Pipes is known for opposing the roadmap and the Oslo peace accords

WASHINGTON, August  23 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Bypassing the U.S. Senate, now in recess, President George Bush appointed an outspoken anti-Muslim scholar, Daniel Pipes, to the board of a government-funded think-tank, the U.S. Institute of Peace which concentrates on foreign policy.

The appointment was strongly opposed by Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee who had forced a delay to the vote.

Bush exploited the Congress summer recess to avoid a congressional vote on his selection, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

But as a recess appointment, Pipes will serve less than 18 months rather than the normal four years.

The appointment has outraged American Muslims and Arabs, liberal Jews and a large portion of the academic community, who say his opinions are not conducive to peace, reported the Guardian Saturday, August 23.

Muslim groups have been campaigning against Pipes since he was first nominated in April, citing his long history of anti-Islam stances.

Scores of Muslim Americans were urged to contact the White House and their representatives to voice their disapproval over Pipes’ nomination.

Moral Victory

In a statement Friday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said: "While a defeat for democracy, the President's backdoor appointment of Daniel Pipes is a moral victory for the tens of thousands of American Muslims, Arab-Americans, Christians, Jews, and civil rights activists who contacted the White House and the Senate since the nomination was announced in April."

The civil rights group maintained that by such a decision, Bush "acknowledges that Pipes' nomination would have been turned down by the Senate, despite that body's Republican majority."

CAIR also asserted that "the most positive by-product of the campaign was the creation of a broad coalition of religious, ethnic, and civil liberties groups that will last long after Pipes takes his seat on the USIP board."

In a faxed letter to USIP President Richard Solomon Tuesday, April 7, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad warned that "no credible Muslim leader in the U.S. or around the world could cooperate with an organization in which Pipes has a decision-making role."

He stressed "it would be extremely difficult for Muslim representatives to take part in USIP's Special Initiative on the Muslim World if Pipes joined the board."

Awad charged that instead of "increasing the prospects for long-term understanding between the Western and Islamic worlds, Pipes' bigoted views have been instrumental in widening the divide between faiths and cultures."

Biased

As a frequent commentator, Pipes has warned that America's Muslims were the enemy within and called for unrestricted racial profiling and monitoring of Muslims in the military, wrote the Guardian.

He claimed Muslim American government employees in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps "need to be watched for connections to terrorism."

Pipes also alleged that "mosques require a scrutiny beyond that applied to churches and temples."

He is the founder of Campus Watch, a group devoted to monitoring what it calls pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli bias in U.S. universities.

Pipes has also clashed with fellow scholars, who say his Campus Watch website has initiated a witch-hunt against those he views as critics of Israel or lacking in patriotic zeal, said the British daily.

He opposes the roadmap for the Middle East , as he opposed the Oslo peace accords, and objected to efforts to reform the Palestinian Authority, it added.

Pipes has been quoted as saying that "Palestinians are a miserable people...and they deserve to be."