What are the U.S. options on Iran?
Originally published at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Transmission blog, June 25, 2009.
On June 24, the Brookings Institution held an interesting event, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran.”
A monograph of the same name will soon be released by the think tank, enumerating the choices U.S. policymakers have over Iran. These are the options that emerged from the briefing:
Who Speaks For Islam? Not John Esposito
Originally published in FrontPage Magazine and Campus Watch, May 27, 2009. Also highlighted in the Campus Watch Blog.
Georgetown University Professor John Esposito is the media’s favorite go-to man for questions about Islam. As the founding director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, he is also notorious for downplaying radical Islam. Stanford University hosted his latest round of apologetics on May 13.
Esposito, who spoke at Stanford last year, was on campus to promote the film version of his recent book (co-authored with Dalia Mogahed of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies), Who Speaks For Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. He was joined by the film’s executive producer, Muslim convert Michael Wolfe. The 55-minute film claims to present the results of the “largest, most comprehensive study” of Muslim opinion ever done. The crowd’s political leaning were evident in the audible hisses that greeted the cinematic image of former President George W. Bush.
Pervez Musharraf speaks at Stanford
From the Students for an Open Society blog, January 16, 2009:
Pervez Musharraf, former president of Pakistan, spoke at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium today, thanks to the ASSU Speakers’ Bureau and Stanford in Government.
The very first utterance Musharraf made, even before “Thank you for the introduction,” was “Bismillahi al-rahmani al-rahimi.” That is, “In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful.” This is the first sentence of every chapter of the Qur’an (except Chapter 9) and is the first line of the constitutions of many Islamic countries. By beginning with this line, Musharraf wanted everyone present to know that he was not only making his statements as a Muslim, but as a pious Muslim. I have never personally heard any speaker begin with this phrase, and I have heard many Muslims speak at Stanford, including a past president of the Shariah Scholars’ Association of North America.
Mentioned in Daniel Pipes’ column
Through the Hoover Institution, I’ve been working as a research assistant for Daniel Pipes over the past several months. I found some statistics for him about Islamist-related arrests in Europe, and not only did he use the numbers in his column (as opposed to just his blog), but he actually mentioned me by name as his source:
Earlier Europol statistics are less clear, but a close review of the evidence conducted for me by Jonathan Gelbart of Stanford University shows 234 arrests made in 2005, 124 in 2004. and 137 in 2003.
Dr. Pipes’ column is syndicated all over the world, appearing most prominently in The Jerusalem Post. It has also been republished at FrontPage Magazine and dozens of blogs.
