Sociologist Christopher Bail may have a Harvard PhD and a position at Duke. But in his new book, Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Fringe Organizations Became Mainstream, he demonstrates that he hasn’t a clue about an alleged “anti-Muslim fringe” and “mainstream Muslim-Americans,” according to MEF president Daniel Pipes. In fact, “Notwithstanding all [of Bail’s] training, the youthful professor makes an elementary and monumental error: He mixes up the fringe and the mainstream, thinking the one is the other, and the other, the one.” Pipes’s devastating critique of Bail’s work appeared on 9/11/16 at the History News Network. A sample of Bail’s confusion:
Conversely, what Bail calls “mainstream Muslim-Americans” are decidedly not mainstream but Islamist, seeking to create a worldwide caliphate, replace the U.S. Constitution with the Koran, and impose a medieval law on Americans. Utilizing various degrees of subterfuge, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council the share goals with Hezbullah, Hamas, and Boko Haram. The FBI broke ties with CAIR in 2009. The UAE government listed CAIR as a terrorist group in 2014, along with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS. Some mainstream.
