Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is a Pakistani mother of three, an alumna of MIT, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University. She is also accused of working for Al-Qaeda and was charged last week in New York City with attempting to kill American soldiers.
Her arrest serves to remind how invisibly most Islamist infiltration proceeds. In […]

May I, an American citizen living in the United States, comment publicly on Israeli decision making?
 recently criticized the Israeli government for its exchange with Hizbullah in “Samir Kuntar and the Last Laugh“; to this, the eminent counterterrorism expert at Tel Aviv University, Yoram Schweitzer challenged the appropriateness of my offering views on this subject. In […]

Israel has lived the past sixty years more intensively than any other country.
Its highs — the resurrection of a two-thousand year old state in 1948, history’s most lopsided military victory in 1967, and the astonishing Entebbe hostage rescue in 1976 — have been triumphs of will and spirit that inspire the civilized world. Its lows […]

As the United Nations mandate that legitimizes the presence of U.S forces in Iraq expires on December 31, 2008, a humanitarian and strategic disaster is coming into view. The fate of about 3,500 anti-regime Iranians will be decided in the course of status-of-forces negotiations between Washington and Baghdad.
They are members of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK; […]

“Since 9/11, there have been over 2,300 arrests connected to Islamist terrorism in Europe in contrast to about 60 in the United States.” Thus writes Marc Sageman in his influential new book, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press).
This one statistical comparison inspires Sageman, in a chapter he calls “The […]

If you cannot name your enemy, how can you defeat it? Just as a physician must identify a disease before curing a patient, so a strategist must identify the foe before winning a war. Yet Westerners have proven reluctant to identify the opponent in the conflict the U.S. government variously (and euphemistically) calls the “global […]

How do the two leading candidates for president of the United States differ in their approach to Israel and related topics? Parallel interviews with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who spoke in early May with Democrat Barack Obama and in late May with Republican John McCain, offer some important insights.
Asked roughly the same set […]

Accounts from Turkey suggest that the government is attempting a bold re-interpretation of Islam.
Its unusually named ministry of religion, the “Presidency of Religious Affairs and the Religious Charitable Foundation,” has undertaken a three-year “Hadith Project” systematically to review 162,000 hadith reports and winnow them down to some 10,000, with the goal of separating original Islam […]

Two religiously-identified new states emerged from the shards of the British empire in the aftermath of World War II. Israel, of course, was one; the other was Pakistan.
They make an interesting, if little-compared pair. Pakistan’s experience with widespread poverty, near-constant internal turmoil, and external tensions, culminating in its current status as near-rogue state, suggests the […]

As Barack Obama’s candidacy comes under increasing scrutiny, his account of his religious upbringing deserves careful attention for what it tells us about the candidate’s integrity.
Obama asserted in December, “I’ve always been a Christian,” and he has adamantly denied ever having been a Muslim. “The only connection I’ve had to Islam is that my grandfather […]

This month, Denmark's police foiled a terrorist plot to murder Kurt Westergaard, the artist who drew the strongest of the twelve Muhammad images, prompting most of the country's newspapers to reprint his cartoon as an act of solidarity and a signal to Islamists that their threats and violence will not succeed.
This incident points to the […]

Westerners opposed to the application of the Islamic law (the Shari‘a) watch with dismay as it goes from strength to strength in their countries - harems increasingly accepted, a church leader endorsing Islamic law, a judge referring to the Koran, clandestine Muslim courts meting out justice. What can be done to stop the progress of […]

Beneath the deceptively placid surface of everyday life, the British population is engaged in a momentous encounter with Islam. Three developments of the past week, each of them culminating years' long trend — and not just some odd occurrence — exemplify changes now underway.
First, the UK government has decided that terrorism by Muslims in the […]

Startling developments in Gaza highlight the need for a change in Western policy toward this troubled territory of 1.3 million persons.
Gaza's contemporary history began in 1948, when Egyptian forces overran the British-controlled area and Cairo sponsored the nominal "All-Palestine Government" while de facto ruling the territory as a protectorate. That arrangement ended in 1967, when […]

George W. Bush's policies toward the Middle East and Islam will loom large when historians judge his presidency. On the occasion of his concluding his 8-day, 6-country trip to the Middle East and entering his final year in office, I offer some provisional assessments.
His hallmark has been a readiness to break with long-established bipartisan positions […]

Palestinians have a hidden history of appreciating Israel that contrasts with their better-known narrative of vilification and irredentism.
The former has been particularly evident of late, especially since Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, floated a trial balloon in October about transferring some Arab-dominated areas of eastern Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. As he rhetorically asked about […]

Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron - or a term for conservatives to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells, who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis." Really.
His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern […]

