A 13th century Cambodian statue of Vishnu.

Distribution of Eastern religions (yellow), as opposed to Abrahamic religions (purple).

Eastern religions refers to religions originating in the Eastern world —India, China, Japan and Southeast Asia —and thus having dissimilarities with Western religions. This includes the East Asian and Indian religious traditions, as well as animistic indigenous religions.

This East-West religious distinction, just as with the East-West culture distinction, and the implications that arise from it, are broad and not precise. Furthermore, the geographical distinction has less meaning in the current context of global transculturation.

While many Western observers attempt to distinguish between Eastern philosophies and religions, this is a distinction that does not exist in some Eastern traditions.^[1]

Indian religions[link]

A Hindu temple in Sri Lanka.

Religions originating on the Indian subcontinent include Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.^[2] The theologies and philosophies of these religions have several concepts in common, such as dharma, karma, maya and samsara.

Hinduism[link]

OM, a sacred syllable and a quintessential symbol of Hinduism

Hinduism originated on the Indian subcontinent. It is considered by some to be the world's oldest extant religion. Hinduism contains a vast body of scripture, divided as revealed and remembered, expounding on dharma, or religious living. Hindus consider the Vedas and the Upanishads as being among the foremost in authority, importance and antiquity. The Bhagavad Gītā, a treatise excerpted from the Mahābhārata, is sometimes called a summary of the spiritual teachings of the Vedas. It is difficult to identify any universal belief or practice in Hinduism, although prominent themes include: Dharma, Samsara, Karma, and Moksha. Hinduism is sometimes called a polytheistic religion, but this is an oversimplification. Hinduism includes a diverse collection of schools whose beliefs span monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, monism and even atheism. For instance, the Advaita Vedanta school holds that there is only one causal entity (Brahman), which manifests itself to humans in multiple forms, whereas traditions such as Vaishnavism and Shaivism worship Vishnu and Shiva in a monotheistic sense. A number of scholars even consider the Samkhya school of thought to have atheistic leanings.^[3]

Buddhism[link]

The Tian Tan Buddha statue in Hong Kong.

Buddhism is a dharmic, non-deistic religion and philosophy. Buddhism was founded around the fifth century BCE in India by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, with the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path as its central principles. According to the scriptures, the Four Noble Truths were revealed by the Buddha in his first sermon after attaining enlightenment. The schools of Buddhism are typically divided into Theravada and Mahayana. In academic circles, Mahayana is further divided into East Asian and Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhism teaches that someone who becomes enlightened without instruction is a buddha. The primary goal of Buddhism is the liberation of the practitioner from samsara. Buddhists hold this to be the solution to the problem of suffering.

Jainism[link]

This is the holiest Jain symbol.

Jainism is the religion of the followers of Mahavira. He is said to be the 24th Tirthankara, or the 24th in a line of teachers espousing Jain principles. Jains reject the Vedas and highlight the practice of austerity. Jain faith states that the jiva, or soul, can escape the cycle of rebirth and death through strict ethical behavior. When nothing remains but the purity of the jiva, that person is called a jina, or winner, which is the origin of the term Jain. Karma is viewed as an accumulation that burdens the soul, causing attachment and suffering. Ahimsa, or non-violence, is central to Jain faith and practice. It is interpreted very strictly as prohibiting all forms of harm to other living beings. Due to this, Jainism requires a strict vegetarian lifestyle. Ahimsa also applies to speaking, as one's words can cause harm and suffering.^[4]

Sikhism[link]

Sikhism is a religion which began in Northern India. It is founded on the teachings of Guru Nanak Dev and the nine human gurus that followed. He received a vision to preach the way to enlightenment and God in Sultanpur. His views rejected the traditional worships and caste of the Hinduism faith. ^[5] Freedom from reincarnation is tied to remembrance and repetition on one universal God. God is formless and simultaneously in every form. Sikhs believe that there is one universal God who is the ultimate creater, sustainer, and destroyer. The Gurū Granth Sāhib are the central scriptures intended to preserve hymns and the teachings of the Sikh Gurus and other saints from Hindu and Sufi traditions. Rituals, religious ceremonies or empty worship are considered of little use and Sikhs are discouraged from fasting or going on pilgrimages. The tennents of Sikhism include (1) honest living/earning (2) tithing and giving alms (3) chanting on God. Sikhism also has a strong warrior tradition which arose in defense of religious freedom and human rights from a tyrannical Moghul occupation of India.

East Asian religions[link]

The group of East Asian religions or philosophies share the concept of Tao. They may be considered as forming a group within world religions^[6] comparable to the Abrahamic or Dharmic groups. The Taoic faiths claim at least 500 million members worldwide.^[7]

Taoism[link]

Taoism is a variety of related religious and philosophical traditions. Categorization of Taoist sects and movements is very controversial. Taoist propriety and ethics places an emphasis on the Three Jewels of the Tao; love, moderation, humility. Taoist theology focuses on doctrines of wu wei ("non-action"), spontaneity, humanism, relativism and emptiness.^[8]

Most traditional Chinese Taoists are polytheistic. There are disagreements regarding the proper composition of this pantheon. Popular Taoism typically presents the Jade Emperor as the head deity. Intellectual, or "elite", Taoism usually presents Laozi and the Three Pure Ones at the top of the pantheon. Nature and ancestor spirits are common in popular Taoism. But this sort of shamanism is eschewed for an emphasis on internal alchemy among the "elite" Taoists. Tao itself is rarely an object of worship, being treated more like the Central Asian concept of atman.^[9]

Shinto[link]

A Shinto priest kneeling before a shrine.

Shinto is an animistic folk religion from Japan. Shinto literally means "the way of the gods". Many Japanese Shintoists also identify themselves as Buddhists. Japanese Pure Land Buddhism is deeply intertwined with the Shinto faith. Shinto practitioners commonly affirm tradition, family, nature, cleanliness and ritual observation as core values. Taoic influence is significant in their beliefs about nature and self-mastery.^[10]

Ritual cleanliness is a central part of Shinto life. Shrines have a significant place in Shintoism, reflecting the animistic veneration of the kami. "Folk", or "popular", Shinto places an emphasis on shamanism, particularly divination, spirit possession and faith healing. "Sect" Shinto is a diverse group including mountain-worshippers and Confucian Shintoists.^[11]

Confucianism[link]

Statue of Confucius on Chongming Island in Shanghai

Confucianism is a complex system of moral, social, political, and religious thought, influential in the history of East Asia. It is commonly associated with legalism but it rejects legalism for ritualism. It also endorses meritocracy as the ideal of nobility. Confucianism has a complicated system governing duties and etiquette in relationships. Confucian ethics focus on familial duty, loyalty and humaneness.^[12]

Confucianism tolerates the Chinese folk recognition of the existence of animistic spirits, ghosts and deities. It approves paying them proper respect, but at a more fundamental level encourages avoiding them. Confucian thought is notable as the framework upon which the syncretic Neo-Confucianism was built.^[13]

East Asian Buddhism[link]

See also[link]

• Chinese folk religion
• Comparative religion
• Folk religion

Notes[link]

References[link]

