Muslim Radicals

[Rasputin]

Bishop accuses Muslims of 'double standards'

The Church of England's only Asian bishop has criticised Muslims for their "dual psychology" and accused Islam of being a religion of double standards.

Pakistan-born Michael Nazir-Ali, whose father converted from Islam; said that owing to Muslims' desire for both "victimhood and domination" it is impossible to fully placate them.

The bishop of Rochester also told the Sunday Times that he could see no reason for Muslim women to wear the veil and called on the government to evaluate arriving imams for radical beliefs.

Mr Nazir-Ali said: "Their complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene when Muslims are victims, as in Bosnia or Kosovo, and always wrong when the Muslims are the oppressors or terrorists, as with the Taliban or in Iraq.

"Given the world view that has given rise to such grievances, there can never be sufficient appeasement and new demands will continue to be made."

The 57-year-old, who became the world's youngest bishop when ordained 22 years ago, said that the effect of radical teaching was being "felt across the country" upon all British Muslims.

"The two main causes of the present situation [rising extremism] are fundamentalist imams and material on the internet.

"They must be vetted for appropriate qualifications, they must have a reasonable knowledge of the English language and they must take part in a recognised process of learning about British life and culture," the bishop claimed.

Following the debate over Muslim veils sparked by leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw, which prompted prime minister Tony Blair to describe them as a "mark of separation", Mr Nazir-Ali commented: "I can see nothing in Islam that prescribes the wearing of a full-face veil. In the supermarket those at the cash tills need to be recognised. Teaching is another context in which society requires recognition and identification."

The archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has already insisted that any restrictions placed on the wearing of Muslim veils could be "politically dangerous".

Responding to today's Sunday Times article, Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain said that the bishop's comments were not "very helpful for community relationships".

[Rasputin]

If Liberals Win, America’s Islamists Will Have Reasons to Celebrate

Much ink has already been spilled pontificating the likely impact of a Democratic takeover of one or both houses of Congress tomorrow. Most have focused on the likelihood of crippling constraints imposed on the administration’s pursuit of the war on terror in Iraq and political paralysis in Washington for the last two years of the Bush Administration. Less attention has been paid to what is possibly an even more disturbing development in the longer term - the growing affinity between America’s Left and its radical Islamists. Whether it is a question of a marriage of convenience or an unholy alliance between two sides that agree on little else except a perceived common enemy, this budding alliance has the potential to seriously degrade our country’s ability to confront and defeat Islamist extremism at home and abroad. It behooves the American voter to take a hard look where this could lead before casting a vote tomorrow.

As often happens, this trend is not completely new and some form of it or another has been observable for quite some time. In both Europe and the United States, radical Islamists have long made common cause with looney Left, communist and assorted anti-American groups to promote their radical agenda. Convicted financier of Palestinian terrorists, Sami al-Arian, for instance, organized a group called National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF) where “mainstream” Islamic groups work side by side with former communists and trotskyites to defeat U.S. anti-terrorist legislation, while in California, an Islamist-radical Left alliance (California Civil Rights Alliance) aims to defeat the Patriot Act.

What’s fairly new, however, is the increasing willingness of more mainstream leftist and socialist parties to openly ally themselves with Muslim organizations that more often than not are controlled by Islamists. This trend, which first became noticeable in Europe, has spread avalanche-like on the continent over the past few months. In both The Netherlands and Belgium, the socialists did very well in recent municipal elections by openly pandering to newly enfranchised Muslim immigrants and radical Islam. Similarly, in both Germany and England, Muslims vote for the left in huge numbers, while the Italian Islamist Union demands that Muslims vote for the communists. The burgeoning and increasingly radicalized Muslim populations in formerly safe working class socialist bastions throughout Western Europe are making it difficult if not impossible for liberal politicians to get elected without Muslim support. This new reality is pushing European politics ever further to the left, even as the Left is forced to kowtow to Islamist demands for its very political survival.

Unlike Europe, America’s Muslims have a very different profile and with less than one percent of the population are far less numerous. With large numbers of professionals among them, they are also much better off economically and more integrated in American society, which is one reason there are no real Muslim ghettoes in the country. Nonetheless, in one key respect there are disturbing similarities. In both Europe and the United States virtually the entire self-anointed Muslim establishment is firmly in the hands of extremists, courtesy of decades of lavish Saudi spending on Islamist networks and indoctrination.

Yet another similarity is the strong leftward tilt of the democratic party which has brought it much closer to the European left ideologically. Indeed, with politicians bent on class warfare domestically and see-no-evil appeasement of our enemies internationally, like Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, John Conyers and John Kerry it is all but impossible to distinguish today’s democratic leaders from European socialists.

And it is with the help of left-wing politicians such as John Conyers, the likely next chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a man the Islamists from CAIR, ISNA, MPAC and the rest of that radical cabal have cultivated and donated to for a long time, that they hope to start dismantling the Patriot Act and other legislation that has given our troops in the counter-terrorism trenches the tools to keep us safe. It is not an unrealistic hope.

[Rasputin]

TIME FOR THE SAUDIS TO ACT

Whereas the Iraq war has not achieved any of its stated objectives, it has dramatically and irreversibly changed the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East, ushering in new conflicts that may rage for decades. The war has handed Iran an historic windfall, and it has given rise to its long-historic ambitions to dominate the region and establish Persian hegemony while pursuing nuclear weapons to assert its ambitions. New, and until recently perhaps unthinkable, alliances may now be forged, especially between Israel and the leading Sunni Gulf states to confront the emerging threat that looms ominously high over the entire region.

For the majority of the Arab Sunni states, especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the Iranian-Iraqi Shiite axis is a threat to their political survival. Although they believe that America will come to their aid in case of an imminent Iranian threat, these states do not believe that the current U.S. policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons will succeed. Once Iran is in possession of such arms, it will be further emboldened to actively undermine any Arab regime refusing to give into its dictates. A nuclear Iran will continue to expand its subversive activities by providing financial and military assistance, including training, to any militant Islamic group, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, prepared to confront Israel and challenge the Arab states. This reality explains why the Saudis were openly critical of Hezbollah’s unprovoked attack on Israel that precipitated the Lebanon war and their disappointment in Israel’s failure to crush it. That said, the Arab Sunni states still view Israel as a nuclear power the ultimate balance to Iran in the region and probably the only country that can effectively blunt or deter Iran’s adventurism.

Israel, which has been threatened by Iran explicitly and repeatedly, is also looking to buttress its position regionally, but it can do so only if it dedicates itself to Arab-Israeli peace and thus embraces, at least in general terms, the Saudi initiative. (In March 2003, at an Arab League summit in Beirut, Lebanon, the Saudis basically offered Israel a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace with normal relations in exchange for the return of the territories captured in the 1967 war.) The emergence of a common enemy to Israel and the Arab Sunni states in the form of Iranian-led Shiite axis has dramatically changed the dynamic of the Arab Israeli conflict. Of all the Arab states, Saudi Arabia has the greatest stake in how the conflict between this axis and the Sunni Arab states is managed over the next few years. There are three critical initiatives the Saudis must undertake:

First, they must use their considerable influence in Washington to bring about a change in the administration’s Syrian policy that will also encourage Israel to restart peace negotiations with Damascus over the Golan Heights. The goal would be to lure Syria out of the Shiite orbit, which could effectively reduce Iran’s meddling without aggravating the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moreover, extricating Syria from Iran’s belly and rejoining it to the Sunni fold are critical to the fight between the Sunni and the Shiite camps. In return, the Saudis can help the Bush administration end Damascus’s regional marginalization, while also providing Syria with substantial economic assistance. Syria’s moderation and its willingness to engage must be demonstrated by taking some action, such as exiling Hamas’ political Guru Kaled Mashal and closing down in Damascus the offices of extremist groups such as the Islamic Jihad.





