Andrew Bostom Daniel Pipes Islam 101 Islam Debate

DR.ANDREW BOSTOM: DANIEL PIPES VS. DANIEL PIPES ON ISLAMIC ‘ESSENTIALISM’…….

 

Nothing would please me more than to have these two men debate each other, Andy has tried to make it happen, but Daniel continues to refuse.

Personally, I like and respect both men, I have know them for many years, but this isn’t about personalities, this is about shining the light on the facts and truth, and calling it like it is. Western civilization is standing on the precipice of history, we can’t afford any longer to hope vain thoughts and just believe that an imaginary Islam will one day rise up and promote modern liberal (classical sense) ideas like  political  and social pluralism.

NOTE: No one should be afraid of vigorous debate, no one.

Daniel Pipes and Islamic ‘Essentialism’

Islam expert Andrew Bostom charges that Daniel Pipes’ claims about the differences between Islam and Islamism contradict Pipes’ past writings on the political nature of Islam.

By: Andrew G. Bostom

Muslim Army

Has there been an unexpected “harmonic convergence” regarding Islam between Daniel Pipes, the historian, and unabashed Zionist, and Edward Said, anti-Israeli, Arab polemicist?

Daniel Pipes’ recent essay in The Jewish Press (originally published in the Washington Post) derides “those who focus on Islam itself as the problem”—identifying Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, and Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders by name.

Most of his essay re-affirms (without hard doctrinal and historicalfacts) the arguments Pipes has discussed before: Islam’s prophet Muhammad was not an “Islamist,” and was not responsible for “Islamism,” which is a “modern extremist variant” of Islam; an “unbearable” discordance between “pre-modern accomplishment and modern failure” caused the “psychic trauma” which engendered “Islamism” in the 1920s; and a mere 10-15% of Muslims support “Islamism.”

Pipes concludes his latest iteration of “Islam Versus Islamism” by attacking those (such as Ali, Sultan, and Wilders) who reject its premises for their ostensibly uninformed “succumbing” to what he terms “a simplistic and essentialist illusion” (emphasis added) of the Muslim creed. Ironically, Pipes’ latter claim of “essentialism” re-packages the post-modern incoherence of Edward Said, asdemonstrated brilliantly by Philosophy Professor Irfan Khawaja. As Khawaja observed in 2007:

If Said thinks that Islam is different from other abstract nouns, he needs to tell us why… And yet, as we have seen, he often treats abstract nouns in an essentialist fashion. So it should follow that Islam can be treated the same way. And yet that is precisely what he takes to be the cardinal sin.

Adding insult to irony, Said (a Pipes nemesis, as Said’s comments, extracted here, reveal) accused Pipes himself of “essentialism,” largely, one assumes, for frank comments by the latter on Islam—not “Islamism”—as an inherently, even “immutably” political ideology!

More here.

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