The Guardian World news: Islam
Pre-empting home-grown terrorists | Thomas de Maizière
Prevention is better than repression, and we must do everything in our power to guide radicalised Muslims back into our society
Islamist terrorism has in recent years become central to security policy in Germany and many other western countries. The terrorists' intention is to sow mistrust and stoke fears; their aim is to weaken the democratic rule of law and to shatter citizens' confidence in public institutions. Governments are determined to prevent this, but the reality is that frequent terror alerts tend to increase rather than reduce insecurity among our people.
The debates across Europe on new security laws to fight terrorism have sometimes created the false image that states threaten rather than protect their citizens' freedom. In fact, the often-assumed conflict between freedom and public security does not exist.
Freedom and public security are not irreconcilable opposites. They complement and even depend on each other. Public security is a prerequisite for freedom, and protecting freedom is at the core of a democratic state's responsibility for public security.
A state's monopoly on the use of force is justified if citizens can rely on it to ensure their security. The prevention of threats, along with law enforcement that involves prosecuting offenders, are crucial responsibilities, but they do not require, as a matter of principle, ever-newer security laws.
Of course, security authorities need suitable tools to fight terrorism. As terrorists take advantage of new technologies, the legal and technical means used by security authorities must adapt accordingly. But terrorism cannot be fought by the security authorities alone.
Prevention is better than repression. We should do everything in our power to avoid radicalisation, to interrupt radicalisation processes early, and to guide radicalised individuals back into our society and to acceptance of our values.
Yet, in facing a worsening problem of home-grown terrorism, western countries are often unaware of this radicalisation process. To intervene effectively, we need to find answers to three questions: where and how do people radicalise, why are they attracted to radical ideas and what can we do to counteract it.
In Germany, radicalisation takes place largely through radical mosque communities or private prayer rooms, as well as through the internet. State surveillance is used as a counter-measure, but it is just as important to work closely with the Muslim population.
Parents, friends, and imams can spot signs of radicalisation earlier than security officials can, and they act responsibly by contacting the relevant state agencies in such cases. Security authorities are responsible for monitoring the more visible signs of radicalisation, and other state agencies can help potential terrorism recruits to leave extremist environments and become reintegrated into society. Nothing, though, can replace support and help within these young people's immediate environment.
The second question – why are some people attracted to radical ideas – has been explored by researchers and security practitioners, who generally agree that people are more inclined to accept radical ideologies if they feel alienated. This is especially true of young people who have experienced real or even imagined discrimination. Lacking attractive social or professional prospects, such young people often seek a new and more welcoming home within a radical group.
Society's task is to give them a feeling of belonging. That means a new sense of commitment by civil society as a whole. Our societies need to engender greater respect and acknowledgement of others, and to acquire more knowledge about different cultures and religions. We need to create tightly knit networks of personal relations between the members of different social and religious groups.
It is equally important that citizens should consider it their duty to commit themselves to the principles of liberal democracy. It is everyone's task to counter extremism actively and speak out about radical statements, in public and in private.
Muslims have a particular responsibility here. Within their communities, or in social frameworks, they have an opportunity that others do not. Non-Muslims rarely have much contact with Muslims who are in the process of becoming radicalised, and in any case their arguments would not be well received.
The UK and the Netherlands, in particular, have notched up a number of positive civic-engagement projects involving Muslims. In Germany, we intend to facilitate and support similar contacts with Muslim groups.
But Europe and the western world must also cooperate more closely with key Muslim countries. We need Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Maghreb countries as partners in the fight against Islamist terrorism, and that means improved operational cooperation between security authorities.
These countries have a clear interest in maintaining their stability. They should be anxious to allow terrorist groups as little room for development as possible. At the same time, it is in our interest to obtain from them as much important information about terrorist structures and activities as we can.
Improved co-operation should not stop there. We need to establish an extended dialogue with Muslim countries, particularly those from which immigrants come, and convince them to accept that their own Islamic authorities have a special responsibility in fighting radicalisation. We need each other, and in many areas we can make a difference only if we act together.
• Thomas de Maizière is Germany's interior minister
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010
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Is France right to ban the burka in public? | Debate
Egyptian-born columnist and lecturer Mona Eltahawy argues in favour of the proposed French ban on the burka in public; actor and playwright Stephanie Street takes the opposite view
YES: Mona EltahawyEgyptian-born columnist and lecturer on Arab and Muslim issuesAs a Muslim woman and as a feminist I support banning the face veil, everywhere and not just in France where they are to vote on a resolution and possibly a ban on wearing the garment in public places [hospitals, schools and public transport, but not in the streets] after regional elections end.
I am appalled to hear the defence of the niqab or burka in Europe. A bizarre political correctness has tied the tongues of those who would normally rally to defend women's rights but who are now instead sacrificing those very rights in the name of fighting an increasingly powerful right wing.
Every time I return to Cairo from New York City, where I now live, I wonder what Hoda Shaarawi, the pioneering Egyptian feminist, would say if she could see how many of her sisters are disappearing behind the face veil. Returning from an international women's conference in Italy in 1923 – yes, we had feminists that early in Egypt – Shaarawi famously removed her face veil at a Cairo train station, declaring it a thing of the past. We might not have burned our bras in Egypt but some have described Shaarawi's gesture as even more incendiary for its time.
And yet here we are, almost a century later, arguing over a woman's "right" to cover her face. What is lost in those arguments is that the ideology that promotes the niqab (the total body covering that leaves just the eyes exposed) and the burka (the garment which covers the eyes with a mesh) does not believe in the concept of women's rights to begin with.
It is an ideology that describes women alternately as candy, a diamond ring or a precious stone that needs to be hidden to prove her "worth". That is not a message Muslims learn in our holy book, the Qur'an, nor is the face veil prescribed by the majority of Muslim scholars.
It is instead a pillar of the ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam known as Salafism. It is associated with Saudi Arabia, where I spent most of my adolescence and where it is clear that women are effectively perpetual children, forbidden as they are from driving, from travelling alone and from even the simplest of surgical procedures without the permission of a male "guardian". I detest the niqab and the burka for their erasure of women and for dangerously equating piety with that disappearance – the less of you I can see, the closer you must be to God. I defend a woman's right to cover her hair if she chooses but the face is central to human interaction and so the ideologues who promote its covering are simply misogynists.
I abhor the rightwing Muslim ideology behind the veils but I equally abhor the political rightwing xenophobes of Europe. The European political right – be it President Nicolas Sarkozy, his ultra-right rival Jean-Marie Le Pen (who did alarmingly well in the first round of those regional elections) or Dutch provocateur Geert Wilders – do not give a rat's ass about Muslim women or their rights: they are merely using the issue in an attempt to win votes.
The racism and discrimination that Muslim minorities face in many countries — such as France, which has the largest Muslim community in Europe, and Britain, where two members of the xenophobic British National party were shamefully elected to the European parliament — are very real. But the silence of the left wing and liberals isn't the way to fight it. The best way to support Muslim women would be to say we oppose both the racist right wing and the niqabs and burkas which are products of what I call the Muslim right wing. Women should not be sacrificed to either.
Mona Eltahawy can be reached at info@monaeltahawy.com
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You can't clone the Ka'bah | Riazat Butt
Islam's holy sites cannot remain unchanged. But the suggestion that a new 'Ka'bah' be constructed in Sinai has ruffled feathers
You wait for a story about Mecca all year and then two come along at once. First it was Egyptian writer and academic Sayyed al-Qimni suggesting Mount Sinai as an affordable religious tourism destination for members of the Abrahamic faiths. Now a Saudi cleric at a Riyadh university has called for the construction of extra floors just for women at the Grand Mosque in Mecca in order to prevent them from mingling with men during tawaf and prayers.
I'm no builder but even I realise the latter would require, at the very least, demolition of the Grand Mosque and a temporary shutdown of pilgrimage facilities lasting months, probably years.