Second, Saudi Arabia must initiate (if not continue) direct secret talks with Israel to determine commonalities between both nations regarding the Saudi initiative and to identify major stumbling blocks. Critical issues like final borders, Palestinian refugees, the future of Jerusalem, and even the general parameters of a Palestinian state, could then be discussed in a non-acrimonious atmosphere and without public pressure, both allowing for positive results. After it is established that differences can be narrowed, other Arab states, notably Egypt and Jordan, could enter the negotiating process.

Third, the secret talks may reveal that prospects for agreement are good because of the compelling new political reality. The Saudis should then take the lead in calling for a Middle-East international peace conference, preferably in Riyadh. An Israeli delegation actually visiting Riyadh will create its own political dynamic that is sure to reverberate throughout the region. The involvement of other major powers including the U.S, EU, China and Russia in the conference will lend credence and legitimacy, and may bring pressure to produce a workable framework for peace. Direct and indirect U.S. involvement inside and outside the Saudi initiatives remain pivotal to any progress.

None of the above policy initiatives would have been conceivable only six months ago. But the Lebanon war, the raging Israeli-Palestinian violence, the galvanization of the Jihad movement regionally and globally, the intensified Shiite-Sunni conflict, and Iran’s nuclear threats have made them not only conceivable but imperative.

[Rasputin]

Clifford Geertz, who died last month at the age of 80 of complications following heart surgery, was perhaps the most celebrated anthropologist of a distinguished generation that included Ernest Gellner and Mary Douglas. However, Gellner and Douglas always regarded themselves as social scientists. Geertz switched sides and became the prophet of a radical new humanism.

Geertz began his professional career as a graduate student in an interdisciplinary social science programme that Talcott Parsons had set up in Harvard. Parsons elected anthropology to be the handmaiden of sociology. It should treat the collective ideas and values that Parsons called culture. After all, people often behaved irrationally, to the despair of economists and policymakers. The job of anthropologists was to decode their symbolic statements, find out what they believed and so explain why they made irrational choices. This was particularly relevant to the study of the new states that emerged after the second world war, where culture seemed to be the main roadblock to rational political modernisation and economic “take-off” (a rocket-ship metaphor much in vogue at the time).

In 1951, Geertz went to the new state of Indonesia as a member of an interdisciplinary Harvard team. He and his wife Karen Blu carried out two years of field research in Java, and his initial conclusions were optimistic. Traditional cultural patterns could adjust to the demands of development. “Indonesia is now, by all the signs and portents, in the midst of such a pre-take-off period,” he wrote in 1963, and he claimed to see “the beginnings of a fundamental transformation in social values and institutions toward patterns we generally associate with a developed economy.”

This optimism was soon dispelled. Sukarno’s Indonesia was plunged into a chaotic and violent revolution. Geertz moved on. Shortly before the bloody massacres of 1965 in Java, he shifted his field site to Morocco. He now undertook a comparative study of Islam in Morocco and Indonesia—the antipodes of the Muslim world—which he saw as undergoing, in different ways, another necessary cultural change, as they came to terms with the inevitable process of secularisation. Events, once again, were soon to put this conclusion in doubt. (Ernest Gellner, studying Islam in Morocco at much the same time, foresaw the development of fundamentalism as a reaction to forces of modernisation.)

In 1970 Geertz moved from the University of Chicago to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, and here he issued a manifesto for a new anthropology, a collection of essays entitled The Interpretation of Culture. Anthropologists were not the partners of sociologists after all. Their business was not with action but with culture, a stand-alone system of meanings expressed in symbols. From the early 1970s, Geertz’s essays—increasingly literary, even flowery—explored the symbolic meanings of exotic and often marginal activities, from pre-colonial ceremonies in Bali to cock-fights in Java.

This new programme had a huge impact. In his memoir After the Fact, Geertz claimed that “the move toward meaning” had “proved a proper revolution: sweeping, durable, turbulent and consequential.” Sweeping it certainly was, at least in the US, and not only in anthropology. Geertz’s models were now drawn from literary theory and philosophy, and he was read more and more by scholars in the humanities. According to Robert Darnton, Geertz’s anthropology “offered the historian what the study of mentalité has failed to provide, a coherent conception of culture.”

Within anthropology Geertz became a hugely influential figure, but there were two broad critical responses to his intellectual trajectory. European scholars typically regretted that he had abandoned his earlier concern with social history, economic change and political revolution. The other reaction, which worried him more, was that of a younger, more radical generation of American anthropologists, who believed that his ambitious project was fatally flawed, because there could be no authoritative translation of meanings between two cultures. Geertz flirted with a radical relativism for a while, but towards the end of his life he seemed to be moving back to a more robust view of the complexity, and objective reality, of the social order, and to a recognition that the choices people make may have little to do with what they tell ethnographers that they believe.

[Rasputin]

Mark Steyn is a wonderful and prolific journalist, Canadian by birth, American by residence. I first encountered his writings in Britain's The Spectator, one of the most elegant political and literary magazines published in English. An urbane, witty, insightful observer of U.S. politics, he shared the magazine's moderate conservative point of view.

How, then, could he write America Alone? It is quite possibly the most crass and vulgar book about the West's relationship with the Islamic world I have ever encountered.

In fact, I heard these arguments almost word for word a year ago, when I was visiting New Orleans and an American special forces sergeant, who was one of the army's "hearts-and-minds" Islam specialists, decided to set me straight about the world when he learned I wasn't able to get Fox News in Canada.

For Steyn, there are no moderate Muslims, there are only Muslims. They all feel roughly the same way about the West. Some are more active in pursuing anti-Western activities than others; these we call extremists. But we delude ourselves if we think that the moderates don't share their aims and sympathize with their successes. Trying to compromise with such people is pointless, because they are fundamentalists, and fundamentalists by definition can't cut a deal. You can't go halfway to heaven.

The clash of values between Islam and the West is irreconcilable. Muslims may adopt technology, but not Western civilization. Europe, Steyn believes, fails to understand this basic point and countries like France, Great Britain and Germany, with their large Muslim minorities, are already paying the price with rioting in the banlieus and bombings of buses. Americans need to realize that Islam and American values are incompatible rivals in deadly conflict.

This is a struggle that the United States in particular, and the West in general, looks likely to lose. The West won't be defeated by al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Wahhabism. It will lose because men and women in the West no longer get married and have babies. The fertility rate in Italy, according to Steyn, where only 6.9 out of 1,000 get married in a given year, is 1.23. It's little better in Canada, at 1.48. The United States is one of the few places in the West where couples still get married in reasonable numbers and are reproducing themselves, with a fertility rate of 2.11.

