LONDON — This is the latest message from America to Arabs and Muslims everywhere: President George Bush has appointed one of their leading enemies to the board of directors of the United States Institute of Peace, which specializes in foreign affairs. This astonishing appointment is symbolic and should give us pause. It should make us think hard about Arab-American relations, because the message is crude and harsh.

It is true that the Institute of Peace doesn’t shape US policy, but the people who chose this man in spite of everything that he represents do formulate policy. If a man is known by the choices he makes, that should heighten the degree of concern and unease of Arabs and Muslims everywhere.

The individual in question is the infamous 53-year-old Jewish American author Daniel Pipes. He has among other things launched a website called Campus Watch to track teachers and academic establishments that dare to criticize Israel or sympathize with Palestinians. The website asks students at American universities to provide him with information about professors and their political opinions in order to terrorize and restraint them — to have them punished and their voices silenced.

Not many in the Arab world may have heard of this man, but Muslims in the US know him very well, and they have been shocked that the US president should nominate him to the board of directors of the Peace Institute when his opinions run precisely counter to the message that the institute should be conveying. That is why the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), on hearing of his nomination in April, invited various influential Muslims and all factions involved with the issue of peace in the Middle East, especially academics and politicians, to register their opposition to the nomination. In mid-July CAIR issued a 4-page report in which it registered Daniel Pipe’s positions.

In the report CAIR asks the question “Why should you oppose the nomination of Daniel Pipes?” The answers are as follows:

• He suggested that Israel should wipe out Palestinian villages.

• He alleges that between 10 and 15 percent of all Muslims are potential killers.

• He opposed President Bush calling Islam a religion of peace.

• He refuses to condemn the mass detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

• He subscribes to the theory that conflict resolutions can only be achieved through a total military defeat of one party by the other, especially in the case of the Palestinians.

• He has said that the Palestinians are a wretched people.

• He alleges that Muslims have no real religious link to Jerusalem.

• In an article published in Commentary magazine in November 2001, he demanded immediate political and social pressure to ensure that Islam is not given any kind of special status in the US.

• In his speech to the Jewish American Congress on Oct. 21, 2001 he said, “I am anxious ... at the existence and increased influence and spread of Muslim Americans ...it represents a real threat to Jewish Americans.”

• He announced that “mosques require a scrutiny beyond that of churches or temples.” Muslim schools also need increased surveillance to find out what is being taught in them.

• He rejects any positive representation of Islamic history and the doctrines of the religion.

• He condemned and mounted a campaign against PBS for airing a documentary on the life of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

• He does not fulfill the basic requirements for a board member of the institute, namely academic or real experience in conflict resolution and spreading of peace.

This official record paints a negative image of the man. On April 30 the Chicago Tribune’s comment on the announcement of the nomination was: “The White House should pull its nomination of Pipes, and if it doesn’t then the Senate should reject that nomination.” The Washington Post made a similar statement on the April 14, as did the Dallas Morning News, which denounced the nomination and said that the idea of placing a person who advocates the use of force to the board of a peace organization was incomprehensible. This was echoed by academics, all of whom voiced their opinion of this perverse situation. Judith Kipper, a Middle East fellow at the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Pipes espoused “extreme views.” Don Burns, a professor of political science at a New York University said that Pipes’ vision did not help the aims of the Institute of Peace. Ted Gallen Carpenter, assistant head of defense research and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, described Pipes as the most extreme hawk in the US. And John McAdam, a history professor at Harvard University, considers him the nation’s leading Islamophobe.

There is a long list of other testimonials that are unanimous on two basic points: The first is that this man is an enemy of Islam, Muslims and Arabs in general, all of which he frankly acknowledges on multiple platforms. The second is that Pipes’ positions make it inappropriate for him to participate in any effort to serve peace, let alone be responsible for drawing up the policy of an organization that works for peace in the US.

But the Pipes issue is only relevant because of the message it sends. The government insisted on his nomination in an overt challenge to denunciations of his nomination from all quarters. It makes no difference that he has been appointed to the post for a year and a half rather than the full three years. That the US government has ignored the opinions, criticisms and opposition and taking this incomprehensible decision symbolizes two things. The first is the arrogance of the extremists in the US administration, and the second their determination to entrench their hegemony and remove all moderate factions inside public organizations in the US.

What is astounding is that this is happening in Washington at a time when the US administration is sending a delegation to this region in an attempt to find out what it is that makes the Arab people hate America.

The Pipes issue is an example of the hatred that the extremists in US public life are directing against Arabs and Islamic world. The deepest insult of all is that the US thinks the Arab world will swallow these insults and still respond favorably to a parallel campaign aimed at making us love America and retain our respect for it.

- Arab News Opinion 13 September 2003