Qimni's idea – and it is just that – was well-intentioned and he makes several valid points. Not everybody has the finances to perform the hajj, Mount Sinai has special significance in Christianity, Islam and Judaism and the Bedouin have no income. I would also concur with his assertion that there is not much in that neck of the woods except the mount itself, St Catherine's Monastery and the Burning Bush. It might be fruitful, in an economic sense, to develop the area further.
Where al-Qimni comes a cropper is his use of the word Ka'bah, which has immediate and almost non-negotiable connotations of a particular granite building in Mecca. The word itself, or so my rudimentary Arabic tells me, means cube or cubic. It could be applied to any similarly-shaped structure but it isn't, because that would be offensive, right?
Al-Qimni, who was once described as being more fatal to Islam than Salman Rushdie, is the theological and ideological opposite of Dr Yousuf al-Ahmed, the professor of Islamic jurisprudence at Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University, who called for the knocking down of the Grand Mosque in order to reintroduce the principal of gender segregation in a country that institutionalises the practice to devastating effect.
Creating women-only enclaves in the Grand Mosque would not only be impractical, disruptive and expensive, but it would kill off the hajj by driving women away – and they would be right to stay away. Elsewhere men and women are, in the main, separated in mosques, a cause of chagrin for many, but not so in Mecca where, for logistical reasons if nothing else, everybody circumambulates and prays together. Free mingling in Mecca through accident, rather than by design, is preferable to none whatsoever.
Islam's holy city has undergone a huge physical transformation in the last 20 years, responding to consumer demand and an unstoppable rise in religious tourism, yet to many it is a thing that must still be protected from innovation. It is no use pretending that Mecca, its Grand Mosque or the Ka'bah are exactly like they were in Muhammad's time. That bird has flown.
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Death of a president | Khaled Diab
If exaggerated rumours of President Mubarak's death become fact, where will the end of his one-man show leave Egypt?
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has appeared on state television in a bid to lay to rest premature rumours of his death. The Egyptian leader is currently in Germany recovering from surgery on his gall bladder.
Since news broke of his "routine" surgery on 6 March, Egypt has been filled with speculation about the real state of Mubarak's health and, with reports that a benign tumour was also removed, there have even been wild rumours that the president is actually dead and that the government has been covering this up to buy time.
Against this backdrop of uncertainty, the Egyptian stock exchange lost around 5% but the latest footage has brought calm to the jittery market.
While the death of a president would be disruptive in any country, in Egypt it carries a special significance because Mubarak has been the only show in town for the past three decades and the ageing and ailing dictator has no clear successor.
At nearly 82 years of age, Baba Mubarak, as he is mockingly known, is certainly no spring chicken and could die at any moment. With such a realistic prospect on the horizon, many Egyptians are rightly apprehensive about what would happen if the president suddenly passed away before next year's presidential elections.
In Egypt, the state of the president's health has long been something of a taboo, with journalists running the risk of arrest for broaching the topic, and so this newfound openness is actually arousing suspicion in some people's minds.
"The fact that they are releasing news about Mubarak's health is an improvement," Kholoud Khalifa, a young Egyptian journalist, said. "One reason for this is that Mubarak has now fully groomed his son, Gamal, for the top job," she speculates.
So, what would happen if the president were suddenly to breathe his last?
While many Egyptians are hopeful for change, as I highlighted in a recent article, they do not realistically expect the dawn of democracy – at least, not full democracy – once Mubarak is out of the way.
"We are not a revolutionary people. Anything that can be counted as revolutionary change in this country is almost invariably brought about by a small minority," my friend Ahmed opined over dinner in a Cairo restaurant.
Many reform-minded Egyptians disagree with this received wisdom. "The regime has so suppressed opposition and ingrained apathy in the masses that people no longer believe they can change anything," assesses Khalifa.
Based on conversations with numerous people, it would seem the most expected scenario is the emergence of a Mubarak dynasty, in the guise of son Gamal, albeit with a more democratic facade. The current constitution, which was rejigged in Mubarak's favour before the last elections in 2005, states that, in the event of the president's sudden death, the speaker of the house – Ahmed Fathi Sorour, a staunch Mubarak loyalist – would hold executive power temporarily, until elections can be called.
"There will be elections, most certainly, but how democratic they will be, no one can tell," said Ahmed. "I think Gamal Mubarak will be the [ruling] National Democratic party's candidate, and the NDP candidate will most likely win – and fair and square."
This is partly because Egyptians, sceptical as they are about politics and politicians, would rather the devil they knew, and partly because the officially approved opposition does not possess a viable candidate.
Miriam, another friend, believes this is no accident. "The NDP has stacked the system and the odds so in its own favour that its candidate will win without the need for any actual, crude cheating," she observes.
And considering Mubarak's tight grip on power in Egypt for the past 30 years, a surprising number of ordinary Egyptians would freely vote for his son in free elections, despite the growing power of the "anything but Mubarak" movement.
Moreover, Gamal, with his background in banking, is a popular choice among Egypt's business elite. "Economists and anyone who is in business would be quite happy for Gamal to take over because he will provide the kind of continuity and stability, as well as the economic competence, the Egyptian economy needs to thrive," the head of an Egyptian stock brokerage firm told me.
In addition to Gamal's perceived safe pair of hands, my brother Osama believes this backing for the Mubarak clan is also a manifestation of some kind of Stockholm syndrome among a hostage population half of which has known no other leader. In fact, Osama would not be at all surprised if, despite the current apathy towards Hosni Mubarak, there would be a significant outpouring of public sympathy for him once he died.
Personally, though I am no supporter of Gamal Mubarak, if he becomes Egypt's next president through free and fair elections, then I can at least draw comfort from the fact that Egypt will be well on its road to democracy.
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Egyptian writer's call for new Ka'bah shrine causes international uproar
Mount Sinai building could be affordable alternative to Mecca, says controversial thinker
An award-winning Egyptian writer has caused an international row after he appeared to propose the construction of a second Ka'bah, the cube-shaped building in Mecca that is the focal point of prayer for a billion Muslims.
Progressive thinker Sayyed al-Qimni suggested in an interview with an Egyptian television listings magazine that a religious shrine on Mount Sinai would provide an affordable alternative destination for poor pilgrims as well as generating an income of more than £3bn for his country.
He also said it could improve relations between the three Abrahamic faiths because Mount Sinai is significant in Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
Qimni is a divisive figure in his home country, attracting opprobrium and sometimes death threats for his views.
His detractors have accused him of blasphemy and apostasy because of his critical approach to Islam and his fondness for secularism.
His previous brush with controversy was last year, when he received the State Award of Merit in Social Sciences from the ministry of culture. It sparked a legal and media campaign to have him stripped of the prize.
But it is his comments about the Ka'bah, said to have been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, that have inflamed opinion outside Egypt.
In London the Saudi embassy said: "This is impossible. There can only be one Holy Ka'bah. This is a sacred place, sacred to all Muslims." The Saudi writer and journalist Muhammad Diyab said in his Asharq al-Awsat column that Qimni had "fallen into an abyss" and had "officially shifted from the list of fools to the list of madmen".
The Association of British Hujjaj, a national organisation for British pilgrims, also condemned the "atrocious proposal" for turning Mount Sinai into a place of pilgrimage and a tourist attraction.
Qimni sought to defuse the anger by insisting he was talking about a place of worship and spirituality that all three religions could benefit from, rather than a substitute for the Islamic site, and that he had used the word Ka'bah because of its immediate religious connotations.
He said: "There is no difference between the religions at that place [Sinai]. Ignoring that place constitutes a great mistake, not only religiously but economically. The Bedouins have no source of income. I am not denying the religious obligation on Muslims to perform the hajj [pilgrimage], I am not interfering in it. All I asked was for good and not evil. What I thought about was religious tourism.
"I used the word Ka'bah so it would be more acceptable to Muslims. It is not intended to be a substitute. This would not be an obligation, it would be a choice."
Qimni said there were many poor people in north Africa, especially Egypt, who could not afford to go to Saudi Arabia to perform the hajj, which is the fifth pillar of Islam.
