To Stop Radicalization, the French Need More Fraternité
Excerpts:
"Many French Muslims have no feeling of ownership or belonging toward their homeland. They use France as long as needed to live, become educated and take care of their families, but it is a transactional relationship. France may be less repressive and may offer more opportunities than their native or ancestral Arab homelands, but many of them have no real stake in French society. Like the driver who rents a car but cares little about its long-term condition, they make little investment and have minimal loyalty to the country. It is no coincidence that more French citizens have traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State, or ISIS, than citizens of any other European nation."
"As France and other European nations begin a justified crackdown to identify and arrest other terrorists before they strike, they also need to look at the soft side of fighting terrorism, addressing the humiliation that citizens feel that can lead them to radicalization. This means not declaring war on Muslim citizens or refugees within their borders, even if doing so may feed an immediate political purpose or satisfy a thirst for revenge. Instead, the fight requires openly embracing Muslims, some of whom have been French for two or three generations, as full citizens of France to directly address the issues of alienation and disenfranchisement. In the wake of last week’s carnage in Paris, revenge is easy. Changing a culture will be difficult."
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/opini ... d=71987722
Walied Shater, a security consultant, was an agent with the United States Secret Service from 1995 to 2007.
ISLAM IN EUROPE
The Joy of ISIS
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/1 ... isis/?_r=0
Excerpt:
And yet: If you don’t recognize that for at least some of the Islamic State’s young volunteers there is a feeling of joy and celebration involved in joining up, then you’re a very long way from understanding the caliphate’s remarkable appeal. And Oates, in a daffy-seeming way, has put her finger on one of the West’s weaknesses in this conflict: Our widespread inability (concentrated in particular among our leadership class) to imagine or understand what else, beyond the pull of sadism and thuggery, our fellow human beings (including quite a few young, Western-raised people) seem to find intoxicating about the Daesh experiment.
Via Rod Dreher, who’s been writing a great deal on this theme, here’s an excerpt from a New York Review of Books piece by Scott Atran and Nafees Hamid, discussing the, yes, joyous and celebratory feelings that the Islamic state’s religious utopianism instills in people cut adrift by secular modernity:
France’s Center for the Prevention of Sectarian Drift Related to Islam (CPDSI) estimates that 90 percent of French citizens who have radical Islamist beliefs have French grandparents and 80 percent come from non-religious families. In fact, most Europeans who are drawn into jihad are “born again” into radical religion by their social peers. In France, and in Europe more generally, more than three of every four recruits join the Islamic State together with friends, while only one in five do so with family members and very few through direct recruitment by strangers. Many of these young people identify with neither the country their parents come from nor the country in which they live. Other identities are weak and non-motivating. One woman in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois described her conversion as being like that of a transgender person who opts out of the gender assigned at birth: “I was like a Muslim trapped in a Christian body,” she said. She believed she was only able to live fully as a Muslim with dignity in the Islamic State.
For others who have struggled to find meaning in their lives, ISIS is a thrilling cause and call to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends, and through friends, eternal respect and remembrance in the wider world that many of them will never live to enjoy …
And here are the same authors on the gap between this vivid conversion experience and the feeble Western attempts to talk ISIS recruits out of their newfound cause:
In its feckless “Think Again Turn Away” social media program, the US State Department has tried to dissuade youth with mostly negative anonymous messaging. “So DAESH wants to build a future, well is beheading a future you want, or someone controlling details of your diet and dress?” Can anyone not know that already? Does it really matter to those drawn to the cause despite, or even because of, such things? As one teenage girl from a Chicago suburb retorted to FBI agents who stopped her from flying to Syria: “Well, what about the barrel bombings that kill thousands? Maybe if the beheading helps to stop that.” And for some, strict obedience provides freedom from uncertainty about what a good person is to do.
By contrast, the Islamic State may spend hundreds of hours trying to enlist single individuals and groups of friends, empathizing instead of lecturing …
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/1 ... isis/?_r=0
Excerpt:
And yet: If you don’t recognize that for at least some of the Islamic State’s young volunteers there is a feeling of joy and celebration involved in joining up, then you’re a very long way from understanding the caliphate’s remarkable appeal. And Oates, in a daffy-seeming way, has put her finger on one of the West’s weaknesses in this conflict: Our widespread inability (concentrated in particular among our leadership class) to imagine or understand what else, beyond the pull of sadism and thuggery, our fellow human beings (including quite a few young, Western-raised people) seem to find intoxicating about the Daesh experiment.
Via Rod Dreher, who’s been writing a great deal on this theme, here’s an excerpt from a New York Review of Books piece by Scott Atran and Nafees Hamid, discussing the, yes, joyous and celebratory feelings that the Islamic state’s religious utopianism instills in people cut adrift by secular modernity:
France’s Center for the Prevention of Sectarian Drift Related to Islam (CPDSI) estimates that 90 percent of French citizens who have radical Islamist beliefs have French grandparents and 80 percent come from non-religious families. In fact, most Europeans who are drawn into jihad are “born again” into radical religion by their social peers. In France, and in Europe more generally, more than three of every four recruits join the Islamic State together with friends, while only one in five do so with family members and very few through direct recruitment by strangers. Many of these young people identify with neither the country their parents come from nor the country in which they live. Other identities are weak and non-motivating. One woman in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois described her conversion as being like that of a transgender person who opts out of the gender assigned at birth: “I was like a Muslim trapped in a Christian body,” she said. She believed she was only able to live fully as a Muslim with dignity in the Islamic State.
For others who have struggled to find meaning in their lives, ISIS is a thrilling cause and call to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends, and through friends, eternal respect and remembrance in the wider world that many of them will never live to enjoy …
And here are the same authors on the gap between this vivid conversion experience and the feeble Western attempts to talk ISIS recruits out of their newfound cause:
In its feckless “Think Again Turn Away” social media program, the US State Department has tried to dissuade youth with mostly negative anonymous messaging. “So DAESH wants to build a future, well is beheading a future you want, or someone controlling details of your diet and dress?” Can anyone not know that already? Does it really matter to those drawn to the cause despite, or even because of, such things? As one teenage girl from a Chicago suburb retorted to FBI agents who stopped her from flying to Syria: “Well, what about the barrel bombings that kill thousands? Maybe if the beheading helps to stop that.” And for some, strict obedience provides freedom from uncertainty about what a good person is to do.
By contrast, the Islamic State may spend hundreds of hours trying to enlist single individuals and groups of friends, empathizing instead of lecturing …
Terror From Europe's Future Street
The family of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of the Paris attacks, lived on Future Street in Brussels. Theirs was a “spacious if shabby corner home,” my colleagues, Andrew Higgins and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, write. Abaaoud’s parents, Moroccan immigrants to Belgium, had done well enough.
The Rue de l’Avenir, or Future Street, was supposed to lead to a decent European life, not veer off to Syria and the apocalyptic universe of the Islamic State. Future Street, a place of opportunity for the industrious, was what the Turkish and Moroccan and Algerian immigrants coming to Europe from the 1960s onward sought.
Abaaoud, son of Brussels, was not poor, not stupid, not marginalized. He was on the ladder before he stepped off into a zigzagging life between Syria and Europe. He attended for a year an exclusive Catholic School, the Collège Saint-Pierre d’Uccle. I lived in Uccle between 1980 and 1982. Europe does not get much more leafy or placid than that.
But Future Street, so luminous a half-century ago during the great postwar European recovery — what the French call “Les Trente Glorieuses” (or the 30 glorious years) — has become a much more ambiguous place. It is now situated, thanks to technology, between homeland and adopted land in the jangling, borderless, cacophonous space of modern civilization.
A bad economy is not what flips young Muslims off Future Street onto the road to Raqqa. It’s the humiliation of purposelessness. It’s a quest for respect. It’s laying the burden of choice to rest through a subsuming mission against the “decadent” West. It’s the discovery of a plausible flight from ambivalent modernity to the Caliphate’s zealous strictures.
Abaaoud, killed by French security forces in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, joins all the other sons (mainly sons) who could not abide the future despite comfortable circumstances and opted to take refuge from it in the all-resolving ideology of jihadist violence. He joins Mohamed Atta and Faisal Shahzad and Michael Adebolajo, plotters and perpetrators from New York to London who did not come from poverty or social exclusion.
Atta, who took the first plane into the North Tower, and Shahzad, who plotted mayhem at Times Square, and Adebolajo, who killed a British soldier with a knife and machete on a London street, placed their college educations at the service of destruction of the liberal Western order. Theirs were the educated choices of what the late Fouad Ajami called “Islam’s nowhere men,” people for whom Western freedom became alienation.
ISIS is not a social issue. You don’t kill 130 people in Paris because you lost your job or never had one. It is ideological. It must therefore be fought by a counter-ideology, among other things. This neither the United States nor Europe nor their nominal Arab and Muslim allies have been able to articulate. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have played double games with their bastard child, ISIS.
What inhabits that spacious if shabby corner house on Future Street? In one Islamic State video, Abaaoud urged Muslims to shake off a “humiliating life” in Europe and find “pride and honor” in their religion and in jihad.
Humiliation is an ample notion. It may embrace anything from the Algerian war of more than a half century ago to the Iraq war; it may invoke Gaza; it may be social; it may well be sexual. But whatever its nature, it is escaped by adherence to the Islamic State’s state in the making, that border-straddling land where doubt goes to die, where each day has its assigned task and all needs are met.
The dangerous thing about this ISIS territory, the Caliphate’s embryo, is not so much its oil revenue, or its training facilities, or its proximity to the West, or its control over several million people — it is its magnetic assertion of Suuni jihadist power, the retort to humiliation that drew Abaaoud from Future Street. The United States and Europe would not have accepted its existence in 2001. They would not have accepted that terrorists centered in a sanctuary close to a NATO border could shut down Brussels or the University of Chicago.
But the West will no longer deploy infantry against global jihad. Nor will Arab states. That is a high-risk policy — too high, in my view. ISIS is working on the means to make the carnage in Paris look modest.
Europe is now entwined with the Syrian debacle — its refugees moving westward, its violence, its intra-Islamic battle, and its jihadi-spawning void. Abaaoud’s story is also a warning in a world where, as Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter put it recently at Harvard’s Kennedy School, “destructive power of greater and greater magnitude falls into the hands of smaller and smaller groups of human beings.”
Future Street has done a one-eighty. Europe’s opportunities drew Abaaoud’s father to Brussels. Abaaoud’s younger brother, Younes, was 13 when he left Brussels for Syria. He will likely return. And this middle-class adolescent Islamist will not be bearing a bouquet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/opini ... 87722&_r=0
The family of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of the Paris attacks, lived on Future Street in Brussels. Theirs was a “spacious if shabby corner home,” my colleagues, Andrew Higgins and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, write. Abaaoud’s parents, Moroccan immigrants to Belgium, had done well enough.
The Rue de l’Avenir, or Future Street, was supposed to lead to a decent European life, not veer off to Syria and the apocalyptic universe of the Islamic State. Future Street, a place of opportunity for the industrious, was what the Turkish and Moroccan and Algerian immigrants coming to Europe from the 1960s onward sought.
Abaaoud, son of Brussels, was not poor, not stupid, not marginalized. He was on the ladder before he stepped off into a zigzagging life between Syria and Europe. He attended for a year an exclusive Catholic School, the Collège Saint-Pierre d’Uccle. I lived in Uccle between 1980 and 1982. Europe does not get much more leafy or placid than that.
