Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: New York Sun
Date: July 19, 2005
Something possibly unprecedented
has occurred in the battle with radical Islam. A leading Islamist
organization has retracted its slurs against me and issued a public
apology. This offers a small but important step in blocking the advance
of Islamic extremism.
The imbroglio began more than two
years ago, when President Bush nominated me for a position in the
federal government. Leftists and Islamists opposed my appointment;
one tactic they used was to try to get me to say things that would
get me into trouble. And so it was that I was asked in April 2003
if I condoned the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War
II. I avoided the question, saying I lacked the knowledge to reply.
My curiosity was roused, though,
so I read Michelle Malkin's book, In Defense of Internment (Regnery)
and wrote about it in late 2004, concluding that given what was known
(and not known) in the early 1940s, FDR's internment decision was
"correct and sensible."
Juan Cole of the University of Michigan
seized upon this assessment and distorted it, alleging that I have
"fond visions of rounding up Muslim Americans and putting them in
concentration camps." To this inaccuracy, I immediately replied:
"I am not calling for the internment of Muslims. I am calling for
an ideological war on radical Islam and the understanding that Islamists
are our enemy. I see anti-Islamist Muslims as critical to the war
on radical Islam and far from wanting them interned, see their active
participation as critical to winning the conflict."
But the cat was out of the bag.
Now, 350 websites have repeated the falsehood that I want American
Muslims in concentration camps. A cartoon even appeared in Islamist
publications that has a caricature of me advocating "Muslim internment
camps in the USA (the sooner the better)."
From endorsing concentration camps,
it was but a short step to portraying me as an advocate of mass murder.
Wahida Valiante of the Canadian Islamic Congress, an Ontario-based
group, on April 29, 2005, wrote in her organization's weekly bulletin
that I am a follower of Hitler, that I use the tactics of Hitler,
and that I want "to ethnically cleanse America of its Muslim presence."
Did I really need to point out that
this representation of me is, in the words of a National Post editorial,
"a vicious calumny that Ms. Valiante plucked from thin air"? Must
I insist that I really do execrate Hitler? Aver my horror of genocide?
Protest that I never espoused expelling or murdering Muslim Americans?
I thought not. Rather than take
these demeaning and surely futile steps, I took a different route.
Backed by the Heenan Blaikie law firm of Toronto and the CanWest
Global Communications Corporation, Stan Fisher of Heenan Blaikie
sent a libel notice in early May to Ms. Valiante, the CIC, and the
CIC's chairman, Mohamed Elmasry.
On June 10, the CIC published an
apology and retraction: "The Canadian Islamic Congress and Ms. Valiante
apologize without reservation and retract remarks in the column that
suggest that Dr. Daniel Pipes is a follower of Hitler or that he
uses the tactics of Hitler or that he wants to ethnically cleanse
America of its Muslim presence." The CIC also sent funds to cover
my legal expenses and made a donation in my honor to a Canadian charity.
The CIC's action is, to the best
of my knowledge, without precedent.
Western Islamist organizations until
now have relentlessly attacked, successfully extracting apologies
from media figures like Paul Harvey and Mortimer Zuckerman, from
businesses like Amazon and Nike, from pastors, columnists, and even
from state politicians, a top U.S. general, and the president of
the United States.
Never before have they apologized
for having libeled someone The CIC retraction breaks the Islamists'
spell of privilege and their miasma of immunity. It establishes,
at least in Canada and at present, that Islamist groups do not have
impunity to fabricate lies about their opponents. The rule of law
does prevail and it applies even to them.
For those who fear the growth of
radical Islam, this episode offers encouragement that its forces
can be contained and defeated. I hope others will join me in standing
up to the new totalitarianism.
