Daniel Pipes talked to a crowded Cohen Auditorium last night about the dangers posed by "a terroristic version of Islam." Pipes, the director of the neoconservative think tank the Middle East Forum, came to Tufts as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.
But before he took the stage, about 30 students stood outside of the auditorium to express their opposition to his views. They held flyers that read "This is a hate-free campus" and signs questioning "Islamo-fascism or Islamophobia?"
"He seems like he has a very moderate message, but underneath opposition to Islamic terrorism, he includes policies that would treat Muslims as below the law," freshman Philip Bene said. "I'm going to go and listen to his talk, but I also want to register my position."
The tension caused by Pipes' appearance was evident even as members of the community entered Cohen, as they had to pass through a metal detector. Earlier in the day, Tufts University Police Department Captain Mark Keith said that university officials determined this precaution was necessary after examining "the circumstances surrounding the event."
Pipes began his speech by addressing the title of the week, saying he is "not really a fan of the term Islamo-Fascism" and prefers any number of phrases including radical Islam and totalitarian Islam.
He then brought up the question "Who is the enemy?" While some people give an establishment answer and cite terrorism or extremism, Pipes disagrees with such an abstract response.
"First of all it's a euphemism," he said. "Second of all it's inaccurate."
Terrorism is a tactic of the enemy, according to Pipes, and not the only tactic.
Pipes also disagreed with the view that Islam is the enemy because he said such a claim is historically inaccurate.
"It assumes they've always been the enemies," he said. "That is certainly not the case. [Furthermore,] from an American point of view, it allows for no policy."
Pipes proposed a third answer somewhere between the two responses: The enemy is "a terroristic version of Islam."
This version of Islam is new in many ways, he said, in that it has tried to apply Islam to every aspect of life, even those in which the religion has not traditionally had a role.
Pipes described the transition as "a faith turned into a totalitarian ideology" as Islam becomes Islamism.
This transition is not comparable to other religions, but to other totalitarian movements, he said, and is the "third totalitarian movement of the modern age" following Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Like those other movements, "it seeks total control everywhere," Pipes said. However, Islamism is unique in its popularity, non-Western roots and religious base.
After providing his definition of who the enemy is, Pipes turned to the question of what our policy should be.
"Here again, one finds great vagueness," he said. But he said that the intelligent option is to modernize Islam.
"That may sound unlikely; it may sound presumptuous," he said.
Still, he thinks it's possible to modernize the religion if the West can defeat radical Islam and then leave it up to the Muslim world.
"At the moment it's a one-sided debate because the modernists are rarely to be heard from," he said. "They exist. They are there. They are weak. They are not funded, they are not organized and they don't have a coherent body of ideas."
While Westerners can not take a direct role in this debate, they can still help.
"We can cheer them on," Pipes said. "We can fund them, we can work with them. We cannot work with the Islamists."
Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is taking place on around 200 college campuses this week and aims to dispel notions that the Iraq war has bolstered terrorism and call attention to what its organizers consider to be the human rights abuses perpetrated by adherents to radical Islam. It was organized by David Horowitz, the conservative founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
The Primary Source sponsored yesterday's speech, and senior Matthew Gardner-Schuster offered remarks at the beginning of the event.
"One thing that I've learned from Tufts, and I believe its primary mission, at least its primary stated mission, is to foster tolerance and help people keep an open mind," he said. "I hope that all of you will keep an open mind and actually listen to all the substance and content of what Mr. Pipes is going to say."
After the speech, Gardner-Schuster told the Daily that his group chose Pipes because of his emphasis on fostering moderate versions of Islam.
"I was impressed with his record in reaching out to moderate Muslims and encouraging them to join the fight against the extremist elements within their religion," he said.
But some of the people demonstrating outside of the auditorium before the speech felt that the themed week and the speech had very little to do with moderate viewpoints.
"I think that it's very sad that we have people that are attacking an entire religion. ... I'm here to say this is something that is objectionable and not useful," said Hossam Aljabri, the president of the Boston Muslim American Society.
Still, all of the demonstrators supported Pipes' right to speak.
"There is room for dialogue," Aljabri said. "I am all for free speech."
According to Shai Fuxman, a facilitator of Pathways, an interfaith initiative at Tufts, they were not there to protest, but to "demonstrate in a very peaceful and respectful manner."
Gardner-Schuster told the Daily that their opposition was misguided, as it claims that the aim of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is to attack an entire religion.
"I'd say that's a foolish and a baseless claim in an attempt to discredit our campaign to draw awareness to radical Islam," he said.
Bennett Kuhn and Rob Silverblatt contributed reporting to this article.