But Future Street, so luminous a half-century ago during the great postwar European recovery — what the French call “Les Trente Glorieuses” (or the 30 glorious years) — has become a much more ambiguous place. It is now situated, thanks to technology, between homeland and adopted land in the jangling, borderless, cacophonous space of modern civilization.
A bad economy is not what flips young Muslims off Future Street onto the road to Raqqa. It’s the humiliation of purposelessness. It’s a quest for respect. It’s laying the burden of choice to rest through a subsuming mission against the “decadent” West. It’s the discovery of a plausible flight from ambivalent modernity to the Caliphate’s zealous strictures.
Abaaoud, killed by French security forces in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, joins all the other sons (mainly sons) who could not abide the future despite comfortable circumstances and opted to take refuge from it in the all-resolving ideology of jihadist violence. He joins Mohamed Atta and Faisal Shahzad and Michael Adebolajo, plotters and perpetrators from New York to London who did not come from poverty or social exclusion.
Atta, who took the first plane into the North Tower, and Shahzad, who plotted mayhem at Times Square, and Adebolajo, who killed a British soldier with a knife and machete on a London street, placed their college educations at the service of destruction of the liberal Western order. Theirs were the educated choices of what the late Fouad Ajami called “Islam’s nowhere men,” people for whom Western freedom became alienation.
ISIS is not a social issue. You don’t kill 130 people in Paris because you lost your job or never had one. It is ideological. It must therefore be fought by a counter-ideology, among other things. This neither the United States nor Europe nor their nominal Arab and Muslim allies have been able to articulate. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have played double games with their bastard child, ISIS.
What inhabits that spacious if shabby corner house on Future Street? In one Islamic State video, Abaaoud urged Muslims to shake off a “humiliating life” in Europe and find “pride and honor” in their religion and in jihad.
Humiliation is an ample notion. It may embrace anything from the Algerian war of more than a half century ago to the Iraq war; it may invoke Gaza; it may be social; it may well be sexual. But whatever its nature, it is escaped by adherence to the Islamic State’s state in the making, that border-straddling land where doubt goes to die, where each day has its assigned task and all needs are met.
The dangerous thing about this ISIS territory, the Caliphate’s embryo, is not so much its oil revenue, or its training facilities, or its proximity to the West, or its control over several million people — it is its magnetic assertion of Suuni jihadist power, the retort to humiliation that drew Abaaoud from Future Street. The United States and Europe would not have accepted its existence in 2001. They would not have accepted that terrorists centered in a sanctuary close to a NATO border could shut down Brussels or the University of Chicago.
But the West will no longer deploy infantry against global jihad. Nor will Arab states. That is a high-risk policy — too high, in my view. ISIS is working on the means to make the carnage in Paris look modest.
Europe is now entwined with the Syrian debacle — its refugees moving westward, its violence, its intra-Islamic battle, and its jihadi-spawning void. Abaaoud’s story is also a warning in a world where, as Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter put it recently at Harvard’s Kennedy School, “destructive power of greater and greater magnitude falls into the hands of smaller and smaller groups of human beings.”
Future Street has done a one-eighty. Europe’s opportunities drew Abaaoud’s father to Brussels. Abaaoud’s younger brother, Younes, was 13 when he left Brussels for Syria. He will likely return. And this middle-class adolescent Islamist will not be bearing a bouquet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Norway Offers Migrants a Lesson in How to Treat Women
A pioneering program seeks to combat sexual violence by helping new immigrants adapt to a society whose sexual norms they may find confusing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/world ... d=45305309
A pioneering program seeks to combat sexual violence by helping new immigrants adapt to a society whose sexual norms they may find confusing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/world ... d=45305309
France’s Diminished Liberties
Since President François Hollande of France declared a state of emergency after the terrorist attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, more than 2,700 police raids have been carried out. They have yielded very little that can be linked to terrorism, but have traumatized citizens and left havoc in their wake.
The majority of these raids have been on Muslim homes, businesses, mosques and prayer rooms. Ethnic profiling by the police of France’s minorities — condemned as discriminatory by a Paris appeals court in June — has returned with a vengeance, and hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise. Yasser Louati, spokesman for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, warns: “The Muslim minority in France feels like it’s being treated as the public enemy.”
The current state of emergency gives the French government exceptional powers, including the authority to conduct houses searches without a warrant, shut down associations and restrict the right to peaceful assembly — all without judicial oversight. Individuals may file complaints against the government in court, but only after the fact. Many say they have no idea why they were targeted.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/opini ... ef=opinion
Since President François Hollande of France declared a state of emergency after the terrorist attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, more than 2,700 police raids have been carried out. They have yielded very little that can be linked to terrorism, but have traumatized citizens and left havoc in their wake.
The majority of these raids have been on Muslim homes, businesses, mosques and prayer rooms. Ethnic profiling by the police of France’s minorities — condemned as discriminatory by a Paris appeals court in June — has returned with a vengeance, and hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise. Yasser Louati, spokesman for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, warns: “The Muslim minority in France feels like it’s being treated as the public enemy.”
The current state of emergency gives the French government exceptional powers, including the authority to conduct houses searches without a warrant, shut down associations and restrict the right to peaceful assembly — all without judicial oversight. Individuals may file complaints against the government in court, but only after the fact. Many say they have no idea why they were targeted.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/opini ... ef=opinion
First Female British ISIS Returnee Jailed For Six Years
A court sentenced a British woman, the first to join ISIS and return to the U.K., to six years in prison on Monday for becoming a member of the Islamic State militant group.
In October 2014, Tareena Shakil, 26, traveled with her son to ISIS’s de-facto capital of Raqqa in Syria after telling her family that she was going on holiday, before returning to Britain.
Birmingham Crown Court sentenced her to six years after she was found guilty of becoming a member of an extremist group and encouraging acts of extremism on social media.
The sentencing judge, Mr. Justice Inman, said that Shakil showed no remorse that her son may have become an ISIS militant in the future.
He said that she told “lie after lie” and called photographs of her child with weapons and an ISIS hat “abhorrent.”
Photo at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/fir ... ar-BBoXNUN
A court sentenced a British woman, the first to join ISIS and return to the U.K., to six years in prison on Monday for becoming a member of the Islamic State militant group.
In October 2014, Tareena Shakil, 26, traveled with her son to ISIS’s de-facto capital of Raqqa in Syria after telling her family that she was going on holiday, before returning to Britain.
Birmingham Crown Court sentenced her to six years after she was found guilty of becoming a member of an extremist group and encouraging acts of extremism on social media.
The sentencing judge, Mr. Justice Inman, said that Shakil showed no remorse that her son may have become an ISIS militant in the future.
He said that she told “lie after lie” and called photographs of her child with weapons and an ISIS hat “abhorrent.”
Photo at:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/fir ... ar-BBoXNUN
Conversion to Islam
Why some Brits choose Islamic prayer over partying
EVERY year, thousands of British people convert to Islam. Estimates of how many vary a lot, but in 2011 a study concluded that the total number of converts in the United Kingdom might exceed 100,000 and that about 5,000 had made that choice the previous year, with women exceeding men and the “white British” share of fresh converts amounting to around half. Whatever their own religious views, people are curious about unusual spiritual journeys: when, in 2013, Cambridge University produced a study of British women who had embraced Islam, it was downloaded more than 150,000 times.
When conversions come to public attention, it is usually for one of two reasons. Either the people involved are celebrities or closely connected to celebrities; Tony Blair’s sister-in-law is one example. Or else they are the subject of police attention as suspects in jihadi violence. But the great majority of converts are neither famous nor in any way prone to violence, they are simply products of a cosmopolitan age where all kinds of cultural experiences, whether through travel, social life or simply surfing the net, are available to all kinds of people, and the results can be surprising.
This month the University’s Centre for Islamic Studies reported on the second part of that project; this involved an 18-month investigation of the experiences of 50 male converts. Although the approach is more anecdotal than statistical, the two reports amount to a vivid picture of the range of reasons why some British people choose Islam and what happens thereafter.
Young converts have sometimes been impressed by the camaraderie they observe in Muslim student groups. To a first-year student faced with a bewildering variety of ideological and cultural choices, the quiet certainty of the Muslims can make a strong impression. Older ones often said their interest was sparked by a chance encounter, perhaps on holiday, with some aspect of Islamic culture, from architecture to calligraphy to the muezzin’s call of prayer. A local authority worker who is the only hijab-wearer in her Sussex village said she had been impressed, during post-university travels round the Middle East, by the “tranquillity and stability” of people despite the difficulty of their lives. “I started looking into other Islamic practices I’d dismissed as harsh: fasting, compulsory charity, the idea of modesty. I stopped seeing them as restrictions on personal freedom and realised they were ways of achieving self-control.”
One of the young male informants reported an unexpected problem: “his mother’s occasional wish for him to be “normal” [and] “roll in drunk” like the other boys...” Almost all reported some problem with their relatives, especially those South Asians who had previously been Sikh or Hindu and were perceived to have betrayed their families. On one hand, Islam mandates its followers to behave dutifully towards close kin, and this duty is not cancelled out when those kin are of a different religion. But some duties become impossible for a family member who has turned to Islam; he cannot oversee the Hindu cremation, or the Christian burial, of a parent.
Muslims of both genders had some disappointments. Some had been attracted to the faith, in part, because of its seemingly universalist spirit and racial egalitarianism, offering men and women of all races and classes the chance to address God directly with no priestly hierarchy in the middle. But instead they found themselves caught up in sectarian and ethnic rivalry, pitting say, Somali mosques against Pakistani ones. Many converts are drawn to Islam by Sufism, the faith’s mystical strain, and find themselves unwelcome in mosques where the stripped-down form of Islam known as Salafism prevails. Converts could find themselves in a no-man’s-land, estranged from their own families but not fully accepted by “heritage Muslims” because they were seen as untrained in the faith or even as fifth columnists.
Through all these stories, one thing stands out. In all manner of ways, from consumer products to moral values to personal styles, Western culture of the 21st century lauds variety, choice, experimentation. A Westerner who converts to Islam is making a self-conscious move in a diametrically opposite direction: accepting non-negotiable rules in respect of diet, dress, sexual and social behaviour. Perhaps the prolixity of mainstream culture makes the uncompromising strictness of Islamic rules more attractive to a significant minority. And somehow or other, Western societies will have to accommodate both impulses, without slipping into a permanent state of cultural war or as a Muslim would say, fitna.
/www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2016/02 ... /n/n/email
MHI's quote:
There is the potential in the Islamic heritage to help modern societies cope with the confusions, disillusionments and moral vagaries that afflict them. (Aga Khan; MHI)
/www.nanowisdoms.org/nwblog/4793/
Why some Brits choose Islamic prayer over partying
EVERY year, thousands of British people convert to Islam. Estimates of how many vary a lot, but in 2011 a study concluded that the total number of converts in the United Kingdom might exceed 100,000 and that about 5,000 had made that choice the previous year, with women exceeding men and the “white British” share of fresh converts amounting to around half. Whatever their own religious views, people are curious about unusual spiritual journeys: when, in 2013, Cambridge University produced a study of British women who had embraced Islam, it was downloaded more than 150,000 times.
