Pipes v. Gershman
- 06.06.2007 - 2:53 PMMy idea of uncomfortable is having one of my heroes attack another. That is how I felt when I read Daniel Pipes’s charge that Carl Gershman was among “government figures [who] wrong-headedly insist on consorting with the enemy.” Pipes is a prolific Middle East expert and indefatigable opponent of jihadism (as well as a longtime contributor to COMMENTARY) from whose writings I have profited greatly. Gershman is the president of the National Endowment for Democracy (and another valued contributor).
Pipes’s case against Gershman is that the NED supports the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) and that Gershman himself spoke at its 2004 annual conference.
For all my admiration of Pipes, I think his attack on Gershman is off-base. For starters, Gershman is not a “government figure.” The NED is funded by Congress, but it is privately incorporated, and Gershman is chosen by its board of mostly private citizens, not by any branch of the government. This is not a nit, because the NED’s effectiveness depends on this modest margin of separation from the government.
More importantly, I don’t buy Pipes’s take on the CSID or his criticism of Gershman for involvement with it. I myself am a member of CSID and spoke at its 2006 conference. In addition to speaking, I attended the entire weekend. I found it an interesting mix. It included Islamists or Islamist-sympathizers who called themselves democrats. It also included liberals whose democratic credentials were not in question.
Its keynote speaker was Laith Kubha of Gershman’s NED (the same man who was for a time spokesman for the Iraqi government). His speech was remarkable. Its main theme? How Iraqis, instead of focusing on what America did wrong in Iraq, should confront what they themselves did wrong. It was certainly not what one would expect to hear at a jihadist gathering, and it went over well. I share Pipes’s suspicion of Islamists who profess democracy. But I don’t expect genuine Muslim democrats to blackball Islamists who call themselves democrats. I expect them to argue with them. Which is exactly what was going on at the CSID conference. (Not to mention that the CSID puts the likes of me on its programs.)
Pipes has argued cogently that the solution to extremist Islam is moderate Islam. (I don’t like the term “moderate Islam,” but that is for another occasion.) The CSID looked to me precisely like an arena in which “moderates” were confronting Islamists. What sense does it make to anathematize that as “consorting with the enemy?”
| »Back to Contentions | »Back to Commentary |
June 8th, 2007 at 7:16 PM
In his article on “Pipes v. Gershman” 6/6/07 Joshua Muravchik attempted to justify his and Carl Gershman’s collaboration with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy and wrote that “I don’t like Pipes’s take on the CSID or his criticism of [Carl] Gershman for his involvement with it. I myself am a member of the CSID and spoke at it’s 2006 conference”. He also described the CSID event as an “interesting mix”of “Islamists and Islamist sympathisizers who called themselves democrats”adding that “the CSID put the likes of me on the program”.What Muravchik sees as an “interesting mix” entails the granting of legitimacy to radicals, by putting them on equal footing with “democrats” and “the likes” of him and Mr.Gershman . http://www.commentarymagazine.com/contentions/index.php/muravchik/503
In 2004 Dr.Pipes debunked the attempts of the of the CSID to maintain a moderate façade when the USIP (where he sat on the board) planned a meeting with the group prompting Dr.Pipes to write two articles decrying their decision to host the organisation on the grounds that most of their members were radical Islamists. He focused on the presence of CSID fellow Kamran Bokhari , the spokesman for Al Muhajiroun in North America, as an example of their radical Islamist agenda.( Bokhari was a speaker at the conference which also featured Carl Gershman).
CSID board member Taher Jaber al -Alwani was named on the Operation Greenquest indictment and in the court papers in the case of Sami Al Arian and his associates.
