Center for Islamic Pluralism, which was establish in 2004, describes itself as "a think tank that challenges the dominance of American Muslim life by militant Islamist groups. The CIP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit group.
One of its founders was Stephen Schwartz, who is its Executive Director and, based on its 2005 annual financial return, its only full time employee. Another of the founding members of the group is M. Zuhdi Jasser who also founded another group with the same agenda, American Islamic Forum for Democracy[16].
Daniel Pipes is working as diligently as ever to protect the United States and the Western world from the influence of radical Islamists.
He has proposed the creation of a new Anti-Islamist Institute (AII) designed to expose legal "political activities" of "Islamists," such as "prohibiting families from sending pork or pork byproducts to U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq," which nonetheless, in his view, serve the interests of radical Islam.
"In the long term...the legal activities of Islamists pose as much or even a greater set of challenges than the illegal ones," according to the draft of a grant proposal by Pipes' Middle East Forum (MEF) obtained by IPS.
Pipes is also working with Stephen Schwartz on a new Center for Islamic Pluralism (CIP) whose aims are to "promote moderate Islam in the U.S. and globally" and "to oppose the influence of militant Islam, and, in particular, the Saudi-funded Wahhabi sect of Islam, among American Muslims, in the America media, in American education … and with U.S. governmental bodies."
Stephen Schwartz, author of The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism, is as of today also the director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, a Muslim anti-Islamist organization.
Schwartz, a former Trotskyite militant who became a Sufi Muslim in 1997, has received seed money from MEF, which is also accepting contributions on CIP's behalf until the government gives it tax-exempt legal status, according to another grant proposal obtained by IPS.
The CIP proposal, which says it expects to receive funding from contributors in the "American Shia community" and in "Sunni mosques once liberated from Wahhabi influence," also boasts "strong links" with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other notable neoconservatives, such as former Central Intelligence (CIA) director James Woolsey and the vice president for foreign policy programming at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Danielle Pletka, as well as with Pipes himself.
Pipes, who created MEF in Philadelphia in 1994, has long campaigned against "radical" Islamists in the United States, especially the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and several other national Islamic groups.
Long before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, he also raised alarms about the immigration of foreign Muslims, suggesting that they constituted a serious threat to the political clout of U.S. Jews, as well as a potential "fifth column" for radical Islamists.
In addition, Pipes has been a fierce opponent of Palestinian nationalism. He told Australian television earlier this month, for example, that Israeli Prime Minister's Gaza disengagement plan and his agreement to negotiate with the new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, were a "mistake" because 80 percent of the Palestinian population, including Abbas, still favor Israel's destruction.
In 2002, Pipes launched Campus Watch, a group dedicated to monitoring and exposing alleged anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, and/or Islamist bias in teachers of Middle Eastern studies at U.S. colleges and universities.
The group, which invites students to report on offending professors, has been assailed as a McCarthyite tactic to stifle open discussion of Middle East issues.
Pipes' nomination by Bush in 2003 to serve as a director on the board of the quasi-governmental USIP, a government-funded think tank set up in 1984 to "promote the prevention, management, and peaceful resolution of international conflicts," moved the controversy over his work from academia into the U.S. Senate where such appointments are virtually always approved without controversy.
Pipes' nomination, however, offered a striking exception. Backed by major Muslim, Arab-American, and several academic groups, Democratic senators, led by Edward Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, and Tom Harkin, strongly opposed the nomination as inappropriate, particularly in light of some of his past writings, including one asserting that that Muslim immigrants were "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene."
Several Republican senators subsequently warned Bush that they would oppose the nomination if it came to a vote, and, in the end, the president made a "recess appointment" that gave him a limited term lasting only until the end of 2004. It appears now that, despite the enhanced Republican majority in the Senate, Bush does not intend to re-nominate him.
Indeed, both the USIP and Bush now probably regret having nominated him in the first place. During his board tenure, Pipes blasted USIP for hosting a conference with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, charging that it employed Muslim "radicals" on its staff.
That accusation was publicly refuted by the USIP itself, which echoed the complaints of his longtime critics, accusing him of relying on "quotes taken out of context, guilt by association, errors of fact, and innuendo."
Pipes also criticized Bush for "legitimizing" various "Islamist" groups, such as CAIR and the Arab-American Institute, by permitting their representatives to take part in White House and other government ceremonies and for failing to identify "radical Islam" as "the enemy" in the war on terror.
His own disillusionment with Bush is made clear in the AII draft which notes that "creative thinking in this war of ideas must be initiated outside the government, for the latter, due to the demands of political correctness, is not in a position to say what needs to be said."
AII's goal, it goes on, "is the delegitimation of the Islamists. We seek to have them shunned by the government, the media, the churches, the academy and the corporate world."
Pipes' complementary goal – to enhance the influence of "moderate" Muslims – is to guide the work of Schwartz's CIP, which is "headed by one born Muslim (its President) and a 'new Muslim', i.e. an American not born in the faith, as its Executive Director. This is the best combination for leading such an effort."
The "extremists," according to the CIP proposal, are mainly represented by the "Wahhabi lobby," an array of organizations consisting of CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), as well as "secular" groups, including the Arab-American Institute (AAI) and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).
"The first goal of CIP will be the removal of CAIR and ISNA from monopoly status in representing Muslims to the American public," the proposal goes on. "[S]o long as they retain a major foothold at the highest political level, no progress can be made for moderate American Islam."