• De Bary, William Theodore & Tu, Weiming. Confucianism and Human Rights. Columbia University Press (1998). ISBN 0-231-10936-9.
• Fisher, Mary Pat. Living Religions: An Encyclopaedia of the World's Faiths. I.B. Taurus (1997). ISBN 1-86064-148-2.
• Flood, Gavin D. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press (1996). ISBN 0-521-43304-5.
• Huang, Siu-chi. Essentials of Neo-Confucianism: Eight Major Philosophers of the Song and Ming Periods. Greenwood Press (1999). ISBN 0-313-26449-X.
• Leaman, Oliver. Key Concepts in Eastern Philosophy. Routledge (1999). ISBN 0-415-17362-0.
• LaFargue, Michael. Tao and Method: A Reasoned Approach to the Tao Te Ching. SUNY Press (1994). ISBN 0-7914-1601-1.
• Markham, Ian S. & Ruparell, Tinu. Encountering Religion: an introduction to the religions of the world. Blackwell Publishing (2001). ISBN 0-631-20674-4.
• Maspero, Henri. Translated by Frank A. Kierman, Jr. Taoism and Chinese Religion. University of Massachusetts (1981).
• Morgan, Diane. The Best Guide to Eastern Philosophy and Religion. St. Martin's Griffin (2001). ISBN 1-58063-197-5.
• Ono, Sakyo. Shinto: The Kami Way. Tuttle Publishing (2004). ISBN 0-8048-3557-8.
• Pilgrim, Richard B. Buddhism and the Arts of Japan. Columbia University Press (1999). ISBN 0-231-11347-1.
• Rausch, Thomas P. & Chapple, Christopher Key. The College Student's Introduction to Theology. Liturgical Press (1993). ISBN 0-8146-5841-5.
• Segal, Robert Alan. The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion. Blackwell Publishing (2006). ISBN 0-631-23216-8.
• Sharot, Stephen. A Comparative Sociology of World Religions: virtuosos, priests, and popular religion. NYU Press (2001). ISBN 0-8147-9805-5.
• Slingerland, Edward Gilman. Effortless Action: Wu-Wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. Oxford University Press (2003). ISBN 0-19-513899-6.
• Smart, Ninian. World Philosophies. Routledge UK (2000). ISBN 0-415-22852-2.
• Swami Bhaskarananda. The Essentials of Hinduism. Viveka Press (1994). ISBN 1-884852-02-5.
• Weightman, Simon. Hinnells, John (ed). Handbook of Living Religions. Penguin Books (1997). ISBN 0-14-051480-5.
• Yao, Xinzhong. An Introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge University Press (2000). ISBN 0-521-64430-5.
• York, Michael. Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion. NYU Press (2005). ISBN 0-8147-9708-3.

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Alan Wilson Watts

Born	(1915-01-06)6 January 1915 Chislehurst, Kent, England
Died	16 November 1973(1973-11-16) (aged 58) Mt. Tamalpais, California, USA
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Eastern Philosophy
School	Zen Buddhism · Hinduism · Pantheism · Religious naturalism · Taoism
Main interests	Personal identity · Higher consciousness · Aesthetics  · Public Ethics

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest but left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Living on the West Coast, Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not just a religion. Like Aldous Huxley before him, he explored human consciousness in the essay, "The New Alchemy" (1958), and in the book, The Joyous Cosmology (1962).

Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. His legacy has been kept alive by his son, Mark Watts, and by many of his recorded talks and lectures that have found new life on the Internet. According to the critic Erik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity."^[1]

Early years[link]

Watts was born to middle class parents in the village of Chislehurst, Kent, in 1915, living at 3 (now 5) Holbrook Lane. His father was a representative for the London office of the Michelin Tyre Company, his mother a housewife whose father had been a missionary. With modest financial means, they chose to live in pastoral surroundings and Alan, an only child, grew up playing at brookside, learning the names of wildflowers and butterflies.^[2] Probably because of the influence of his mother’s religious family^[3] the Buchans, an interest in "ultimate things" seeped in. But it mixed with Alan’s own interests in storybook fables and romantic tales of the mysterious Far East.^[4]

Watts also later wrote of a mystical vision he experienced while ill with a fever as a child. During this time he was influenced by Far Eastern landscape paintings and embroideries that had been given to his mother by missionaries returning from China. The few Chinese paintings Watts was able to see in England riveted him, and he wrote "I was aesthetically fascinated with a certain clarity, transparency, and spaciousness in Chinese and Japanese art. It seemed to float...".^[5] These works of art emphasized the participative relationship of man in nature, a theme that stood fast throughout his life.

Buddhism[link]

Seated Great Buddha (Daibutsu), Kamakura, Japan

By his own assessment, Watts was imaginative, headstrong, and talkative. He was sent to boarding schools (which included both academic and religious training of the Muscular Christianity sort) from early years. Of this religious training, he remarked “Throughout my schooling my religious indoctrination was grim and maudlin…”^[6] During holidays in his teen years, Francis Croshaw, a wealthy Epicurean with strong interests in both Buddhism and the exotic little-known aspects of European culture, took Watts on a trip through France. It was not long afterward that Watts felt forced to decide between the Anglican Christianity he had been exposed to and the Buddhism he had read about in various libraries, including Croshaw’s. He chose Buddhism, and sought membership in the London Buddhist Lodge, which had been established by Theosophists, and was now run by the barrister Christmas Humphreys. Watts became the organization’s secretary at 16 (1931). The young Watts explored several styles of meditation during these years.

Education[link]

Watts attended The King's School next door to Canterbury Cathedral. Though he was frequently at the top of his classes scholastically, and was given responsibilities at school, he botched an opportunity for a scholarship to Oxford by styling a crucial examination essay in a way that was read as presumptuous and capricious.^[7]

Hence, when he graduated from secondary school, Watts was thrust into the world of employment, working in a printing house and later a bank. He spent his spare time involved with the Buddhist Lodge and also under the tutelage of a "rascal guru" named Dimitrije Mitrinović. (Mitrinović was himself influenced by Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, G. I. Gurdjieff, and the varied psychoanalytical schools of Freud, Jung and Adler.) Watts also read widely in philosophy, history, psychology, psychiatry and Eastern wisdom. By his own reckoning, and also by that of his biographer Monica Furlong, Watts was primarily an autodidact. His involvement with the Buddhist Lodge in London afforded Watts a considerable number of opportunities for personal growth. Through Humphreys, he contacted eminent spiritual authors (e.g., Nicholas Roerich, Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan) and prominent theosophists like Alice Bailey. In 1936, aged 21, he attended the World Congress of Faiths at the University of London, heard D. T. Suzuki read a paper, and afterwards was able to meet this esteemed scholar of Zen Buddhism. Beyond these discussions and personal encounters, Watts absorbed, by studying the available scholarly literature, the fundamental concepts and terminology of the main philosophies of India and East Asia.

Influences and first publication[link]

In 1936, Watts' first book was published, The Spirit of Zen, which he later acknowledged to be mainly digested from the writings of Suzuki.

In 1938 he and his bride left England to live in America. He had married Eleanor Everett, whose mother Ruth Fuller Everett was involved with a traditional Zen Buddhist circle in New York. A few years later, Ruth Fuller married the Zen master (or "roshi"), Sokei-an Sasaki, and this Japanese gentleman served as a sort of model and mentor to Watts, though he chose not to enter into a formal Zen training relationship with Sasaki. During these years, according to his later writings, Watts had another mystical experience while on a walk with his wife.

