The article,
The Muslims Are Coming! The Muslims Are Coming!, written in 1980, is an exhibit to be used by those who would demonstrate that Dr. Pipes is a bigot.
Speculations about a Muslim threat divide into two distinct types. Some observers point to hostile states and the military forces bent on jihad (Islamic righteous war). Others focus on migrants to the West and fear a subversion of Western civilization from within. For the latter, the mischief of a Saddam Husayn or Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi poses fewer dangers than that of their followers living in our midst.
Here we see Pipes' argument in its embryonic form. Jihad is one threat to the West. I don't have a problem with that statement, as long as Pipes carefully defines jihad and exactly who are its adherents. Pipes is not being so careful. His next statement is to call Arab immigrants to the West a threat, fearing that they will "(subvert) Western civilization from within". That is the sort of statement we would get from the likes of Pat Buchanan or David Duke.
Even Dr. Pipes' proposed answer to jihad is troubling. Overall, he sees Islam as an enemy of Western Civilization. It is interesting in reading the article how Pipes at first refers to "radical Islam", as though to distinguish it from mainstream Islam, and then simply to "Islam", as though the faith, unlike Judaism and Christianity, were monolithic. For example:
(T)he fear of Islam has some basis in reality. From the Battle of Ajnadayn in 634 until the Suez crisis of 1956, military hostility has always defined the crux of the Christian-Muslim relationship. Muslims served as the enemy par excellence from the Chanson de Roland to the Rolando trilogy, from El Cid to Don Quixote. In real life, Arabs or Turks represent the national villains throughout southern Europe. Europeans repeatedly won their statehood by expelling Muslim overlords, from the Spanish Reconquista beginning in the early eleventh century to the Albanian war of independence ending in 1912.
Note that to demonstrate this "reality", Pipes has citied a battle fought nearly a millennium and a half ago, the seizure of a colonial relic by a secular Arab nationalist leader, works of fiction and historical facts centuries old and long forgotten.
Dr. Pipes' remarks about Arab/Muslim immigration is more troubling:
All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most. Also, they appear most resistant to assimilation. Elements among the Pakistanis in Britain, Algerians in France, and Turks in Germany seek to turn the host country into a Islamic society by compelling it to adapt to their way of life.
Pipes then makes a series of unsubstantiated claims, such as an insistence that factories keep to the Islamic calendar. He also claims:
A significant body of Muslims, especially followers of Ayatollah Khomeini, appear to hope they can remake Europe and America in their own image. And they are not shy to say so.
For this, Pipes presents some anecdotal evidence. However, he never justifies his characterization of this body of Muslims as "significant".
It is clear that Dr. Pipes sees Islam as not just one of the great faiths of mankind, but as a menacing ideology. He worries about the high birth rate among Muslims:
High Muslim birth rates already drive politics in the two non-Muslim states of the Middle East. Christians lost control of Lebanon after Muslims became a majority there. The challenge of maintaining a Jewish majority lies near the heart of the Israeli political debate; the local Muslim population keeps up a fertility rate of no less than 6.6 children per woman (1981 estimate). Comparable political tensions have arisen on the fringes of the Middle East-in Ethiopia, Cyprus, Armenia, and Serbia-as the minority Muslim population climbs toward either political power or majority status.
Thus, it isn't just Islam that is a menacing ideology, but Muslims who in themselves are a threat to Western Civilization. Pipes concludes:
Fears of a Muslim influx have more substance than the worry about jihad. West European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene. Muslim immigrants bring with them a chauvinism that augurs badly for their integration into the mainstream of the European societies. The signs all point to continued clashes between the two sides; in all likelihood, the Rushdie affair was merely a prelude to further troubles; already it has spawned a Muslim political party in Great Britain. Put differently, Iranian zealots threaten more within the gates of Vienna than outside them.
In other words, Pipes fears that Western Civilization is threatened by allowing the barbarians to enter. The question, he says, is whether or not Muslims can "modernize."
Future relations of Muslims and Westerners depend less on crude numbers or place of residence, and much more on beliefs, skills, and institutions. The critical question is whether Muslims will modernize or not. And the answer lies not in the Qur'an or in the Islamic religion, but in the attitudes and actions of nearly a billion individuals.
Dr. Pipes seems to be suggesting that the problem with Muslims is that they read the Koran, if they can read at all.
It is, of course, fallacious to assume that one cannot be both modern and adhere to a religious faith, including Islam. The latter belongs to the private realm, just as the food one eats (although Pipes seems to have problems with Arab cuisine as well).
Pipes is a bigot. That should be as obvious as the sun against a clear blue sky.
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