When conversions come to public attention, it is usually for one of two reasons. Either the people involved are celebrities or closely connected to celebrities; Tony Blair’s sister-in-law is one example. Or else they are the subject of police attention as suspects in jihadi violence. But the great majority of converts are neither famous nor in any way prone to violence, they are simply products of a cosmopolitan age where all kinds of cultural experiences, whether through travel, social life or simply surfing the net, are available to all kinds of people, and the results can be surprising.
This month the University’s Centre for Islamic Studies reported on the second part of that project; this involved an 18-month investigation of the experiences of 50 male converts. Although the approach is more anecdotal than statistical, the two reports amount to a vivid picture of the range of reasons why some British people choose Islam and what happens thereafter.
Young converts have sometimes been impressed by the camaraderie they observe in Muslim student groups. To a first-year student faced with a bewildering variety of ideological and cultural choices, the quiet certainty of the Muslims can make a strong impression. Older ones often said their interest was sparked by a chance encounter, perhaps on holiday, with some aspect of Islamic culture, from architecture to calligraphy to the muezzin’s call of prayer. A local authority worker who is the only hijab-wearer in her Sussex village said she had been impressed, during post-university travels round the Middle East, by the “tranquillity and stability” of people despite the difficulty of their lives. “I started looking into other Islamic practices I’d dismissed as harsh: fasting, compulsory charity, the idea of modesty. I stopped seeing them as restrictions on personal freedom and realised they were ways of achieving self-control.”
One of the young male informants reported an unexpected problem: “his mother’s occasional wish for him to be “normal” [and] “roll in drunk” like the other boys...” Almost all reported some problem with their relatives, especially those South Asians who had previously been Sikh or Hindu and were perceived to have betrayed their families. On one hand, Islam mandates its followers to behave dutifully towards close kin, and this duty is not cancelled out when those kin are of a different religion. But some duties become impossible for a family member who has turned to Islam; he cannot oversee the Hindu cremation, or the Christian burial, of a parent.
Muslims of both genders had some disappointments. Some had been attracted to the faith, in part, because of its seemingly universalist spirit and racial egalitarianism, offering men and women of all races and classes the chance to address God directly with no priestly hierarchy in the middle. But instead they found themselves caught up in sectarian and ethnic rivalry, pitting say, Somali mosques against Pakistani ones. Many converts are drawn to Islam by Sufism, the faith’s mystical strain, and find themselves unwelcome in mosques where the stripped-down form of Islam known as Salafism prevails. Converts could find themselves in a no-man’s-land, estranged from their own families but not fully accepted by “heritage Muslims” because they were seen as untrained in the faith or even as fifth columnists.
Through all these stories, one thing stands out. In all manner of ways, from consumer products to moral values to personal styles, Western culture of the 21st century lauds variety, choice, experimentation. A Westerner who converts to Islam is making a self-conscious move in a diametrically opposite direction: accepting non-negotiable rules in respect of diet, dress, sexual and social behaviour. Perhaps the prolixity of mainstream culture makes the uncompromising strictness of Islamic rules more attractive to a significant minority. And somehow or other, Western societies will have to accommodate both impulses, without slipping into a permanent state of cultural war or as a Muslim would say, fitna.
/www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2016/02 ... /n/n/email
MHI's quote:
There is the potential in the Islamic heritage to help modern societies cope with the confusions, disillusionments and moral vagaries that afflict them. (Aga Khan; MHI)
/www.nanowisdoms.org/nwblog/4793/
The first Muslims in England
Sixteenth-century Elizabethan England has always had a special place in the nation's understanding of itself. But few realise that it was also the first time that Muslims began openly living, working and practising their faith in England, writes Jerry Brotton.
From as far away as North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, Muslims from various walks of life found themselves in London in the 16th Century working as diplomats, merchants, translators, musicians, servants and even prostitutes.
The reason for the Muslim presence in England stemmed from Queen Elizabeth's isolation from Catholic Europe. Her official excommunication by Pope Pius V in 1570 allowed her to act outside the papal edicts forbidding Christian trade with Muslims and create commercial and political alliances with various Islamic states, including the Moroccan Sa'adian dynasty, the Ottoman Empire and the Shi'a Persian Empire.
She sent her diplomats and merchants into the Muslim world to exploit this theological loophole, and in return Muslims began arriving in London, variously described as "Moors", "Indians", "Negroes" and "Turks".
Before Elizabeth's reign, England - like the rest of Christendom - understood a garbled version of Islam mainly through the bloody and polarised experiences of the Crusades.
More...
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35843991
Sixteenth-century Elizabethan England has always had a special place in the nation's understanding of itself. But few realise that it was also the first time that Muslims began openly living, working and practising their faith in England, writes Jerry Brotton.
From as far away as North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, Muslims from various walks of life found themselves in London in the 16th Century working as diplomats, merchants, translators, musicians, servants and even prostitutes.
The reason for the Muslim presence in England stemmed from Queen Elizabeth's isolation from Catholic Europe. Her official excommunication by Pope Pius V in 1570 allowed her to act outside the papal edicts forbidding Christian trade with Muslims and create commercial and political alliances with various Islamic states, including the Moroccan Sa'adian dynasty, the Ottoman Empire and the Shi'a Persian Empire.
She sent her diplomats and merchants into the Muslim world to exploit this theological loophole, and in return Muslims began arriving in London, variously described as "Moors", "Indians", "Negroes" and "Turks".
Before Elizabeth's reign, England - like the rest of Christendom - understood a garbled version of Islam mainly through the bloody and polarised experiences of the Crusades.
More...
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35843991
A religious killing in Scotland
A quiet man with a loud message
A horrific murder prompts fears of more attacks on a small Islamic sect
SHAH’S NEWSAGENT, in the Shawlands district of Glasgow, is firmly shuttered now. But the spirit of the man who ran it until his murder on March 24th lingers on in the hundreds of floral tributes that carpet the pavement outside.
The “kindest, sweetest man”, says one card. Tellingly, there are also heartfelt messages from the local Methodist Church, a “Christian brother” and a “Jewish couple”, for Asad Shah was a Muslim, a member of the Ahmadiya sect, and a man who by all accounts believed firmly in embracing people of all faiths. Indeed, he had become something of a local celebrity for this, “a quiet man with a loud message” in the words of another mourner. And for this he might well have been killed as well.
Mr Shah was found with multiple stab wounds outside his shop on the evening of the 24th and died in hospital. On March 29th Tanveer Ahmed, a 32-year-old from Bradford, in the north of England, appeared in court charged with the murder. Mr Ahmed, it is thought, is a Sunni Muslim. The murder has not only shocked the local community but has also provoked fears that a particularly vicious split among Muslims worldwide has finally arrived in Britain. Scotland, however, has prided itself on the lack of extremism among its 80,000 or so Muslims, so the authorities will be straining to ensure that Mr Shah’s death remains an isolated incident.
The Ahmadi consider themselves Muslims but differ from the mainstream in that they believe Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the 19th-century Indian who founded their tradition, was a latter-day prophet. In many Muslims’ eyes, this makes them un-Islamic and blasphemous. Pakistan’s Ahmadis, of whom there may be 4m, were declared to be non-Muslims by the government in 1974 and they have been subject to harassment and worse ever since. In effect, their faith has been criminalised. In 2010 gunmen entered two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore and killed 95 worshippers. Ahmadis have also been victimised and killed in Indonesia in recent years.
There are about 25,000 Ahmadis in Britain, organised in 150 chapters across the country. Their first mosque was built in London in 1926. Perhaps 400 Ahmadis live in Glasgow. Until now, the Ahmadis report that relations with other Muslims have been generally good, although Abdul Abid, an elder at the Ahmadiya community centre in Glasgow, where Mr Shah worshipped, says that some of the sectarianism of Pakistan has always spilled over into their lives in Scotland. Certain Muslim-owned shops, for instance, will not stock goods produced by Ahmadiya communities. More importantly, says Mr Abid, certain imams have stoked hardline worshippers against the Ahmadiya and Muslim satellite channels have carried anti-Ahmadiya messages.
Against this background some Ahmadis fear that Mr Shah’s murder could provoke others to attack them. “Intolerance breeds intolerance,” says an Ahmadiya leader, “so we want this problem nipped in the bud.” The Ahmadis have been trying to promote a positive image of Islam in Britain, running adverts on buses proclaiming “United against Extremism”, for instance. Now they want mainstream Muslim leaders to condemn unequivocally the same extremism that has very probably led to what the police describe as the “religiously prejudiced” murder of Mr Shah.
Muslim leaders in Scotland have condemned the “outrageous, violent attack by one individual on another”, but that has not been enough for some Ahmadis. The local mosques and imams were invited to the Glasgow Ahmadiya centre on the morning of March 30th to show their solidarity with the grieving Ahmadis and to sign a joint statement. None came. It was “disappointing, an opportunity lost,” says Mr Abid. He accuses the imams of hypocrisy, of saying nice words but of failing to take a real stand together with the Ahmadis against extremism. One Muslim group has been accused of posting messages online gloating over Mr Shah’s death.
“Love for all, hatred for none” is the slogan Ahmadis try to live by, and it seems to have inspired Mr Shah. Perhaps his death will help that message to prevail in the coming weeks and months.
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/2 ... rsc=dg%7Cc
A quiet man with a loud message
A horrific murder prompts fears of more attacks on a small Islamic sect
SHAH’S NEWSAGENT, in the Shawlands district of Glasgow, is firmly shuttered now. But the spirit of the man who ran it until his murder on March 24th lingers on in the hundreds of floral tributes that carpet the pavement outside.
The “kindest, sweetest man”, says one card. Tellingly, there are also heartfelt messages from the local Methodist Church, a “Christian brother” and a “Jewish couple”, for Asad Shah was a Muslim, a member of the Ahmadiya sect, and a man who by all accounts believed firmly in embracing people of all faiths. Indeed, he had become something of a local celebrity for this, “a quiet man with a loud message” in the words of another mourner. And for this he might well have been killed as well.
Mr Shah was found with multiple stab wounds outside his shop on the evening of the 24th and died in hospital. On March 29th Tanveer Ahmed, a 32-year-old from Bradford, in the north of England, appeared in court charged with the murder. Mr Ahmed, it is thought, is a Sunni Muslim. The murder has not only shocked the local community but has also provoked fears that a particularly vicious split among Muslims worldwide has finally arrived in Britain. Scotland, however, has prided itself on the lack of extremism among its 80,000 or so Muslims, so the authorities will be straining to ensure that Mr Shah’s death remains an isolated incident.
The Ahmadi consider themselves Muslims but differ from the mainstream in that they believe Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the 19th-century Indian who founded their tradition, was a latter-day prophet. In many Muslims’ eyes, this makes them un-Islamic and blasphemous. Pakistan’s Ahmadis, of whom there may be 4m, were declared to be non-Muslims by the government in 1974 and they have been subject to harassment and worse ever since. In effect, their faith has been criminalised. In 2010 gunmen entered two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore and killed 95 worshippers. Ahmadis have also been victimised and killed in Indonesia in recent years.