Watts' fascination with the Zen (or Chan) tradition—beginning during the 1930s—developed because that tradition embodied the spiritual, interwoven with the practical, as exemplified in the subtitle of his Spirit of Zen: A Way of Life, Work, and Art in the Far East. "Work," "life," and "art" were not demoted due to a spiritual focus.

Priesthood and after[link]

Watts left formal Zen training in New York because the method of the teacher didn't suit him. He was not ordained as a Zen monk, but he felt a need to find a professional outlet for his philosophical inclinations. He entered Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, an Anglican (Episcopalian) school in Evanston, Illinois, where he studied Christian scriptures, theology, and Church history. He attempted to work out a blend of contemporary Christian worship, mystical Christianity, and Asian philosophy. Watts was awarded a master's degree in theology in response to his thesis, which he published as a popular edition under the title Behold the Spirit. The pattern was set, in that Watts did not hide his dislike for religious outlooks that he decided were dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing—no matter if they were found within Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, or Buddhism.

All seemed to go reasonably well in his next role, as Episcopalian priest (beginning in 1945, aged 30), until an extramarital affair resulted in his young wife having their marriage annulled. It also resulted in Watts leaving the ministry by 1950. He spent the New Year getting to know Joseph Campbell; his wife, Jean Erdman; and John Cage.

In early 1951, Watts moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. Here he taught alongside Saburō Hasegawa, Frederic Spiegelberg, Haridas Chaudhuri, lama Tokwan Tada, and various visiting experts and professors. Hasegawa, in particular, served as a teacher to Watts in the areas of Japanese customs, arts, primitivism, and perceptions of nature. Besides teaching, Watts served for several years as the Academy's administrator. One notable student of his was Eugene Rose, who later went on to become a famous Hieromonk and theologian in the Eastern Orthodox Church of America.

Watts also studied written Chinese and practiced Chinese brush calligraphy with Hasegawa as well as with some of the Chinese students who enrolled at the Academy. While Watts was noted for an interest in Zen Buddhism, his reading and discussions delved into Vedanta, "the new physics", cybernetics, semantics, process philosophy, natural history, and the anthropology of sexuality.

Middle years[link]

After heading up the Academy for a few years, Watts left the faculty for a freelance career in the mid 1950s. In 1953, he began what became a long-running weekly radio program at Pacifica Radio station KPFA in Berkeley, which continued until his death in 1973. Like other volunteer programmers at the listener-sponsored station, Watts was not paid for his broadcasts; they did, however, gain him a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area. These programs were later carried by additional Pacifica stations, and were re-broadcast many times over in the decades following his death. The original tapes are currently held by the Pacifica Radio Archives, based at KPFK in Los Angeles, and at the Electronic University archive founded by his son, Mark Watts (alanwatts.org).

In 1957 when 42, Watts published one of his best known books, The Way of Zen, which focused on philosophical explication and history. Besides drawing on the lifestyle and philosophical background of Zen, in India and China, Watts introduced ideas drawn from general semantics (directly from the writings of Alfred Korzybski and also from Norbert Wiener's early work on cybernetics, which had recently been published). Watts offered analogies from cybernetic principles possibly applicable to the Zen life. The book sold well, eventually becoming a modern classic, and helped widen his lecture circuit.

Around this time, Watts toured parts of Europe with his father, meeting the renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung. In relation to modern psychology, Watts's instincts were closer to Jung's or Abraham Maslow's than to those of Freud.

Experimentation[link]

When he returned to the United States, he began to dabble in psychedelic drug experiences, initially with mescaline given to him by Dr. Oscar Janiger. He tried LSD several times with various research teams led by Drs. Keith Ditman, Sterling Bunnell, and Michael Agron. He also tried marijuana and concluded that it was a useful and interesting psychoactive drug that gave the impression of time slowing down. Watts’ books of the ’60s reveal the influence of these chemical adventures on his outlook. He would later comment about psychedelic drug use, "When you get the message, hang up the phone."^[8]

For a time, Watts came to prefer writing in the language of modern science and psychology (Psychotherapy East and West is a good example), finding a parallel between mystical experiences and the theories of the material universe proposed by 20th-century physicists. He later equated mystical experience with ecological awareness, and typically emphasized whichever approach seemed best suited to the audience he was addressing.

Supporters and critics[link]

Watts's explorations and teaching brought him into contact with many noted intellectuals, artists, and American teachers in the human potential movement. His friendship with poet Gary Snyder nurtured his sympathies with the budding environmental movement, to which Watts gave philosophical support. He also encountered Robert Anton Wilson, who credited Watts with being one of his "Light[s] along the Way" in the opening appreciation of Cosmic Trigger.

Though never affiliated for long with any one academic institution, he did have a fellowship for several years at Harvard University. He also lectured to many college and university students. His lectures and books gave him far-reaching influence on the American intelligentsia of the 1950s–1970s, but he was often seen as an outsider in academia. When questioned sharply by students during his talk at University of California Santa Cruz in 1970, Watts responded that he was not an academic philosopher but rather "a philosophical entertainer."

Watts has been criticized by Buddhists such as Roshi Philip Kapleau, John Daido Loori, and D. T. Suzuki for allegedly misinterpreting several key concepts of Zen Buddhism. Examples of the criticisms by those who believe that zazen can only be achieved by a strict and specific means of sitting as opposed to a cultivated state of mind available at any moment in any situation would be when Kapleau claimed that Watts dismissed zazen on the basis of only half a koan.^[9] In regard to the aforementioned koan, Robert Baker Aitken reports that Suzuki told him "I regret to say that Mr. Watts did not understand that story."^[10] In Loori's translation of Dogen's The True Dharma Eye, the author also mentions this and expands further to suggest that Zen in its essence is zazen, and cannot be grasped without the practice. This had been the predominant interpretation of Zen in the West before Alan Watts began to write. One major point raised today, however, is that the state of Zen is like that of a dog, always in the moment, regretting nothing. Although in one Koan Zhaozhou is said to have answered that a Dog does not have Buddha nature, in a different Koan from the same period Zhaozhou answered the same question in the positive, demonstrating the disagreements between the sects of 'walking monks' and 'sitting monks' that go back thousands of years. In his talks, Watts addressed the issue of defining zazen practice when he said, "A cat sits until it is tired of sitting, then gets up, stretches, and walks away."

