Fistful of Euros on Pipes on Ramadan

junius: the point is not how ideologically moderate Ramadan is (define moderate… or even, define not-fundamentalist: someone who has overtly denounced antisemitism, sexism, fundamentalist violence, and simplistic ideologisation doesn’t sound too much like an Islamic fundamentalist according to my dictionary, but interpretations vary).

It’s about claiming he has terrorist connections, has organised terrorist meetings, is preaching and advocating terrorism, is giving or getting funds from terrorists, in other words, claims he has not just spoken but acted in support of terrorism – when there is actually nothing to support either claims. Because if there was anything substantial about those allegations, he’d be already standing trial in France or Switzerland.

Pipes built his argument in support of the visa revocation on pure hearsay, propaganda and distortion. He can list all the claims he wants, he can mis-translate from any sources he links to, he can make up all the crap about judge Garzon accusing Ramadan of having had a baby with bin Laden’s sister, but there’s still nothing solid there!

We don’t know why the visa was revoked, but I doubt unfounded allegations or misreadings of his statements in interviews had anything to do with it. As has already been duly noted, why would Ramadan still be given a chance to apply?

What’s more ironic, there’s probably thousands of really extreme Muslim radicals within the US already, as we speak, that would find view Ramadan as a wimp, as he’s not hardcore enough, not even a ‘real’ Muslim in their extreme view. Not to mention the ever ineffable Saudi and Pakistani rich bankers and investors for whom fundamentalism is more of a business than ideological matter. But those are welcome! bling bling! I’d like to hear Pipes explain that. He’d probably blame it on the liberals.

Naomi: You point out that “there’s probably thousands of really extreme Muslim radicals within the US already” (unarrested and untried) and then — illogically — use the absence of Ramadan’s being tried in Switzerland as evidence for his moderation. I agree that Ramadan should get his visa. He’s not my cup of tea but hardly a danger to the republic. On the other hand Scott Martens goes way overboard in his rebuttal of Pipes’ article (and, as it happens, French is my first language, so I don’t need Martens or Pipes to understand what was said, and can tell when either man is shading his report).

How could he expect to get away with it? Is Pipes still getting in print?

These people get away with it. Again and again and again … after a while, gall is easy, because there’s no risk.

I thought Martens was scrupulously accurate, unlike Pipes.

I see a lot of commenters over there who have worked themselves into a tizzy but don’t have any facts to bring to the table.

Mr. Carr: Like Pipes, you are distorting Ramadan’s remarks beyond recognition. The point Ramadan was making was that bin Laden’s terrorism has little support in the Islamic world, in contrast to the Palestinian and Iraqi resistance movements. That’s not a personal endorsement of the Palestinian or Iraqi resistance movements, much less the particular tactics they sometimes employ–after all, I can say that 9/11 gained GWB a lot of support in the US without thereby endorsing GWB’s policies, which I find abhorrent.

I see a lot of commenters over there who have worked themselves into a tizzy but don’t have any facts to bring to the table.

The point that some people are making, Praktike, is that Scott Martens is in the “tizzy” zone as well, witness his umbrage at Pipes’ harping on “interventions”. I don’t like Pipes’ politics but the author of the word “interventions” is patently minimizing what happened in Spain, Bali and New York, and Pipes is right to notice it. As I would if someone here would refer to, say, the “disturbances” of Sept. 11.

I don’t like Pipes’ politics but the author of the word “interventions” is patently minimizing what happened in Spain, Bali and New York, and Pipes is right to notice it. As I would if someone here would refer to, say, the “disturbances” of Sept. 11.

Helene, for someone with two accents in your name you’re rather missing Scott’s point about French literacy. Pipes’ point is based on an egregious mistranslation, which is quite obviously a mistranslation in context.

“how the hell did Pipes think he was going to get away with this?”
He has. Or do you think Scott Martens’s debunking will damage Pipes’s career or readership?
Maybe there’s a definition of “get away with it” I’m missing.
“Robert Novak will never get away with outing an active undercover CIA agent.”

Wow, Danial Pipes a hack? Who’d have guessed.

A consistent hack that is – from 1998:

Third, the institutional preponderance of fundamentalists in the United States makes it extremely difficult for American Jewish organizations to build constructive relations with Muslim counterparts, for all of the main Islamic groups are fundamentalist, with the possible exception of W. Deen Mohammed’s movement. Faced with a choice of dealing with fundamentalists or no one, the Jewish organizations should choose the latter course. Otherwise, they run the risk of legitimating their own worst enemies.

Given that he said that in 1998 it should come as no surprise that he created campuswatch and is opposed to muslims teaching at american universities.