So when the bomb-throwing imams arrive in St. Peter's Square to set up their madrassas, they won't face any opposition from the post-Christian Europeans, because there won't be any Europeans left. They will have bred themselves out of existence. The triumph of Islam will be the ultimate revenge of the cradle.

What's the answer? The United States needs the cultural confidence to give Islam what Steyn describes as an opportunity to reform itself. Part of this strategy involves: denying foreign funding to mosques, madrassas and Islamic think tanks in the United States; "marginalizing and euthanizing" the UN, NATO and the International Atomic Energy Agency; ending the Iranian regime; and striking militarily "when the opportunity presents itself."

There certainly seems to be a large market for rants of this sort in the United States. Steyn's book is high on bestseller lists across the United States (and, it must be said, number 3 on amazon.ca). It is also on offer from the Conservative Book Club, along with The Truth About Muhammad, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), State of Emergency: The Third World's Invasion and Conquest of America, Dossier on Hillary Clinton and Ann Coulter's Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

You wonder what makes any of this conservative. It is an aggressive, intolerant and radical ideology and, in Andrew Sullivan's view, quite new to U.S. politics.

In The Conservative Soul, Sullivan, former editor of The New Republic and an influential political blogger, argues that the founders of the American Republic were a pretty diverse and tolerant group. Thomas Paine, the ideologue of the revolutionary war, was an atheist. Thomas Jefferson was a Deist, who believed that truth was accessible without Revelation and he hoped that one day the idea that Jesus was generated by a supreme being would be ranked as a fable along with birth of Minerva from the brain of Jupiter.

In 1797, the U.S. Senate approved a treaty to deal with piracy in the Mediterranean. One of its clauses stated that that the U.S. government was not "in any sense, founded on the Christian religion," and went on to affirm that the United States had "no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen."

"Words are wise men's counters," Thomas Hobbes wrote, "they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools." So why is it so important to be known as a conservative? The seminal document in U.S. conservatism is undoubtedly Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative, written in 1960. Goldwater, from a Jewish background but raised in the Episcopalian faith, did not wear his religion on his sleeve. He believed in low taxes and limited government. As a libertarian, he was sympathetic to gay rights and a woman's right to choose. He had no sympathy for those whom Sullivan calls theoconservatives.

Where did theoconservatism come from? In my view, it arose as a response to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (1974), the case that decriminalized abortion. (The Canadian Supreme's Court's 1988 decision in R. v. Morgentaler had a similar, though weaker, impact.)

The Supreme Court decisions were an outrage to devout Christians. Previously, the law had protected what they saw as a fundamental value: the sanctity of human life. Now that protection was gone and there was no recourse. The decision of the nine justices overrode both the voice of the people and the word of God. People who said that this wasn't a black-and-white issue simply didn't understand it. It was necessary to get real conservatives into positions of power -- Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency -- people who would be steadfast in their determination to resist and then reverse the country's drift away from a Christian society.

Unlike Steyn, Sullivan is appalled by this intolerance. His book is partly personal memoir, partly philosophical reflection and partly political analysis. He deftly reveals details about his personal life that both set him apart and put him at odds with the theoconservatives. Sullivan is gay and HIV-positive. He is a practising Roman Catholic, not a born-again Christian, but he meditates on his faith rather than taking it for granted. He is not a native-born American, but an Englishman.

The conservatism that draws him is a freedom of mind and soul. A conservative, he writes, is "sick for freedom." His kind of conservatism abhors dogmatism. It is skeptical, without being nihilistic or relativist. It sees life as a continuous searching after the better, knowing that the perfect is an illusion, probably a danger and certainly a bore.

A conservative politician would be prudent. Unlike George W. Bush, he would be a careful manager of the nation's finances. Even if she were determined like Margaret Thatcher, she would consult, adapt and shift.

Sullivan's intellectual mentor was the great English political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. He has absorbed Oakeshott's ideas well, and applied them with great insight to U.S. politics. His book is an important contribution to civilized discourse about how people might live together in a community: Life is like a conversation. It is important to keep the conversation going. There is no defined conclusion that it is required to reach. It is the nature of an ideologue to demand the certainty of a conclusion.

Was Oakeshott himself a conservative? One of his most beautiful and profound essays bears the title On Being Conservative. I once asked him whether he considered himself a conservative. "No," he replied. "It was just the title for a lecture I was given and I didn't see any point in changing it." As Hobbes's editor, he knew that words were only tokens. But they seem to matter to Americans.

[Rasputin]

Win the Moderate Muslims as an Asset in the War on Terror

The word terrorists, without an adjective, is sufficient to describe an evil group. Terrorism was defined by the U.S. Department of State in 1982 as "Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents usually intended to influence an audience." Terrorism has neither religion, nationality, conscience nor home. It is a dark cold-hearted evildoing. It could never be related to Muslims or to any other religion for that matter. Islam means peace and surrender to God. Using the adjective Islamic to describe terrorism is incorrect, contradictory and rejected by Muslims. There is a need to distinguish between the ideological principle of Islam that moderate Muslims adhere to, and the violent actions committed by the few.

The term Moderate Muslims has been used by observers to refer to Muslims who seek to establish peacefully harmonious relations and goodwill with other religions and nations. They are the majority in the world of Islam and in America. Imam Jahya Hendi from Georgetown University and a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, best expresses the feelings of the American Muslims. "I feel not only proud to be an American-to carry an American passport and travel worldwide-" he said, "I feel that I can be myself, a fully practicing Muslim, particularly in America. This means I wake up in the morning without fear and come home at the end of the day without fear."

Muslims all over the world look to the Americans with admiration and respect upon reading the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, which is expressed as "The United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. No nation owns these aspiration, and no nation is exempt from them…" "America must stand firmly for the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law; limits on the absolute power of the state; free speech; freedom of worship; equal justice; respect for women; religious and ethnic tolerance; and respect for private property."

However, there is a virulent anti-Americanism that is building up. Enemies of the United State make use of the prevailing venomous rhetoric about Islam, the dubious military actions and of the torture and abuse cases to draw and cultivate recruits to their ranks.

Pursuing and eliminating terrorists is legitimate and justified. Terrorists represent a continuing threat to humanity and civilization. However, a soul searching is needed among the politicians in the United States to find out why some people "hate us." The American policy makers cannot continue to ignore the root cause of the growing anti-Americanism by declaring a "war on terror " and relating it to all military operations in the world. The 9/11 Commission concluded on page 376 of their report "radical Islamists do not hate Americans for their freedom, way of life, culture, accomplishment or values." More than anything else, unbalanced U.S. foreign policy, which does not fairly address the underlying problems causes the growth of a hate tide.


There are many scholars of Islam here in the U.S. with institutions for Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. They have produced a considerable amount of valuable information that may be used for help by U.S. foreign policy makers in dealing with the world of Islam.

