“Does the Bush administration really believe, as its leadership has kept repeating since right after 9/11, that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’ not connected to the problem of terrorism?” Daniel Pipes asks.

Front Page Magazine, 25 April 2005

Pipes takes comfort in the news that “America’s highest officials widely agree that the country’s ‘greatest ideological foe is a highly politicized form of radical Islam and that Washington and its allies cannot afford to stand by’ as it gains in strength. To fight this ideology, the U.S. government now promotes a non-radical interpretation of Islam.”

But Pipes is still not entirely convinced: “Working to change how Muslims understand their religion, of course, raises some difficult implications. It is one thing to want to help moderate Muslims and quite another to locate them.”

All the same, this marks a bit of a retreat from Pipes’ recent denunciations of the Bush administration for going soft on Islam. Is he perhaps angling for a reappointment to the USIP board?