Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: New York Sun
Date: July 19, 2005
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2782
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.