It has become clear that things have gone wrong for the Muslims since World War I. They continued to be poor, weak and feel dominated by the West. Muslims have found themselves invaded in every aspect of life by western culture and values. Even their private life had painfully changed. The self-declared leaders in most Islamic countries have ostensibly shown that they wanted progress. They claimed to develop their countries with military, economic and political reforms. The results of those shabby reforms had been, in many instances, humiliating defeats in military confrontations, corrupt economies, impoverished population and decadent infrastructure. Regimes of autocracies and dictatorships in the world of Islam have emerged, mostly by usurpation, keen on only modernizing their systems of tyranny, crushing the dissidents, restricting individual liberties and embezzling the national wealth. These regimes have braced themselves to survive without any qualms by outflanking, subterfuge, force, internal terror and oppression. From the Muslims perspective, the defects in the U.S. foreign policy are unfairness and the unconditional support of those regimes. The policy makers know for sure how corrupt and undemocratic those regimes are. The real victims of the present U.S. foreign policy are the hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims in their countries. They are the oppressively muted majority in the world of Islam and constitute the less vociferous Muslims in America. In their countries, the moderate Muslims are underdeveloped, neglected, powerless and infected with hopelessness, yet the West equates them with terrorism. Moderate Muslims pay the price with toil, blood and tears to survive. They have to secure livelihood and care for their families amid hardships, chaos, danger, sanctions and oppression.

President Bush said in the year 2000 during the second debate with his opponent Al Gore "I think our troops ought to be used to help overthrow a dictator…when it’s in our best interest." By contradicting the American ideals and following a policy of supporting tyranny, the United States as a responsible and unique superpower contributes to the frustration and disappointment of the Muslims. There will be no escape from anger, rage, poverty and oppression in the world of Islam unless new U.S. fair policies are followed. The American Information Centers used to be beacons for cultural and academic activities in the Middle East. They have become today fortresses representing the American might and hegemony. Some politicians think that continuing the support of corrupt and totalitarian regimes may be in the U.S. national interest. Questions such as "If those are toppled …what come next?" " Is there a viable opposition?" and "Are the people ready for democracy?" are signs of the failures of high officials and their lack of understanding of the status. If democracy is the real objective, all obstacles can be removed with time and people will be given the right to choose.

The politicians have to admit that some of their policy choices are wrong and should start to prescribe a real change. Better tactics are needed within the overall strategy of the "war on terror". These tactics comprise the implementation of steps for good will toward the moderate Muslims. To this end the politicians should strive to achieve a better understanding of Islamic nomenclature and values. This understanding starts from Allah to the Qur'an and from the respect of family ties to Ramadan. The Americans need to study objectively the Islamic lifestyle, geography, history, literature, and past achievements. In the Middle East, there has been a long history of affinity among Christians, Jews and Muslims. Reciprocal reverence of each other’s faiths and tolerance are prevalent. Bigotry and hate are foreign to Islam and moderate Muslims. Some people in the West think that sleazy expression in reference to Islam or to the Prophet Muhammad is tolerated if they could get away with it. Those people use the slogan of freedom of speech and freedom of expression as a pretext to serve their agenda, as ratings are big money and controversy sells. When Islam or the Prophet Muhammad are maliciously vilified, the West needs to understand the proper context of the fervent response of the Muslims around the world, moderate included. However, moderate Muslims denounce mob violence, which causes death and destruction, as a means to stage protest.

At the same time, Muslims should be given the opportunity to understand in depth the American lifestyle and culture. This understanding extends from the founding fathers and constitution to fast food, from the Malls and Disney World to Christmas and from Thanksgiving to the Fourth of July. Expressions such as: Freedom of speech, the American judiciary systems, civil rights, voting rights will not be foreign to Middle Easterners. The perception of the relationship between religion and politics in the West should be understood in its proper context.

There will be a need for extensive exchange programs to provide the young generations of moderate Muslims with an opportunity in exploring the cultures and values of the West. This requires the restoration of confidence, financial assistance and lifting travel restrictions. Also, offering financial, technical and educational aid from the United States to the moderate Muslims in their countries will dramatically improve the poor status of those people. This is a moral obligation to show the real image of the American ideals. When these plans are implemented, terrorism will wither away because it breeds on oppression, injustice, ignorance and frustration. The anti-Americanism wave, which has started to grow, will be alleviated.

The political realities of the world of Islam and its diverse relations with the United States make the preponderant majority of moderate Muslims an asset in confronting terrorism. It is in the national interests of America and Europe to preserve, protect and nurture the moderate Muslims against injustice, oppression, alienation and being associated with terrorism. Riling the Muslims, moderate included, by the ongoing brawl launched on television, movies and in news media has to stop. The torture and abuse of Muslims on the ground and in the camps should be alleviated. Avoid crossing the line between the myth of associating the Muslims with the despicable terrorists and the reality that the moderate Muslims are the good guys.

[Rasputin]

A cross-cultural group of 20 prominent world figures has called for urgent efforts to heal the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies.
The chief causes of the rift are not religion or history, they say, but recent political developments, notably the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Their findings were presented to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at a ceremony in Istanbul on Monday.

No other dispute had such a symbolic or emotional impact on people, he said.

"We may wish to think of the Arab -Israeli conflict as just one regional conflict among many. But it is not," Mr Annan said.

"As long as the Palestinians live under occupation, exposed to daily frustration and humiliation, and as long as Israelis are blown up in buses and in dances halls, so long will passions everywhere be inflamed."

Peoples who feel that they face persistent discrimination, humiliation, or marginalisation are reacting by asserting their identity more aggressively

Alliance of Civilisations report

The Alliance of Civilisations, which includes Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, dismisses the notion that a clash of civilisations is inevitable, but says that swift action is needed.

The group argues that the need to build bridges between Muslim and Western societies has never been greater.

They say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with Western military interventions in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, contributes significantly to the growing sense of resentment and mistrust that mars relations among communities.

Globalisation's downside

READ THE FINDINGS


Alliance of Civilisations report [431KB]
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The experts call for renewed effort from the international community to resolve the Middle East crisis.

In a separate development, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is in Washington for talks with President George W Bush on the conflict.

The Alliance of Civilisations report also proposes appointing a high-level representative to work to defuse tensions at times of crisis.


The inflammatory language used by some leaders is criticised
It warns that globalisation is contributing to the discord, with many communities experiencing it as "an assault".

"For them, the prospect of greater well-being has come at a high price, which includes cultural homogenisation, family dislocation, challenges to traditional lifestyles, and environmental degradation," the report said.

People who feel they face discrimination, humiliation, or marginalisation are reacting by asserting their identity more aggressively, the report says.

The report also suggests that the repression of non-violent political opposition and the slow pace of reforms in some Muslim countries is a key factor in the rise of extremism.

It calls for ruling parties in these countries to allow the full participation of peaceful political groups, whether religious or secular in nature.

Youth education

It criticises the inflammatory language sometimes used by political and religious leaders and the effect such language can have when amplified by the media, urging leaders and shapers of public opinion to promote understanding among cultures and mutual respect of religious belief and traditions.

HAVE YOUR SAY
The only way to bridge the gap is to respect other peoples' beliefs and customs

Steve Hughes, UK


Send us your comments
The report's authors argue that ignorance is the root cause of a good deal of hostility, so they also propose long-term media and youth education programmes and a focus on cultural ties.

But the group makes it clear such schemes will have limited impact if the immediate political causes of tension are not addressed.

The Alliance of Civilisations report was written by prominent international figures from a variety of religions who have been meeting over the past year.

It was created by Mr Annan with the mandate to propose a concrete plan of action to bridge the gap between increasingly polarised Muslim and Western societies and overcome mutual feelings of fear and suspicion.

The UN initiative was co-sponsored by the prime ministers of predominantly Roman Catholic Spain and Muslim Turkey.