"Far from being the source of anti-Americanism in Turkey, the AKP represents an ideal partner for the United States in the region." So asserts Joshua W. Walker, a former Turkey desk officer at the State Department now studying at Princ­eton University, referring to the Justice and Development Party (known as the AKP). Writing in The […]

Surprisingly, something useful has emerged from the combination of the misconceived Annapolis meeting and a weak Israeli prime minister, Ehud ("Peace is achieved through concessions") Olmert. Breaking with his predecessors, Olmert has boldly demanded that his Palestinian bargaining partners accept Israel's permanent existence as a Jewish state, thereby evoking a revealing response.
Unless the Palestinians recognize […]

What's wrong with American liberalism? What happened to the self-assured, optimistic, and practical Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy? Why has Joe Lieberman, their closest contemporary incarnation, been run out of the party? How did anti-Americanism infect schools, the media, and Hollywood? And whence comes the liberal rage that […]

The Bush administration's counterterrorism policies appear tough, but inside the courtroom, they evaporate, consistently favoring not American terror victims, but foreign terrorists.
Consider a civil lawsuit arising from a September 1997 suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Hamas claimed credit for five dead and 192 wounded, including several Americans. On the grounds that the Islamic Republic of Iran […]

About 100,000 Turkish troops, backed by aircraft and tanks, are poised to enter Iraq for counterterrorism purposes. But once there, they might just stay permanently, occupying the Mosul area, leading to dangerous regional consequences.
To understand this danger requires a refresher in Turkish irredentist ambitions harking back to the 1920s. The Ottoman Empire emerged from World […]

"We are all Keynsians now," Richard Nixon famously asserted just as the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes fell into disrepute. Likewise, one could have said with similar confidence in 1989, as Israel's existence reached wide acceptance, "We are all Zionists now." No longer.
Count the ways Israel is under siege: from Iranians building a nuclear […]

While the outside world hardly noticed, a significant and rapidly growing amount of money is now being managed in accord with Islamic law, the Shari‘a. According to one study, "by the end of 2005, more than 300 institutions in over 65 jurisdictions were managing assets worth around US$700 billion to US$1 trillion in a Shari'ah-compatible […]

Saudi Arabian Airlines (known as Saudia) declares on its English-language website that the kingdom bans "Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols such as the Star of David." Until the Saudi government changes this detestable policy, its airline should be disallowed from flying into Western airports.
Michael Freund brought this regulation to international attention in […]

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 U.S. troops in Iraq […]

When Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., in June 1957, his 500-word talk effused good will ("Civilization owes to the Islamic world some of its most important tools and achievements") even as the American president embarrassingly bumbled (Muslims in the United States, he declared, have the right to their "own church"). […]

Is the knighting of Salman Rushdie, 60, by the queen of England "a sign of the changing mood" toward British Muslims, as Observer columnist Nick Cohen wrote? Is it "a welcome example of … British backbone," as Islamism specialist Sadanand Dhume described it in the Wall Street Journal?
I think not. Rather, the knighting, announced June […]

The Hamas victory over Fatah in Gaza on June 14 has great importance for Palestinians, for the Islamist movement, and for the United States. It has rather less significance for Israel.
Tensions between Fatah and Hamas are likely to endure and with them, the split between the West Bank and Gaza. The emergence of two rival […]

The decision the other week by the Islamic Society of Boston to drop its lawsuit against 17 defendants, including counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson, gives reason to step back to consider radical Islam's legal ambitions.
The lawsuit came about because, soon after ground was broken in November 2002 for the ISB's $22 million Islamic center, the media […]

One of the great enigmas of the modern Middle East is why, forty years ago this week, the Six-Day War took place. Neither Israel nor its Arab neighbors wanted or expected a fight in June 1967; the consensus view among historians holds that the unwanted combat resulted from a sequence of accidents.
Enter Isabella Ginor and Gideon […]

A question mark hangs over the opening of New York City's planned Arabic-language school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy.
That the topic remains open is surprising. Other than objections from a few of us – the New York Sun's editorialists, its columnist Alicia Colon, the investigative team of Beila Rabinowitz and William A. Meyer, plus my own […]

"Moderate Unicorns," huffed a reader, responding to my recent plea that Western states bolster moderate Muslims. Dismissing their existence as a myth, he notes that non-Muslims "are still waiting for moderates to stand and deliver, identifying and removing extremist thugs from their mosques and their communities."
It's a valid skepticism and a reasonable demand. Recent events […]