In achieving its goal, CIP cites the help it can expect from its "strong links" to Wolfowitz, Woolsey, and Pletka; as well as Senators Charles Schumer and Sen. Jon Kyl, among others, "terrorism experts" Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project, Paul Marshall of Freedom House, and Glen Howard of the Jamestown Foundation; and journalists such as Fox News anchors David Asman, Brit Hume, and Greta van Susteren, Dale Hurd of the Christian Broadcasting Network; and editors at the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Interviewed by phone, Professor Kemal Silay, "president-designate" of the CIP who teaches Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at Indiana University, told IPS he was not aware that he was to be group's president, but that he had talked about the group with Schwartz and agrees with both Pipes and Schwartz about the dangers posed by Wahhabi groups in the U.S. and the world.
Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Washington-based Saudi Institute and named as CIP's research director in the grant proposal, told IPS he had also talked with Schwartz about the group and strongly supported its goals, although he thought several of the groups listed as part of the Wahhabi lobby were more independent.
He also said that he did not know that Pipes was involved with the group.
"[Pipes] sees all Arabs and Muslims the same, because he has interest in the security of the state of Israel," said al-Ahmed, who publicizes human rights abuses committed in Saudi Arabia.
Principals Center for Islamic Pluralism:
1 Kemal Silay, President; professor of Ottoman and modern Turkish culture at Indiana University.
2 Stephen Schwartz, Executive Director; associate of the Faculty of Islamic Studies, Sarajevo. Stephen Schwartz is the Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, D.C. [1] In a 2003 article in National Review Online, Schwartz describes himself as one of three former Trotskyites who supported the war in Iraq. (The other two he identified are Christopher Hitchens and Kanan Makiya). "One thing must be observed here: We are almost alone among younger neoconservatives in boasting such credentials," he wrote.
3 A brief biographical note on the FrontPage website describes him as "a vociferous critic of Wahhabism , Schwartz is a frequent contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, FrontPage, and other publications." [article ref]
4 Dr Irfan al-Alawi, Europe director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, is ‘extremely concerned’ about the spread of Tablighi Jamaat and recently addressed a seminar at the Policy Exchange think-tank about the mosque plans. ‘Tablighi are not moderate Muslims, they are a separatist movement,’ he said. ‘If this mosque were to go ahead it will be strictly run by the Tablighis; there will be no room for moderates.’ - ref
The group of founders includes:
5 Jalal Zuberi
6 Salim Mansur, professor of political science, University of Western Ontario, and columnist, Toronto Sun.
7 Tashbih Sayyed
Khaleel Mohammed assistant professor of religious studies at San Diego State University. Tashbih Sayyed, is a neocon of Pakistani origin who works closely with the Israel lobby. He edits web based publications such as Muslim World Today, Pakistan Today (Both share a URL). He trades in the "Islamist threat".
"Tashbih Sayyed, political analyst, journalist, and writer, is Editor in Chief of Our Times, Pakistan Today, and In Review. He worked from 1967-1980 at Pakistan Television in various capacities, including writer, editor, director, producer, Controller, and General Manager.
8 Nawab Agha, American Muslim Congress
9 Ahmed Subhy Mansour former professor, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, author of Penalty of Apostasy: A Study of Islamic Law.
10 Stephen Schwartz and the Center for Islamic Pluralism ref
11 ISLAMIST WATCH, a project of Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum ref
12 Radical Muslim doctors and what they mean for the NHS (report carried by both daily telegraph and the times)- "The disclosure that the leading alleged conspirators in last year’s bombing attempts in London and Glasgow were Muslim doctors sent a shockwave through the worldwide non-Muslim public. The same question was asked everywhere: how can those who are trained to heal turn to terrorism?
Our organisation, the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, has compiled a report, Scientific Training and Radical Islam, which we were preparing when the London and Glasgow events occurred. The report is now complete and available as a free download at www.islamicpluralism.eu. It is a distillation of field research, interpretation of major source materials in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and English, and collation of individual perspectives from a team of Muslim researchers. All members of the team are experienced in the observation of Islamist movements throughout the world. The report offers answers to the questions asked by personnel in the NHS, which employed three of the suspects" - Irfan Al-Alawi, international director (London)1, Stephen Schwartz, executive director (Washington, DC), schwartz@islamicpluralism.eu1 - ref
13 Our survey shows British Muslims don't want sharia - Schwartz, Stephen, Al-Alawi, Irfan - ref
14 Ken’s mega-mosque will encourage extremism - Irfan al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz warn that the Olympic mosque has been conceived by Islamic radicals, supported by politically correct politicians, and will add to divisions in Britain - ref
15 For the Islamist doctor, terror is healing - Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi say that radical Islam is less the product of extreme deprivation than of the thwarted aspirations of the Muslim middle classes and professionals - ref
16 American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) a right-wing lobby group, founded in 2003 by M. Zuhdi Jasser.
AIFD claims to battle "Islamo-facsism" and to be "a leading voice for liberty-minded Muslims in America in the war on terror." [1] In the "members" section on its website, it lists only one individual - its founder, Zuhdi Jasser [2], who is also "one of the founding members" of CIP, by his own account. [3] The emergence of groups such as AIFD, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in January 2006, has Pipes' broad endorsement. ""I see the emergence of these new groups as vital to present an alternative view to Muslims," he said. [4]
The group seems to have no support at all beyond right wing publications such as National Review Online, or the New York Sun. AIFD's raison d'etre seems to be the targetting of mainstream Muslim organizations, such as CAIR. In his critique of CAIR, Zuhdi Jasser writes:
We need to create organizations — high-profile, well-funded national organizations and think tanks — which are not afraid to identify al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah by name, and by their mission as the enemies of America.
The conflation of al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah is interesting, as two of them have nothing to do with the United States; their adversary is only Israel.Key Associations : Daniel Pipes
17 related article: Purge on Muslim clerics who turn a blind eye to the abuse of women - which is targetting deobandi ref
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