One of Muravchik’s fellow speakers at the 2006 conference was Imad - Ad- Dean Ahmad the head of the “Minaret of Freedom Institute”. In 2001 Ad Dean Ahmad attended a terrorist summit in Beirut together with representatives of Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. http://www.minaret.org/beirutconference.htm
It is intellectually dishonest for Muravchik to attempt to justify his and Gershman’s involvement with an organisation whose members have documented ties to terrorism on the grounds that some of the participants are people “the likes” of them. This claim grants legitimacy to the organisation and Islamists like Kamran Bokhari, Taher Jabar al -Alwani and Imad -ad- Dean Ahmad who have also been welcomed into the CSID fold.
Muravchik concludes his piece by asking “What sense does it make to anathematize them (the CSID) as consorting with the enemy?”
Instead of blaming Dr.Pipes for exposing the CSID Joshua Muravchik and Carl Gershman would be better served asking themselves why they are aiding and abetting the enemy and betraying the values they claim to represent.
Beila Rabinowitz
June 10th, 2007 at 12:48 AM
This is a very important topic, I would love to see someone from Commentary tackle it in print.
What is the best way to deal with extremists? Do you try to include them in a big tent, legitimizing them to one degree or another; or you could say that this “controls” them to one degree or another instead of having them running around unchecked. Or do you exclude them, and also give those who run an organization the power to say “you can not be a member because you have suspect ties and beliefs”, obviously a powerful and very political decision which in a way makes the organization look “extremist”.
I don’t know which way I would come out, however there aren’t very many organizations that appear to exclude people for such reasons.
June 11th, 2007 at 10:08 PM
According to Phillip including extremists in “the a big tent” like CSID means that one could “control” them to some degree instead of having them “run around unchecked”. An online dictionary defines extremist as “One who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm, especially in politics.” This means that extremists by their very nature “have suspect ties and beliefs” and any organisation which allows them membership is implicitly condoning their agenda.
June 28th, 2007 at 8:59 AM
Apparently Joshua Muravchik and Golnar Oyvessi (his minion at the AEI) find criticism of his membership in the Wahhabist think tank CSID so hilarious that they sent an article around titled “Is the American Enterprise Insititute going Islamist? The subject heading was “News Flash: Muravchik called an Islamist and more…” and explained why the mailing deviated from Muravchik’s usual self promotion.
Dear All,
Usually I send you Josh’s publications but this article about Josh, in which he is accused of being an Islamist, is so amusing that we decided to send it out just for fun! Enjoy: http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=aei61907.htm.
Ovyessi falsely claimed that Muravchik had been referred to an Islamist by the in the piece. In fact the authors criticised Muravchik and his AEI colleague Christina Hoff Sommers, for supporting Islamists and legitimizing the CSID by speaking at their conferences.
In an article yesterday titled “The Walter Duranty of Saudi Arabia” subtitled “Commentary’s Clueness love letter to the Saudis” Stephen Sulayman Schwartz accused Muravchik of being a “useful idiot” based on his account of his trip to Saudi Arabia which he pretentiously titled “My Saudi Sojourn”. http://www.jewcy.com/feature/2007-06-25/the_walter_duranty_of_arabia
Schwartz writes:
“…Muravchik’s experiences seem to have left him in doubt as to whether Wahhabi Islam—the official Saudi creed that is the most extreme, radical, and violent form of Islam—exists at all. This is revealed in the first of his few references to radical Islam, where he informs us that “Not all Saudis are salafis, as Muslim puritans are known. (We often call them Wahhabis.)” Seldom has so much regime boilerplate been packed into a single sentence.
The Wahhabi media enterprise Al-Sahat used the occasion of his Commentary piece to attack Muravchik and reaffirm its hostility toward Israel and Zionism.
Pity Commentary and Joshua Muravchik, both of whom must be pining for the 1930s. Back then, at least totalitarians flattered the useful idiots who serviced them.
Hopefully Golnar Oyvessi’s next mailing from the American Enterprise Institute think tank to her mentors list of subscribers will be more factually accurate then previous one and bear the subject line;
“News Flash:Joshua Muravchik called a useful idiot and more…”