He did, however, have his supporters in the Zen community, including Shunryu Suzuki, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center. As David Chadwick recounted in his biography of Suzuki, when a student of Suzuki's disparaged Watts by saying “we used to think he was profound until we found the real thing," Suzuki "fumed with a sudden intensity," saying, "You completely miss the point about Alan Watts! You should notice what he has done. He is a great bodhisattva."^[11]

Applied aesthetics[link]

Watts often wrote about, or sometimes alluded to, a group of neighbors in Druid Heights (near Mill Valley, California), who had endeavored to combine architecture, gardening, and carpentry skills to make a beautiful and comfortable life for themselves. These neighbors accomplished this by relying on their own talents and using their own hands, as they lived in what has been called "shared bohemian poverty."^[12] Druid Heights was founded by the writer Elsa Gidlow,^[13] and Watts dedicated his book The Joyous Cosmology to the people of this neighborhood.^[14]

Regarding his intentions, Watts attempted to lessen the alienation that accompanies the experience of being human that he felt plagued the modern Westerner, and (like his fellow British expatriate and friend, Aldous Huxley) to lessen the ill will that was an unintentional by-product of alienation from the natural world. He felt such teaching could improve the world, at least to a degree. He also articulated the possibilities for greater incorporation of aesthetics (for example: better architecture, more art, more fine cuisine) in American life. In his autobiography he wrote, "… cultural renewal comes about when highly differentiated cultures mix".^[15]

In his last novel Island (1962), Aldous Huxley mentions the religious practice of maithuna as being something like what Roman Catholics call "coitus reservatus". A few years before, Alan Watts had discussed the theme in his own book Nature, Man and Woman. There, he discusses the possibility of the practice being known to early Christians and of it being kept secretly by the Church.

Later years[link]

In his writings of the 1950s, he conveyed his admiration for the practicality in the historical achievements of Chán (Zen) in the Far East, for it had fostered farmers, architects, builders, folk physicians, artists, and administrators among the monks who had lived in the monasteries of its lineages.

In his mature work, he presents himself as "Zennist" in spirit as he wrote in his last book, Tao: The Watercourse Way. Child rearing, the arts, cuisine, education, law and freedom, architecture, sexuality, and the uses and abuses of technology were all of great interest to him.

Though known for his Zen teachings, he was equally if not more influenced by ancient Hindu scriptures, especially Vedanta, and spoke extensively about the nature of the divine Reality Man that Man misses, how the contradiction of opposites is the method of life and the means of cosmic and human evolution, how our fundamental Ignorance is rooted in the exclusive nature of mind and ego, how to come in touch with the Field of Consciousness and Light, and other cosmic principles. These are discussed in great detail in dozens of hours of audio that are in part captured in the ‘Out of Your Mind’ series.

On the personal level, Watts sought to resolve his feelings of alienation from the institutions of marriage and the values of American society, as revealed in his classic comments on love relationships in "Divine Madness" and on perception of the organism-environment in "The Philosophy of Nature".

In looking at social issues he was quite concerned with the necessity for international peace, for tolerance and understanding among disparate cultures. He also came to feel acutely conscious of a growing ecological predicament; as one instance, in the early 1960s he wrote: “Can any melting or burning imaginable get rid of these ever-rising mountains of ruin—especially when the things we make and build are beginning to look more and more like rubbish even before they are thrown away?"^[16] These concerns were later expressed in a television pilot made for NET filmed at his mountain retreat in 1971 in which he noted that the single track of conscious attention was wholly inadequate for interactions with a multi-tracked world.

Political stance[link]

Distrusting both the established political left and right, Watts found political inspiration in the Chinese sage Chuang-Tzu, an ancient Taoist thinker^{[citation needed]}. He disliked much in the conventional idea of "progress." He hoped for change, but personally he preferred amiable, semi-isolated rural social enclaves, and also believed in tolerance for urban tenderloins, social misfits, and eccentric artists. Watts decried the suburbanization of the countryside and the way of life that went with it.

In one campus lecture tour, which Watts titled "The End to the Put-Down of Man", Watts presented positive images for both nature and humanity, spoke in favor of the various stages of human growth (including the teenage years), reproached excessive cynicism and rivalry, and extolled intelligent creativity, good architecture and food^{[citation needed]}.

On spiritual and social identity[link]

Watts felt that absolute morality had nothing to do with the fundamental realization of one’s deep spiritual identity. He advocated social rather than personal ethics. In his writings, Watts was increasingly concerned with ethics applied to relations between humanity and the natural environment and between governments and citizens. He wrote out of an appreciation of a racially and culturally diverse social landscape.

He often said that he wished to act as a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between East and West, and between culture and nature.

Watts led some tours for Westerners to the Buddhist temples of Japan. He also studied some movements from the traditional Chinese martial art T'ai chi ch'uan, with an Asian colleague, Al Chung-liang Huang.

Worldview[link]

In several of his later publications, especially Beyond Theology and The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Watts put forward a worldview, drawing on Hinduism, Chinese philosophy, pantheism, and modern science, in which he maintains that the whole universe consists of a cosmic self playing hide-and-seek (Lila), hiding from itself (Maya) by becoming all the living and non-living things in the universe, forgetting what it really is; the upshot being that we are all IT in disguise. In this worldview, Watts asserts that our conception of ourselves as an "ego in a bag of skin" is a myth; the entities we call the separate "things" are merely processes of the whole.

Internet phenomenon[link]

As part of his growing popularity, Matt Stone and Trey Parker—creators of the animated series South Park—have also contributed a video tribute by animating some of his lectures. This has spawned a culture of user-animated videos all around the net.^[17]

Personal life[link]

Watts married three times and had seven children, five daughters and two sons. His oldest son, Mark Watts, currently serves as curator of his father's work.

Watts met Eleanor Everett in 1936, when her mother, Ruth Fuller Everett, brought her to London to study piano. They met at the Buddhist Lodge, were engaged the following year and married in April 1938. A daughter, Joan, was born November 1938 and another, Anne, was born in 1943. Their marriage ended eleven years later, but Watts continued to correspond with his former mother-in-law.^[18]

After leaving Eleanor in 1950, Watts married Dorothy DeWitt and moved to San Francisco in early 1951 to teach. They began a family that grew to include five children: Tia, Mark, Richard, Lila, and Diane. However the couple separated in the early sixties after Watts met Mary Jane Yates King while lecturing in New York. After a difficult divorce he married Mary Jane in 1964.

Watts lived with Mary Jane in Sausalito, California, in the mid-60s.^[19] He lived his later years at times on a houseboat in Sausalito called the Vallejo,^[20] and at times in a secluded cabin on Mount Tamalpais.

In October 1973, Watts returned from an exhausting European lecture tour to his cabin in Mount Tamalpais. On November 16, 1973, he died in his sleep of heart failure.

Publications[link]

• 1936 The Spirit of Zen, Paperback. 1969 ISBN 0-8021-3056-9 A preview from Google Books
• 1937 The Legacy of Asia and Western Man
• 1940 The Meaning of Happiness, Paperback. 1970, ISBN 0-06-080178-6
• 1944 Theologica Mystica of St. Dionysius, (translation from Greek of pseudo-Dionysius, available online)
• 1948 Behold the Spirit:A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion, Vintage ed. 1972, ISBN 0-394-71761-9
• 1950 Easter – Its Story and Meaning
• 1950 The Supreme Identity, Vintage ed. 1972, ISBN 0-394-71835-6
• 1951 The Wisdom of Insecurity, Vintage ed. 1968, ISBN 0-394-70468-1
• 1953 Myth and Ritual in Christianity, Beacon Press 1971, ISBN 0-8070-1375-7
• 1957 The Way of Zen, Vintage Spiritual Classics 1999, ISBN 0-375-70510-4
• 1958 Nature, Man, and Woman, Vintage reissue 1991, ISBN 0-679-73233-0
• 1959 Beat Zen Square Zen and Zen, Paperback, ASIN B000F2RQL4
• 1960 "This Is It" and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience, Vintage reprint 1973, ISBN 0-394-71904-2
• 1961 Psychotherapy East and West, Vintage ed. 1975, ISBN 0-394-71609-4 An excerpt
• 1962 The Joyous Cosmology – Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
• 1963 The Two Hands of God – The Myths of Polarity
• 1964 Beyond Theology – The Art of Godmanship, Vintage 1973, ISBN 0-394-71923-9
• 1966 The Book – On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Vintage reissue 1989, ISBN 0-679-72300-5 An excerpt
• 1967 Nonsense, ISBN 0-525-47463-3. (This book is a spiritual application of literary nonsense).
• 1970 Does It Matter?: Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality, Vintage ed. 1971, ISBN 0-394-71665-5
• 1971 Erotic Spirituality – The Vision of Konarak
• 1972 The Art of Contemplation
• 1972 In My Own Way – An Autobiography 1915–1965, Vintage 1973, ISBN 0-394-71951-4 A preview from Google Books
• 1973 Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal, Vintage 1974, ISBN 0-394-71999-9