The Ka'bah is the focal point for prayer and, five times a day, a billion people turn in its direction. It is instantly recognisable to Muslims throughout the world.
It also plays a pivotal role in the hajj, with millions of people orbiting the structure.
The building itself has been demolished and rebuilt several times in the course of its existence. It has always been in Mecca. This city – and Medina – fall under the aegis of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.
Riazat Buttguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Why we're on strike at IslamOnline | Bibi-Aisha Wadvalla
New management in Qatar has hijacked our pluralist site in an attempt to make us follow a hardline agenda. We will not do so
On Monday, there were many on Facebook and Twitter who posted a reminder: "Beware the Ides of March". I laughed at their superstition. But just as Caesar failed to see the betrayal by Brutus, so did we at IslamOnline (IOL) fail to see the treachery that would befall us on that portentous day.
We weren't oblivious, nor ostrich-like; we were just trusting. When the new management at al-Balagh Cultural Society, the holding company in Qatar, imposed their dictates on IOL's editorial tone, and issued guidelines for rather conservative content, the pluralistic body of staff balked at the editorial interference.
Pluralism was what had attracted me to IslamOnline. Impressed the first time I visited its website, I set myself a goal to write for IOL. It was my involvement with IslamOnline that transported me from science graduate to journalist.
Being sent to Lebanon on assignment after the July 2006 war catalysed my future. It created in me a desire to be a news journalist. In 2007, I represented IslamOnline at the Highway Africa conference, where IOL won in the category of Most Innovative Use of New Media. Networking at the conference led me to write for SciDev.net, and land my dream job at SAfm radio in South Africa. In 2009 I returned to Egypt, after being asked to start an internet radio station for IOL's English site.
As a female, I feel honoured to work at IOL, where women sit alongside men in equality, and where travel opportunities for conferences are not the sole preserve of men, as in other Muslim organisations. As a managing editor, I'm allowed autonomy in setting my editorial agenda.
Heavy-handedness by the board led to the resignation of the site's general manager and a Qatari, Dr Atef Abdel Mughny, was sent to preside over the Egypt office. Two hundred and fifty employees protested against the behaviour of the board, by signing a petition sent to both the board and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, under whose guidance IslamOnline was founded. A chill silence was the response.
A game of Chinese whispers ensued, with talks of restructuring and layoffs. A committee was sent from Qatar to deal with the concerns of employees. However, their presence heightened the speculation, especially after some lower-level staff were laid off. Insidiously, the password to the server was appropriated by Mughny, and the Arabic youth site was transferred to a smaller server. The purge spread, obliterating "luxuries" such as milk and toilet paper. A few employees resigned, afraid we'd all be consumed by the hunger for editorial control exhibited by the board.
Were the rest of us blind to the writing on the wall? No, just trusting. We believed in the soothing words cooed to us by upper management, who pleaded for calm. Since I abhor paranoia and conspiracy theories, I too dismissed the wild notion the website would be shut down; but anticipated downsizing. I thought IOL Radio would be the first to fall, since it was still in a fledgling state. My boss assured me this wouldn't happen.
So, when we fell down the rabbit hole on Monday, we became cognisant we'd been duped by our own trust. The dominoes came falling down as we learned that Qatar had blocked Egypt's access to the server. Then it was revealed that a contract – of which nobody seemed aware – between al-Balagh and Media International (which produces the website for al-Balagh) ends on 31 March and will not be renewed, and all employees will be released. The duplicity by Qatar persisted, with promises made to compensate those who resigned. They reneged on the deal a day later.
We vacillated between hope and fear, but never despair. A spirit of resistance reigned. Bound by unity, our hearts were also with those resisting the occupation of al-Aqsa. There were expressions of outrage and disbelief at our inability to cover the al-Aqsa clashes.
While others lamented the impending unemployment of more than 300 people, I also mourned for the loss of opportunity for freelancers worldwide. I had started as a freelance writer, and until this week I was living my dream of building up an internet radio station on a Muslim platform.
But it could all come to an inglorious end. Calling for more religious content, but behaving in this manner towards employees, is an insult to the ideals on which IslamOnline was built.
The clash between homogenous and pluralistic Islam is one of great importance. At IOL we make local news global, truly connecting Muslims and non-Muslims around the world. We offer content far more diverse and inclusive than that of other Muslim websites.
One defining chant rang out on Monday: "Where is Sheikh Qaradawi?" He finally answered the call on Wednesday, at the 11th hour. An emergency meeting was held where he revoked the decisions of al-Balagh's general manager, Ibrahim al-Ansari, and his deputy, Ali el-Amady. Both were duly suspended and a Qatari woman, Mariam al-Thany, has been appointed general manager. But these are only interim measures; a meeting of al-Balagh will be held in two weeks where they will be put to a vote.
Meanwhile, the strike continues until we are given access to the website's server and normality is regained.
We float in limbo. We can only wait and see what the final answer will be, and play our part in perpetuating the truths as we believe them to be.
Pluralistic Islam must win.
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Le Pen's back, and winning again | Nabila Ramdani
Fuelled by Nicolas Sarkozy's anti-Muslim 'identity' debate, the Front National is punching above its weight in regional elections
During the French presidential campaign of 2007, I trailed Jean-Marie Le Pen to a dilapidated sports hall in Marseille to watch him deliver a speech staking his claim to run France. The setting – peeling white walls daubed with racist graffiti and creaky spectator platforms swaying under the weight of a few shaven-headed young men and blue-rinse grannies – could not have been more appropriate. The lumbering figure emitting spittle and sweat up on the podium in front of me looked every inch the prize boxer who had long since stopped boxing, let alone winning prizes.
Afterwards, Le Pen invited me into his personal changing area – where Janny, his over-made-up wife, wiped his forehead and tutted worriedly as he collapsed into a leather armchair. "Where do you come from?" he asked, offering me his quivering, meaty hand, before inquiring more deeply into my racial origin in a manner that was as outdated as it was offensive. At almost 80, the Foreign Legion-trained brawler who had shocked the civilised world by being a runner-up in the 2002 presidential bout was as much of a spent force as his party, the Front National.
So why, three years on, have they done so well in the first round of regional elections? In the kind of comeback performance normally associated with George Foreman, Le Pen earned a personal vote of 20% in his Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur heartland, while nationally his party won 12% of the poll. If the results are repeated in the second round on Sunday, then the Front National can once again claim to be the party of choice of the unthinking Gallic bigot.
Tellingly, Eric Besson, France's notoriously rightwing immigration minister, said he was shocked. Last month he had described the Front National as a "bogeyman that no longer exists", suggesting that their offensive mix of populist racism and xenophobia should not be channelled through a staid gang of provincial nationalists.
What Besson meant to say, of course, was that such feelings should be channelled through his own governing party, the UMP. There is little difference between the Front National's principal election poster – an image of France covered by an Algerian flag, a burka-clad woman, and minarets shaped as missiles – and the kind of racist ideas that Nicolas Sarkozy's government have been propagating ever since they came to power in 2007.
It was Sarkozy, remember, who in 2005 told parliament that those responsible for riots in the major cities were "foreigners … not all of whom are here illegally". This wasn't long after he had casually referred to rebellious kids of immigrant origins from the burbs as "racaille", or "scum".
Since his general election win, Sarkozy has continued to stigmatise France's five million-plus Muslim community, galvanising all this prejudice into an ill-conceived national identity debate that is proving just as divisive as any of Le Pen's ramblings. Official websites and public debating chambers are awash with every kind of insult and insinuation offering, in the words of Socialist opposition leader Martine Aubry, an "open door" for the Front National. Well, Le Pen has now marched through it, without having to throw so much of a single punch.
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'Jihad Jane': not the usual suspect | Wajahat Ali
Terrorism comes in all shapes and colours, but it is apparently easier to label it as such when it's wrapped in a Muslim package
The assumption that terrorism and radicalisation is specific to a certain racial profile, religion and ethnic name is undermined by the arrest of two, white American women allegedly conspiring to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist and the recent attack on the IRS building by a disgruntled Texan American.
