In Monday’s New York Times, Andrea Elliott traces the controversy raging around the Brooklyn-based Khalil Gibran International Academy to its source: Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum and outspoken opponent of Muslim culture in the U.S. The Academy’s principal, Debbie Almontaser, was forced to resign last August after the media, led by the New York Post, characterized her as an Islamic extremist.

The Academy, which was to implement the first Arabic as a Second Language curriculum in a New York public school, upset Pipes from the beginning, as he documents on his blog. He has argued that Arabic language instruction inevitably leads to political indoctrination and called the Khalil Gibran Academy a madrassa—a label which, he later admitted to Elliott, was “a bit of a stretch” and a way to “get attention” for his cause.

Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg, who wrote a book about Jewish and Muslim fundamentalism called The End of Days, blogs:

Besides the absolute rigidity of thinking this reflects, the utter failure to understand varieties of thought within a religion, the bigotry, and the incomprehension of the dynamics of religious responses to modern culture, Pipes is also rather dangerous to Jews.”

The article has attracted newfound attention to Pipes, who was also the subject of a recent New Yorker article that focused on the battle over tenure for Columbia professor Nadia Abu El-Haj.

Pipes is not without supporters, some of whom are to be found among the hundreds of commentators responding to the Times article: “From the comments I have read, it shows how an article can be slanted to favor the so called ‘victim’. Blame the critics instead like Daniel Pipes who has laid out a plausible case against Jihadism education.”