Posthumous publications[link]

• 1974 The Essence of Alan Watts, ed. Mark Watts, Celestial Arts 1977, ISBN 0-89087-210-4
• 1975 Tao: The Watercourse Way, with Al Chung-liang Huang, Pantheon 1977, ISBN 0-394-73311-8
• 1976 Essential Alan Watts ed. Mark Watts,
• 1978 Uncarved Block, Unbleached Silk: The Mystery of Life
• 1979 Om: Creative Meditations ed. Mark Watts,
• 1982 Play to Live ed. Mark Watts,
• 1983 Way of Liberation: Essays and Lectures on the Transformation of the Self ed. Mark Watts,
• 1985 Out of the Trap ed. Mark Watts,
• 1986 Diamond Web ed. Mark Watts,
• 1987 The Early Writings of Alan Watts, Paperback. 1995, ISBN 0-89087-794-7
• 1990 The Modern Mystic: A New Collection of Early Writings
• 1994 Talking Zen ed. Mark Watts,
• 1995 Become What You Are, Shambhala Expanded ed. 2003, ISBN 1-57062-940-4
• 1995 Buddhism: The Religion of No-Religion ed. Mark Watts, A preview from Google Books
• 1995 The Philosophies of Asia ed. Mark Watts,
• 1995 The Tao of Philosophy, ed. Mark Watts, edited transcripts, Tuttle Publishing 1999, ISBN 0-8048-3204-8
• 1996 Myth and Religion ed. Mark Watts,
• 1997 Taoism: Way Beyond Seeking ed. Mark Watts,
• 1997 Zen and the Beat Way ed. Mark Watts,
• 1998 Culture of Counterculture ed. Mark Watts,
• 1999 Buddhism: The Religion of No-Religion, ed. Mark Watts, edited transcripts, Tuttle Publishing, ISBN 0-8048-3203-X
• 2000 What Is Zen?, editor: Mark Watts, New World Library, ISBN 0-394-71951-4 A preview from Google Books
• 2000 What Is Tao?, ed. Mark Watts, New World Library, ISBN 1-57731-168-X
• 2000 Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation, ed. Mark Watts, New World Library, ISBN 1-57731-214-7
• 2000 Eastern Wisdom, ed. Mark Watts, MJF Books, ISBN 1-56731-491-0, three books in one volume: What is Zen?, What is Tao?, and An Introduction to Meditation (Still the Mind). These were assembled from transcriptions of audio tape recordings made by his son Mark, of lectures and seminars given by Alan Watts during the last decade of his life. They constitute simplified introductions to the philosophies he taught.
• 2002 Zen, the Supreme Experience: The Newly Discovered Scripts, ed. Mark Watts, Vega
• 2006 Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks, 1960-1969, New World Library

Audio and video works, essays[link]

Including recordings of lectures at major universities and multi-session seminars: Many of his works have made it easier for western people to apprehend eastern esoteric thinking, which until now required western people to travel to Asia and spend years learning the subtle nuances of the profound traditions.

• 1960 Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life, television series, (here)
• 1960 Essential Lectures, audio recordings, (here)
• 1960 Nature of Consciousness, essay, (here)
• 1960 The Value of Psychotic Experience
• 1960 The World As Emptiness
• 1960 From Time to Eternity
• 1960 Lecture On Zen
• 1960 The Cross of Cards
• 1960 Taoism
• 1962 This Is IT
• 1968 "Psychedelics & Religious Experience", in California Law Review (here)
• 1969 Why Not Now: The Art of Meditation
• 1971 A Conversation With Myself (part 1 part 2part 3)
• 1994 Zen: The Best of Alan Watts (VHS)
• 2005 Do You Do It, or Does It Do You?: how to let the universe meditate you (CD)
• 2007 Zen Meditations with Alan Watts, DVD, (here)

Biographical publications[link]

• Genuine Fake: a Biography of Alan Watts, by Monica Furlong, Published by Heinemann, 1986

Academic connections[link]

Saybrook University offers the only course on Watts in the United States and perhaps the world (HTP 3075: The Life of Alan Watts). Saybrook also has the only Watts academic chair in the world, which is held by Stanley Krippner, Executive Faculty Member.^{[citation needed]}

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Aitken, Robert. Original Dwelling Place. Counterpoint. Washington, D.C. 1997. ISBN 1-887178-41-4 (paperback)
• Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hard cover); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (paperback)
• Furlong, Monica, Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts Houghton Mifflin. New York. 1986 ISBN 0-395-45392-5, Skylight Paths 2001 edition of the biography, with new foreword by author: ISBN 1-893361-32-2
• Kapleau, Philip. Three Pillars of Zen (1967) Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-5975-7
• Stirling, Isabel. "Zen Pioneer: The Life & Works of Ruth Fuller Sasaki" Shoemaker & Hoard. 2006. ISBN 978-1-59376-110-3
• Watts, Alan, In My Own Way New York. Random House Pantheon. 1973 ISBN 0-394-46911-9 (his autobiography)

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alan Watts

• The Alan Watts Electronic University – Alan Watts audio and video courses, co-founded by Alan Watts, Mark Watts, and Henry Jacobs in 1973.
• Alan Watts Podcast – The official Podcast of Alan Watts
• Master Enlightenments Arts Seminars and Lectures by Alan Watts – Looking at many different forms of enlightenment – Recorded by Henry Jacobs in 1964/65 who set up the original Alan Watts radio network.
• Alan Watts Online – Project Unicorn (also via Archive.org)
• Works by or about Alan Watts in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Watts essay on Nothingness (This link no longer functions.)
• Alan Watts Lectures and Essays Audio, video, essays and articles – resources from deoxy.org
• Alan Watts' This Is IT: The First Psychedelic LP essay by Patrick Lundborg
• Alan Watts Resource Compilation A collection of audio and video links of Alan Watts lecture and essays
• Alan Watts on YouTube, South Park Interview with Mark Watts on the resurgence of his father's work
• watts.progressiveradionetwork.org Gary Nulls online station with Alan Watts show including some archived audio lectures.
• Alan Watts. The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Daniel Pipes
Born	(1949-09-09) September 9, 1949 (age 62) Boston, Massachusetts
Occupation	Political commentator; Distinguished Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy (Spring '07); Director of Middle East Forum; Expert at Wikistrat
Nationality	United States
Subjects	Middle East, Islamic terrorism, Islamism
Relative(s)	Richard Pipes (father)
www.danielpipes.org

