| May 2012 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
In a recent post, I closed with "So what exactly is the deal [with Pakistan]? Stay tuned." Details on what the deal is there are provided in this MSNBC interview, conducted by Monica Crowley, with Daniel Pipes, author of Militant Islam Reaches America, and Azzam Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought and a senior member of the Muslim Society of Great Britain:
Crowley: Daniel, I begin with you on the question of Pakistan. How reliable are the Pakistanis as an ally to the United States in this war?
Pipes: Well, the government of Parvez Musharraf has said the right thing, makes the right noises, but has not cracked down. And so there is a problem. And the problem is a deep problem, because in fact the forces of radical Islam are popular in Pakistan. The clip you saw with Tom Brokaw suggests, [Musharraf] would be in danger [if] he took steps against radical Islam. So, to call the government an ally is to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it is not an ally in the war. It is caught between us and its constituency of Islamists.
...
Crowley: Daniel, you mentioned earlier that Musharraf is walking a political tight rope here because his country has a huge constituency of radical Islamists who are certainly engaged in terrorist activity, he's got the fundamentalists he has to worry about, and pressure from the United States and from the west to crack down on the groups and individuals. It's amazing to me that Musharraf has been able to survive for so long. How has he been able to manage that? And is that tenable into the future?
Pipes: He has been able to survive in part through luck. There have been significant attacks on him and some people have died in the course but he has survived. I am a little surprised that Mr. Tamimi looks to socio-economic reasons and talks about dignity and the like, when he lives in London and London just some days ago had rounds of explosions killing 55 people. It had nothing to do with dignity and poverty and humiliation or lack of democracy. Britain is a democratic, rich country. The point is that the ideologues in Leeds or the ideologues in Pakistan seek to overthrow whatever government and impose Islamic order, a radical Islamic order. And they are not people who can be bought off through concessions; they are people who have to be defeated. Either Mr. Musharraf is someone who will defeat him or he is not. I think we have to put him to the test. We have not done that yet. We have accepted his good will but have not pushed him hard enough to take the steps to crack down in a way required in Pakistan.
Crowley: Daniel, do you believe the will exists in Pakistan for Musharraf to do that even if he wanted to?
Pipes: I think that if he is a supple and cautious and long-range strategic politician and general he can manage it. It won't be easy, but he needs to do it for his own survival as well as for our interests.
So that's what's up: Pakistan is a hotbed of Islamofascism, and Musharraf hasn't yet found a way to shut that down.
Monica Crowley wouldn't tolerate Tamimi's insults directed towards Pipes. The following is a message from Pipes to his email list:
Dear Reader:
Islamists have insulted me many times on television but never before has an anchor stood up on my behalf and prevented a fellow panelist from continuing - until Monica Crowley did so for me earlier this week, as seen in the transcript below. Here is an excerpt:
Tamimi: ... You [the U.S. media] don’t want to enlighten the American people about what actually goes on in the world. And you bring in the likes of Daniel Pipes to continue to keep the American people in the dark. You should listen for a change --
Crowley: You know, excuse me Azzam, I’m sorry I try to be respectful of all of my guests, it seems you are grossly --
Tamimi: You have not respected me from the beginning. You called my statement outrageous --
Crowley: That is because you are blanketing us with untruths and I just, I have to put a stop to it on my program. I’m sorry.
And with that, Tamimi was left speaking into a dead microphone. I am most grateful to Ms Crowley. I also plan to write a column on the subject of putting "the likes of" Azzam Tamimi, someone who has declared his own willingness to be a suicide bomber (see below for a link to his saying that), on American television.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Pipes
Pipes is not exaggerating about Tamimi's declaration of willingness to be a suicide bomber:
TIM SEBASTIAN: And meanwhile you advocate the suicide bombing. You said on an internet chat forum early in 2003: 'For us Moslems martyrdom is not the end of things but the beginning of the most wonderful of things'.
If it's so wonderful to go and blow yourself up in a public place in Israel why don't you do it?
...
DR AZZAM AL-TAMIMI: Not a single person of those who bomb themselves, bomb themselves because they are desperate or poor. It doesn't happen because of this. They do it because they want to sacrifice themselves for a cause after all avenues have been closed before them. If the Palestinians today are given F16s and Apache helicopters ...
TIM SEBASTIAN: No - please come back to my question. Please come back to my question. Why if it is so glorious and honourable to do this, why don't you do it?
DR AZZAM AL-TAMIMI: I would do it ...
TIM SEBASTIAN: When?
DR AZZAM AL-TAMIMI: If I have the opportunity I would do it ...
TIM SEBASTIAN: When are you going to do it?
DR AZZAM AL-TAMIMI: When? If I can go to Palestine and sacrifice myself I would do it. Why not?
TIM SEBASTIAN: So what's stopping you?
DR AZZAM AL-TAMIMI: I cannot go to Palestine. I cannot go to Palestine.
TIM SEBASTIAN: You simply can't get in?
DR AZZAM AL-TAMIMI: No, I cannot get in.
That's the villains in this drama; they like to kill women and children. To defeat them, it's necessary to impose rigorous blow-back on the communities that give birth to the terrorist killers themselves. I discuss this most recently here.