Alleged ring leader Colleen Larose, popularly known as "Jihad Jane" and Jamie Paulin Ramirez ("Jihad Jamie"), recently exonerated of all charges, are as American as Apple pie and The Liberty Bell due to their blonde hair, blue eyes, and white skin. However, the women's conversion to Islam and embrace of radicalised politics represent to many an unfathomable juxtaposition. The US department of justice proclaimed: "This case also demonstrates that terrorists are looking for Americans to join them in their cause, and it shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance."
This revelation immediately creates an exaggerated and fictitious paranoia in some that the average white American neighbour could secretly be a stealth, Islamist jihadist willingly ready to explode at the drop of a satirist's paint brush. It also rationalises "western" Europe's hysterical fear about its impending transformation into "Eurabia", and condones its prejudicial and reactionary behaviour that has lead to the banning of minarets and hijabs.
In America, the sensationalised curiosity surrounding Jihad Jane's revelation can be ascertained from her Google search, which has yielded 1,760,000 hits, and by her front page appearance on nearly every major media outlet. Whereas a search on Joseph Stack, the disgruntled and suicidal Texan who flew a plane into an IRS building killing one and injuring 13, has only netted 430,000 hits.
The existence of such white, radicalised identities reveals several important realities.
First, the necessity to racially profile Middle Easterners and Arabs, and the subsequent erosion of civil liberties to protect our "safety," becomes moot in light of Jihad Jane's Whiteness. Her seven co-conspirators arrested in Ireland, five of them recently released without charge, all come from varying ethnic backgrounds. If we are to racially profile all suspicious individuals based on this revelation, TSA might as well show the "special security" love to nearly every airline passenger. Will Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, who have advocated unfettered profiling against Middle Easterners, call for similar treatment against middle aged, White women and men? Perhaps President Obama should amend his recent security measures, created after the arrest of the Nigerian underwear bomber, and extend special pat downs and heightened profiling to individuals returning from European countries, not just the 14 mostly Muslim countries currently targeted.
Second, terrorism comes in all shapes and colours, but it is easier and more comfortable to label it as such when it's wrapped in a Muslim package. Even though the "war on terror" has made the word almost meaningless, "terrorism" is specifically defined by the United States as a "violent act … intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population … [or] influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion". In comparison to Jihad Jane's alleged assassination attempt, Joseph Stack's kamikaze into the IRS building seems more apt to fit the definition.
Specifically, Stack outlined his intentions and grievances in a detailed 3,200 word manifesto proclaiming his hatred of the government and the IRS in particular. However, Representatives, such as Republicans Steven King of Iowa and Massachusetts centrefold Scott Brown, have been slow to label him a terrorist and even empathised with him. "It's sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, [the IRS is] an agency that is unnecessary. And when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it's going to be a happy day for America," said King.
One wonders if Joseph Stack was named Yusuf ibn Stack and a practising Muslim if he'd be afforded such sensitive understanding. Considering America's violent history with rightwing, anti-government extremists, most notably Timothy McVeigh, one hopes the government is actively concerned about Joseph Stack's sympathisers and supporters, "who are looking for Americans to join them in their cause."
It seems radicalisation and extremist ideology is a non-discriminatory disease that increasingly preys on isolated, lonely and angry individuals, regardless of colour or religious belief, who perversely justify the use of violence as means of furthering their agenda.
Ultimately, the US government must finally heed its own advice and seek colour blind security procedures and policies that effectively isolate radicalised elements within its society instead of marginalizing its own citizens based purely on race or religion.
Wajahat Aliguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
The rights and wrongs of halal | Nesrine Malik
Calls to outlaw halal and schechita slaughter are a diversion from the truth – that killing animals is never pleasant
I remember vividly the first time I saw an animal slaughtered at our home in Sudan. The hapless sheep was brought to the house and tethered in the garden days before the Eid festival. My sisters and I fed it, watered it and giggled at its silly bleats outside our bedroom windows at night.
I was vaguely aware that this sheep was to provide food for us, but as a five-year-old had not fully grasped the concept until I walked out on Eid morning just in time to see the butcher slit its throat.
Having spent my first few years in a non-Muslim country, I had grown familiar with anthropomorphised animals on TV, in children's books and bedtime stories. We bought our meat from halal butchers, but never saw it killed.
So, arriving back in Sudan, I was somewhat more sensitive about the slaughter process than other children in my family and neighbourhood.
That fateful day, our neighbour's two boys dropped by to witness the killing. Once the sheep was dead, the butcher sliced an aperture in its body and blew air between its skin and its flesh – a practice that makes skinning easier. As the carcass inflated, the two boys punched it gleefully.
Sorry to be graphic. I could go on. It was pretty gruesome. The poor animal certainly did not die immediately, since the religious stipulation on halal slaughter is that it must bleed to death. The logic behind this is that remaining blood in the body may become polluted and harmful to humans. By the time I eventually moved to the UK, my original cuddly approach towards animals had been eroded by years of mini-abattoirs in the back garden. If anything, the whole process had begun to take on pleasant associations as sheep were only ever slaughtered at our home in celebration of a happy event.
Brian Sewell, the art critic, had his own reverse epiphany, having previously consumed "half a calf's head in a Brussels brasserie, tête de veau complete with ear, eye and half muzzle, the cheek, the tongue and brain" like an "unthinking glutton", he found his unflinching carnivorousness did not translate to indifference towards the way his meat was killed. When he witnessed halal and shechita slaughter, he saw animals kicked, bludgeoned and felled so that the butcher could get at their necks.
Isn't there some hypocrisy in heartily consuming meat but being precious about how animals are butchered? Apart from lethal injection in a Swiss clinic somewhere, I cannot imagine that any method of execution is particularly pleasant. If you're squeamish about the killing, surely vegetarianism is the only tenable position.
My own culture is less squeamish, more unequivocal. The shorter distance from farm gate to plate makes it so. In trying somehow to find some solace for the sheep killed in the back garden I asked my mother whether animals go to animal heaven. She said: "No, animals don't have souls, they were put on Earth to feed us." So that was that.
The issue of legislation on halal and schechita slaughter in the UK is a thorny one. In 2003, The Farm Animal Welfare Council advised that the practice must end as it involves "severe suffering to animals".
The halal method of slaughter is exempted from a legal requirement to stun animals first. In halal terms, stunning is undesirable as there is a risk the animal may die before its throat is cut. The response from religious representatives is that once the throat is slit loss of consciousness is instantaneous and the animal does not feel any pain while bleeding to death as the brain is deprived of blood.
Whether one buys this or not, the dilemma is whether religious values should trump secular ethical ones when it comes to animal rights. In attempting to regulate an industry with no common standard by defaulting to the former, legislation also allows for the abuse of consumers who sometimes end up paying higher prices for meat products that are either falsely labelled as halal or were produced in factories were the definition of halal slaughter was stretched very thin.
I visited a halal poultry factory in London once where the religious blessing (another stipulation of halal slaughter) was broadcast over a tannoy as the birds, suspended upside down on a conveyor belt, had their necks sliced in one deft slash. A most surreal experience, which highlighted the absurdity of literal translation of religious edicts.
Although halal and kosher methods are by no means merciful, banning them could drive already loosely regulated practices underground.
Regulators are probably relieved that so much attention is focused on religious groups at a time when battery farming is still rife and society is struggling to come to grips with mass consumption of animals while maintaining humane levels of farming and butchery.
Cracking down on halal and shechita slaughter is a disingenuous, albeit worthy cause. But perhaps that's just me. Blame it on my mother.
Nesrine Malikguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
World of Islam children's books spark protest from US Muslims
Council on American-Islamic Relations complains Muslims are portrayed as violent in series by foreign policy thinktank
A series of US children's textbooks on Islam contains misleading and inflammatory rhetoric about the religion, inaccurately portraying its followers as hostile and deserving of suspicion, according to a US Muslim civil liberties group.
The Pennsylvania chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has begun what it calls a public awareness campaign against the World of Islam books by Mason Crest Publishing.