Daniel Pipes (born September 9, 1949) is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal. His writing focuses on the American foreign policy, the Middle East, Islam and Islamism. He is also an Expert at Wikistrat.^[1]

After graduating with a PhD from Harvard and studying abroad, Pipes taught at a number of universities. He then served as director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, before founding the Middle East Forum. His 2003 nomination by U.S. President George W. Bush to the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace was protested by Democratic leaders, Arab-American groups, and civil rights activists, who cited his allegedly rightist views and oft-stated belief that force was the most effective remedy to conflict.^[2][3] The Bush administration sidestepped the opposition with a recess appointment.^[2]

Pipes has written or co-written more than a dozen books, and has written columns or opinion pieces for many newspapers. He frequently participates in discussion panels on television, and has lectured prolifically in the U.S. and abroad. He served as an adviser to Rudolph Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign.^[4] According to The New York Times: "Among his supporters, Mr. Pipes enjoys a heroic status; among his detractors, he is reviled."^[5] He is currently the Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.^[6]

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

The son of Irene (née Roth) and Richard Pipes, Daniel Pipes was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1949.^[7] His parents were Polish Jews who had each fled German-occupied Poland, and met in the United States.^[8] His father, Richard Pipes, was a historian at Harvard University, specializing in Russian and Soviet history, and Daniel Pipes grew up primarily in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Pipes attended the Harvard pre-school, then received a private school education, partly abroad. He enrolled in Harvard University, where his father was then still a professor, in the fall of 1967; for his first two years he studied mathematics, but has said: "I wasn't smart enough. So I chose to become a historian."^[9] He said he "found the material too abstract."^[10] He credits visits to the Sahara Desert in 1968 and the Sinai Desert in 1969 for piquing his interest in the Arabic language,^[9] and visits to Niger and Tunisia for piquing his interest in the Islamic world, and he changed his major to Middle East history.^[10] For the next two years Pipes studied Arabic and the Middle East, obtaining a B.A. in history in 1971; his senior thesis was titled A Medieval Islamic Debate: The World Created in Eternity, a study of Al-Ghazali.^[9] After graduating in 1971, Pipes spent nearly two years in Cairo. He learned Arabic and studied the Quran, which he states gave him an appreciation for Islam.^[10]

Career in academia[link]

Pipes returned to Harvard in 1973 and obtained a Ph.D. in medieval Islamic history^[7] in 1978. His Ph.D. dissertation eventually became his first book, Slave Soldiers and Islam, in 1981. He studied abroad for six years, three of which were spent in Egypt, where he wrote a book on colloquial Egyptian Arabic which was published in 1983. He switched his academic interest from medieval Islamic studies to modern Islam in the late 1970s.^[7]

He taught world history at the University of Chicago from 1978 to 1982, history at Harvard from 1983 to 1984, and policy and strategy at the Naval War College from 1984 to 1986. In 1983, Pipes served on the policy-planning staff at the State Department.^[11]

Post-academia[link]

Pipes largely retired from academia after 1986, though in 2007 he taught a course titled "International Relations: Islam and Politics" as a visiting professor at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy.^[12] Pipes told an interviewer from Harvard Magazine that he has "the simple politics of a truck driver, not the complex ones of an academic. My viewpoint is not congenial with institutions of higher learning.".^[9] His articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Latin.^[13]

From 1986 on, Pipes worked for various think tanks. From 1986 to 1993 he was director of the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) and editor of its journal, Orbis. In 1990 he organized the Middle East Forum as a unit of FPRI; it became an independent organization with himself as head. Pipes edits its journal, the Middle East Quarterly. In 2002, he established Campus Watch as a project of the Middle East Forum.

In 2003, President George W. Bush nominated Pipes for the board of the United States Institute of Peace. After a controversy including a filibuster by Democratic Senators,^[14] Pipes obtained the position by recess appointment.^[9]

Campus Watch[link]

Pipes' think tank the Middle East Forum established a website in 2002 called Campus Watch, which identified what it saw as five problems in the teaching of Middle Eastern studies at American universities: "analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students." According to the New York Times, Campus Watch is the project for which Pipes is "perhaps best known."^[5]

Through Campus Watch, Pipes encouraged students and faculty to submit information on "Middle East-related scholarship, lectures, classes, demonstrations, and other activities relevant to Campus Watch".^[15] The project was accused of "McCarthyesque intimidation" of professors who criticized Israel when it published "dossiers" on eight professors it thought "hostile" to America. In protest, more than 100 academics demanded to be added to what some called a "blacklist". In October 2002 Campus Watch removed the dossiers from their website.^{[16][17][18][19]}

Views on Islam and the Middle East[link]

Radical and moderate Islam[link]

Pipes has long expressed concern about what he calls the danger of "radical" or "militant Islam" to the Western world. In 1985, he wrote in Middle East Insight that "[t]he scope of the radical fundamentalist's ambition poses novel problems; and the intensity of his onslaught against the United States makes solutions urgent."^[20] In the fall 1995 issue of National Interest, he wrote: "Unnoticed by most Westerners, war has been unilaterally declared on Europe and the United States."^[21]

He wrote this in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing; investigative journalist Steven Emerson had said in the aftermath of the bombing that it bore a "Middle Eastern trait." Pipes agreed with Emerson and told USA Today that the United States was "under attack" and that Islamic fundamentalists "are targeting us."^[7] Four months before the September 11, 2001 attacks, Pipes and Emerson wrote in the Wall Street Journal that al Qaeda was "planning new attacks on the U.S." and that Iranian operatives "helped arrange advanced ... training for al Qaeda personnel in Lebanon where they learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings."^[22]

Pipes has written, "It’s a mistake to blame Islam, a religion 14 centuries old, for the evil that should be ascribed to militant Islam, a totalitarian ideology less than a century old. Militant Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution." ^[9][23] Pipes believes that moderate Muslims "constitute a very small movement", but a "brave"^{[citation needed]} one, which the U.S. government should "give priority to locating, meeting with, funding, forwarding, empowering, and celebrating".^[24]

Pipes has praised Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Turkey and the Sudanese thinker Mahmoud Mohamed Taha.^[25] In a September 2008 interview by Peter Robinson, Pipes stated that Muslims can be divided into three categories: "traditional Islam", which he sees as pragmatic and non-violent, "Islamism", which he sees as dangerous and militant, and "moderate Islam", which he sees as underground and not yet codified into a popular movement. He elaborated that he did not have the "theological background" to determine what group follows the Koran the closest and is truest to its intent.^[26]

Muslims in Europe[link]

In 1990, Pipes wrote in the National Review that "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." After these sentences "attracted controversy"^{[quantify][27]} Pipes, when reprinting the article on his website, said "my goal in it was to characterize the thinking of Western Europeans, not give my own views. In retrospect, I should either have put the words 'brown-skinned peoples' and 'strange foods' in quotation marks or made it clearer that I was explaining European attitudes rather than my own."^[28]

