Daniel Pipe: No Longer Banned in the British Library!

The following by Daniel Pipes is reposted here with permission:

No Longer Banned in the British Library!

by Daniel Pipes
Apr 9, 2014
Cross-posted from National Review Online, The Corner

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2014/04/no-longer-banned-in-the-british-library

The British Library, I documented yesterday, had blocked my website and those of the Middle East Forum while letting through some of the most foul antisemitic and Islamist sites. The article ended with mention of my writing to the library, a government institution, to request that the blocks be removed. Also, a substantial number of readers wrote to the library in protest.

The British Library's reading room.

As a result, I am happy to report, the blocks have been removed. A representative of the library's Electronic Services wrote me:

Daniel Pipes Banned in British Library -- But Not Hamas, Islamists and Antisemites

The following by Daniel Pipes is reposted here with permission:

Banned in the British Library

by Daniel Pipes
National Review Online
April 8, 2014

Prominent counter-jihadis like Geert Wilders, Michael Savage, and Robert Spencer have the distinction of being banned from entry into the United Kingdom – and, now, Her Majesty's Government, in its wisdom, has also banned two websites connected to me. It's not quite the same, admittedly, and I am working to get this ban removed, but I also wear it as a perverse badge of honor given that government's shameful record vis-à-vis Islamism.

Why Is Daniel Pipes Yawning Over the Latest From the Middle East?

The following from Daniel Pipes is reposted here with permission:

Yawning Over the Latest From the Middle East

by Daniel Pipes
January 26, 2014
Cross-posted from National Review Online, The Corner

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2014/01/yawning-over-the-latest-from-the-middle-east

The Middle East does offer some signs of hope, such as the inspiring example of Israel, the metaphorical "villa in the jungle"; the bracing prospect of Islamists falling into disarray; and the emergence of an independentKurdistan.

But these are the exceptions. In general, the regions these days hosts such unchanging, repetitious and dreary news that this commentator barely reads the news and has little to say about it. Consider some leading issues of the moment:

What Do You Think: Does Daniel Pipes ALWAYS Agree With Israel's Policies?

The following by Daniel Pipes is reposted here with permission:

Do I Not Criticize Israeli Policies?

by Daniel Pipes
September 29, 2013

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2013/09/do-i-not-criticize-israeli-policies

David C. Speedie.

David C. Speedie, a senior fellow and director of U.S. Global Engagement Program at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, recently wrote how he follows me "quite closely" and that my work is of no value because I don't "in any way question any aspect of Israel's policy."

He implied here that I am a lapdog of the Israeli government with no mind of my own, but a p.r. agent or lobbyist for whoever's in charge in Jerusalem, so my views should have no weight. His portrayal undermines my role as an independent analyst and therefore calls for refutation.

In fact. I disagree often and volubly with Israeli policies, as the following partial list suggests:

Daniel Pipes Interviewed on Islam and Islamism

The following interview of Daniel Pipes by Tom Bethell is reposted here with permission:

Islam and Islamism in the Modern World

An interview with Daniel Pipes

by Tom Bethell
The American Spectator
February 2013

http://www.danielpipes.org/12521/islam-islamism-modern-world

Daniel Pipes, one of our leading experts on Islam, established the Middle East Forum and became its head in 1994. He was born in 1949 and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, Richard Pipes, was a professor of Russian history, now emeritus, at Harvard. 

Daniel studied Arabic and Islamic history and lived in Cairo for three years. His PhD dissertation became his first book, Slave Soldiers and Islam (1981). Then his interest in purely academic subjects expanded to include modern Islam. He left the university because, as he told an interviewer from Harvard Magazine, he has "the simple politics of a truck driver, not the complex ones of an academic." 

His story of being harassed through the legal system by a Muslim who later committed suicide was recently told in The American Spectator ("A Palestinian in Texas," TAS, November 2012). He has been personally threatened but prefers not to talk about specifics except to note that law enforcement has been involved. 