"The overall theme of the books is that Muslims are inherently violent, that Islam is a second-rate religion and that one should be wary of Muslims in any society," said Moein Khawaja, the chapter's civil rights director. "These books do not fulfil the mission of a school, which is to educate."
Among dozens of examples cited by Khawaja, the book Muslims in America says: "Some Muslims began immigrating to the United States in order to transform American society, sometimes through the use of terrorism." Elsewhere, a picture of two smiling Muslim girls in head scarves appears on a page subtitled "Security Threats".
Mason Crest produced the 10-book series, which is designed for ages 10 and older, in partnership with the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute.
It was not immediately clear where the series was being used, either in classrooms or libraries. But Khawaja said complaints from council chapters across the country led him to believe it was on bookshelves in about two dozen states.
The publisher, based in the Philadelphia suburb of Broomall, did not return a request for comment.
The research institute president Harvey Sicherman said he was mystified by the reaction to the series and the two examples were taken out of context.
The photo placement was inadvertent, he said, and the caption in no way implied the girls were security threats. The quote about Muslim immigration to America was accurate, Sicherman said. "Well, yes, some people did come to the United States to commit terrorism, and I don't know how one can quarrel with that sentence."
Sicherman said a representative from the institute would attend the Muslim group's news conference to learn more.
Khawaja said the problem went beyond isolated sentences to what he described as the series' overarching anti-Islamic tone and message. "A book isn't just a set of quotes – it's a conclusion you walk away with."
He noted a chronology in the book Islam in Europe started with 1988 and listed 10 events, seven of which involved extremist Muslims participating in bombings, hijackings or other violence.
"Muslims have been in Europe for thousands of years," Khawaja said. "This is ridiculous."
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Sisters | Theatre review
Crucible Studio, Sheffield
Until Alia Bano's Shades, Muslim women rarely featured in British drama. Now Stephanie Street, who starred in Bano's play, fulfils a long-cherished dream by creating a verbatim piece drawn from interviews with female Muslims. And, while the structure is a bit wonky, Street's fascinating play helps to chip away at the myth that there is such a thing as a monolithic Muslim culture.
Street's format is to suggest that we are all guests at Sunday lunch at the Khan family home in Sheffield. We meet the locally born mother, married to a British Pakistani, and three of her five daughters, ranging from the secularised Samina to the hijab-wearing Salima. Through the family gathering we get a mix of opinions and are offered a variety of food from pakoras to jam sponges. This air of inclusiveness makes it all the more shocking when Samina secretly confesses that she was once nearly driven to knife her abusive father. But the enclosed family atmosphere also creates problems: in order to admit evidence from the wider world, Street resorts to the clumsy device of having a relative read from a leaflet about Muslim women that's dropped through the letterbox.
In the end, the contrivance doesn't matter because the material is so rewarding. There are two confessional monologues of jaw-dropping candour: gay Farida describes how she was abducted by her family and forced into marriage before being allowed to settle down with a female partner, and transgendered Husna recounts the agonies of being misidentified as a man before undergoing a vital operation.
Embracing religion and politics as well as sex, the show constantly reminds that there is no single Muslim female viewpoint. The hijab is variously seen as a statement, an imposition or a good excuse not to brush your hair. And while some women see a ratcheting up of Islamophobia in Britain since the London bombings, others think the real prejudices lie among Muslims. Possibly the only source of agreement is that the history of Muslim women remains hidden to this day.
Ruth Carney's production, however, sheds light, shrewdly acknowledges the audience and is well-acted by the five-strong ensemble. Aside from the author herself, who tends to embody the secular, liberal viewpoint, there is good work from Denise Black as the adoptive Muslim mum, Zahra Ahmadi and Nisha Nayar as her daughters, and Lena Kaur as a relative who acts as a handy chorus.
What I like about the play is that it scuppers windy generalisations and opens our eyes to the multifariousness of Muslim experience.
Michael Billingtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
IslamOnline website in crisis as employees in Egypt stage sit-in
Future of one of the world's largest Islamic sites in doubt as row escalates between Qatari managers and workers in Egypt
The future of one of the largest Islamic websites in the world was in doubt today after hundreds of staff walked out, accusing new managers of trying to hijack the site in order to promote a hardline, conservative agenda.
IslamOnline, which draws over 120,000 visitors a day and is one of the most popular internet destinations in the Middle East, was plunged into crisis following an attempt by the website's senior management in Qatar to wrest control of the site's content away from its editorial offices in Cairo.
Insiders claim that the move, which would involve many of the site's 350 Egypt-based staff losing their jobs, is part of a broader effort by conservative elements in the Gulf to reshape the identity of a media outlet long viewed as a bastion of liberal and reformist voices within the Islamic world.
"This is not an issue of money," journalist Fathi Abu Hatab told the Guardian via telephone from the website's offices, which are currently under occupation by staff. "It's a matter of editorial independence and media ethics, and we are not going to back down. They are trying to hijack IslamOnline, and we are resisting."
IslamOnline was founded in 1997 by the controversial Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a popular preacher who has previously been banned from entering the United States and Britain.
Promoting a "holistic" vision of Islam, it offered Muslims a wide range of online guidance on political, family and social issues. With a reputation for including non-Muslims and secular Muslims on its payroll, the multilingual website quickly gained global popularity as a source for theological answers to questions involving everything from homosexuality to Hamas.
"When it was launched, IslamOnline was very distinctive and very different," said one former employee, who worked for the site for seven years. "Most other Islamic websites are quite dull and dense, but this one saw Islam as a way of life and offered practical help."
Most importantly, it enjoyed a degree of editorial independence from its financial backers, a welcome rarity in the Arab media world.
That independence came under threat last month when a new set of Qatar-based managers criticised journalists in Egypt, where most of the site's content is produced, for running articles on Valentine's Day and film festivals, and began to shut down sections of the website devoted to culture and youth. That put the site's board of directors on a direct collision course with staff, who soon found that their access to the website's servers had been restricted.
Today, after hearing reports that many of them were to be fired as part of an editorial shake-up, over 250 staff went on strike.
"We will all resign," said Abu Hatab. "They may own the offices and the URL, but they don't own us."
Workers taking part in the sit-in used a variety of innovative ways to air their grievances to the general public, including setting up real-time video footage from inside the offices and streaming it on the web.
"Those of us that stayed in the building overnight slept on our desks," said the site's new media analyst, Abdallah Elshamy. "But when we weren't sleeping we were also putting out a lot of messages on Twitter and other social media which kept the attention on us and eventually forced management to the negotiating table."
Analysts believe that the dispute at IslamOnline is part of a wider conflict between Salafist Muslims in the Gulf, who follow a more literal and traditional interpretation of the Qur'an, and the more reformist brand of Islam popular in countries like Egypt.
Jack Shenkerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Workers' jihad at Islamic website | Jack Shenker
Staff at IslamOnline have gone on strike. But is it about workers' rights, religious principles or national rivalries?
Islamic advice websites aren't the first thing that spring to mind when talking of strikes, sit-ins and workers' occupations, but if there's any proof needed that Egypt's extraordinary wave of industrial action is reaching every corner of the nation, then today's drama at IslamOnline.net fits the bill.
With more than 120,000 hits a day and a global reach that extends through several languages, IslamOnline is one of the biggest and most influential Muslim websites in the world. From Baghdad to Basildon, Muslims use it as a key source of scholarly advice on everything from impotency to the insurgency in Iraq.
So the question of who owns and controls the site is a vitally important one. And that's the question being wrestled over today, after hundreds of staff walked out in protest over what they say is an attempt by conservatives in the Gulf to hijack the site and force it to pursue a more traditional and hardline agenda.
Tension had been simmering for months between the website's Cairo-based editorial offices and the managers in Doha, whose plan this week to fire many of the 350 employees in Egypt led to an all-night occupation of the company's offices, which was still continuing at the time of writing.
