The Wolf in the Door.(Militant Islam Reaches America)(Book Review)

Militant Islam Reaches America, by Daniel Pipes (Norton, 256 pp., $25.95)

On September 13, 2002, southern Florida was closed down after a Shoney's customer told police she suspected that three of her fellow diners were Islamist terrorists. On the same day, FBI agents broke up a bona fide al-Qaeda sleeper ring operating out of Lackawanna, N.Y. People wishing to make sense of both events would do well to consult this new book by Daniel Pipes -- an extraordinarily useful compendium of basic information and analysis that is easily readable by the non- specialist, yet engaging for scholars as well.

Pipes is a non-Muslim writing for non-Muslims, and he achieves objectivity by being respectful without fawning. He brings forward copious quotations from those he criticizes, allowing them to make their own cases in their own -- sometimes shocking -- words.

The book is a collection of essays written between 1994 and 2002 -- some of which originally appeared in National Review -- and they stand up very well; in fact, events have made them timelier. The book supplies the reader with an intellectual framework within which to assess the frequently unspoken -- and sometimes erroneous -- premises that underlie public discussions of terrorism. Like a good professor, Pipes poses questions the inquisitive person has yet to frame; he anticipates lines of inquiry and guides the reader to sound conclusions backed by solid research.

In the first half of the book, Pipes draws a strong -- and crucial -- distinction between Islam, the religious faith, and militant Islam (or Islamism), which he calls "the most vibrant and coherent ideological movement in the world today." This is no small point: Criticism of Islamism is regularly mistaken for an assault on Islam in general, when in fact Islamism is not a religion but a sociopolitical belief system, based on -- but separate from -- the Muslim faith. The tenets of Islamism are derived from a radical reading of the Koran as a blueprint for social order, not as a guide to individual piety. It is a revolutionary vision, the practical expression of which is Taliban- style totalitarianism. Moreover, as with any other extreme ideology, the fact that it is the fervent ideal only of a dedicated minority is no barrier to its being foisted on a society unable or unwilling to defend itself. The threat of Islamism cannot be measured in mere numbers (only an estimated 10-15 percent of Muslims actually are Islamists) but must be judged against its adherents' dedication, persistence, and willingness to engage in violence.

Pipes outlines the primary characteristics of Islamism: It is utopian, anti-democratic, anti-Semitic, anti-Western, and unwilling to coexist with other belief systems. Pipes observes that one critical failing of the West is not taking seriously public statements that reflect these traits. The Western liberal mind tends to discount the Islamists' more radical utterances as mere motivational boilerplate, and thus not a good guide to understanding Islamism. As 9/11 has shown, however, when the Islamists speak it is worth ...