Since not everybody will follow the link and read all comments at Fistful I give the highlight of my comments here too:

A Michael writes: “Don’t you just love being on the good side rather than with those evil ones?”
My question would then be:
Are you sure you are without that inclination?

I do appreciate Scott’s effort to check Pipes’ sources and links but I can’t help feeling that the effort comes close to an attempt to completely run down the guy without trying to understand his point of view a little bit.
The attacks at Scott in the comments at Fistful totally fail where “facts are encountered with style”, that kind of things, but we do not have all ultimate facts here either. (we will never have IMHO).
Following a Dutch reference from Pipes site to one of the best (most conscientious) newspapers here in the Netherlands (Trouw) I got the impression that Piper is driven by the idea that there is a lot of denial of the mere existence of islamofacism.

I found Irfan Khawaja of the history news network saying it much better then I can:
“Pipes is neither the demon that his enemies have made of him, nor the savior that his champions have made him into. He is, on the one hand, an astute and courageous scholar of militant Islam who has said what needs to be said on that subject without worrying too much about winning popularity contests. On the other hand, however, he is an insensitive, careless, and unreliable journalist with a consistent pattern of exaggeration and misjudgment that he adamantly refuses to acknowledge or rectify. Both facts are real; neither should be ignored.”
Go read the whole thing; Piper commented on it too.

The tragedy is that the denying and the exaggerating (of the islamofascist threat) reinforce each other.
This tragedy is so much more important than a more or less moderate muslim-scholar not getting a visa.
Reading the debate at Fistful and at HNN (and now it starts here at CT too it seems) I get the idea there is way to much focus on details. Trying to prove the other side is completely wrong instead of trying to convince (maybe not the addresses but the readers).

A silly example: in the last line of his comments on Irfan Khawaja Pipes points to an error by Khawala. Pipes was not nominated at April 4 but on April 1…

The critics should aim at the huge errors in Pipes’ writings.
For example defending his support for the idea to support Saddam Houssein to encounter the greater evil of Khomeiny with a comparison with the cooperation with Stalin against Hitler.
Or to the absurd suggestion on his own website concerning the Israel-Palestinian conflict where he suggests that the Palestinians (which ?) should surrender completely like Argentine surrendered to the Brits at the end of the Falkland war or else there can never be peace. Suggesting that the PLO or the Palestine authority could be compared with the Argentine government. As if indeed Arafat has total control over Hamas for example.

To focus on Pipes defense of refusing a visa to Tariq Ramadan comes close to fueling the abovementioned greater tragedy.

Helene; I’ve spoken French for a fair old while myself and you’re wrong. If someone tried to make the case that someone should be denied a visa and was obviously a terrorist supporter based on implications of a single word choice in English, I’d be laughing at them, and the change of language is invariant.

By the way, the combination of your dragging up arguments from other threads, plus your IP number, leads me toward the belief that “Helene” with the accents is a new pseudonym you’ve adopted to look more credible. It doesn’t work.

Dsquared: I’ve lurked here since mid-August, and if you speak French as you now claim (was it also acquired researching that railway guide to Vietnam?), you’ve shown little sign of understanding it. I can recall at least one time when you linked to a French text only to have someone demonstrate that it actually damages to your position. Nor does your careless reading of English (as above) inspire much confidence. I was making no brief for Pipes, but pointing out that Ramadan’s descriptive term for the terrorist attacks in Madrid, Bali and New York is remarkable for being inappropriate. Unlike you, I think others can judge my comment on its own merits. As for my name and its accents, they are both genuine (as is my IP address; it is a dynamic address, half of which is shared by several hundred thousand subscribers, so I’m not sure what you’re implying) and I’ll readily stake their veracity against your comprehension of French and your general disagreeableness.

Thanks for the link, Naomi (it requires registration and I may get around to it later). I’ve already read a bit of Ramadan. Some of it comes across as very reasonable and some strikes me as a transparent apology for Islamism. As for the term in question, I simply accepted that Le Point had quoted him correctly. I’m not sure whether he is claiming that they misquoted him or that they came up with the term and he simply adopted it. In either case we have no disagreement about Ramadan’s validity as visiting lecturer.

delpiero – I’m not speaking for the site’s owners, but from familiarity with Movable Type, which this site uses, and which, like other publishing/commenting systems, automatically retrieves the IP of the commenter. It allows you to block the IP of an abuser or spammer, if you want to.

So, simply taking a look at a commenter’s IP on your blog, to know which country they’re posting from, is nothing special. It’s not even “tracing”.

The no-no is when you make the IP of a person public without their knowing it would be made public, but that didn’t happen.