"We're all resigning," Fathi Abu Hatab, a former IslamOnline journalist and one of the strike leaders, told me over the phone from inside the building. "If we lose this battle then IslamOnline as we know it will be dead. We were an exception – in our professionalism, in our moderation, in our refusal to be bound by hidden agendas. And like all exceptions in the Arab World, we've come to the end of the line."
So what is the battle, exactly? There's not a lot of agreement on this point, with a host of competing explanations trickling out of the IslamOnline offices on to Twitter, Facebook and even a live online video stream that the workers set-up to show their grievances to the world. Some of the staff believe this is primarily a business dispute over pay, conditions and company management but others are reading more into it, placing the tussle over editorial control at IslamOnline into a wider political rivalry between Egypt and Qatar, and an even broader context of cultural warfare between Egypt and the Gulf.
As detailed in the news reports, there's certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that a new board of directors in Doha has been throwing its weight around in debates over the site's content. Analysts have argued that the site's relatively open and inclusive nature (where discussions over homosexuality sit side by side with the latest fatwas on vegetarianism, martyrdom and T-shirts) has unnerved some of IslamOnline's more conservative financial backers in the Gulf. At this stage it's hard to verify that one way or another, but if true it would only be the latest salvo in a long-running campaign by the Gulf to wrest cultural ascendancy in the Arab World away from Egypt.
In the often febrile Middle Eastern media market, domination of the cultural landscape has tended to go hand in hand with political ascendancy. Historically the biggest centres of cultural production were Beirut and Cairo; the latter's singers, film-makers, actors and writers were untouchable in the 1950s and 1960s.
Egypt's status as the capital of Arab culture mirrored its political fortunes under Gamal Abdel Nasser; Umm Kolthoum sang, Youssef Chahine directed, and Nasser was the all-singing, all-dancing leader of the "Arab street" who faced down western colonialism at Suez in 1956 and swaggered across the world stage.
Then came the oil explosion of the 1970s, and the Gulf states suddenly found themselves with a load of petro-dollars at their disposal. Over the next couple of decades, with Lebanon mired in civil war and Egypt rocked by the assassination of Sadat and the beginning of the moribund, bureaucratic rule of Mubarak, Saudi Arabia (and to a lesser extent the UAE) embarked on an ambitious and eye-wateringly expensive programme to force control of the region's culture away from their rivals.
The Arab culture wars are open on a number of different fronts, but all involve Egypt losing its grip on the Middle East's cultural tiller. On television, for example, Egyptian soaps and serials have long dominated prime-time schedules, but now the UAE is fighting back with multimillion dollar productions like Million's Poet, an insanely popular reality TV show that commands 70m viewers from across the Arab World, yet is based around an obscure form of Gulf Arabian poetry. The result has been a hitherto unknown appreciation for the Gulf dialect across the Middle East.
The whole show is funded by the Abu Dhabi Authority of Culture and Heritage, and forms part of a much wider push to make Abu Dhabi the capital of culture in the Middle East, with local versions of the Louvre and Guggenheim under construction.
It's not just a matter of the Gulf producing new cultural products to rival Egypt's; investors are actively taking over Egyptian cultural institutions and reshaping them to reflect more conservative Gulf values. Egypt's film studios were managing to produce only about five or six films a year in the early 1990s; now, almost solely because of Saudi investment, they're churning out around 40, some of which now have to conform to the "35 rules" of piety laid down by the Saudi backers – a huge shift away from Egypt's traditionally more pluralistic Islamic values to the much more austere form of Wahhabi Islam prevalent in the Gulf.
This "Saudisation" has left some Egyptians, such as the billionaire communications tycoon Naguib Sawiris, feeling like a foreigner in their own land. "As far as I'm concerned, this is the biggest problem in the Middle East right now," he says. "Egypt was always very liberal, very secular and very modern. Now ... I'm looking at my country, and it's not my country any longer. I feel like an alien here."
As the IslamOnline workers prepare themselves for a second night of occupation in an attempt to assert their editorial independence over those that bankroll them, a broader upheaval is under way in every corner of the Arab media world, one that could prove dangerous for cultural pluralism.
"There is an Egyptian taste to IslamOnline at the moment which is very discernible; if the site packs up and moves to Qatar the spirit and attitude of the site will change," says Khalil al-Anani, an expert on political Islam at Durham University.
"That would be a big loss to the Muslim community globally, because we are facing a wave of Salafist media at the moment – on the internet, on satellite TV, and elsewhere – and IslamOnline was one of the key outlets resisting that trend."
Jack Shenkerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Islamism: why the west gets it wrong | Roger Hardy
Islamism is widely misunderstood in the west. It has its roots in a reaction to the global politics of the 20th century
"The west is ill at ease with Islam", a BBC colleague remarked, long before 9/11. "Even communism was more familiar." Communism, after all, came from within the western intellectual tradition. Islam, in contrast, is alien as well as threatening.
Our mistake is to see Islam as monolithic. We think of the Saudi brand as the norm – as if cutting off hands, outlawing the building of churches and denying women the right to drive were the norm across the vast sweep of the Muslim world. After 30 years' experience travelling in the Muslim world – most of that time as a regional specialist with the BBC World Service – I'm still constantly startled by how many ways there are of being a Muslim in the modern world.
The failure to see Islam's extraordinary diversity has in turn hampered our efforts to understand Islamism – the notion that it is an ideology as well as a religion. Islamism is, at root, a reaction to western power. It is no accident that the archetypical Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, was born in British-ruled Egypt. Its founder, a young schoolteacher called Hasan al-Banna, believed Muslims were fighting a battle on two fronts – an internal battle to revive the faith and an external one to drive foreigners from Muslim lands. In his mind, the two were linked. "Eject imperialism from your souls", he declared, "and it will leave your lands".
Al-Banna saw Islamism as essentially a social movement. His successor as ideologue of the Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, saw it as a revolutionary struggle not just against the west, but against what he denounced as the apostate regimes of the Muslim world. Qutb was hanged in an Egyptian jail in 1966, becoming Islamism's first important martyr and a role model for Bin Laden and the global jihadists of today.
What turned Islamism into a truly global phenomenon was an accident of geopolitics. Two events came together in 1979 – the Khomeini revolution which overthrew the Shah of Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan – which radicalised and internationalised Islamism in both its Sunni and Shia forms.
The paradox of Islamism is that it has captured the grassroots but for the most part failed to make the breakthrough to power. It has proved more effective as an instrument of protest than an instrument of governance.
Groups of the al-Qaida type, making skilful use of the internet, have developed a narrative of humiliation. Their message to Muslims is simple: look around the world, and you see countless conflicts in which your co-religionists are involved, invariably on the losing side. From this springs the idea that the umma – the worldwide community of the faithful – is under siege, and that every able-bodied Muslim has a duty to come to its defence.
In this narrative, the aggressive violence of the west must be met with the defensive violence of the mujahid, the holy warrior. The jihad is not only just; it washes away the stain of humiliation. The idea – put forward recently by Farid Zakaria in Newsweek – that the narrative has lost its force and al-Qaida has lost the ideological battle strikes me as wishful thinking.
Much of the talk about winning Muslim "hearts and minds" is shallow and misguided. The issue is often seen, especially in the United States, as a matter of public relations – as if America has an image problem in the Muslim world, and dollars can buy it a better one. Or it is seen, in a facile way, as a matter of bolstering "good Muslims" while clobbering "bad Muslims". Without a surer grasp of Islamism and its discontents, the battle for Muslim hearts and minds will be lost.
Roger Hardyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Two Muslim men charged over alleged plot to kill Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks
Two Muslim men were charged last night in the Irish Republic in connection with an alleged plot to murder Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, whose artwork outraged many Muslims after he depicted the Prophet Muhammad's head on the body of a dog in 2007.
Algerian Ali Charafe Damache and Abdul-Salam Mansour al-Jehani, from Libya, were brought before a specially convened court in Waterford, south-east Ireland late last night.
Damache, 44, was charged with sending a menacing text message while al-Jehani, 32, was charged with an immigration offence after allegedly giving a false name. Both men were remanded in custody until Friday after Irish detectives said they were not convinced of the authenticity of the men's identities.