"If today's Arab anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish propaganda strongly resembles that of the Third Reich, there is a good reason." So writes Joel Fishman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in "The Big Lie and the Media War against Israel," an insightful piece of historical research.
Fishman begins by noting the topsy-turvy situation whereby Israel is […]

After defeating fascists and communists, can the West now defeat the Islamists?
On the face of it, its military preponderance makes victory seem inevitable. Even if Tehran acquires a nuclear weapon, Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the cold war. What do the […]

After nearly sixty years on the sidelines, Israel's third and final enemy may be joining the battle.
Foreign states are Israel's enemy number 1. With the declaration of Israeli independence in May 1948, five foreign armed forces invaded Israel. All the major wars that followed — 1956, 1967, 1970, 1973 — involved Israelis at war with neighboring […]

Ninety-two percent of respondents in a recent poll of one thousand Egyptians over 18 years of age called Israel an enemy state. In contrast, a meager 2% saw Israel as "a friend to Egypt."
These hostile sentiments express themselves in many ways, including a popular song titled "I Hate Israel," venomously antisemitic political cartoons, bizarre conspiracy […]

Has the United States ever engaged in a crusade against Islam? No, never. And, what's more, one of the country's earliest diplomatic documents rejects this very idea.
Exactly 210 years ago this week, toward the end of George Washington's second presidential administration, a document was signed with the first of two Barbary Pirate states. Awkwardly titled […]

As coalition policy reaches a crisis, may I resurrect an idea I have been flogging since April 2003? It offers a way out of the current debate whether to "stay the course" (as President George W. Bush has long advocated) or to withdraw troops on a short timetable (as his […]

A suicide bombing in Hadera, Israel, on October 26 that killed five people inspired the usual Palestinian joy: some 3,000 people took to the streets in celebration, chanting Allahu Akbar, calling for more suicide attacks against Israelis, and congratulating the “martyr’s” family on the success of the attack.
But Palestinians were uncharacteristically morose after three explosions […]

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and the author of several books, most recently Militant Islam Reaches America. You may visit his website by clicking here and purchase his books by clicking here.
(This article courtesy of the Middle East Forum.)
“Iran’s stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon [i.e., Israel]. We […]

The Jewish High Holidays this year fall in early October, and that's when a massacre was planned against two Los Angeles synagogues, as well as other targets, according to an indictment just handed down against four young Muslim men.
Law enforcement traces the origins of this plot to 1997. That's when Kevin Lamar James, a black […]

Twice in the past two weeks, I found myself disinvited from television shows when I objected to appearing with representatives of radical Islam or the far-left. In both cases, once each with CNN and MSNBC, I agreed to precede or follow these persons, but I refused to debate them, resulting in my exclusion.
I have two […]

Israel’s interior minister recently declared that after their release from long jail sentences, four Palestinians convicted of helping with suicide bombings in 2002, killing 35, will be expelled from Israel. They would, reports the Associated Press “lose the privileges of permanent residents, such as social security and health insurance.”
The minister’s decision raises a question: Why […]

Is Turkey going Islamist? Is it on the road to implementing Islamic law, known as the Shari’a?
I replied in the affirmative to these questions in a symposium at FrontPageMag.com a month ago. Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan, I wrote, plans to undo the secular Atatürk revolution of 1923-34 and replace it with the Shari’a. […]

Yasir Arafat’s demise in November excited great hopes among those who saw his malign personality as the main reason for Palestinian intransigence.
But those of us who saw the problem as larger than Arafat — as resulting, rather, from the deep radicalization of the Palestinian body politic — expected little change. Indeed, I wrote at the […]

For all their rhetoric about Israel’s “vicious” and “brutal” occupation, Palestinians — including their leaders — sometimes let down their guard and candidly acknowledge how much they prefer Israel to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Here are some of their themes:Restraints on violence. After the PA police raided the house of a Hamas supporter in an […]

The Bush administration’s push for quick democracy in the Middle East has an increasingly clear implication: if Islamist organizations such as Hamas are to be likely electoral winners, Western powers should stop classifying them as terrorists, and, instead, come to terms with them.
This conclusion follows from such efforts as those led by Alastair Crooke and […]

Shortly after Yusra Azzami, 20, strolled with her fiancé and her sister on the beach in Gaza last week, the vigilantes from Hamas formed suspicions that she was engaged in “immoral behavior.” They followed her, shot her dead as she sat in her fiancé’s car, dragged her corpse out, and mutilated it savagely with clubs […]

In a surprisingly fine editorial last week about the crisis at Columbia University, the New York Times observed that a university report investigating student complaints about Middle East studies “is deeply unsatisfactory” because it was “so limited.” The “Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report,” the paper observed, focused on faculty intimidation of students, ignoring that the […]