An excerpt from anarchist ideologue Stuart Christie's journal, 'Arena Two: Noir Fiction' can now be seen on the bizarre right-wing web page and blog of the 'Center for Islamic Pluralism.' 

An excerpt from anarchist ideologue Stuart Christie's journal, 'Arena Two: Noir Fiction' can now be seen on the bizarre right-wing web page and blog of the 'Center for Islamic Pluralism.' 

   http://www.islamicpluralism.org/documents/1545.pdf  

The 'Center for Islamic Pluralism' is a pro-war personal project of 'Arena Two: Noir Fiction' contributor and long-time neo-conservative war propagandist Stephen Schwartz.    An excerpt from the article below illustrates the role of this latest in a long series of weird endeavors by the endlessly bizarre Stephen Schwartz in service to the foreign policy goals of the United States government.   The article can be found at:  

http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/stephen_schwartz_center_on_islamic_pluralism/0018441  

Stephen Schwartz and the Center on Islamic Pluralism by Sheila Musaji
Stephen Schwartz is the Director of the Center on Islamic Pluralism (CIP), and was a Senior Fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.    In 2003 it was reported that Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum was seeking support to form a progressive Islamic institute that would represent liberal Muslims living in the United States.  Pipes sent out a request to various foundations across the United States to raise funds for a proposed Islamic Progress Institute.   At that time, I wrote an article Daniel Pipes the New Voice of Moderate Islam?  in which I said in part

And, now, the neo-cons have a new strategy in their War on Islam which is to subvert ignorant and naive Muslims. This strategy was first announced by Paul Wolfowitz a year ago.  Then Front Page began what they said would be a series of articles with "A Troubling Influence" by Frank Gaffney,  followed by "Ford Has A Better Idea: One Nation Under Allah"  by Alyssa Lappen which attacked specific individuals who represent a wide spectrum of ideologies.  Daniel Pipes also published an article "Do You Believe in Modernity?" in which he includes a series of questions to use to test whether a Muslim is a moderate or not.    A UPI article recently announced that Daniel Pipes and Stephen Schwartz are seeking major funding for their two organizations to speak on behalf of "REFORMED MUSLIMS".  "Pipes Forming Islamic Institute" .  There we have it, the neo-con agenda discovered and described in Jim Lobe's excellent article,  "Neocons Seek Islamic Reform".

In April of 2005, I added an update to this article which stated that

On March 25, 2005 Daniel Pipes announced on his website the opening of the Center on Islamic Pluralism, directed by Stephen Schwartz - the name has changed from the original Islamic Progress Institute but the cast of characters remains the same.  The Center for Islamic Pluralism also opened a website and issued a press release calling itself a "platform for moderate Muslims in North America."  Schwartz also wrote an article entitled "The Battle for Islam is Joined" published, of course on Front Page.

Also in 2003, Schwartz testified at a U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security hearing on the topic of "Wahhabism and Islam in the United States".  In this testimony he stated the unfounded claim that At the present time, Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslim community leaders estimate that 80 percent of American mosques - out of a total ranging between an official estimate of 1,200 and an unofficial figure of 4-6,000 - are under Wahhabi control.   Schwartz himself identified the source of this claim The same influences are brought to bear throughout the ten-million-strong Muslim community in America, as well as those in Europe. In the US, 80 percent of mosques are estimated by the Sufi Hisham al-Kabbani, born in Lebanon and now living in the US, to be under the control of Wahhabi imams, who preach extremism."   Schwartz has involved himself in just about every Islamophobic cause over the years.  He says he is a Muslim, and we have to take him at his word.  He wrote an article Coming to Islam which is published on a Naqshbandi site.  In that article he says "Then I met Shaykh Hisham of the Naqshbandi order, and, within weeks, had made shehadeh, hamdilullah.'  He is referring to Shaykh Hisham Kabbani.  He has identified himself as a Sunni-Hanafi Muslim, and as a Sufi.  He also uses the name Sulayman Ahmed.  However, like Zuhdi Jasser and a few others, some of his opinions and associations are very puzzling.  He has attacked just about every mainstream Muslim leader and organization.  Anti-Wahhabism and anti-Salafism are the focus of much of his work.  The problem is that anyone who doesn't agree with him completely gets branded with these designations. In 2006 Schwartz posted an article attacking Hamza Yusuf.  Sidi Aftab Ahmad Malik wrote an excellent response which included this paragraph

My immediate response is to question why Schwartz has searched out this reference (of questionable accuracy) to denounce Hamza Yusuf. Why does he go to such pains to try to convince his readership that Yusuf is an extremist who does not speak for the majority of Muslims? The implication of course, is that Schwartz is a moderate Muslim (struggling for plurality) and in fact speaks for the majority of mainstream Muslims. In fact, Schwartz has a long record of denouncing other Muslims as either being Islamists, Jihadists, or Wahhabis-all words that the public has been taught to "understand" represent three incarnations of everything evil in the world today. While the reality remains that many Americans still cannot make sense of Islam, Schwartz's simplistic articles only offer a dangerous black and white view of a complex landscape. I find it astonishing that Schwartz, the executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism cannot even recognize the plurality within the Muslim community itself, and rather than acknowledge this, he demarcates disperse communities into moderates versus extremists..."  

Also of interest here:   The Anarchist Stuart Christie and His Very Peculiar Literary Bedfellow, the Neo-Conservative War Propagandist Stephen Schwartz:   http://interactivist.autonomedia.org/node/21023   Kevin Keating San Francisco