The men, who both gave Waterford addresses to the court, were among seven people arrested last Tuesday morning over an alleged conspiracy to kill Vilks.
Acting on intelligence shared between the CIA, FBI and European security agencies, Irish police arrested the men in a series of raids.
Damache, who is believed to have lived in Ireland for about a decade, swore an oath on the Qur'an before taking the stand in an attempt to secure bail.
The alleged plot involves nationals from several countries reportedly recruited over the internet for an attack on Vilks.
It is alleged a 46-year-old American woman dubbed "Jihad Jane" is at the centre of the plot, recruiting the other suspects through intenet chat rooms. Colleen LaRose, from suburban Philidephia, was named in an indictment last week in a US court.
Another American woman was caught up in the alleged conspiracy. Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a mother-of-one and a trainee nurse from Colorado, was questioned by Irish police in connection with the plot but was released. The 31-year-old is a Muslim convert.
In September 2007 Vilks had a $100,000 (£66,000) bounty placed on his head by an al-Qaida faction in Iraq in response to his drawings. Swedish newspapers reprinted the controversial cartoon after this week's arrests.
Aidan Jonesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Too little too late for Somalia | Riazat Butt
A gathering of clerics in Dubai feels like a poor substitute for concerted action by the international community
On Saturday I asked if a fatwa could solve Somalia's problems. The consensus among those commenting seemed to be that it couldn't and, after hearing scholarly debate on the subject in Dubai, I must concur. But the devil is in the detail. A fatwa – especially one validated by the great and good of the clerical world – could go some way to shoring up political support and influence in nations hitherto uninterested in stopping the chaos and destruction raging through the Horn of Africa.
Shaykh Hashim Jihad Brown, director of research at the Tabah Foundation, thinks this is where the fatwa can make a difference. Speaking at a conference aimed at bringing peace to Somalia he said: "We don't have an army or a police force. We have talk. We have to make it the best talk we can."
"What the fatwa can do is receive the right type of buy-in and support from other scholars," he said. "It can defuse the ability of a rebel group to use the Islam to justify bloodshed, attacking other Muslims and rebelling against a legitimate government. It is a small part of a very big picture."
Success depends on who supports this fatwa. So who was at the event?
Well, the invitation went out to many – including al-Shabaab and other Islamist rebel groups. Al-Shabaab refused to countenance the offer while others, including the militia outfit Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a, wanted to attend but were prevented from doing so by the logistics. In addition to the Somali line-up – featuring the president – there was Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, from the Global Centre for Renewal and Guidance, Abdullah Omar Naseef, former vice-chair of the shura council in Saudi Arabia, Shaykh Habib Ali Jifri and OIC assistant secretary-general Abdullah Alim. The special representative of the UN secretary-general for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdullah, said Somalia needed many things including moral and spiritual direction. There is no question that the country had political direction, he said, it has a legitimate government recognised by the electorate and the international community (the transitional federal government or TFG). The Dubai meeting gave an added "moral and spiritual authority" to the TFG. "The ulema who are here come from different regions and spiritual backgrounds. This is what we need. More than that, or equally important, we need the continued support of the international community."
A quick look at the sums tells you that the largest source of (financial) support comes from western governments – $213m from Brussels in 2009, $185m from the US over the last 18 months and $12m to the TFG in the last financial year. Last week Gordon Brown pledged £5m for a Somali fighting fund, in addition to the £15m given to aid agencies between 2009-10. "The ulemas have political influence in their own country. They come from the Khaleej (Gulf)." He says governments in the Middle East and the Gulf have given aid that reaches Somalia faster than that which originates in the west. But public support from such leaders is thin on the ground. Granted, Somalia poses a great security to threat to its immediate neighbours as well as North America and the UK, so these regions have a vested interest in ensuring stability. Elsewhere in Africa, Nigeria and Sudan are too convulsed with hardship and violence to lend any significant material support.
Ould Abdullah noted that while there are already foreign troops in Somalia, from the African Union, "we don't want foreigner [sic] troops coming in." It is hoped that a fatwa endorsed by eminent scholars will stir oil-rich states into paying greater attention to what is happening across the water. Perhaps this is what Bin Bayyah meant when he said those on the "Red Sea" should care more their neighbours. "If one part of the body bleeds then the whole body feels pain. I can't understand why these countries, they don't move to help the government and Somali people."
Behind the scenes, over lunch, it was revealed – to nobody's great surprise – that some of the delegates thought the fatwa as "too little, too late". How to explain to a Somali teenager, who has seen his family murdered and his home burned down, that killing is wrong? A fatwa will do little to appease his anger or desire for revenge. Between a fatwa and inaction maybe a fatwa is the lesser of two evils.
Riazat Buttguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Jihad Jamie: Racial profiling under scrutiny after second white Islamist arrested
US citizen Jamie Paulin-Ramirez detained in connection with alleged conspiracy to kill Swedish cartoonist
The use of racial profiling as a counterterrorism tool has been fatally undermined after a second white American woman was arrested over an alleged Islamist murder plot, critics of the policy said today.
Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, a nursing student from Colorado, was detained in Ireland in connection with an alleged conspiracy to kill a Swedish cartoonist. News of her arrest came days after Colleen LaRose, 46, of suburban Philadelphia, was named in a federal indictment for her alleged role in the plot against Lars Vilks, who had offended many Muslims with his portrayal of the prophet Muhammad as a dog.
Paulin-Ramirez, described by her mother as a lonely woman who had "got sucked in" to extremism, was released this weekend without charge. LaRose has been in custody in the US since October.
The two women join a young Nigerian, a fair-haired North Carolina man and his sons, a US army psychiatrist of Palestinian descent, and others who have been accused in the past year of perpetrating or plotting Islamist violence.
And this year, American-born, non-Muslim anti-government protesters flew a plane into a government building in Texas, killing a worker, and shot at the Pentagon, wounding two police officers.
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said: "It shows that racial profiling is ineffective, as we've always said."
In the years since the 9/11 attacks, US conservatives have encouraged racial profiling as a counterterrorism tool.
The Republican senator James Inhofe said in January: "If you're looking at people getting on an airplane and you have X amount of resources to get into it, you need to get at targets, not my wife."
As a white woman of European descent, the senator's wife, Kay Inhofe, has a racial profile exactly matching those of Paulin-Ramirez and LaRose, who converted to Islam and allegedly posted comments on the web under the alias "Jihad Jane". Paulin-Ramirez, dubbed "Jihad Jamie" in the US media, converted to Islam last year and became estranged from her family.
This week, the liberal chatshow host Rachel Maddow poked fun at racial profiling. "We are now looking for anyone who is a man, a woman, an American, an African, a Middle Easterner, an eastern European, a western European, a blond, a brunette or between the ages of 20 and 49, which by my calculation leaves only one being on planet Earth above reproach and that is Alf", referring to a TV show alien.
• This article was amended on 15 March 2010. It stated Lars Vilks was a Danish cartoonist. He is Swedish. This has been corrected.
Daniel NasawHenry McDonaldguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Fears over non-Muslim's use of Islamic law to resolve disputes
Muslim Arbitration Tribunal reports 15% rise in non-Muslims employing sharia law in commercial cases
Campaigners have voiced concerns over a growing number of non-Muslims using Islamic law to resolve legal disputes in Britain despite controversy over the role of sharia law.
A spokesman for the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) said that there had been a 15% rise in the number of non-Muslims using sharia arbitrations in commercial cases this year. Last year, more than 20 non-Muslims chose to arbitrate cases at the network of tribunals, which operate in London, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, Nuneaton and Luton. "We are offering a cheap and effective service for Muslim and non-Muslims," said MAT spokesperson Fareed Chedie.
"95% of the people who come to us for arbitration do not feel they need legal representation." Chedie said that tribunals deal mainly with civil and commercial cases, including mosque disputes referred by the Charity Commission. But the tribunals have also continued to hear cases in the field of family law and divorce, Chedie said.