There are about 25,000 Ahmadis in Britain, organised in 150 chapters across the country. Their first mosque was built in London in 1926. Perhaps 400 Ahmadis live in Glasgow. Until now, the Ahmadis report that relations with other Muslims have been generally good, although Abdul Abid, an elder at the Ahmadiya community centre in Glasgow, where Mr Shah worshipped, says that some of the sectarianism of Pakistan has always spilled over into their lives in Scotland. Certain Muslim-owned shops, for instance, will not stock goods produced by Ahmadiya communities. More importantly, says Mr Abid, certain imams have stoked hardline worshippers against the Ahmadiya and Muslim satellite channels have carried anti-Ahmadiya messages.
Against this background some Ahmadis fear that Mr Shah’s murder could provoke others to attack them. “Intolerance breeds intolerance,” says an Ahmadiya leader, “so we want this problem nipped in the bud.” The Ahmadis have been trying to promote a positive image of Islam in Britain, running adverts on buses proclaiming “United against Extremism”, for instance. Now they want mainstream Muslim leaders to condemn unequivocally the same extremism that has very probably led to what the police describe as the “religiously prejudiced” murder of Mr Shah.
Muslim leaders in Scotland have condemned the “outrageous, violent attack by one individual on another”, but that has not been enough for some Ahmadis. The local mosques and imams were invited to the Glasgow Ahmadiya centre on the morning of March 30th to show their solidarity with the grieving Ahmadis and to sign a joint statement. None came. It was “disappointing, an opportunity lost,” says Mr Abid. He accuses the imams of hypocrisy, of saying nice words but of failing to take a real stand together with the Ahmadis against extremism. One Muslim group has been accused of posting messages online gloating over Mr Shah’s death.
“Love for all, hatred for none” is the slogan Ahmadis try to live by, and it seems to have inspired Mr Shah. Perhaps his death will help that message to prevail in the coming weeks and months.
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/2 ... rsc=dg%7Cc
He Disavowed Radical Islam. Was He Lying?
PARIS — Ten young Muslim men, bored by a mundane life in France and haunted by a “feeling of uselessness,” as one put it, were seduced by a leading Islamic State recruiter in Europe in 2013. Within months, they were in Syria under the watchful eyes of hooded, Kalashnikov-wielding militants, doing push-ups, fiddling with weapons and imbibing the ideology.
But the harsh regimen, most have since told investigators, was not to their liking, and it was not long before they hastened back to their families in the Strasbourg area, where they were almost immediately picked up by the French authorities.
What to do with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such young men in Europe is now among the biggest challenges facing governments and security services.
After the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks, which were carried out in part by Europeans who had spent time in Syria with the Islamic State, France and other countries are grappling with how far to go in tightening laws to prosecute, monitor and restrict the movements of returnees.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/world ... 87722&_r=0
PARIS — Ten young Muslim men, bored by a mundane life in France and haunted by a “feeling of uselessness,” as one put it, were seduced by a leading Islamic State recruiter in Europe in 2013. Within months, they were in Syria under the watchful eyes of hooded, Kalashnikov-wielding militants, doing push-ups, fiddling with weapons and imbibing the ideology.
But the harsh regimen, most have since told investigators, was not to their liking, and it was not long before they hastened back to their families in the Strasbourg area, where they were almost immediately picked up by the French authorities.
What to do with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such young men in Europe is now among the biggest challenges facing governments and security services.
After the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks, which were carried out in part by Europeans who had spent time in Syria with the Islamic State, France and other countries are grappling with how far to go in tightening laws to prosecute, monitor and restrict the movements of returnees.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/world ... 87722&_r=0
How Islam Created Europe
In late antiquity, the religion split the Mediterranean world in two. Now it is remaking the Continent.
Europe was essentially defined by Islam. And Islam is redefining it now.
For centuries in early and middle antiquity, Europe meant the world surrounding the Mediterranean, or Mare Nostrum (“Our Sea”), as the Romans famously called it. It included North Africa. Indeed, early in the fifth century A.D., when Saint Augustine lived in what is today Algeria, North Africa was as much a center of Christianity as Italy or Greece. But the swift advance of Islam across North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries virtually extinguished Christianity there, thus severing the Mediterranean region into two civilizational halves, with the “Middle Sea” a hard border between them rather than a unifying force. Since then, as the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset observed, “all European history has been a great emigration toward the North."
More...
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... pe/476388/
In late antiquity, the religion split the Mediterranean world in two. Now it is remaking the Continent.
Europe was essentially defined by Islam. And Islam is redefining it now.
For centuries in early and middle antiquity, Europe meant the world surrounding the Mediterranean, or Mare Nostrum (“Our Sea”), as the Romans famously called it. It included North Africa. Indeed, early in the fifth century A.D., when Saint Augustine lived in what is today Algeria, North Africa was as much a center of Christianity as Italy or Greece. But the swift advance of Islam across North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries virtually extinguished Christianity there, thus severing the Mediterranean region into two civilizational halves, with the “Middle Sea” a hard border between them rather than a unifying force. Since then, as the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset observed, “all European history has been a great emigration toward the North."
More...
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... pe/476388/
Sadiq Khan Elected in London, Becoming Its First Muslim Mayor
LONDON — In a Europe struggling with a rise in Islamophobia, riven by debates about the flood of Syrian migrants and on edge over religious, ethnic and cultural disputes, London has elected its first Muslim mayor.
Sadiq Khan — a Labour Party leader, a former human rights lawyer and a son of a bus driver from Pakistan — was declared the winner after a protracted count that extended into Saturday. He will be the first Muslim to lead Britain’s capital.
The victory also makes him one of the most prominent Muslim politicians in the West.
London is hardly representative of Britain: About a quarter of its residents are foreign-born, and one-eighth are Muslim. And Mr. Khan is not the first Muslim to hold prominent office in Europe: Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, has had a Muslim mayor since 2009, and Sajid Javid is the British secretary of state for business.
Nonetheless, Mr. Khan, 45, won a striking victory after a campaign dominated by anxieties over religion and ethnicity. Britain has not sustained a large-scale terrorist attack since 2005, and its Muslim population, in contrast to France, is considered well integrated. But an estimated 800 people have left Britain to fight for or support the Islamic State. Dozens of assaults on British Muslims were reported after the Paris terrorist attacks in November.
The Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, attacked Mr. Khan’s past advocacy for criminal defendants, including his opposition to the extradition of a man who was later convicted in the United States of supporting terrorism. Mr. Goldsmith said Mr. Khan had given “oxygen and cover” to extremists. When the Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, repeated those assertions in Parliament, he was accused of racism.
.....
Mr. Khan argued that, as an observant Muslim, he was well placed to tackle extremism. “I’m a Londoner, I’m European, I’m British, I’m English, I’m of Islamic faith, of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, a dad, a husband,” he said in a recent interview with The New York Times.
.....
“The palace called me and said, ‘What type of Bible do you want to swear on?’ ” Mr. Khan told the magazine The New Statesman. “When I said the Quran, they said, ‘We haven’t got one.’ So I took one with me.”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/07/world ... 87722&_r=0
LONDON — In a Europe struggling with a rise in Islamophobia, riven by debates about the flood of Syrian migrants and on edge over religious, ethnic and cultural disputes, London has elected its first Muslim mayor.
Sadiq Khan — a Labour Party leader, a former human rights lawyer and a son of a bus driver from Pakistan — was declared the winner after a protracted count that extended into Saturday. He will be the first Muslim to lead Britain’s capital.
The victory also makes him one of the most prominent Muslim politicians in the West.
London is hardly representative of Britain: About a quarter of its residents are foreign-born, and one-eighth are Muslim. And Mr. Khan is not the first Muslim to hold prominent office in Europe: Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, has had a Muslim mayor since 2009, and Sajid Javid is the British secretary of state for business.
Nonetheless, Mr. Khan, 45, won a striking victory after a campaign dominated by anxieties over religion and ethnicity. Britain has not sustained a large-scale terrorist attack since 2005, and its Muslim population, in contrast to France, is considered well integrated. But an estimated 800 people have left Britain to fight for or support the Islamic State. Dozens of assaults on British Muslims were reported after the Paris terrorist attacks in November.
The Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, attacked Mr. Khan’s past advocacy for criminal defendants, including his opposition to the extradition of a man who was later convicted in the United States of supporting terrorism. Mr. Goldsmith said Mr. Khan had given “oxygen and cover” to extremists. When the Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, repeated those assertions in Parliament, he was accused of racism.
.....
Mr. Khan argued that, as an observant Muslim, he was well placed to tackle extremism. “I’m a Londoner, I’m European, I’m British, I’m English, I’m of Islamic faith, of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, a dad, a husband,” he said in a recent interview with The New York Times.
.....
“The palace called me and said, ‘What type of Bible do you want to swear on?’ ” Mr. Khan told the magazine The New Statesman. “When I said the Quran, they said, ‘We haven’t got one.’ So I took one with me.”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/07/world ... 87722&_r=0
Sadiq Khan vs. Donald Trump
The most important political event of recent weeks was not the emergence of Donald J. Trump as the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party but the election Sadiq Khan, the Muslim son of a London bus driver, as mayor of London.
Trump has not won any kind of political office yet, but Khan, the Labour Party candidate, crushed Zac Goldsmith, a Conservative, to take charge of one of the world’s great cities, a vibrant metropolis where every tongue is heard. In his victory, a triumph over the slurs that tried to tie him to Islamist extremism, Khan stood up for openness against isolationism, integration against confrontation, opportunity for all against racism and misogyny. He was the anti-Trump.
Before the election, Khan told my colleague Stephen Castle, “I’m a Londoner, I’m a European, I’m British, I’m English, I’m of Islamic faith, of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, a dad, a husband.”
The world of the 21st century is going to be shaped by such elided, many-faceted identities and by the booming cities that celebrate diversity, not by some bullying, brash, bigoted, “America first” white dude who wants to build walls.
It is worth noting that under the ban on Muslim noncitizens entering the country that Trump proposes, Khan would not be allowed to visit the United States. To use one of Trump’s favorite phrases, this would be a “complete and total disaster.” It would make America a foul mockery in the eyes of a world already aghast at the Republican candidate’s rise.
Khan’s election is important because it gives the lie to the facile trope that Europe is being taken over by jihadi Islamists. It underscores the fact that terrorist acts hide a million quiet success stories among European Muslim communities. One of seven children of a Pakistani immigrant family, Khan grew up in public housing and went on to become a human rights lawyer and government minister. He won more than 1.3 million votes in the London election, a personal mandate unsurpassed by any politician in British history.
His election is important because the most effective voices against Islamist terrorism come from Muslims, and Khan has been prepared to speak out. After the Paris attacks last year, he said in a speech that Muslims had a “special role” to play in countering the terrorism, “not because we are more responsible than others, as some have wrongly claimed, but because we can be more effective at tackling extremism than anyone else.”
Khan has also reached out to Britain’s Jewish community, vigorously disavowing the creeping anti-Semitism in Labour ranks that last month saw Ken Livingstone, a former London mayor, suspended from the party.
As George Eaton observed in The New Statesman: “Khan will be a figure of global significance. His election is a rebuke to extremists of all stripes, from Donald Trump to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who assert that religions cannot peacefully coexist.”
Trump as a politician is a product of American fear and anger above all. In the past several weeks, a U.C. Berkeley student has been escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight because he was heard speaking Arabic, and an olive-skinned, curly haired Italian Ivy League economist was taken off an American Airlines flight because he was spotted scribbling mathematical calculations that his seatmate found suspicious.