[Rasputin]

The convicted terrorist son of jailed radical Muslim preacher Abu Hamza Al Masri insisted that he was "proud to be British," in a BBC radio interview to be broadcast Tuesday.

Mohammed Kamel Mostafa, 25, distanced himself from the views of his one-eyed, hook-handed father, who is appealing a seven-year prison term for inciting murder and racial hatred and battling extradition to the United States.

Mostafa, who was jailed for three years in Yemen in 1999 for plotting a bombing campaign, insisted that his message was one of "peace."

There was an outcry in Britain last month when it was revealed that he had been working on the London Underground train network. He was fired immediately once his employers realized who he was. London is still on high alert after last year's deadly suicide bomb attacks on the Underground and a bus.

"To defend myself I'm just saying I'm a British citizen and I've got nothing against this country, this is my country, and I'm proud to be British, I love my country, it's as simple as that," Mostafa told the BBC World Service. "I was just working like everybody else, struggling like a young man, trying to get some money, trying to get my head together in life."

Mostafa maintained that he was innocent of plotting to sabotage economic and tourist sites in Yemen.

And he said that he did not agree with the controversial preaching of his father, who raised him.

"Everybody has their own beliefs. It doesn't mean if my dad believes something that I have to believe the same thing and that's how I look at it," Mostafa said. "I don't agree with everything my dad says, everybody has their different views," he said.

"You can't force your religion on anyone; if you want to be a Muslim, be a Muslim, if you want to be a Jew, be a Jew, if you want to be a Christian, be a Christian. It's up to you.

"I haven't got anything against anyone, that's my message, and peace."

During the Egyptian-born father's trial, the prosecution said that Hamza was a recruiting sergeant for global terrorism, preached "terrorism, homicidal violence, and hatred" and incited his followers to murder non-Muslims and Jews.

The 48-year-old was also convicted of possessing a terror manual, which featured a dedication to Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and a list of potential targets including Big Ben in London and Paris' Eiffel Tower.

[Rasputin]

Islamic Terrorism and the Injustice Myth

When four young Muslims unleashed a suicidal terrorist attack on a bus and underground trains that crippled the London transportation system and killed 52 innocent commuters on July 7, 2005 (7/7 attack), Muslim leaders of UK came out in force to blame the UK government's foreign policy for the horrendous carnage. The leftists and liberal intellectuals and political leaders quickly joined the chorus of blaming the injustice in Afghanistan and Iraq for the attack. When PM Blair summoned a meeting with the Muslim leaders (in which he had obviously pressurized them about their violent tone over the years), overnight they changed their tune that there is no justification for terrorism. What was today a justified action in Islamic ideals, the next day became totally unjustified. They even found a verse in the Koran to discredit the horrendous terrorist attack which was a creditable act a day earlier.

Over one year on, when the chief of MI5 in the UK published an intelligence report on the 10th of November, 2006 about the massive terrorist plots being pursued by the homegrown Islamic extremists in the UK, the media again became flooded with commentaries and expert opinions on how the injustice of UK government's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is putting the country at the wrath of these homegrown Muslim terrorists. The message one gets from these commentaries is that the UK government is at fault and these terrorists have a justifiable cause to avenge the injustices unleashed by the US and UK lead coalition in Iraq and UN-lead forces in Afghanistan .

Indeed, Muslims from all walks of life - educated or illiterate, moderate or fanatic - keep harping about them being oppressed in America, Europe and Australia, in India, China, Philippines, Thailand, Russia (Chechnya), Nigeria, Serbia and of course in Israel. As a rule of thumb, wherever Muslims are a minority, they are being oppressed there by the majority ethnic or religious groups. In this unsubstantiated blame-game (explained below), Muslims have found a number of well-known Western activists, namely reporter Robert Fisk, UK MP George Galloway, US professor Edward Churchill and Noam Chomsky, London mayor Ken Livingstone and many more. These Western liberals, who come from the leftist and/or communist background, constitute what are called the 'strange bedfellows' of the Muslims because these staunch lefts and liberals, many of whom are atheists, agnostics or skeptics, are the most hated enemies of the faithful of Islam. The Koran, the Muslims' holy book, says about this group of people: " The worst beasts in Allah's sight are the disbelievers" [Koran 8:55] and when given the opportunity, they will be dealt with by the Muslims in the harshest way, as evidenced in the way such people are being treated in Islamic Kingdoms of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan etc. It should be recalled here that the naive Leftists and Communists joined the Islamists in the Iranian revolution to ouster the secular dictator Reza Shah. When the Islamist Ayatollahs got into power, these strange bedfellows were handed out the cruelest of treatments in which tens of thousands of them were exterminated by the Mullahs. We must not forget also how the body of Afghan communist leader Najibullah was dragged across the streets of Kabul after the Taliban militias swept into power.

After the 7/7 attack in London, PM Blair defiantly confronted the long-standing myth of Muslims being oppressed by the West and in particular by its ally in Israel. He declared no "oppression is taking place against the Muslims". In reality, a thorough analysis immutably establishes the fact that there is no injustice being caused on Muslims by the non-Muslims anywhere in the world. Instead, it is the Muslims who remain the greatest perpetrators of injustice and violation of human rights of the non-Muslims all over the world. This two-part commentary will analyze every grudges of the Islamists' allegations of injustice from Afghanistan to Iraq to Kashmir to Palestine .

Oppression by Israel in Palestine

Coming back to the issue of injustice against the Muslims, a careful look into Islamist complaints of injustice in hotspots like Kashmir and Israel does not substantiate those claims but instead the opposite appears to be the case. The United Nations (UN) approved the creation of Israel in the 1940s and yet, the Arab world started a war against Israel the next day after the creation of Israel was declared in 1948 and a few more times subsequently. These wars were supported whole-heartedly by the entire Muslim world. Palestinians never believed in the existence of Israel until recently (~1990) when only the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), seeing no hope of destroying Israel, abandoned it's original aim and started negotiation for two states. Then again, PLO is a minority in Palestine. They were overwhelmingly defeated by Hamas alone in the latest free and fair democratic election; the latter's aim is still to destroy Israel. If other prominent militant groups like the Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, also intent of destroying the Jewish states, join Hamas - the PLO will be washed away. Under such circumstances how does one guarantee security to Israel?

There is a lot of hatred against America amongst the Muslims and majority of the leftists, communists many liberals worldwide for her standing up in favor of Israel in the UN by resisting dozens of resolutions against Israel over the years. How could the UN pass resolutions against Israel one after another before the Muslim world and the Palestinians agree to UN's mandate of creating the state of Israel? If not for the United States, the state of Israel would not exist today.

Creation of Pakistan vs. Israel

The State of Pakistan was created in 1947 because of the sole insistence of the Muslims under no justifiable reasons or compelling circumstances. Muslims came from the Arab world, ruled the Indian subcontinent with intimidation and murder of people of indigenous religions and massive enslavement and rape of the local non-Muslim people, albeit with some limited periods of respite. And when the Hindus saw the hope of taking the destiny of their land in their own hands after so many centuries, the fanatic Muslims divided that country to create the state of Pakistan for the Muslims. But the Hindus of India never wished to destroy the Pakistani state nor did they ever send suicide bombers for killing innocent people. Neither did the Hindus from other parts of the world wish to destroy Pakistan nor did they send suicide bombers to kill innocent people in Pakistan - unlike the two British Muslim suicide bombers who went to Israel to kill the Jews.