In response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Pipes wrote that the "key issue at stake" was whether the "West [would] stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech" and the "right to insult and blasphemy". He supported Robert Spencer's call to "stand resolutely with Denmark." He lauded Norway, Germany and France for their stance on the cartoons and freedom of speech, but criticized Poland, Britain, New Zealand and the United States for giving statements he interpreted as "wrongly apologizing."^[29]

Through his Middle East Forum, Pipes fund-raised for the Dutch politician Geert Wilders during his trial, according to NRC Handelsblad.^[30] Pipes himself praised Wilders in January 2010 as "the unrivaled leader of those Europeans who wish to retain their historic [European] identity.".^[31] However, in autumn 2010 Pipes called Wilders' political program in an interview "bizarre" and not to be taken too seriously.^[32]

Muslims in the United States[link]

According to The New York Times, Pipes has "enraged" many American Muslims by advocating that Muslims in government and military positions be given special attention as security risks and by opining that mosques are "breeding grounds for militants."^[33] In an article entitled "Japanese Internment: Why It Was a Good Idea--And the Lessons It Offers Today", Pipes endorsed a defense of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and linked the Japanese-American wartime situation to that of Muslim Americans today.^[34][35]

In October, 2001 Pipes said, before the convention of the American Jewish Congress. "I worry very much, from the Jewish point of view, that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims, because they are so much led by an Islamist leadership, that this will present true dangers to American Jews."^[36][37]

The New York Times cited Pipes as helping to lead the charge against Debbie Almontaser, a woman with a "longstanding reputation as a Muslim moderate" whom Pipes viewed as a representative of a pernicious new movement of "lawful Islamists." Almontaser resigned under pressure as principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy, an Arabic-language high school in New York City named after the famed Christian Arab-American poet. Pipes initially described the school as a "madrassa", which means school in Arabic but, in the West, carries the implication of Islamist teaching, though he later admitted that his use of the term had been "a bit of a stretch".^[5] Pipes explained his opposition: "It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the implementation of sharia. It is much easier to see how, working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — you can promote radical Islam."^[5] Pipes had also stated that “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.”^[5]

Pipes has criticized the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which he says is an "apologist" for Hezbollah and Hamas, and has a "roster of employees and board members connected to terrorism".^[38] CAIR, in turn, has written of Pipes that his "agenda-driven polemic... only serves to fan the flames of ignorance and prejudice. But perhaps that is his intent."^[39]

For his views on Islam and the Middle East, Pipes has attracted both condemnation and praise.

Support of Pipes' views[link]

Boston Globe Columnist Jeff Jacoby writes: "To hear his critics tell it, Pipes is an 'Islamophobe'", but in Jacoby's view, "these are gross and vicious libels."^[40]

Tashbih Sayyed, former editor of the Muslim World Today and the Pakistan Times, called Pipes "a Cassandra. He must be listened to. If there is no Daniel Pipes, there is no source for America to learn to recognize the evil which threatens it... Muslims in America that are like Samson; they have come into the temple to pull down the pillars, even if it means destroying themselves."^[9] Similarly, Ahmed Subhy Mansour, a former visiting fellow at Harvard Law School, writes, "We Muslims need a thinker like Dr. Pipes, who can criticize the terrorist culture within Islam."^[9]

Daniel C. Peterson, professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic, thinks positively of Daniel Pipes' works, that he is "a legitimate, well-trained scholar, and very bright." Peterson also worries about what he thinks is a campaign to blacken and marginalize Daniel Pipes, because "if he’s wrong, that should be demonstrated with evidence and analysis, not by name-calling."^[41]

Criticism of Pipes' views[link]

In The Nation, Brooklyn writer Kristine McNeil describes Pipes as an "anti-Arab propagandist" who has built a career out of "distortions... twist[ing] words, quot[ing] people out of context and stretch[ing] the truth to suit his purpose."^[19] James Zogby argues that Pipes possesses an "obsessive hatred of all things Muslim", and that "Pipes is to Muslims what David Duke is to African-Americans". Christopher Hitchens, a fellow supporter of the Iraq War and critic of political Islam, has also criticized Pipes, arguing that Pipes pursues an intolerant agenda, "confuses scholarship with propaganda", and "pursues petty vendettas with scant regard for objectivity." ^[42]

Pipes's views gained widespread public attention when they triggered a filibuster in the United States Senate against his nomination by President George W. Bush to the board of the United States Institute of Peace.^[14] Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) explained that he was "offended" by Pipes's comments on Islam, and that while "some people call [Pipes] a scholar... this is not the kind of person you want on the USIP."^[43] While defending Pipes's nomination, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer distanced Bush from Pipes's views, saying that Bush "disagrees with Pipes about whether Islam is a peaceful religion."^[33]

In addition, Pipes sparked a controversy when he was invited to speak at the University of Toronto in March 2005. A letter from professors, staff and students asserted that Pipes had a "long record of xenophobic, racist and sexist speech that goes back to 1990."^[44] but university officials said they would not interfere with Pipes's visit.^[45] Pipes would later write an article recollecting his experience with the incident at the University of Toronto.^[46]

Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times compared and contrasted Pipes with Juan Cole. Kristof said that while both are "smart" and "well-informed", Pipes is less sensible, and consequently Kristof often disagrees with Pipes.^[47]

Professor John L. Esposito of Georgetown University has called Pipes "a bright, well-trained expert with considerable experience", but accuses Pipes of "selectivity and distortion" when asserting that "10 to 15 percent of the world's Muslims are militants". Esposito writes that Pipes' methodology "is as legitimate as equating all American Jews who have emigrated to Israel with Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the American physician who emigrated to Israel and later slaughtered some 25 Muslims at prayer in the Hebron mosque. Pipes knows much better."^[48]

Allegations against Barack Obama[link]

On his own website and in articles for The Jerusalem Post, Pipes claimed that Barack Obama was a former Muslim.^[49] He alleged that Obama falsely claims that he had never been a Muslim, and that "the campaign appears to be either ignorant or fabricating when it states that Obama never prayed in a mosque."^[50] Pipes wrote an article for FrontPage Magazine entitled "Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam." According to Pipes, "this matters" because Democratic presidential candidate Obama "is now what Islamic law calls a murtadd (apostate), an ex-Muslim converted to another religion who must be executed", and as president this would have "large potential implications for his relationship with the Muslim world."^[51] The progressive^[52] media watchdog group Media Matters for America described Pipes' article as promoting a "falsehood".^[53] Ben Smith, in an article on The Politico responded to these accusations claiming that they amounted to a "template for a faux-legitimate assault on Obama's religion" and that Daniel Pipes' work "is pretty stunning in the twists of its logic".^[54]

On a program on the Fox News Network, Pipes claimed that scholar Rashid Khalidi was an employee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, at the time when the United States government designated the PLO as a 'terrorist organization', and that Barack Obama had alleged "financial ties" with Khalidi and that Khalidi hosted a fundraiser for Obama.^[55]

Views on US foreign policy[link]

Pipes was a firm supporter of the Vietnam War, and when his fellow students occupied the Harvard administration building to protest it in the 1960s, he sided with the administration.^[7] Pipes had previously considered himself to be a Democrat, but after anti-war George McGovern gained the 1972 Democratic nomination for President, he switched to the Republican Party.^[7] Pipes used to accept being described as a "neoconservative", once saying that "others see me that way, and, you know, maybe I am one of them."^[56][57] However, he explicitly rejected the label in April 2009 due to differences with the neoconservative positions on democracy and Iraq, now considering himself a "plain conservative".^[56]