Trump — described to me by Norm Ornstein, the political scientist, as “the most insecure and ego-driven person in the country” — is the mouthpiece of this frightened America that sees threats everywhere (even in an Italian mathematician).
When Trump declares, “America First will be the major and overriding theme of my administration,” the rest of the world hears an angry nation flexing its muscles.
Khan’s rise, by contrast, is a story of victory over the fears engendered by 9/11. His victory is a rebuke to Osama bin Laden, the Islamic State, jihadi ideology of every stripe — and to the hatemongering politicians like Trump who choose to play the Muslim-equals-danger game. Khan has argued that greater integration is essential and “too many British Muslims grow up without really knowing anyone from a different background.”
Sigmund Freud wrote, “It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.” Donald Trump has written: “I have learned to listen and trust my gut. It’s one of my most valued counselors.” He recently said, “We must, as a nation, be more unpredictable.”
Right.
Put together an egotist, a bully, immense power and a taste for gut-driven unpredictability and you have a dangerous brew that could put civilization at risk. Those small fingers would have access to the nuclear codes if Trump was elected.
In this context, Sadiq Khan’s victory is reassuring because he represents currents in the world — toward global identity and integration — that will prove stronger over time than the tribalism and nativism of Trump.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/opini ... 87722&_r=0
The most important political event of recent weeks was not the emergence of Donald J. Trump as the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party but the election Sadiq Khan, the Muslim son of a London bus driver, as mayor of London.
Trump has not won any kind of political office yet, but Khan, the Labour Party candidate, crushed Zac Goldsmith, a Conservative, to take charge of one of the world’s great cities, a vibrant metropolis where every tongue is heard. In his victory, a triumph over the slurs that tried to tie him to Islamist extremism, Khan stood up for openness against isolationism, integration against confrontation, opportunity for all against racism and misogyny. He was the anti-Trump.
Before the election, Khan told my colleague Stephen Castle, “I’m a Londoner, I’m a European, I’m British, I’m English, I’m of Islamic faith, of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, a dad, a husband.”
The world of the 21st century is going to be shaped by such elided, many-faceted identities and by the booming cities that celebrate diversity, not by some bullying, brash, bigoted, “America first” white dude who wants to build walls.
It is worth noting that under the ban on Muslim noncitizens entering the country that Trump proposes, Khan would not be allowed to visit the United States. To use one of Trump’s favorite phrases, this would be a “complete and total disaster.” It would make America a foul mockery in the eyes of a world already aghast at the Republican candidate’s rise.
Khan’s election is important because it gives the lie to the facile trope that Europe is being taken over by jihadi Islamists. It underscores the fact that terrorist acts hide a million quiet success stories among European Muslim communities. One of seven children of a Pakistani immigrant family, Khan grew up in public housing and went on to become a human rights lawyer and government minister. He won more than 1.3 million votes in the London election, a personal mandate unsurpassed by any politician in British history.
His election is important because the most effective voices against Islamist terrorism come from Muslims, and Khan has been prepared to speak out. After the Paris attacks last year, he said in a speech that Muslims had a “special role” to play in countering the terrorism, “not because we are more responsible than others, as some have wrongly claimed, but because we can be more effective at tackling extremism than anyone else.”
Khan has also reached out to Britain’s Jewish community, vigorously disavowing the creeping anti-Semitism in Labour ranks that last month saw Ken Livingstone, a former London mayor, suspended from the party.
As George Eaton observed in The New Statesman: “Khan will be a figure of global significance. His election is a rebuke to extremists of all stripes, from Donald Trump to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who assert that religions cannot peacefully coexist.”
Trump as a politician is a product of American fear and anger above all. In the past several weeks, a U.C. Berkeley student has been escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight because he was heard speaking Arabic, and an olive-skinned, curly haired Italian Ivy League economist was taken off an American Airlines flight because he was spotted scribbling mathematical calculations that his seatmate found suspicious.
Trump — described to me by Norm Ornstein, the political scientist, as “the most insecure and ego-driven person in the country” — is the mouthpiece of this frightened America that sees threats everywhere (even in an Italian mathematician).
When Trump declares, “America First will be the major and overriding theme of my administration,” the rest of the world hears an angry nation flexing its muscles.
Khan’s rise, by contrast, is a story of victory over the fears engendered by 9/11. His victory is a rebuke to Osama bin Laden, the Islamic State, jihadi ideology of every stripe — and to the hatemongering politicians like Trump who choose to play the Muslim-equals-danger game. Khan has argued that greater integration is essential and “too many British Muslims grow up without really knowing anyone from a different background.”
Sigmund Freud wrote, “It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.” Donald Trump has written: “I have learned to listen and trust my gut. It’s one of my most valued counselors.” He recently said, “We must, as a nation, be more unpredictable.”
Right.
Put together an egotist, a bully, immense power and a taste for gut-driven unpredictability and you have a dangerous brew that could put civilization at risk. Those small fingers would have access to the nuclear codes if Trump was elected.
In this context, Sadiq Khan’s victory is reassuring because he represents currents in the world — toward global identity and integration — that will prove stronger over time than the tribalism and nativism of Trump.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Sadiq Khan and the Future of Europe
WASHINGTON — As the votes in London’s mayoral election were being counted on May 5, almost every British Muslim I know seemed to have only one thought: Would Sadiq Khan pull it off?
He did. Mr. Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants, was elected as the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital city, with more than 1.3 million votes, in what is being called the biggest mandate in the history of British politics. And the Labour candidate managed his landslide even after his opponent, the Conservative politician Zac Goldsmith, smeared him as a “radical” and shamelessly accused him of giving “oxygen” to extremists.
Islamophobes are tearing their hair out as they decry the Islamization of Britain. But for all the Muslim baiting, London’s new mayor is part of an encouraging trend. He’s just the latest in a series of observant Muslims who have captured the hearts and minds of the British public. Last October, 14.5 million Britons tuned in to watch the smiling, hijab-clad Nadiya Hussain, the daughter of a waiter from Bangladesh, as she was crowned champion of “The Great British Bake Off,” a TV show. In April, Riyad Mahrez, who was born in Paris to an Algerian father and a Moroccan mother, was awarded the Professional Footballers’ Association Player of the Year trophy after scoring 17 goals for Leicester City, which went on to a surprise victory in the Premier League championship.
In a perfect world, the faith of a TV cooking show star, an athlete or even a major politician would be irrelevant. But in our deeply imperfect — and, yes, Islamophobic — world, it isn’t. British newspapers are filled with alarmist headlines about “Muslim sex grooming” and “the rise in Muslim birthrate.” Earlier this year, Trevor Philips, the former chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, accused Britain’s Muslims of “becoming a nation within a nation.”
It’s harder to say that now. The tide is turning in the toxic debate on Islam, integration and multiculturalism. As Mr. Khan told Time magazine, the best way to fight extremism is to “say to youngsters you can be British, Muslim and successful” and to “point to successful British role models,” like Zayn Malik, a pop star, and Mo Farah, an Olympic gold medal-winning runner. London’s new mayor may become the ultimate role model. I imagine Muslim parents across Britain are now reciting Sadiq Khan’s name to their kids. It’s one thing to celebrate the Muslim winner of a reality TV show; quite another to have a Muslim elected to one of the highest offices in the land.
Mr. Khan’s resounding victory was a stinging rebuke to the peddlers of prejudice. Here is a Muslim who prays and fasts and has gone on the hajj to Mecca. But he sees no contradiction in being a card-carrying liberal, too. As a member of Parliament, he voted — despite death threats from Islamist extremists — in favor of same-sex marriage and he campaigned to save a local pub in his constituency from closure. He has pledged to serve as a “feminist mayor” of London and made his first public appearance after the election at a Holocaust memorial service.
The capital, admittedly, is a city apart — diverse, immigrant-friendly and home to around four in 10 of England’s 2.6 million Muslims. But even outside London, the more relaxed and tolerant British model of multiculturalism has done a far superior job of integrating, even embracing, religious and racial diversity than the more muscular, assimilationist models in Continental Europe.
While Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have declared multiculturalism a failure, the truth is that their countries, Germany and France, have never tried it. As Tariq Modood, the author of “Still Not Easy Being British,” writes, multiculturalism is the “political accommodation of difference.” For the French, however, difference has never even been tolerated, much less accommodated. In contrast, British-style multiculturalism has treated integration, as even David Cameron conceded almost a decade ago, as “a two-way street” and never required, in the words of Will Kymlicka, the author of “Multicultural Odysseys,” that “prior identities” must “be relinquished” in order to build a national identity.
Is it surprising that polls find that British Muslims are more patriotic and take more pride in their national identity than their non-Muslim counterparts and studies show that ethnic and religious segregation in Britain is either steady or in decline?
That isn’t to deny the problems. Britain’s Muslims tend to have the highest unemployment, worst health and fewest educational qualifications of any faith community. But this likely has more to do with a history of racism than it does with an unwillingness to integrate. A 2013 study found that Muslim men in Britain were up to 76 percent less likely to get a job offer than Christian men of the same age holding similar qualifications, while Muslim women were 65 percent less likely to be employed than Christian women.
The situation, then, is far from perfect, but there is a good reason that British Muslims look across the English Channel and breathe a sigh of collective relief.
It is difficult to imagine a Mayor Khan being elected in Berlin or the hijab-clad Hussain being embraced by French TV viewers. In Germany, a far-right, anti-immigrant party did surprisingly well in recent local elections. The prime minister of France has suggested that a “majority of French citizens doubt” that Islam is compatible with French society. Meanwhile, the Czech president claims it is “impossible” to integrate Muslims in Europe.
Such virulent rhetoric risks becoming self-fulfilling: The more you demonize Islam and Muslims, and the more Muslims are treated as “them” and not “us,” the more you push people apart. Fear and loathing is not a strategy for integration. Last week, Londoners, in the words of their new mayor, chose “hope over fear, and unity over division.” It’s an example for the rest of Europe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/opini ... d=45305309
WASHINGTON — As the votes in London’s mayoral election were being counted on May 5, almost every British Muslim I know seemed to have only one thought: Would Sadiq Khan pull it off?
He did. Mr. Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants, was elected as the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital city, with more than 1.3 million votes, in what is being called the biggest mandate in the history of British politics. And the Labour candidate managed his landslide even after his opponent, the Conservative politician Zac Goldsmith, smeared him as a “radical” and shamelessly accused him of giving “oxygen” to extremists.
Islamophobes are tearing their hair out as they decry the Islamization of Britain. But for all the Muslim baiting, London’s new mayor is part of an encouraging trend. He’s just the latest in a series of observant Muslims who have captured the hearts and minds of the British public. Last October, 14.5 million Britons tuned in to watch the smiling, hijab-clad Nadiya Hussain, the daughter of a waiter from Bangladesh, as she was crowned champion of “The Great British Bake Off,” a TV show. In April, Riyad Mahrez, who was born in Paris to an Algerian father and a Moroccan mother, was awarded the Professional Footballers’ Association Player of the Year trophy after scoring 17 goals for Leicester City, which went on to a surprise victory in the Premier League championship.