I interviewed Pipes shortly before Christmas, when the Egyptians were voting on their new constitution. I started out by saying that the number of Muslims in the U.S. has doubled since the 9/11 attacks.

DP: My career divides in two: before and after 9/11. In the first part I was trying to show that Islam is relevant to political concerns. If you want to understand Muslims, I argued, you need to understand the role of Islam in their lives. Now that seems obvious. If anything, there's a tendency to over-emphasize Islam; to assume that Muslims are dominated by the Koran and are its automatons—which goes too far. You can't just read the Koran to understand Muslim life. You have to look at history, at personalities, at economics, and so on.

TB: Do you see the revival of Islam as a reality?

Daniel Pipes: It Is Turkey -- Not Iran -- That Is Closest To Leading The Muslim World

The following by Daniel Pipes is reposted here with permission:

Turkey, Closest to Leading the Middle East

by Şenay Yıldız
Akşam
January 7, 2013

http://www.danielpipes.org/12459/turkey-leading-middle-east

Translation of the original text: Ortadoğu liderliğine en yakın ülke Türkiye
Translated by Elif S. Gürbey

N.B.: This translation from Turkish includes numerous changes in the text by Daniel Pipes to improve the presentation and to make it more accurate.

Founder and president of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes is well known for his work on the Middle East and political Islam. Pipes, an award-winning columnist for the National Review and Jerusalem Post, writes commentaries and articles about the Middle East in leading media organizations such as the BBC, Al Jazeera, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. After visiting Turkey last month, Pipes, who has 12 books and numerous articles on Islam, Syria, and the Middle East, published an article in National Review Online titled "Talking Turkey." We talked with him [in mid-December] about his impressions of Turkey and his expectations from the Middle East.

- When were you in Turkey the last time?
I was in Turkey two weeks ago. I visited in 2007 as well. My first visit to Turkey was in 1972. I spent the summer of 1973 trying to learn Turkish while living in Istanbul's Üsküdar quarter … but I was not very successful at it.

Back To Basics: Using Cold War Tactics Against Iran

The following by Daniel Pipes is reposted here with his permission:

Using Cold War Tactics to Confront Iran

by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
January 9, 2013

http://www.danielpipes.org/12442/iran-sofaer-cold-war

As Americans seek to find an alternative to the stark and unappetizing choice of accepting Iran's rabid leadership having nuclear weapons or pre-emptively bombing its nuclear facilities, one analyst offers a credible third path. Interestingly, it's inspired by a long-ago policy toward a different foe – the Reagan administration's ways of handling the Soviet Union – yet this unlikely model offers a useful prototype.

Abraham D. Sofaer, a former U.S. district judge and legal adviser to the State Department, now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, argues in Taking On Iran: Strength, Diplomacy and the Iranian Threat (Hoover Institution, 2013) that since the fall of the shah during the Carter administration, Washington "has responded to Iranian aggression with ineffective sanctions and empty warnings and condemnations."

Not since 1988, he notes, has the U.S. government focused on the Iranian military force that specifically protects the country's Islamic order and most often attacks abroad, variously called the Pasdaran or Sepah in Persian and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC in English. This roughly 125,000-strong elite force, created in 1980, has an outsized role in Iran's political and economic life. It possesses its own army, navy, and air force units, it controls ballistic missile programs, and it shares control over the country's nuclear program. It runs the Basij, which enforces strict Islamic mores on the Iranian public. Its military forces are more important than the regular armed forces. Its Quds Force of about 15,000 agents spreads the Khomeini revolution abroad via infiltration and assassination. Its graduates staff key positions in the Iranian government.

Video: Daniel Pipes On Panel About The Future Of The Arab Spring--And Israel

I came across this and thought the issues were interesting, so I am passing it on, here.
Daniel Pipes participated on an Australian Broadcast Corporation show, "Q&A: Adventures in Democracy" which covered a number of topics, including the Middle East and Israel.

Here is the video, followed by a transcript of just the topics relating to Israel and the Middle East: