It was 2002 when Daniel Pipes gave his theory that not poverty but wealth or affluence was the cause of militancy in Islam. And within three years he has been disproved, at least by the example of Bangladesh, where, in Mr. Ahsan's words, "if you dig a hole anywhere (in Bangladesh), some Islamic militant is likely to pop out."

How could it happen? The socio-economic condition has not improved, poor Bangladesh has not become rich in last three years. Neither Iranian people, Iraqi insurgents, the Sudanese, the Indonesians, the Pakistanis, or the Chechens became richer over the last few years. Then why the rise of militant Islam around the world?

Mr. Ahsan's article did not provoke me to argue with Daniel Pipes' claim that poverty does not cause militant Islam but affluence does. I only intend to look into the context of his thesis. But before that we should know a little about the person's background who seemed to be so convincing to our fellow columnist.

Daniel Pipes is that notorious American 'Middle East expert' who maintains that the only solution to Middle East conflict is the final military victory of Israel over the Palestinian people. He wrote in April 1990: 'There can be either Israel or a Palestine, but not both. To think that two states can stably and peacefully coexist in the small territory between Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is to be either naive or duplicitous. If the last seventy years teach anything, it is that there can be only one state west of the Jordan River. Therefore, 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.'

Daniel Pipes is director of the 'Middle East Forum', a Philadelphia-based pro-Israel think tank, and well known as an anti-Arab propagandist. His personal web site www.danielpipes.org is maintained by an Israeli settler named Grayson Levy, and this Grayson Levy has a personal media project called YeashaNews, where he writes and circulates such words: 'The time has come to formally recognise that there is no Palestinian people, they have never existed, they are a figment of our imagination, the fruit of years of Arafat deceit. The so-called Palestinians are Arabs, who have nothing more in common than their language and religion. They have never had a homeland, and certainly not in Eretz Yisrael. Search in history books from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, even 70s and fine references to the Palestinian people. They will not be found, because they do not exist.'

In addition to running Middle East Forum Daniel Pipes started an Internet site called Campus Watch, and this Campus Watch posted what it calls 'dossiers' on eight American professors and scholars who criticised US foreign policy and the Israeli occupation. In fact, Danel's Campus Watch is a 'witch hunter' in American academic world and is a showcase for the signature distortions on which Pipes built his twenty-five-year career, Daniel Pipes twists words, quotes people out of context and stretches the truth to suit his purpose. Known as one of the most notorious Muslim-haters and Islamophobe, Daniel Pipes claimed in an article in 2002 that more than half of all rapists in Denmark were Muslims, and Danish politicians Elisabeth Arnold Elisabeth Gerner protested him in the National Post, 9/6/02 saying that it was a baseless claim, as criminal registers in Denmark did not record religious identity.

Daniel's hatred for Arabs and Muslims is surpassed by his hatred for the religion of Islam. He even questioned the origins of Quran, and questioned whether Prophet Mohammad ever existed. He wrote in 2000 in the Jerusalem Post, "The Quran is not a product of Mohammad or even of Arabia' but a collection of the earlier Judeo-Christian liteurgicals stitched together to meet the needs of later age... A few scholars go even further, doubting even the existence of Mohammad."

According to Pipes, the journey of Prophet Mohammad from Mecca to Jerusalem at the night of Miraj never occurred. In an article in Los Angeles Times he wrote, The Prophet Mohammad never went to the city, nor did he have ties to it... (7.21.2000). Pipes claims that Muslims have no real religious attachments to the city of Jerusalem.

Pipes in fact goes further to advocate ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. He is a ferocious contributor to the web site of Gamla, an organisation founded by former Israeli military officers and settlers that endorses the ethnic cleansing of every Palestinian as 'the only solution' to Arab-Israel conflict. He wrote in 2001 in The National Post: "Israel needs to take more active steps. Bury suicide bombers in potter's fields rather than deliver their bodies to relatives (who turn their funerals into frenzied demonstrations)... permit no transportation of people or goods beyond basic necessities. Shut off utilities to the Palestine Authority... Raze the PA's illegal offices in Jerusalem, its security infrastructure and villages from which attacks are launched."

A bigot Muslim-hater and a cruel Zionist like Daniel Pipes.. cannot make any objective analysis of the Muslim mind and its behaviour. Daniel's theory that not poverty but wealth causes militancy in Islam is not a dispassionate, aloof scientific assumption. Rather he seems to have a hidden agendum behind it. His main target is the American Muslim population who, unlike Asian Muslims, enjoy a kind of socio-economic solvency, if not affluence. He has been trying to persuade American policy makers that the Muslim community living and growing in America is a real threat to the Jewish community. On a radical pro-Israel web site, Pipes claimed that 'as the population of Muslims in the United States grows, so does anti-Semitism.' (http://freeman.io.com/m-online/jan98/pipes.htm)

Pipes does not limit this claim to Arab Muslim alone. He wrote that 'Iranians and Pakistanis, to take two groups of non-Arabs, are at least as widely conspiracy-minded and as anti-Semitic as, say, Tunisians and Kuwaitis.' (Commentary, 9.1.99). Pipes' hatred for the African-American Muslims is even stronger; he wrote, "black converts tend to hold vehemently anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic attitudes." (Commentary, 6.1.2000).

Daniel Pipes believes that there is an international Islamist conspiracy, which aims not to destroy America but to subjugate it. He has no doubt that the Islamists want to create a Muslim state in America. They can be successful to do so by growing in number and by sharing the material affluence of American society. Daniel Pipes spoke before the convention of the American Jewish Congress in 2001: "I worry very much from the Jewish point of view that the presence and increased stature and affluence and enfranchisement of American Muslims.... will present true dangers to American Jews."

Whether poverty causes militancy in Islam or affluence does it might be a very pertinent question in this age of growing 'Islamic terrorism', and one might of course find some arguments to spare poverty and blame affluence. But Daniel Pipes is not a right source of reference or scholastic evidence because he is a Hater. Hatred is bad because it destroys intellectual judgment. American policy makers do not seem to be convinced by Daniel Pipes either because they are well aware of people like him, whose views are considered dangerous not only for the ethnic harmony of American society, but for Israel also.

Mashiul Alam is a journalist and fiction writer.