In a perfect world, the faith of a TV cooking show star, an athlete or even a major politician would be irrelevant. But in our deeply imperfect — and, yes, Islamophobic — world, it isn’t. British newspapers are filled with alarmist headlines about “Muslim sex grooming” and “the rise in Muslim birthrate.” Earlier this year, Trevor Philips, the former chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, accused Britain’s Muslims of “becoming a nation within a nation.”
It’s harder to say that now. The tide is turning in the toxic debate on Islam, integration and multiculturalism. As Mr. Khan told Time magazine, the best way to fight extremism is to “say to youngsters you can be British, Muslim and successful” and to “point to successful British role models,” like Zayn Malik, a pop star, and Mo Farah, an Olympic gold medal-winning runner. London’s new mayor may become the ultimate role model. I imagine Muslim parents across Britain are now reciting Sadiq Khan’s name to their kids. It’s one thing to celebrate the Muslim winner of a reality TV show; quite another to have a Muslim elected to one of the highest offices in the land.
Mr. Khan’s resounding victory was a stinging rebuke to the peddlers of prejudice. Here is a Muslim who prays and fasts and has gone on the hajj to Mecca. But he sees no contradiction in being a card-carrying liberal, too. As a member of Parliament, he voted — despite death threats from Islamist extremists — in favor of same-sex marriage and he campaigned to save a local pub in his constituency from closure. He has pledged to serve as a “feminist mayor” of London and made his first public appearance after the election at a Holocaust memorial service.
The capital, admittedly, is a city apart — diverse, immigrant-friendly and home to around four in 10 of England’s 2.6 million Muslims. But even outside London, the more relaxed and tolerant British model of multiculturalism has done a far superior job of integrating, even embracing, religious and racial diversity than the more muscular, assimilationist models in Continental Europe.
While Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have declared multiculturalism a failure, the truth is that their countries, Germany and France, have never tried it. As Tariq Modood, the author of “Still Not Easy Being British,” writes, multiculturalism is the “political accommodation of difference.” For the French, however, difference has never even been tolerated, much less accommodated. In contrast, British-style multiculturalism has treated integration, as even David Cameron conceded almost a decade ago, as “a two-way street” and never required, in the words of Will Kymlicka, the author of “Multicultural Odysseys,” that “prior identities” must “be relinquished” in order to build a national identity.
Is it surprising that polls find that British Muslims are more patriotic and take more pride in their national identity than their non-Muslim counterparts and studies show that ethnic and religious segregation in Britain is either steady or in decline?
That isn’t to deny the problems. Britain’s Muslims tend to have the highest unemployment, worst health and fewest educational qualifications of any faith community. But this likely has more to do with a history of racism than it does with an unwillingness to integrate. A 2013 study found that Muslim men in Britain were up to 76 percent less likely to get a job offer than Christian men of the same age holding similar qualifications, while Muslim women were 65 percent less likely to be employed than Christian women.
The situation, then, is far from perfect, but there is a good reason that British Muslims look across the English Channel and breathe a sigh of collective relief.
It is difficult to imagine a Mayor Khan being elected in Berlin or the hijab-clad Hussain being embraced by French TV viewers. In Germany, a far-right, anti-immigrant party did surprisingly well in recent local elections. The prime minister of France has suggested that a “majority of French citizens doubt” that Islam is compatible with French society. Meanwhile, the Czech president claims it is “impossible” to integrate Muslims in Europe.
Such virulent rhetoric risks becoming self-fulfilling: The more you demonize Islam and Muslims, and the more Muslims are treated as “them” and not “us,” the more you push people apart. Fear and loathing is not a strategy for integration. Last week, Londoners, in the words of their new mayor, chose “hope over fear, and unity over division.” It’s an example for the rest of Europe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/opini ... d=45305309
At last a Prime Minister with guts.
The rest of the world could take a lesson from him.
Hats off to Monsieur Fillon!!!
Prime Minister of France
For once, a French politician has the courage to say out loud what the French think and sometimes cry out about.
Interesting approach?
Learning to live in peace and harmony ?
Muslims who want to live under the law of the 'Islamic Sharia' have recently been told to leave France in order to guard against possible terrorist attacks, the government has targeted radicals.
Apparently, the Prime Minister, Francois Fillon has angered some French Muslims in stating:
THOSE IMMIGRANTS, WHO ARE NOT FRENCH MUST ADAPT. Take it or leave it, I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture.
Our culture has developed with struggles and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. Our official language is French, not Spanish, or Lebanese, or Arabic, or Chinese, or Japanese, or any other language. Therefore, if you want to be part of our society, learn the language!
Most French people believe in God. This is not some Christian obligation, influence by the rightists or political pressure, but it is a fact, because men and women founded this nation on Christian principles, and this is clearly documented.
It is then appropriate to display this on the walls of our schools? if God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your home, because God is part of our culture. We will accept your beliefs without question. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in peaceful harmony with us. This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, AND OUR LIFESTYLE. And we offer you the opportunity to enjoy all this.But if you're tired of our flag, our commitment, our Christian beliefs, or our lifestyle, I strongly encourage you to take advantage of another great French freedom,..... THE RIGHT TO LEAVE.
If you are not happy here then LEAVE. We did not force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU chose. (Perhaps if we circulate this email to the world's citizens we may find a way to stand up and spread the same truths)...Well said Mr. Fillon!!!!!
http://hotcopper.com.au/threads/at-last ... 0_Adb48LfY
The rest of the world could take a lesson from him.
Hats off to Monsieur Fillon!!!
Prime Minister of France
For once, a French politician has the courage to say out loud what the French think and sometimes cry out about.
Interesting approach?
Learning to live in peace and harmony ?
Muslims who want to live under the law of the 'Islamic Sharia' have recently been told to leave France in order to guard against possible terrorist attacks, the government has targeted radicals.
Apparently, the Prime Minister, Francois Fillon has angered some French Muslims in stating:
THOSE IMMIGRANTS, WHO ARE NOT FRENCH MUST ADAPT. Take it or leave it, I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture.
Our culture has developed with struggles and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. Our official language is French, not Spanish, or Lebanese, or Arabic, or Chinese, or Japanese, or any other language. Therefore, if you want to be part of our society, learn the language!
Most French people believe in God. This is not some Christian obligation, influence by the rightists or political pressure, but it is a fact, because men and women founded this nation on Christian principles, and this is clearly documented.
It is then appropriate to display this on the walls of our schools? if God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your home, because God is part of our culture. We will accept your beliefs without question. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in peaceful harmony with us. This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, AND OUR LIFESTYLE. And we offer you the opportunity to enjoy all this.But if you're tired of our flag, our commitment, our Christian beliefs, or our lifestyle, I strongly encourage you to take advantage of another great French freedom,..... THE RIGHT TO LEAVE.
If you are not happy here then LEAVE. We did not force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU chose. (Perhaps if we circulate this email to the world's citizens we may find a way to stand up and spread the same truths)...Well said Mr. Fillon!!!!!
http://hotcopper.com.au/threads/at-last ... 0_Adb48LfY
European churches say growing flock of Muslim refugees are converting
A growing number of Muslim refugees in Europe are converting to Christianity, according to churches, which have conducted mass baptisms in some places.
Reliable data on conversions is not available but anecdotal evidence suggests a pattern of rising church attendance by Muslims who have fled conflict, repression and economic hardship in countries across the Middle East and central Asia.
Complex factors behind the trend include heartfelt faith in a new religion, gratitude to Christian groups offering support during perilous and frightening journeys, and an expectation that conversion may aid asylum applications.
More...
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/eur ... lsignoutmd
A growing number of Muslim refugees in Europe are converting to Christianity, according to churches, which have conducted mass baptisms in some places.
Reliable data on conversions is not available but anecdotal evidence suggests a pattern of rising church attendance by Muslims who have fled conflict, repression and economic hardship in countries across the Middle East and central Asia.
Complex factors behind the trend include heartfelt faith in a new religion, gratitude to Christian groups offering support during perilous and frightening journeys, and an expectation that conversion may aid asylum applications.
More...
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/eur ... lsignoutmd
Germany: Man finds $166,000 in old cupboard, hands it back
BERLIN — Police in the German town of Minden say a 25-year-old man who arrived last year as a refugee is their "hero of the day" after he found some 150,000 euros ($166,095) — and handed it to authorities.
The unidentified Syrian man discovered the money in a cupboard he had been given by a charitable organization.
Minden police said Tuesday that he found about 50,000 euros in cash and savings books containing more than 100,000 euros hidden under a board while assembling the furniture.
Police said in a statement that while small amounts of money are regularly handed in to authorities, "such a large sum is the absolute exception."
The man arrived in Germany last October as a refugee.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/offbeat/g ... li=AAggNb9
********
Syrian Refugee Finds $55,000, Returns It Because ‘I Am A Muslim’
Photos and article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ref ... 4b0b13d7d4
BERLIN — Police in the German town of Minden say a 25-year-old man who arrived last year as a refugee is their "hero of the day" after he found some 150,000 euros ($166,095) — and handed it to authorities.
The unidentified Syrian man discovered the money in a cupboard he had been given by a charitable organization.
Minden police said Tuesday that he found about 50,000 euros in cash and savings books containing more than 100,000 euros hidden under a board while assembling the furniture.
Police said in a statement that while small amounts of money are regularly handed in to authorities, "such a large sum is the absolute exception."
The man arrived in Germany last October as a refugee.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/offbeat/g ... li=AAggNb9
********
Syrian Refugee Finds $55,000, Returns It Because ‘I Am A Muslim’
Photos and article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ref ... 4b0b13d7d4
‘He’s Going Straight to Hell’: Nice's Muslims Disavow Mohamed Bouhlel After Truck Massacre
The al-Wahda prayer room and the Al-Baraka Mosque on the Rue de Suisse in Nice’s city center were filling up for their early afternoon services on Saturday. Muslim worshippers arrived, locked up their bikes and took off their sandals and socks on green mats laid outside the entrance to Al-Baraka to protect their feet. The sound of Arabic prayer spilled out from both.
Both Al-Wahda, which only has a limited space of 160 square meters for its worshippers, and the next door Al-Baraka Mosque, are refusing entry to non-Muslims for the prayers services. But once prayers were over Al-Wahda’s imam, Sheikh Abdulmonam, initially hesitant at speaking to a Newsweek reporter, gave me permission to enter the house of worship so that we could talk about the actions of Mohamed Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian that the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) on Saturday claimed as one their own.
After Bouhlel mowed down hundreds of locals and foreigners celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais on Thursday night, killing at least 84 people, Muslim communities across France are once again coming to terms with a mass killing carried out in their religion’s name.
“What happened on Thursday has nothing at all to do with Islam because the person who did it, even according to his outward acts, wasn’t a Muslim,” the 46-year-old Abdulmonam says in Arabic, speaking through a translator. He declined to give his last name. “He smoked, he didn’t pray, he didn’t fast, he didn’t do all these things that Muslims should do. It was a horrible crime.”
More...
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/%e2 ... ar-BBupdQK
The al-Wahda prayer room and the Al-Baraka Mosque on the Rue de Suisse in Nice’s city center were filling up for their early afternoon services on Saturday. Muslim worshippers arrived, locked up their bikes and took off their sandals and socks on green mats laid outside the entrance to Al-Baraka to protect their feet. The sound of Arabic prayer spilled out from both.