But instead, it is Pakistan who started aggressive wars against India on a couple of occasions to divide that country further starting with Kashmir. Indeed, Muslims worldwide have overwhelmingly supported the separation of Kashmir from India. Indians are being killed regularly by the Islamist terrorists and separatists. The creation of Israel was much more justified in that, that land belonged to the Jewish and Christian people, which the Muslims forcibly occupied in the early days of Islam. Also the WWII and Holocaust experience made it an urgency to create a state for the Jews to give them a respite from centuries of oppression and persecution by Muslims and Christians. Pakistan was created under no such compelling urgency but for the sole reason of Muslims' unwillingness to co-exist or to live under non-Muslim rule, even if the latter were the overwhelming majority in the land.

So much has been said about the occupation and cruelty of the Israeli Government. But has any Muslim ever condemned the occupation of East Timor by Indonesia, a Muslim country? In their 24-year occupation of East Timor and in ensuing guerrilla war, the Indonesian army killed an estimated 200,000 people. Did we ever hear a single word of condemnation from any Muslim Government or Islamic leader? Has Israeli conflict resulted in that many killing and death in 5 years despite the extreme hostility shown by the Palestinians and the entire Muslim world?

The Hindu population has been reduced from ~15% to ~1% in Pakistan and from ~30% to ~10% in Bangladesh since 1947. But in Israel, the Muslim population has risen at a great pace that they are poised to be the majority in a few decades, despite the active migration of Jews to Israel from all corners of the world. Although some discriminatory regulations may exist in Israel given the extraordinary circumstances it faces, Israeli Muslims are still known to enjoy better life, human rights and freedom than Muslims in the entire Middle East. We must also put in perspective of the fact that Muslims living inside Israel are also intent on annihilation of the Jewish state. A Muslim member of Israel parliament (Knesset), Azmi Bishara, recently joined voices with the radical Iran president Ahmedinejad that Israel is the Greatest Robbery of Century and should be moved from the Middle East to Europe. In another instance, Knesset Members Mohammed Barakeh joined with Azmi Bishara to rally Arabs to support and strengthen Syria, which alongside Iran is most intent on extirpating the Jewish state, and declared: "I will never recognize Zionism even if all Arabs do [Bishara] ".

[Rasputin]

Malaysia has received world-wide recognition as a modern and progressive Muslim state, including from the West. Former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Muhammad in the World Economic Forum in New York (2004), declared, "Malaysia is a modern, secular and progressive Islamic state - not despite but because of Islam". Yet, the minority non-Muslim citizens (mostly Chinese and Indians) in Malaysia have faced a situation of apartheid designed by the state over the decades. Non-Muslims are barred from Government educational institutions, jobs and business ventures through positively discriminatory measures. Yet, these minority Chinese and Indian non-Muslims (~35%) are the life-line of Malaysian economy despite the severe discrimination they face. It is the Muslims who get all Government-funded local and overseas education whilst the non-Muslims have to settle for local private schools, Universities or overseas education supported from their own pockets. In the religious front, non-Muslims cannot preach and seek converts from amongst the Muslims whilst the Muslims have created elaborate programs for converting the non-Muslims to Islam. Even then, without the contribution of the hard-working non-Muslims (non-Bhumiputras) population, Malaysia will be like any other impoverished and anachronistic Third World country - not a modern and wealthy state which Malaysia and the Muslims worldwide always keep boasting about.

Is there a single country in the entire world dominated by the non-Muslims, where the minority Muslim people are discriminated like this? Such is the true color of a modern secular Muslim state! The fact that the Muslim population is increasing disproportionately in countries dominated by the non-Muslims, whilst non-Muslim population is decreasing in Muslim-dominated countries, including in Israel clearly demonstrate that Muslims' crying foul about the injustice against them is without foundation. Instead the opposite scenario is the glaring reality of today as has been in the past. Yet, this fake "trump card" of injustice against Muslims has been used effectively by the Muslims to draw sympathy and sometimes staunch support from amongst the gullible non-Muslims in the Western world and elsewhere.

British Colonialism

There are immense grudges and resentment amongst the Muslims about the British colonial rule of the past centuries in Muslim countries, which they hold responsible for creating all sorts of on-going problems there. In the weeks of violence by the immigrant Muslim youths in France in November 2005, the same excuse was brought forward repeatedly in the media. Some prominent Muslim immigrant activists even demanded an apology from the France Government for its past colonial legacy as a cure to the violence. We must be bear in mind here that the British, French and other European colonialists were not the sole imperialists in the World. In truth, it is the Muslims who made the colonial rule a fashion starting a millennium before the colonial activities of the European nations. In reality, the British and other European nations, taking their cue from the Muslims' centuries of colonial and often ruthless and barbaric rule in foreign lands, mastered the art of colonialism.

Yet again, the British did not only rule Muslim countries - they ruled Hindu and Buddhist countries as well and those people are not sending suicide bombers to UK or accusing the Britain for all of their problems. Many of those former colonies have established excellent bilateral relations with the UK instead of keeping themselves busy in making such complaints about the past. The Muslim world's making UK the scapegoat for all of their problems is absolutely baseless.

[Rasputin]

Rape law reform roils Pakistan's Islamists

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – Putting an end to a s***mish but not to the longer battle, Pakistan's lower house of parliament voted on Wednesday to amend the Hudood Ordinances, the country's religious-based laws that govern rape and vice.
Before, women who reported rape were compelled to produce four male witnesses to the crime or face charges that they had committed adultery. If the law passes the upper house, it will replace that burden of proof, deemed both virtually impossible and misogynistic, with standard evidentiary procedures.

Wednesday's vote was a chance for lawmakers to show that secular law trumps religious edict in Pakistan. But this small victory for secularism comes only a day after provincial legislators in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), a stronghold of conservatism, passed a bill establishing an Islamic accountability bureau - a kind of vice and virtue squad with analogies to the Taliban.

The bills passed this week promise to reheat the existential debate about what Pakistan stands for and how it projects itself to the world: whether it is driven by "enlightened moderation" or the tenets of religious conservatism.

Even the national assembly's progressive sex crimes bill, officially known as the Women's Protection Bill, came with caveats. Pakistan's minority religious parties managed to squeeze in an amendment making sex between unmarried persons a criminal offense.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's treatment of the amendments to the Hudood Ordinances exposes his waning commitment to secular reform at a time when religious parties are becoming one of his pillars of support, analysts say.

"This is a major compromise on the part of the government," says Farzani Bari, director of the Women's Study Center at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. "They want to sleep with the strange bedfellows of the mullahs. It is women who will suffer."

Rape is already a common tool of revenge and settling tribal scores in Pakistan. The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated in 2002 that a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours.

The Hudood Ordinances were adopted in 1979, when a clutch of Islamic clerics argued that such austere laws stem from interpretations of divine precepts in the Koran that adjudicate vice and virtue-related offenses, including rape and adultery. Pakistan's then religious-minded dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, bolstered support for the laws.

Activists and Islamic scholars have argued ever since that the Koran contains no such dictates. Their movement to repeal Hudood has driven forward in fits and spurts over the years, peaking this summer after a ground-breaking television series brought the issue before the wider public.

