This week on Uncommon Knowledge, Daniel Pipes, one of the most knowledgeable and trenchant of observers of Israel, the Middle East, and the war on terror. Director of the Middle East Forum, a think tank based in Philadelphia, Daniel is currently the Taube-Diller Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
On today’s segment, I note that American politicians, intent on portraying terrorists as an isolated and aberrant minority in the Muslim world, have made a practice of insisting that “Islam” (to quote President Bush) “is peace.” But is it?
It’s not a good idea to try to define the religion of more than a billion people and nearly a millennium-and-a-half in a word. [But] there’s been a lot of warfare in Islam—there is warfare, there will be warfare. Islam is not peace.