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SNIPPET: "Today, I received two emails from an Elly Kilroy on behalf of WLUML, asking me to “please immediately remove the link to Women Living Under Muslim Laws from your list of recommended websites; we do not want to be associated with you in any way.” The email reads as follows: “Dear Phyllis, Please could you remove the link to Women Living under Muslim Laws from your list of Recommended Websites; we are more than uncomfortable about being in the same list as names such as Daniel Pipes, Melanie Phillips and Internet Haganah to name just a few. We are...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, North America's foremost Islamist group, bills itself as a "civil rights organization," suggesting it maintains high standards of decency and morality. But, as I personally can attest, it fails abysmally to do so. Its seven-year-long campaign against me has included misappropriation, misrepresentation, misquotation, defamation, and inaccuracy, prompting one one writer recently to compare its propaganda with that of Nazi Germany. Consider several dirty-trick episodes: DanielPipes.com: On December 15, 2000, simultaneous with the debut of my website, www.DanielPipes.org, John Michael Janney registered the domain www.DanielPipes.com. Janney was both a member of CAIR and an...

We're all familiar with the concept of modern technology having ancient Chinese analogues. But a 2002 discovery in remote Qinghai province is anachronistic enough to constitute an OOPart. Out-of-place-artifacts are so unusual, or found in such improbable contexts, that mainstream science has no plausible explanation for them. The crystal skulls of Mexico referenced in the latest Indiana Jones movie, the iron pillar of Delhi, and the ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism are examples of OOPart yet to be explained. Like these, the pipes of Qinghai's Mount Baigong suggest a level of technology simply inconceivable for the apparent era of their manufacture. Those...

Two events earlier this month summed up differing views of George W. Bush's Middle East record. In one, Bush himself offered a valedictory speech, declaring that "the Middle East in 2008 is a freer, more hopeful, and more promising place than it was in 2001." In the other, an Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi, expressed disrespect and rejection by hurling shoes at Bush as the U.S. president spoke in Baghdad, yelling at him, "This is a farewell kiss! Dog! Dog!" Ironically, Zaidi's very impudence confirmed Bush's point about greater freedom; would he have dared to throw shoes at Saddam Hussein?While I...

Obama Wins, Muslims Divided   By Daniel PipesFrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, November 11, 2008 Ali ibn Abi-Talib, the seventh-century figure central to Shiite Islam, is said to have predicted when the world will end, columnist Amir Taheri points out. A "tall black man" commanding "the strongest army on earth" will take power "in the west." He will carry "a clear sign" from the third imam, Hussein. Ali says of the tall black man: "Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us." An Iranian in Tehran sports a badge of Barack Obama. (AP: Hasan Sarbakhshian) Barack Hussein in Arabic...

One watches with dismay as Democratic candidate Barack Obama manages to hide the truth on his longstanding, if indirect ties to two institutions: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), listed by the US government in 2007 as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding trial; and the Nation of Islam (NoI), condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its "consistent record of racism and anti-Semitism." First, Obama's ties to Islamists: • The Khalid al-Mansour connection: According to former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton, Mansour "was raising money for" Obama's expenses at Harvard Law School. Mansour, a black American (né Don Warden), became...

Barack Obama is lying when he insists that he has never prayed in a mosque and was never a Muslim, a prominent Middle East expert and journalist says. Daniel Pipes, founder of the Middle East Forum think tank, says he fully accepts that Obama is a Christian now. But there is strong evidence that Obama received a Muslim upbringing during his years in Indonesia, Pipes said. It's fine with me that he was a Muslim and a convert to Christianity, Pipes told Newsmax. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is a convert from Hinduism. I have no problem with his conversion. What...

How do Muslims see Barack Hussein Obama? They have three choices: either as he presents himself – someone who has "never been a Muslim" and has "always been a Christian"; or as a fellow Muslim; or as an apostate from Islam. Reports suggests that while Americans generally view the Democratic candidate having had no religion before converting at Reverend Jeremiah Wrights's hands at age 27, Muslims the world over rarely see him as Christian but usually as either Muslim or ex-Muslim. Lee Smith of the Hudson Institute explains why: "Barack Obama's father was Muslim and therefore, according to Islamic law,...

Hugo Chavez visiting Tehran celebrated his alliance with Akmadinejad. Che Guevara's son Camillo visited Tehran last year. Fidel Castro was there and told his hosts that "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees." It's not just Latin American leftists who see potential in Islamism. There is Ken Livingstone, the Trotskyist mayor of London. Dennis Kucinich, during his first presidential campaign in 2004, quoted the Koran and roused a Muslim audience to chant Allahu akbar ("God is great") and he even announced, "I keep a copy of the Koran in my office." And there...

