipes says is a militant infiltration of Middle East studies departments at universities nationwide.

In articles with titles such as “Why the left loves Osama,” and “Profs Who Hate America,” Pipes has accused anti-war academics such as Noam Chomsky of being terrorist sympathizers.

Pipes said he is simply tired of liberal academics playing apologist for a brand of Islam that is oppressive and anti-American.

“I see my role as saying, ‘We have a problem here,”’ Pipes said. “I think the broader American public is waking up to it, but slowly.”