The series helped push the debate into parliament this summer, but once there, politics blunted its force, analysts say. Each time the bill came up for debate, a coalition of religious parties called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Ama (MMA) or United Action Front, cried foul and threatened to resign en masse from parliament. Before the new law, extramarital sex was brought before Islamic law but rarely prosecuted. By placing extra- marital sex under the penal code on Wednesday, the government kowtowed to their demands once again, analysts say.

That's because the Musharraf regime, finding itself politically isolated, looks increasingly to the MMA for support, observers say. And the MMA, which faces the same predicament, is only too happy to accept.

It's a curious reversal. There was a time when the MMA and Mr. Musharraf's ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League, defined themselves as opponents. Indeed, the MMA came to power in 2002 on pledges that it would resist Musharraf's Western-driven calls for liberal moderation. Musharraf's support base has waned the longer he has run the country as a military leader, breaking promises to step down in place of democratic government.

Activists certainly welcome the removal of the four witness rule, but they shudder at what it symbolizes: Sworn enemies are more interested in political survival than human rights.

Not that Wednesday's results please the MMA - they stormed out of the National Assembly and refused to vote.

"After this bill, we feel that government has withdrawn its duty [to create an Islamic atmosphere]," says Fareed Ahmed Paracha, a member of the National Assembly from the MMA. "They are going to create a free-sex society."

The fact the MMA succeeded in stalling the bill for so long is registering as a subtle victory for religious forces. That has many worried because a not so subtle victory came just the day before, when the MMA pushed through a highly controversial bill at the provincial level in the NWFP.

Known as the Hasba bill, it calls for a kind of accountability bureau, headed by a religious cleric, to ensure that - in terms many find troublingly vague - Islamic virtues and doctrines are adhered to in public in the NWFP.

Taken together, the criminalization of extra-marital sex and the Hasba bill highlight why it is troubling for the ruling government to back the MMA, analysts say.

[Rasputin]

Dutch government backs burqa ban

The Dutch cabinet has backed a proposal by the country's immigration minister to ban Muslim women from wearing the burqa in public places.
The burqa, a full body covering that also obscures the face, would be banned by law in the street, and in trains, schools, buses and the law courts.

The cabinet said burqas disturb public order, citizens and safety.

The decision comes days ahead of elections which the ruling centre-right coalition is expected to win.

Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, who is known for her tough policies, said it was important that all people in the Netherlands were able to see and identify each other clearly to promote integration and tolerance.

Last year a majority of MPs in the Dutch parliament said they were in favour of a ban.

An estimated 6% of 16 million people living in the Netherlands are Muslims.

But there are thought to be fewer than 100 women who choose to wear the burqa, a traditional Islamic form of dress.

Civil rights debate

The latest move came after an expert committee judged that it would not contravene Dutch law.

Other forms of face coverings, such as crash helmets with visors that obscure the face, would also be covered by a legal ban.

[It is] undesirable that face-covering clothing is worn in public places for reasons of public order, security and protection of citizens

Rita Verdonk


The Islamic veil in Europe
Why women wear the veil
Send us your comments

Ms Verdonk insisted the burqa was not an acceptable part of public life in the Netherlands.

"The Cabinet finds it undesirable that face-covering clothing - including the burqa - is worn in public places for reasons of public order, security and protection of citizens," she said.

Critics of the proposed ban say it would violate civil rights.

The main Muslim organisation in the Netherlands, CMO, said the plan was an "over-reaction to a very marginal problem", the Associated Press reported.

But the minister told the BBC that social interaction would be easier if faces were not covered.

"It is very important that we can see each other and can communicate with each other. Because we are so tolerant we want to respect each other."

Tension

The issue of the type of clothing worn by Muslim women has become a hotly-debated subject in a range of European countries.

France has passed a law banning religious symbols, including Muslim headscarves, from schools.


Find out about different styles of Muslim headscarf


In graphics

Some German states ban teachers in public schools from wearing headscarves, but there is no blanket rule against burqas.

Italy has banned face-coverings, resurrecting old laws passed to combat domestic terrorism, while citing new security fears.

The issue of Muslim women's dress also surfaced in the UK, where former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said women should not wear the veil.

The Dutch relationship with its Muslim community has been under scrutiny since the murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh by Islamic extremists in November 2004.

Earlier this year Ms Verdonk clashed with a minority party in the governing coalition over her handling of the citizenship case of Somali-born Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The MP scripted a controversial film about the treatment of women in Islamic society, directed by van Gogh before he was killed.

But she admitted lying on her 1992 application for Dutch citizenship, and Ms Verdonk initially called for the MP to be deported.

[Rasputin]

A senior member of a radical Muslim political group has been discovered working in an IT department run by the Home Office, reports claimed yesterday.

Abid Javaid is a senior executive officer at the troubled Nationality Directorate, where he works in the technology department, according to an investigation by BBC2’s Newsnight.

He is also reported to be an activist in the extremist Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which gained press attention last year when it claimed suicide bombers were no worse than Muslim moderates.

He is said to work in Luminar House in Croydon, South London, where government staff handle and administer many of the tens of thousands of asylum claims made every year.

However, he’s also known at a nearby local mosque, which yesterday singled him out for being among a group of radical worshippers who caused trouble.

“We have tried to build good community relations,” a mosque spokesman told the Daily Mail.

“But the activities of HT have been frankly divisive and they have polarized some of the community.”

Earlier this year, the BBC found that the UK website run by Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group banned by other countries because of their extremist views, promoted racism and anti-Semitic hatred.

In Denmark, one of the group’s officials has been found guilty of distributing racist propaganda, further to claims HT projects a respectable mask of Islam to entice youngsters into its ranks.

On its website yesterday, the group freshly denied the claims, insisting also it continues to be a non-violent organisation, which is now vehemently rejecting the findings of the Newsnight probe.

“The radicalisation of Muslims, particularly young Muslims, is the product of their anger at the government’s unjust and brutal war in Iraq,” the group said.

“To suggest that Muslim organisations such as ours, rather than the government’s policies, have created anger within the Muslim community is disingenuous and irresponsible. It is organisations like ours that channel that anger into non-violent political activism in an attempt to repair the damage caused by government policies.”

It added that allegations made by the BBC concerning its activities in Croydon are “completely false.”

“Although the BBC said that they would be passing evidence of Hizb ut-Tahrir's involvement in criminality to the authorities, Hizb ut-Tahrir has learnt that no material has been passed on”

Despite the denials, the objective of the group is widely understood still to be the removal of Western leaders ruling Islamic lands, with a view to achieving a worldwide Islamic state under Shariah law.

According to the Hizb ut-Tahrir constitution: “Jihad is a compulsory duty on all Muslims. Military training is therefore compulsory. Thus, every male Muslim, fifteen years and over, is obliged to undergo military training in readiness for jihad.”

[Rasputin]

A bid to bring the female voice to Islamic law

For centuries, devout Muslims have looked to the fatwa - an opinion based on religious reasoning of a learned individual or committee - for direction on how to resolve moral dilemmas ranging from the mundane to the sublime. And for centuries, Muslim women have conceded the ground, for the most part, to the men who issue these opinions.
That's beginning to change.

