“Daniel Pipes v. Religious Tolerance” : The Huffington Post
April 30, 2008
Gershom Gorenberg
In recent years, conservative researcher and commentator Daniel Pipes has become a spokesman for fear of Islam. One of his most damaging efforts is chronicled in Andrea Elliott’s recent New York Times article, “Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School.” The piece describes the campaign that prevented Arab-American educator Debbie Almontaser from realizing her vision of creating a New York City charter school in which students would learn Arabic together.
Pipes’s other efforts [include preventing] such threats to Western civilization as allowing women-only hours at public swimming pools so that religious Muslim women can use them.
Almontaser is a moderate, pro-peace Muslim, a proponent of interfaith dialogue with Jews and Christians. Much as I’d like to meet her, I never have. Strangely, though, I once spent a day with Pipes. Read more…
