http://adloyada.typepad.com/adloyada/

"Daniel Pipes spoke next. I also went to his talk on Saturday evening at South Hampstead Synagogue. There he said that in the run-up to the Conference he had received so many emails from London warning him that the audience would be very hostile that he had worked harder on this speech than any other that he had ever given.

It certainly paid off – his speech was outstanding – well-judged, scholarly, well moderated and logical throughout. He began by going back to Samuel Huntington’s original “Clash of Civilisations” paper in Foreign Affairs in 1993. Huntington had warned that clashes between civilisations had become the greatest threat to world peace. He had identified eight civilisations - Western, Eastern Orthodox, Latin American, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, and African. But – Pipes said – there were many problems with Huntington ’s analysis. First, the civilisations he cited are not a political concept. Second, the thesis cannot account for violence within civilisations – he cited the Rushdie Affair. Third, it ignored agreement across civilisations. Fourth, it cannot account for changes over time, eg the increase in tension between the US and Europe .

“Can a world civilisation exist?” asked Pipes “No, not as Huntington defined it”. But a world civilisation was possible as a coalition against what he termed “barbarism”. He then defined what he called ‘Ideological barbarians’ – fascists, totalitarian Communists and most recently – Islamists. The great question – he said – is how to oppose the barbarians. The Mayor , he said, proposed multiculturalism. But he – Pipes – wanted to win what he termed a War against barbarism. The UK had become a safe haven for terrorists. David Blunkett had noted that British based terrorists had carried out incidents in 15 countries. President Mubarak of Egypt had denounced the UK for protecting terrorists.

Pipes then focused on three aspects of Islamism. One, it was attempting to extend Sharia law into new areas. Two, it divided the world into two – those who held the right religion and everyone else. Three, it’s totalitarian and anti-modern. Here he cited Tony Blair’s August speech in Los Angeles (“it is a global fight about global values; it is about modernisation, within Islam and outside of it”).

He went on to ask why some elements of the traditional Left (in which he included Livingstone) were so supportive of Islamism when they opposed other forms of totalitarianism. His answer was that they shared the same enemies. Harold Pinter, for example, said that “the US was run by a bunch of criminal lunatics, with Blair as their hired Christian thug”. Chomsky had called the US “a leading terrorist State”. He noted that the demonstration in Hyde Park on 16 February 2003 was organised by a coalition of Islamists and the Left. Norman Mailer said about 9/11 “We had to realise that the people that did this were brilliant”. Parts of the Left dismiss terrorism as an irritant and blame it on eg Western ‘colonialism’.

In conclusion, said Pipes, there is no way to appease this ideology. It must be defeated as the Germans and Soviets were defeated. Islamism can only be defeated by a coalition of the ‘civilised’, among whom he cited a long list of Muslim dissidents, for example, Irshad Manji."