Naomi: Yes, perhaps it’s just my sensitivity to religious rhetoric in general and I might have a similar reaction to a strict Catholic. In general, my take on Ramadan is that, as Jacques Jormier puts it, he is not out to modernize Islam but to Islamize modernity.

As for Dsquared’s comments on my name and IP, I find them at once offensive and chilling. Offensive that he could choose to mock the the way I spell my name (it is no pseudonym), and chilling that he would go to the trouble of checking my IP address and then lying about what he found… unless his comment is the result of plain ignorance. Any blogger with a middling knowledge of the internet should be aware of the difference between static and dynamic addresses (knowing my IP’s subscribership, I would guess that at any given moment approximately 3/4 of a million internet users will have the same first four numbers as me but the remaining 4-6 numbers will all be different). Yet he disingenuously insinuates some sort of identification. For someone who is always quick to chide others on the most picayune of points, I find this sort of deception indicative of a basic and willful dishonesty. Unless, as I said above, it stems from sheer ignorance. CT is a stimulating site. Too bad that its most prolific commenter can sometimes be such a jerk.

Delpiero,

As Naomi explained, your IP address is automatically logged on Crooked Timber, as at many (not all) blogs. So there’s nothing sinister about that. But Dsquared’s explanation is, well, a bit disingenuous. There are a lot of things done automatically on a web site but checking someone’s IP address against someone else’s is not one of them. That requires personal intervention (funny how that word reappears). If Helene has a dynamic address, it means that it changes every time she logs onto the Internet. So the most someone could gather from an examination of her current address – and even that would require the use of some tracing utility – is that she was a subscriber to, say, AOL or Comcast or Earthlink, in maybe a specified geographical region. Short of requisitioning the ISP’s own records there is no way of knowing that a particular user was assigned and using a specific address at a specific time. To imply otherwise is dishonest.

Or to put it another way; everyone on the internet is free if they like to come onto CT, shout the odds, make dubious claims about things that I know about, try to pull rank on me by claiming many (uncheckable) years of experience and call me names, but they shouldn’t necessarily expect the gentle touch if they do it.

“As I’ve previously indicated, I’ll respond on comments threads when and if I choose, and do not intend to respond to harassment from you. Please go away.”

John Q

“In general, my take on Ramadan is that, as Jacques Jormier puts it, he is not out to modernize Islam but to Islamize modernity.”

Well, Hélène, you see, the problem is, that you indeed could have the same approach to a strict Catholic.

the Vatican makes many pronouncements on political, social, ethical issues in which it puts Catholic beliefs and views above any other, as is only natural from their point of view.

But from a different non-religious or just non-Catholic point of view, one might claim that “the Vatican is not out to modernise Christianity, but to Christianise modernity”. It is literally what they do. And even outside of the Vatican, or of Catholicism alone, or of the clergy, many public figures who overtly support a religious view want that view to shape modernity, and denounce other approaches (secular-only, godless, atheist, rationalist, etc.) as inferior, or even dangerous.

I do not like that approach one bit, but as log as it keeps itself this side of lunacy and dictatorship, I can _live with it_. Because it exists, and it comes from each major religion. I would _love_ it if wasn’t like that, but I can’t demand the impossible. So if everyone can live with moderate Christians being Christians and “Christianising modernity” _for themselves_, in their point of view, and working to proselitise others to their view, within reasonable, tolerable, non-coercive terms, I don’t see why we cannot live with the same when it’s coming from Muslims.

Most people do not tend to assume all Christians are far-out loons that harass women who want to have abortions, so I don’t see why they should tend to assume that all Muslims, just by virtue of believing in Islam as superior to any other set of beliefs, are far-out loons who want to behead or burka everyone else. That’s definitely not the message Ramadan is sending out, unless, of course, he’s saying moderate things in public and then, undercover, underground, goes around advocating mass killing of infidels, but we might as well assume the same “deception” of Daniel Pipes, or anyone.

Sometimes, it feels like today we’re hearing echoes of the same ideological paranoia that in medieval times used to be targeted at both Jews and Muslims. Such a triumph for modernity, that.

Hélène: yes, mainstream Christianity and Judaism as they are generally practised have modernised, come to terms with modernity, relatively better than Islam.

We all know that.

So? Where do you go from there?

My bringing up the Vatican was not meant to say, Catholicism or even strict Catholicism is _the same as_ Islam. It’s similar in many respects, but even the Vatican has learnt to deal with modernity relatively better than Islam.

But, insofar as claims and beliefs about one’s religious view being _still_ superior to a non-religious one, or one from another religion, that’s the part that’s the very same.

Even alongside modernisation and acceptance of secular principles, there is always that point of view: I’m religious, so religion is what shapes my whole view of the world. If you don’t believe that, then you’re not religious.