Europe[link]

On July 16, 2002, Pipes wrote in The New York Post that the differences between the United States and Europeans over the coming invasion of Iraq represented a part of a long term shift rather than a temporary event. He argued that differences were "likely to grow with time" and that "Americans need pay it less and less attention" while instead looking "increasingly to countries outside Europe... for meaningful military alliances."^[58]

Iraq[link]

In 1987, Pipes encouraged the United States to provide Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with upgraded weapons and intelligence to counterbalance Iran's successes in the Iran–Iraq War.^[59] He wrote that "Iraq has a history of anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, support for terrorism, and friendliness toward the Soviet Union", but "If our tilt toward Iraq is reciprocated, moreover, it could lay the basis for fruitful relationship in the longer term."^[60] After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Pipes remarked that he still stands by his recommendation, comparing it to the United States' temporary alliance with Joseph Stalin during World War II. He has debated this view with Philosophy Professor Irfan Khawaja via the History News Network.^[61]

In April 1991, when a debate was raging about the desirability of a U.S. intervention against the Saddam Hussein regime, Pipes wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the prospect of U.S. forces occupying Iraq, "with Schwartzkopf Pasha ruling from Baghdad": "It sounds romantic, but watch out. Like the Israelis in southern Lebanon nine years ago, American troops would find themselves quickly hated, with Shi'as taking up suicide bombing, Kurds resuming their rebellion, and the Syrian and Iranian governments plotting new ways to sabotage American rule. Staying in place would become too painful, leaving too humiliating."^[62]

In 2002 and 2003, Pipes was a strong backer of the Iraq War, saying that Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent threat" to the United States.^[7] In a New York Post article published April 8, 2003, Pipes expressed his opposition to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's concerned prediction that "[the] war [in Iraq] will have horrible consequences.... Terrorism will be aggravated.... Terrorist organizations will be united.... Everything will be insecure." Though this concern was echoed by various other politicians and academics cited by Pipes in his article, Pipes argued that "the precise opposite is more likely to happen: The war in Iraq will lead to a reduction in terrorism." Pipes has since admitted in response to the latter statement that, "Mubarak got this one right and I got it wrong. It could have been otherwise, but the too-close involvement of the coalition troops in Iraq has spurred Muslim anger and fostered more terrorism."^[63]

Pipes has criticized the policies of the occupation of Iraq. He called for "a third position" of "Iraqification" (in reference to Vietnamization). He advocated "getting foreigners quickly out of the business of running Iraq... that elections be delayed and that authority be turned over to a democratically minded Iraqi strongman."^[64] He also stated that "I think it is possible and necessary at times to go to war without taking responsibility for the country that you make war on."^[57]

Arab-Israeli conflict[link]

Pipes is a supporter of Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict and an opponent of a Palestinian state. He wrote in Commentary in April 1990 that "there can be either an Israel or a Palestine, but not both... to those who ask why the Palestinians must be deprived of a state, the answer is simple: grant them one and you set in motion a chain of events that will lead either to its extinction or the extinction of Israel."^[65] Pipes has proposed a Three state solution to the conflict, in which Gaza would be given to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan.^[66]

In September 2008, he said, "Palestinians do not accept the existence of a Jewish state. Until that change, I don't see any point in having any kind of negotiations whatsoever." He also described the Israeli public as focused on a mistaken policy that he considers to be "appeasement".^[26]

Iran[link]

Pipes currently advocates that U.S. President Barack Obama "give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity ... The time to act is now."^[67] He claims that "circumstances are propitious" for the US to initiate a bombing of Iran, and that "no one other than the Iranian rulers and their agents denies that the regime is rushing headlong to build a large nuclear arsenal." He further states that a unilateral US bombing of Iran "would require few 'boots on the ground' and entail relatively few casualties, making an attack more politically palatable."^[67]

Pipes' opposition to Iran is long-standing. In 1980, Pipes wrote that "Iran made the transition to a post-oil economy. It is the only major oil exporter to abandon the heady billions and return to live by its own means."^[68] Pipes was critical of the Reagan administration for its role in the Iran-Contra affair, writing that "American actions also helped to legitimize other kinds of help for, and capitulation to, the Ayatollah."^[60]

Pipes has previously advocated that the U.S. "unleash" the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) against Iran.^[69] Though MEK is listed as a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union, Canada, Iraq and Iran,^[70] Pipes describes this listing as a "sop to the mullahs". He writes, "the MEK poses no danger to Americans or Europeans, and has not for decades. It does pose a danger to the malign, bellicose theocratic regime in Tehran."^[69]

Saudi Arabia[link]

Pipes believes that Saudi Arabia is neither a "friend" nor a "foe" of the United States, but a "rival".^[71]

Pipes believes that what he views as Saudi Arabia's "massive implication in the death of 3,000 Americans on 9/11... is reason for the victims and their families to consider suing it for compensation."^[72]

Awards and honors[link]

• On March 11, 2006, Pipes was awarded the "Free Speech Award" from the Danish organisation Free Press Society of 2004 (Trykkefrihedsselkabet af 2004).^[73]
• In 2003, Pipes was awarded an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University.^[74]
• In May 2006, Pipes received the Guardian of Zion Award by Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.^[75]

Books and policy papers[link]

• Miniatures: Views of Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics (2003), Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0-7658-0215-5
• Militant Islam Reaches America (2002), W.W. Norton & Company; paperback (2003) ISBN 0-393-32531-8
• with Abdelnour, Z. (2000), Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role Middle East Forum, ISBN 0-9701484-0-2
• In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power (2002), Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0-7658-0981-8
• Muslim immigrants in the United States (Backgrounder) (2002), Center for Immigration Studies
• The Long Shadow: Culture and Politics in the Middle East (1999), Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0-88738-220-7
• The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (1997), Palgrave Macmillan; paperback (1998) ISBN 0-312-17688-0
• Conspiracy : How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From (1997), Touchstone; paperback (1999) ISBN 0-684-87111-4
• Syria Beyond the Peace Process (Policy Papers, No. 41) (1995), Washington Institute for Near East Policy, ISBN 0-944029-64-7
• Sandstorm (1993), Rowman & Littlefield, paperback (1993) ISBN 0-8191-8894-8
• Damascus Courts the West: Syrian Politics, 1989–1991 (Policy Papers, No. 26) (1991), Washington Institute for Near East Policy, ISBN 0-944029-13-2
• with Garfinkle, A. (1991), Friendly Tyrants: An American Dilemma Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 0-312-04535-2
• From a distance: Influencing foreign policy from Philadelphia (The Heritage lectures) (1991), Heritage Foundation, ASIN B0006DGHE4
• The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West (1990), Transaction Publishers, paperback (2003) ISBN 0-7658-0996-6
• Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition (1990), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-506021-0
• An Arabist's guide to Colloquial Egyptian (1983), Foreign Service Institute
• Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System (1981), Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-02447-9

See also[link]

	United States portal
	Biography portal
	Middle East portal

• From Time Immemorial

References[link]