Both Al-Wahda, which only has a limited space of 160 square meters for its worshippers, and the next door Al-Baraka Mosque, are refusing entry to non-Muslims for the prayers services. But once prayers were over Al-Wahda’s imam, Sheikh Abdulmonam, initially hesitant at speaking to a Newsweek reporter, gave me permission to enter the house of worship so that we could talk about the actions of Mohamed Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian that the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) on Saturday claimed as one their own.
After Bouhlel mowed down hundreds of locals and foreigners celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais on Thursday night, killing at least 84 people, Muslim communities across France are once again coming to terms with a mass killing carried out in their religion’s name.
“What happened on Thursday has nothing at all to do with Islam because the person who did it, even according to his outward acts, wasn’t a Muslim,” the 46-year-old Abdulmonam says in Arabic, speaking through a translator. He declined to give his last name. “He smoked, he didn’t pray, he didn’t fast, he didn’t do all these things that Muslims should do. It was a horrible crime.”
More...
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/%e2 ... ar-BBupdQK
A Third of Nice Truck Attack’s Dead Were Muslim, Group Says
NICE, France — When a Tunisian man drove a truck down a crowded street in Nice last week in an attack claimed by the Islamic State, more than one-third of the people he killed were Muslim, the head of a regional Islamic association said on Tuesday.
Kawthar Ben Salem, a spokeswoman for the Union of Muslims of the Alpes-Maritimes, said that Muslim funerals were being held for at least 30 of those who died during the Bastille Day attack, including men, women and children.
The Paris prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorism investigations, said on Tuesday that all 84 people killed in the attack had been formally identified, meaning that the number of Muslim fatalities may be even higher. The number of people who were wounded was also raised, to 308 people.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/world ... .html?_r=0
NICE, France — When a Tunisian man drove a truck down a crowded street in Nice last week in an attack claimed by the Islamic State, more than one-third of the people he killed were Muslim, the head of a regional Islamic association said on Tuesday.
Kawthar Ben Salem, a spokeswoman for the Union of Muslims of the Alpes-Maritimes, said that Muslim funerals were being held for at least 30 of those who died during the Bastille Day attack, including men, women and children.
The Paris prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorism investigations, said on Tuesday that all 84 people killed in the attack had been formally identified, meaning that the number of Muslim fatalities may be even higher. The number of people who were wounded was also raised, to 308 people.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/world ... .html?_r=0
Years Before Truck Rampage in Nice, Attacker Wasn’t ‘Living in the Real World’
Extract:
Since then, all of France has struggled to explain the single most murderous act yet committed by an individual since the country’s wave of terror began. Was Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s rampage terrorism or merely the outburst of a madman? Or both?
The Islamic State quickly proclaimed him a “soldier.” Yet Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s life — pieced together in numerous interviews in France and Tunisia, where he was born and raised — showed few signs of real radicalization, and certainly no Islamic zeal.
Instead, it showed plenty of signs of verging psychosis and a hair-trigger propensity for violence by a man variously described as a drinker, a wife beater, a drug taker and a chronic womanizer.
“He danced, he smoked, he ate pork. It was almost as though he wasn’t even Muslim,” Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s brother Jaber, 19, said in an interview outside the family home here in Msaken, Tunisia. “He didn’t even pray.”
Rather, Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s life appears to show the ways in which the unstable and aggrieved have latched on to Islamic State propaganda to shape their violent fixations and find permission to act them out.
In turn, the Islamic State has latched on to them, declaring as its foot soldiers even individuals with tenuous ties to the group but long histories of personal and psychological troubles who are far from models of Islamic rectitude."
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/world ... d=71987722
Extract:
Since then, all of France has struggled to explain the single most murderous act yet committed by an individual since the country’s wave of terror began. Was Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s rampage terrorism or merely the outburst of a madman? Or both?
The Islamic State quickly proclaimed him a “soldier.” Yet Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s life — pieced together in numerous interviews in France and Tunisia, where he was born and raised — showed few signs of real radicalization, and certainly no Islamic zeal.
Instead, it showed plenty of signs of verging psychosis and a hair-trigger propensity for violence by a man variously described as a drinker, a wife beater, a drug taker and a chronic womanizer.
“He danced, he smoked, he ate pork. It was almost as though he wasn’t even Muslim,” Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s brother Jaber, 19, said in an interview outside the family home here in Msaken, Tunisia. “He didn’t even pray.”
Rather, Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s life appears to show the ways in which the unstable and aggrieved have latched on to Islamic State propaganda to shape their violent fixations and find permission to act them out.
In turn, the Islamic State has latched on to them, declaring as its foot soldiers even individuals with tenuous ties to the group but long histories of personal and psychological troubles who are far from models of Islamic rectitude."
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/world ... d=71987722
France’s Real State of Emergency
Extract:
"France is home to the largest Muslim population of any country in Western Europe — up to six million people who already face discrimination in employment, housing and educational opportunity. While Muslims constitute about 9 percent of the population, they are incarcerated at a disproportionate rate, making up an estimated 60 percent of the prison population — a rate that surpasses even the overrepresentation of African-Americans and Latinos in American jails. When the French government targets French Muslims with its emergency measures, it reinforces the sense of persecution of this marginalized minority.
Today, many French Muslims and rights groups regard the state of emergency as a public relations exercise rather than a genuine security policy. Through its repressive, overbroad methods, the government is sending a message both to French Muslims, indiscriminately, and about French Muslims to the rest of French society, reinforcing negative stereotypes and hostility."
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/opini ... d=71987722
Extract:
"France is home to the largest Muslim population of any country in Western Europe — up to six million people who already face discrimination in employment, housing and educational opportunity. While Muslims constitute about 9 percent of the population, they are incarcerated at a disproportionate rate, making up an estimated 60 percent of the prison population — a rate that surpasses even the overrepresentation of African-Americans and Latinos in American jails. When the French government targets French Muslims with its emergency measures, it reinforces the sense of persecution of this marginalized minority.
Today, many French Muslims and rights groups regard the state of emergency as a public relations exercise rather than a genuine security policy. Through its repressive, overbroad methods, the government is sending a message both to French Muslims, indiscriminately, and about French Muslims to the rest of French society, reinforcing negative stereotypes and hostility."
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/opini ... d=71987722
The Meaning of a Martyrdom
Extract:
But our today is not actually quite what 1960s-era Catholicism imagined. The come-of-age church is, in the West, literally a dying church: As the French philosopher Pierre Manent noted, the scene of Father Hamel’s murder — “an almost empty church, two parishioners, three nuns, a very old priest” — vividly illustrates the condition of the faith in Western Europe.
The broader liberal order is also showing signs of strain. The European Union, a great dream when Father Hamel was ordained a priest in 1958, is now a creaking and unpopular bureaucracy, threatened by nationalism from within and struggling to assimilate immigrants from cultures that never made the liberal leap.
The Islam of many of these immigrants is likely to be Europe’s most potent religious force across the next generation, bringing with it an “Islamic exceptionalism” (to borrow the title of Shadi Hamid’s fine new book) that may not fit the existing secular-liberal experiment at all.
Meanwhile the French Catholic future seems like it may belong to a combination of African immigrants and Latin-Mass traditionalists — or else to a religious revival that would likely be nationalist, not liberal, with Joan of Arc as its model, not a modern Jesuit.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opini ... ef=opinion
Extract:
But our today is not actually quite what 1960s-era Catholicism imagined. The come-of-age church is, in the West, literally a dying church: As the French philosopher Pierre Manent noted, the scene of Father Hamel’s murder — “an almost empty church, two parishioners, three nuns, a very old priest” — vividly illustrates the condition of the faith in Western Europe.
The broader liberal order is also showing signs of strain. The European Union, a great dream when Father Hamel was ordained a priest in 1958, is now a creaking and unpopular bureaucracy, threatened by nationalism from within and struggling to assimilate immigrants from cultures that never made the liberal leap.
The Islam of many of these immigrants is likely to be Europe’s most potent religious force across the next generation, bringing with it an “Islamic exceptionalism” (to borrow the title of Shadi Hamid’s fine new book) that may not fit the existing secular-liberal experiment at all.
Meanwhile the French Catholic future seems like it may belong to a combination of African immigrants and Latin-Mass traditionalists — or else to a religious revival that would likely be nationalist, not liberal, with Joan of Arc as its model, not a modern Jesuit.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opini ... ef=opinion
Banning burqas isn’t a sensible response to terrorism
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... terrorism/
Extract:
There was widespread support for the French ban when it was announced: Parliament passed the legislation with near-unanimity, and polls suggested that more than 80 percent of the public agreed with it. In a country where secularism is held dear and religion is regarded as a private matter, there's relatively little debate over the merits of the ban even now, five years later. Just this week, the French resort town of Cannes went further by banning the "burqini," a full-body swimsuit worn by some Muslim women.
The law was accorded international approval in 2014, when the European Court of Human Rights upheld the ban, saying it encouraged citizens to "live together."
But Agnes De Feo, a sociologist and documentary filmmaker who has studied the impact of the French law on Muslim women, says it has had some unintentional effects. De Feo says that since 2009 she has interviewed about 150 women who wear a veil and has seen how the law changed their perception of French society. "Almost all the people wearing the niqab in France today started after the law [was implemented]," she says. "The women wearing the niqab before the law now stay at home and now they never go outside."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... terrorism/
Extract:
There was widespread support for the French ban when it was announced: Parliament passed the legislation with near-unanimity, and polls suggested that more than 80 percent of the public agreed with it. In a country where secularism is held dear and religion is regarded as a private matter, there's relatively little debate over the merits of the ban even now, five years later. Just this week, the French resort town of Cannes went further by banning the "burqini," a full-body swimsuit worn by some Muslim women.
The law was accorded international approval in 2014, when the European Court of Human Rights upheld the ban, saying it encouraged citizens to "live together."
But Agnes De Feo, a sociologist and documentary filmmaker who has studied the impact of the French law on Muslim women, says it has had some unintentional effects. De Feo says that since 2009 she has interviewed about 150 women who wear a veil and has seen how the law changed their perception of French society. "Almost all the people wearing the niqab in France today started after the law [was implemented]," she says. "The women wearing the niqab before the law now stay at home and now they never go outside."
France Has the Burkini Blues
Extract:
"Leaders of European Muslim communities — the many Muslims who have enjoyed success and integration in Europe — need to stand up day after day and declare, loud and clear, that with the fruits of freedom come the obligations of tolerant citizenship. Paris was not built on backwardness or barbarism or misogyny. Its luminous appeal to all humanity stems from the Enlightenment. The French state, in turn, like other states, must recommit itself to combating prejudice against Muslims.
That said, it is also unacceptable to ban Zanetti’s burkini from beaches. A burkini is not in itself “a political project,” “a counter-society” or a symbol of women’s enslavement, as Valls argued. No, it is a choice of dress reflecting a religious belief protected under the French Constitution. If anything, it is the counter-bikini.
Often the choice to wear one has been imposed through forms of male domination sanctioned by certain readings of Islam and pervasive in societies like Saudi Arabia, but equally it may reflect a woman’s independently embraced identity. That is not for officials to decide. Inside the burkini lurk many different women’s journeys."