Pipes and Drums of FreeRepublic Tartan Day 2009?

A ship bound for Syria from North Korea and detained in Cyprus on an Interpol alert for suspected arms smuggling was carrying an air defense system, Cypriot authorities said. The shipment was billed as weather-observation equipment on the freight manifest of the Panamanian-flagged Grigorio 1. The ship was carrying 18 truck-mounted mobile radar systems and three command vehicles. "The radars on the 18 trucks appear to be part of an air defense system," a police spokeswoman said.

There's an impression that Muslims suffer disproportionately from the rule of dictators, tyrants, unelected presidents, kings, emirs, and various other strongmen - and it's accurate. A careful analysis by Frederic L. Pryor of Swarthmore College in the Middle East Quarterly ("Are Muslim Countries Less Democratic?") concludes that "In all but the poorest countries, Islam is associated with fewer political rights." The fact that majority-Muslim countries are less democratic makes it tempting to conclude that the religion of Islam, their common factor, is itself incompatible with democracy. I disagree with that conclusion. Today's Muslim predicament, rather, reflects historical circumstances more than...

The effort is the first time since World War II – when the Germans bombed London, and London children were sent off to families in the countryside to be cared for until the German assault ended – that a "people-to-people" campaign has been organized to remove children from a war zone. Sadly, indeed embarrassingly, the children are those of S'derot, an Israeli town of 19,000 near the border with Gaza that has been under a missile barrage since the Israeli retreat from Gaza in September 2005, with thousands of missiles to date. These have causing damage to property and injuries...

Metal pipes worth more than some US homes By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles Last Updated: 2:19am BST 02/04/2008 Copper pipes and wiring found in many of America's repossessed homes are now more valuable than the properties themselves. Across the country thieves are stripping empty houses of the copper, aluminium, and brass in their plumbing and heating systems to take advantage of the crashing property market and the soaring price of scrap metal, much of which is sold to China and India. The trend has accelerated as the glut of unwanted properties clog the market, dragging down house prices. "Houses...

How did Lenin come to be a socialist? I think the first thing you want to take into consideration is this sort of passion which drove him. It was not idealism. Not so much hope for a better future for humanity, the creation of a new human being, it was above all a passionate hatred for the established regime. And that has a lot to do with personal biography. When he was a teenager, his brother was executed for plotting an assassination attempt on the life of the Czar. That did not, I think, affect him so much because he...

  NIE Makes War Against Iran More Likely   By Daniel PipesFrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, December 11, 2007 With the Dec. 3 publication of a completely unexpected declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities," a consensus has emerged that war with Iran "now appears to be off the agenda." Indeed, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claimed the report dealt a "fatal blow" to the country's enemies, while his foreign ministry spokesman called it a "great victory."I disagree with that consensus, believing that military action against Iran is now more likely than before the NIE came out. The NIE's...

Anthony Cordesman, a strategist at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, has estimated the consequences if Tehran gets the bomb and a nuclear exchange with Israel ensues. He expects, writes Martin Walker of United Press International, some 16 million to 28 million Iranians dead within 21 days, and between 200,000 and 800,000 Israelis dead within the same time frame. The total of deaths beyond 21 days could rise very much higher, depending on civil defense and public health facilities, where Israel has a major advantage.It is theoretically possible that the Israeli state, economy and organized society might just...

Non-Muslims occasionally raise the idea of banning the Koran, Islam, and Muslims. Examples this month include calls by a political leader in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, to ban the Koran — which he compares to Hitler's Mein Kampf — and two Australian politicians, Pauline Hanson and Paul Green, demanding a moratorium on Muslim immigration.What is one to make of these initiatives? First, some history. Precedents exist from an earlier era, when intolerant Christian governments forced Muslims to convert, notably in 16th-century Spain, and others strongly encouraged conversions, especially of the elite, as in 16th- and 17th-century Russia. In modern times,...

Once-exotic forms of Muslim women's head and body garments have now become both familiar in the West and the source of fractious political and legal disputes.

Two positions dominate and polarize the American body politic today. Some say the war is lost, so leave Iraq. Others say the war can be won, so keep the troops in place. I split the difference and offer a third route. The occupation is lost, but the war can be won. Keep American troops in Iraq but remove them from the cities.