Again, I do not share that view myself, but I can live with it when it’s within reasonable enough limits. So I see no reason to fault that view when it comes from a Muslim, that’s all.

Does Ramadan refuse secular principles? no.

Does he advocate Muslims should be exempted from following secular laws? no. (Even on the headscarf ban, even if he argued against it, he said, now it’s law, let’s respect it. Hardly a fundamentalist stance.)

Does he want shariah courts in place of ordinary courts? no.

Does he refuse everything that does not come from Islam? no. Quite the contrary.

I do not subscribe to his views. His views are not targeted at me. I’m not a Muslim. His main target is young European and American Muslims. He wants them to retain pride in their religion _and_ integrate that in their being citizens of their country. Integrate secular and religious principles. He is against a separatist view of Muslim identity as being in opposition to a European or American identity.

What other sensible alternative there is? Keep going on and on about how Islam is irredeemably ancient and will never be able to modernise? Or demand Muslims abandon their religion en mass? How successful would that approach be? It would only drive people even more towards extremes.

Shouldn’t the effort to modernise Islam start somewhere and be realistic?

It’s no use repeating how Islam is archaic. Of course it is, all religions are, Islam is more rigid than others. It doesn’t make sense to brand as “fundamentalist in disguise” even people who are actually trying to get things moving on.

If he has to appeal to Muslims and draw them towards better integration in European and American society, he still has to appeal to Islamic values and praise Islam, that is very obvious. What else should he say?

We can’t demand someone like Ramadan starts saying a secular approach is better than an Islamic approach, because then he would be denying the validity of Islam, and that would be a very dumb thing to do, when you’re actually trying to reach people who want to retain their faith.

Otherwise, let’s have the mullahs run the show. Doesn’t sound like a great prospect to me.

He’s talking from a perspective of living in France, and there even more than in other European countries, there is a growing trend towards fundamentalism even more among young Muslims, third or fourth generation immigrants, who feel more alienated than their fathers. Why not try and counteract that alienation? We don’t do that by demanding people become apostates, or by inferring that even renowned advocate of integration is a terrorist.

It’s a reaction that only panders to the fear of western non-Muslim citizens vis a vis Islam. It doesn’t address anything other than emotion and simplistic ideology and us vs. them, who’s better, who’s cooler. And in doing so, paradoxically, it’s not too far from the Islamist mentality it purports to be “fighting”.

Mainstream Christianity and Judaism (i.e. as they are practised; most Catholics ignore the Vatican’s pronouncements on sex, abortion, marriage etc.) are now western religions

Let’s enlarge the view a little. The “west” is only a part of the world. In some African countries, Christianity has very little of the “western” spirit, if we mean a liberal attitude. In places like Nigeria, for instance, it has taken a scarily fundamentalist approach. And we’re talking millions of followers and billions of profits, not just a bunch.

And even in the west, American society is not a secular as Europe. Fundamentalists have obtained creationism be taught instead of scientific theories. It’s not a marginal result. It’s in no way modern or “western” in that sense.

I wouldn’t be so quick to assume most Christians ignore pronouncements on things like abortion, whatever branch of Christianity we’re talking about. It seems like it’s one of the hottest issues for practicing Christians.

All that goes to show that the danger of religions interfering with public life always exists.

I for one would be happier if every religious group and church on earth was like buddhists. But they’re not. So I have to _deal with it_. I have to give the benefit of the doubt to religious people, and not brand them as extremists just because they believe their view is superior to mine.

And I have to appreciate anyone who makes an effort to speak in favour of reconciling any religion with liberal, secular values. Especially if that religion is still stuck in very backward territory and being used by violent extremists to attract more followers to engage in more violence. I don’t see what good it does to keep calling out for Muslim moderates to speak, then, when they do, bash them on the head for still being Muslims. It’s a very obtuse, masochistic, self-serving kind of arrogance.

they shouldn’t necessarily expect the gentle touch

No, Daniel, after all your lies, obscenities and sleazy behavior, after all the demonstrations of your making shit up, “the gentle touch” is something we have learned not to expect. Still, like listening to the Republican Convention, it comes as a shock when people’s worst expectations are confirmed.

Absent a universal authority, the tendency in Islam is for the shriller literalists to get heard, not the softer accomodationists.

All the more reasons for the ‘softer accomodationists’ to get heard, instead of accused of being terrorists without enough grounds for such accusations, no?

Yeah, well, there are always worse alternatives to anything… I was going for a _slightly_ more flattering definition but yeah, I agree.

I have to say the way he’s reacted has earned him some extra respect. Can’t say the same for the other parties involved, sadly.