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/opini ... &te=1&_r=0
*****
France’s Burkini Bigotry
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/opini ... pe=article
*****
Police in Cannes stop Muslim women wearing banned burkinis
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/pol ... li=AAggNb9
Extract:
"Leaders of European Muslim communities — the many Muslims who have enjoyed success and integration in Europe — need to stand up day after day and declare, loud and clear, that with the fruits of freedom come the obligations of tolerant citizenship. Paris was not built on backwardness or barbarism or misogyny. Its luminous appeal to all humanity stems from the Enlightenment. The French state, in turn, like other states, must recommit itself to combating prejudice against Muslims.
That said, it is also unacceptable to ban Zanetti’s burkini from beaches. A burkini is not in itself “a political project,” “a counter-society” or a symbol of women’s enslavement, as Valls argued. No, it is a choice of dress reflecting a religious belief protected under the French Constitution. If anything, it is the counter-bikini.
Often the choice to wear one has been imposed through forms of male domination sanctioned by certain readings of Islam and pervasive in societies like Saudi Arabia, but equally it may reflect a woman’s independently embraced identity. That is not for officials to decide. Inside the burkini lurk many different women’s journeys."
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/opini ... &te=1&_r=0
*****
France’s Burkini Bigotry
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/opini ... pe=article
*****
Police in Cannes stop Muslim women wearing banned burkinis
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/pol ... li=AAggNb9
Burkini ban suspended: UN backs court ruling as right-wing politicians pledge to keep ban
The United Nations has welcomed a ruling by France’s highest court that the burkini ban is “seriously and clearly illegal”, as right-wing politicians have vowed to continue their bid to ban the swimwear.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “We welcome the decision by the court. I think our opinion was expressed fairly clearly the other day on the need for people’s personal dignity and person to be respected.”
Speaking prior to the court ruling he said: “It’s about respecting the dignity of people; it’s about respecting the dignity of women. And from what I’ve seen in the photos, it doesn’t look like that was the case in this particular incident.”
Images of a woman being ordered by armed French police to remove the modest swimwear tunic while sitting on a beach in France, provoked outrage round the world.
More..
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/bur ... li=AAggv0m
The United Nations has welcomed a ruling by France’s highest court that the burkini ban is “seriously and clearly illegal”, as right-wing politicians have vowed to continue their bid to ban the swimwear.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “We welcome the decision by the court. I think our opinion was expressed fairly clearly the other day on the need for people’s personal dignity and person to be respected.”
Speaking prior to the court ruling he said: “It’s about respecting the dignity of people; it’s about respecting the dignity of women. And from what I’ve seen in the photos, it doesn’t look like that was the case in this particular incident.”
Images of a woman being ordered by armed French police to remove the modest swimwear tunic while sitting on a beach in France, provoked outrage round the world.
More..
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/bur ... li=AAggv0m
Farmer finds nearly 80 sheep ritually slaughtered in his field
Nearly 80 sheep have been ritually slaughtered in a field in the Austrian Alps in what animal protection staff described as a "flagrant breach of the law".
An unnamed farmer in the Styria region said he had lent his field to a friend for a month so 131 sheep could graze.
But the friend did not tell him the sheep were being bred to be sacrificed as part of Islamic Eid al-Adha or the Feast of Sacrifice.
During the festival, which comes in the middle of the Haji, Muslims slaughter sheep, goats or cows to commemorate the day they believe Abraham, known as Ibrahim to Muslims, was told by God to sacrifice his son but was eventually allowed to kill a sheep instead.
Muslims who can afford it are supposed to sacrifice their best animal as a symbol of Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his only son for God and then donate at least part of the meat to the poor.
After seeing what was happening witnessed called the police, who rushed to the scene and prevented 52 sheep being slaughtered.
Under Austrian law, all sacrifices performed as part of the festival had to take place in official slaughterhouses where humane conditions can be guaranteed but the 79 animals reportedly bled to death for several minutes.
Slaughtered animals must be drained of blood as consuming it is forbidden in Islam.
A police spokesman told the Local that it appeared the sheep had their carotid arteries cut in accordance with Muslim tradition and an investigation into animal cruelty had been launched.
Slaughtering animals in public is also illegal in Austria.
The head of a local animal shelter, Herbet Oster, told Austrian newspaper Die Presse: "There is lack of awareness that it is a terrible injustice and a flagrant breach of the law".
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/far ... ailsignout
Nearly 80 sheep have been ritually slaughtered in a field in the Austrian Alps in what animal protection staff described as a "flagrant breach of the law".
An unnamed farmer in the Styria region said he had lent his field to a friend for a month so 131 sheep could graze.
But the friend did not tell him the sheep were being bred to be sacrificed as part of Islamic Eid al-Adha or the Feast of Sacrifice.
During the festival, which comes in the middle of the Haji, Muslims slaughter sheep, goats or cows to commemorate the day they believe Abraham, known as Ibrahim to Muslims, was told by God to sacrifice his son but was eventually allowed to kill a sheep instead.
Muslims who can afford it are supposed to sacrifice their best animal as a symbol of Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his only son for God and then donate at least part of the meat to the poor.
After seeing what was happening witnessed called the police, who rushed to the scene and prevented 52 sheep being slaughtered.
Under Austrian law, all sacrifices performed as part of the festival had to take place in official slaughterhouses where humane conditions can be guaranteed but the 79 animals reportedly bled to death for several minutes.
Slaughtered animals must be drained of blood as consuming it is forbidden in Islam.
A police spokesman told the Local that it appeared the sheep had their carotid arteries cut in accordance with Muslim tradition and an investigation into animal cruelty had been launched.
Slaughtering animals in public is also illegal in Austria.
The head of a local animal shelter, Herbet Oster, told Austrian newspaper Die Presse: "There is lack of awareness that it is a terrible injustice and a flagrant breach of the law".
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/far ... ailsignout
England’s Forgotten Muslim History
London — Britain is divided as never before. The country has turned its back on Europe, and its female ruler has her sights set on trade with the East. As much as this sounds like Britain today, it also describes the country in the 16th century, during the golden age of its most famous monarch, Queen Elizabeth I.
One of the more surprising aspects of Elizabethan England is that its foreign and economic policy was driven by a close alliance with the Islamic world, a fact conveniently ignored today by those pushing the populist rhetoric of national sovereignty.
.......
It turns out that Islam, in all its manifestations — imperial, military and commercial — played an important part in the story of England. Today, when anti-Muslim rhetoric inflames political discourse, it is useful to remember that our pasts are more entangled than is often appreciated.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opini ... ef=opinion
London — Britain is divided as never before. The country has turned its back on Europe, and its female ruler has her sights set on trade with the East. As much as this sounds like Britain today, it also describes the country in the 16th century, during the golden age of its most famous monarch, Queen Elizabeth I.
One of the more surprising aspects of Elizabethan England is that its foreign and economic policy was driven by a close alliance with the Islamic world, a fact conveniently ignored today by those pushing the populist rhetoric of national sovereignty.
.......
It turns out that Islam, in all its manifestations — imperial, military and commercial — played an important part in the story of England. Today, when anti-Muslim rhetoric inflames political discourse, it is useful to remember that our pasts are more entangled than is often appreciated.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opini ... ef=opinion
Women’s Emergence as Terrorists in France Points to Shift in ISIS Gender Roles
PARIS — There was the parked car stuffed with gas canisters near the Notre Dame Cathedral, a possible effort to set off an explosion in the heart of Paris. There was the suspected plot to attack a train station in the Paris area. There was the effort by one of the Islamic State’s most prominent propagandists to recruit two young people in Nice, where an attacker had killed 86 people in July by running them down in a truck.
In France, where terrorist threats have become distressingly commonplace, these three episodes, all in the last month, stood out for one reason in particular: Radicalized women were at the heart of each.
It is not yet clear whether the phenomenon is a blip or the beginning of a trend in which women play a more active role in plotting and carrying out attacks on the West.
Security officials say they are concerned, and they are seeking to understand whether women are beginning to step up because so many men are under surveillance or in detention, or whether recruiters from terror groups are urging women on, in part, as a way to shame more men into taking action. They also wonder if it is part of a strategy to make Europeans feel that they should fear men and women alike.
Whatever the reasons, the authorities take it as a given that women are now part of the Islamic State’s European strategy, said François Molins, the Paris prosecutor who is in charge of terrorism investigations nationwide.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/world ... 87722&_r=0
PARIS — There was the parked car stuffed with gas canisters near the Notre Dame Cathedral, a possible effort to set off an explosion in the heart of Paris. There was the suspected plot to attack a train station in the Paris area. There was the effort by one of the Islamic State’s most prominent propagandists to recruit two young people in Nice, where an attacker had killed 86 people in July by running them down in a truck.
In France, where terrorist threats have become distressingly commonplace, these three episodes, all in the last month, stood out for one reason in particular: Radicalized women were at the heart of each.
It is not yet clear whether the phenomenon is a blip or the beginning of a trend in which women play a more active role in plotting and carrying out attacks on the West.
Security officials say they are concerned, and they are seeking to understand whether women are beginning to step up because so many men are under surveillance or in detention, or whether recruiters from terror groups are urging women on, in part, as a way to shame more men into taking action. They also wonder if it is part of a strategy to make Europeans feel that they should fear men and women alike.
Whatever the reasons, the authorities take it as a given that women are now part of the Islamic State’s European strategy, said François Molins, the Paris prosecutor who is in charge of terrorism investigations nationwide.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/world ... 87722&_r=0
Prophet Muhammad and the London bus!
Photo:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/the ... YyOTI0MTc-
------------------------------------
Photo:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/the ... YyOTI0MTc-
------------------------------------
Germany Bans ‘True Religion’ Muslim Group and Raids Mosques
BERLIN — A German organization that calls itself the True Religion and that is known for distributing German-language copies of the Quran was outlawed on Tuesday, after the authorities accused it of recruiting jihadists to fight in Iraq and Syria.
Thomas de Maizière, the German interior minister, said the government had banned the True Religion organization, which is also known as Read (as in the instruction to read the Quran), because it acted as a “collecting pool” for would-be Islamist fighters.
Starting on Tuesday morning, officers raided 190 premises in more than half of Germany’s 16 states. Materials were secured, but there were no detentions, Mr. de Maizière said.
“The organization brings Islamic jihadists together under the pretext of the harmless distribution of the Quran,” Mr. de Maizière told reporters in Berlin, stressing that the authorities were acting against the group because of its work to foster violence, not because of its faith. “A systematic curtailment of our rule of law has nothing to do with the alleged freedom of religion,” he said.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/world ... d=45305309
BERLIN — A German organization that calls itself the True Religion and that is known for distributing German-language copies of the Quran was outlawed on Tuesday, after the authorities accused it of recruiting jihadists to fight in Iraq and Syria.
Thomas de Maizière, the German interior minister, said the government had banned the True Religion organization, which is also known as Read (as in the instruction to read the Quran), because it acted as a “collecting pool” for would-be Islamist fighters.
Starting on Tuesday morning, officers raided 190 premises in more than half of Germany’s 16 states. Materials were secured, but there were no detentions, Mr. de Maizière said.
“The organization brings Islamic jihadists together under the pretext of the harmless distribution of the Quran,” Mr. de Maizière told reporters in Berlin, stressing that the authorities were acting against the group because of its work to foster violence, not because of its faith. “A systematic curtailment of our rule of law has nothing to do with the alleged freedom of religion,” he said.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/world ... d=45305309