Meeting in New York over the weekend, Muslim women from 25 countries began laying groundwork for the first international all-female council formed to issue fatwas. Their idea: to ensure that women's perspectives on Islamic law become part of religious deliberation in the Muslim world - particularly on issues such as domestic violence, divorce, and inheritance.

"There's this growing sense on the part of literate Muslim women ... that there is a vital need for women to confront the Islamic tradition and to work on a par with men in interpreting the sources," says Ann Mayer, an expert in Middle Eastern law at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. "Otherwise you end up with a very sexist bias in the readings."

The number of women officially sanctioned to issue fatwas is hard to pin down, but certainly tiny. The emergence of such women, known as muftias, usually makes headlines: A religious school in India installed three in 2003, and the Turkish government last year hired two assistant muftias, its first. Governments and schools try to license who can issue fatwas, but Islam stipulates only certain prerequisites, such as knowledge of the Koran and Arabic. As a result, the ranks of unofficial authorities are deeper and the barriers to women surmountable.

Whether the opinions of a women's council will carry any weight, especially in conservative cultures, is another matter.

Its advent is proving to be controversial even among Muslim women who share many goals of those launching the council.

"Advancing the idea of reinterpreting the texts has to be done, but I am totally against this initiative because it will have negative effects," says Rebab al-Mahdi, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo. It will be portrayed as part of "a Western cultural invasion," she adds. "This is what conservative clerics always say, and people listen."

For others, doubt is mingled with hope.

"I share some cynicism, but at the same moment, symbols are sometimes important," says Pakistani-born Asma Barlas, a politics professor at Ithaca College in New York and a prominent advocate of jettisoning what she calls male-centric and incorrect interpretations of the Koran. "These little steps, ... even if they don't change anything, do send a message that women are getting together and trying to make their voices heard."

The group is also up against the inertia of tradition. Throughout history, few Muslim women were prominent jurists, though scholars are uncovering more, including, some say, Aisha, the prophet Muhammad's wife. Some question whether much within the religion is open to new interpretation and, by extension, reform. Others note that fatwas are nonbinding and may have little effect on civil law and state judgments.

Still, Muslim women have recently brought change by citing the Koran and other Islamic sources:

• In Malaysia, a group called Sisters in Islam used Koranic scholarship to rebuff efforts to exclude Muslims from a domestic-abuse law.

• In Saudi Arabia, an effort this summer to push women further back at a crowded holy site in Mecca was thwarted with the help of a female Islamic scholar's arguments.

• In the United States, the forthcoming English translation of the Koran by a woman, the first ever, finds an alternate meaning in a verse widely interpreted to give husbands authority to beat their wives as a last resort.

MIDDAY PRAYER: Muslim women take a break from deliberations on forming the world's first all-female shura council. It's a controversial plan, even among reform-minded Muslims.
MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN - STAFF

The New York gathering, called the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity, plans to seat the new council - perhaps seven members - within a year. Drawn from diverse schools within Islam, the members will be versed in Islamic law. The group also plans to give scholarships for more women to pursue advanced training - open to women in places like Morocco, Egypt, and Iran - in an effort to broaden the qualified pool.

"Islam is a religion of law, and it is important to express the principles of social justice within the framework of Islamic law," says Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and leader of the effort. "This is why we need muftias, in order to do that. Otherwise, it falls on deaf ears."

Traditionally, religious legal authority was local, vested in muftis and other leaders who attained their status via government appointment or community esteem. But today's global communications are challenging that, as more Muslims seek religious opinions far and wide through the Internet. The women's council takes advantage of this: Its members will be in different places, taking questions and conferring over the Web.

Given this wider marketplace of ideas, the new council's credibility will be determined by the quality of its legal reasoning, and whether its logic strikes a chord, say several scholars and observers.

"There is a sense among many Muslims - particularly, but not exclusively, women - that Islamic jurists are out of touch, that their guidance is not adequate to the modern world. And if this shura council succeeds in bridging that gap, it may be speaking to an audience that doesn't currently consider itself bound by the pronouncements of existing groups," says Kecia Ali, assistant professor of religion at Boston University.

"But this is going to be a tremendously challenging task because religious authority, even scholarly authority, has always been contested," she adds. "It is in matters related to women, marriage, sexuality that Muslim intellectuals on both conservative and modernist sides of the spectrum have chosen to wage their epic battle."

For others, the council has a credibility problem right out of the gate. "It should not have happened in New York, because it will set back the agenda of women given the current political upheaval [over the Iraq war]," says Mohammad Reda, a Syrian-American Muslim in the Boston area often sought out for his religious opinions. He supports the idea that "women should stand up and give their own opinions on women's issues," but says American efforts to force change in the Muslim world, as in Iraq, mean reformers now must avoid links to the US. The New York conference used money from nongovernmental foundations, some based in the US.

Conference attendees say a muftia council could prompt wider support for women's struggles. "The women who we're trying to help, for them religion is very important," says Zainah Anwar, head of the Malaysian group Sisters in Islam. "It's empowering for them to know that their desire to not be beaten by their husband can actually be justified in the name of Islam."

[Rasputin]

What Makes a Muslim Radical?

Ask any foreign-policy expert how the West will know it is winning the war on terror, and the likely response will be, “When the Islamic world rejects radicalism.” But just who are Muslim radicals, and what fuels their fury? Every politician has a theory: Radicals are religious fundamentalists. They are poor. They are full of hopelessness and hate. But those theories are wrong.

Based on a new Gallup World Poll of more than 9,000 interviews in nine Muslim countries, we find that Muslim radicals have more in common with their moderate brethren than is often assumed. If the West wants to reach the extremists, and empower the moderate Muslim majority, it must first recognize who it’s up against.
Fundamentally Similar

Because terrorists often hijack Islamic precepts for their own ends, pundits and politicians in the West sometimes portray Islam as a religion of terrorism. They often charge that religious fervor triggers radical and violent views. But the data say otherwise: There is no significant difference in religiosity between moderates and radicals. In fact, radicals are no more likely to attend religious services regularly than are moderates.

The Radically Rich
It’s no secret that many in the Muslim world suffer from crippling poverty and lack of education. But are radicals any poorer than their fellow Muslims? We found the opposite: There is indeed a key difference between radicals and moderates when it comes to income and education, but it is the radicals who earn more and who stay in school longer.

A Hopeful Future
Whenever a suicide bomber completes a deadly mission, the act is often attributed to hopelessness—the inability to find a job, earn a living, or support a family. But the politically radical are not more “hopeless” than the mainstream. More radicals expressed satisfaction with their financial situation and quality of life than their moderate counterparts, and a majority of them expected to be better off in the years to come.

Extreme Esteem
The war on terror is premised on a key question: Why do they hate us? The common answer from Washington is that Muslim radicals hate our way of life, our freedom, and our democracy. Not so. Both moderates and radicals in the Muslim world admire the West, in particular its technology, democratic system, and freedom of speech.
The Way Forward
What, then, separates a Muslim moderate from a Muslim radical? Although almost all Muslims believe the West should show more respect for Islam, radicals are more likely to feel that the West threatens and attempts to control their way of life. Moderates, on the other hand, are more eager to build ties with the West through economic development. This divergence of responses offers policymakers a key opportunity to develop strategies to prevent the moderate mainstream from sliding away, and to check the persuasive power of those who would do us harm.