MANY MUSLIMS received the news that the White House had nominated scholar Daniel Pipes to, of all places, the U.S. Institute of Peace as sort of a cruel joke. The institute is a quasi-governmental think tank dedicated to international "peace and conflict resolution"; one of its latest projects is the Special Initiative on the Muslim World, begun after Sept. 11, 2001, as a bridge between cultures. Mr. Pipes has long been regarded by Muslims as a destroyer of such bridges. And it takes only a glimpse at the latest column posted on his Web site to see why. The column, written for the New York Post, is about Hasan K. Akbar, the U.S. soldier in Kuwait charged with throwing a grenade at his fellow soldiers: "No one yet knows Akbar's motives, but ignoring that it fits into a sustained pattern of political violence by American Muslims amounts to willful self-deception. When will officialdom acknowledge what is staring it in the face?"[...]