"We are increasingly dealing with reconciliation and mediation in marriage," said Chedie. "Many of these are cases where women have petitioned because they have a difficult marriage and want some guidance and direction. If they then want to terminate the marriage then we can help with that."
The increase in marriage and divorce cases comes as one law firm has begun offering advice on civil Scots law and sharia law, making it the first in Britain to offer both civil and Islamic law as part of one service.
Glasgow law firm Hamilton Burns says that it is responding to a greater demand from Muslim clients who want advice on sharia law alongside civil advice under Scots law. It has teamed up with Shaykh Amer Jamil, a Muslim scholar who specialises in Islamic family law.
"We hope that by incorporating sharia family jurisprudence against a background of domestic Scottish legislation, we can provide our clients with as much relevant information as possible," said Niall Mickel, a solicitor advocate and managing partner at Hamilton Burns.
But some groups have criticised the move by the Scottish firm, arguing that the recognition of sharia law decisions in Britain is regressive and harmful to women.
"We have a petition signed by more than 22,000 people saying that all religious tribunals should be prevented from operating within or outside the legal system," said Maryam Namazie, a spokeswoman for the One Law for All Campaign, which campaigns against sharia law in Britain. " I have spoken to women who are losing custody of their children in the sharia councils – under sharia law custody of a child goes to the husband after a certain age, irrespective of the welfare of the child.
There are cases of domestic violence where women have dropped criminal charges and the sharia councils have sent the husbands on anger-management courses. That is just not how we deal with domestic violence in this country," Namazie said.Many Muslim lawyers have challenged criticism of sharia law in Britain as "islamophobic", arguing that there is a distinction between sharia councils – which largely operate outside the law – and arbitration tribunals, which are subject to the Arbitration Act passed by parliament.
"The media get this out of context and hyped up," said Dr Saba Al-Makhtar, from the Arab Lawyers Association. "Under English law there is room to settle disputes on any ground that it is acceptable to the parties involved, provided it doesn't conflict with English law .… it is an extremely good idea.
"Critics deny that the campaign against sharia law is targeted specifically against Muslims, however.
"Our campaign is focusing on sharia but we are against all religious tribunals including the Jewish beth din," said Namazie. "Human rights are non-negotiatble and religious tribunals puts religion before people's rights and their freedoms. Law based on any religion – whether the Bible, Torah or the Quran – is completely antithetical to rights woman have in this day and age. Many of the rights women have now result in the UK is the result of a hard fight to wrestle control out of church hands."
Afua Hirschguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
In search of the real Pakistan | Amil Khan
With extremism on the rise, it is more important than ever to support the tolerant, peaceful elements of Pakistani society
What exactly is Pakistan all about? The international media will tell you it's one of the most dangerous places on earth, beset by sectarian warfare and religious extremism. Well-heeled Pakistanis beg to differ. Their country, they say, is made up of an irrepressible population that likes to buy the latest fashions, listen to the latest music and read poetry about mysticism.
In reality, Pakistan is both of those things and many more in between. The country has spent most of its existence ruled by military dictators, but each of them was regularly lampooned in newspaper cartoons. Today, it has a largely rural and conservative society but one of the country's most popular talk show hosts is a Dame Edna-style transvestite. It has a politically engaged population that tunes into the many current affairs programmes broadcast on more than 70 private channels with enough regularity to make Pakistani news media one of the few in the world to turn a profit. Its largest media group has spearheaded an attack on the perceived corruption of politicians with a ferocity that makes the MPs' expenses scandal in the UK pale in comparison.
Many Pakistanis distrust western intentions, but that doesn't mean helping Pakistan involves battling the country's character. Pakistan's greatest strengths contribute to its most pressing problems. A governing ideology inherited from the British still values a free press and independent civil society. At the same time, a relatively hands-off approach to religion has allowed local extremists to build extensive local infrastructure with outside funding. As the world now knows, that extremism was nurtured and exploited by whisky-loving generals (with the tacit support of western powers) for short-term gain and has now turned against the state.
Extremism is not just limited to the Taliban in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) but is bleeding into the rest of society. In a restaurant tucked away in a corner of Islamabad's upscale shopping district I met a 20-something Pakistani friend with an encyclopaedic knowledge of rap lyrics and Indian movie starlets. After ordering a beer from the restaurant's illicit stash, he told me why he thought his more conservative relatives held the answer to Pakistan's social and economic problems. "In my uncle's family the women cover their faces and they have thrown out their television, banned music and disconnected the internet … They had the strength to follow Islam properly. I wish I had. If we all did, Pakistan would no longer be weak," he said.
Yet many Pakistanis oppose this sort of outlook. And they aren't just the rich, insulated and western-educated. In Attock, a small village on the border of Punjab and NWFP, I met local people who had decided that the growing extremism they were witnessing amongst their young men was down to the serious lack of educational opportunities, social services and proper Islamic knowledge. They are working on building a girls' school, a hospital and a mosque with a teacher capable of challenging the cult of suicide bombings and the ideology of religiously sanctioned hate. However, despite America's commitment to provide $7.5bn to strengthen Pakistani civil society over the next five years, the villagers of Attock – who lack the right connections – have been unable to find anyone to help them with their project.
For the last five months, I have been working in Pakistan on a project to support the many elements of Pakistan's society who believe that hating other religions or different Islamic communities is against the nature of Islam. Our project, Karvaan-e-Amn (Caravan of Peace) has its work cut out, not because its message its alien, but because we are trying to argue against an ideology that has been purposely built up over 30 years with millions of dollars worth of foreign funding.
Pakistan's future is far from decided. It needs help to become a peaceful, prosperous and stable country, and those who stand ready to assist will find allies from across its diverse society. They might also be surprised by a nation that dearly wants to prove wrong its portrayal in the international media.
Amil Khanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Reporting on Nigerian massacre deaths seems to have hit a religious divide
The recent atrocities near Jos in Nigeria received greater coverage than similar events there two months ago
They came from the hills at night. Wielding machetes, knives and cutlasses, the raiders swept through three villages in Nigeria, cutting down women and children. Hundreds died. Generations were wiped out.
People die invisibly in conflicts in Africa every day, but last weekend's highly organised pre-dawn massacre near Jos was one the western media decided it could not ignore. Shocking images and testimony of an orgy of violence reached television, radio, web and newspapers in America and Europe.
But two months earlier there was another massacre near Jos. Similarly, innocent women and children were slaughtered, their bodies later recovered from wells and sewage pits. Similarly, hundreds died. This also received international attention – but significantly less. Analysis by the Observer found that in the three days following the January massacre, 14 articles appeared in the British press, totalling 4,584 words. In the three days after the March massacre, there were 25 articles in UK newspapers, adding up to 9,890 words. There is no obvious explanation, but a journalist close to the story in Jos offered a suggestion, wondering "if that had anything to do with the victims in January being Muslim and the victims now being Christian".
Among those quick to issue press releases condemning the latest violence was the Christian Solidarity Network, which "works on behalf of those persecuted for their Christian beliefs and promotes religious liberty for all". The Pope and Hillary Clinton made public statements that guaranteed coverage. Normally the death toll would be a guide to the level of interest, but in this case it was far from reliable. Figures fluctuate wildly. The first official toll from the January massacre was 326, although aid workers and religious leaders estimated it at 550.
Last week's figure was also in flux. Reports described "dozens" and "scores" of deaths, which soon became "hundreds". The BBC's news website headlined "500" for a few hours, but cautiously reverted to "hundreds".
The Plateau state information commissioner, Gregory Yenlong, said more than 500 had died. The state police commissioner, Ikechukwu Aduba, overruled him, saying the total was 109. "Various unwholesome figures credited to the information commissioner are fabricated and should be discarded."
Yet the New York Times quoted the Nigeria Red Cross saying that 332 bodies were buried in a mass grave in a single village. Human rights groups and religious leaders put the overall count at more than 500. A Reuters report noted: "Death tolls have been highly politicised in previous outbreaks in central Nigeria, with various factions accused of either exaggerating figures for political ends or downplaying them to try to douse the risk of reprisals."
Even the death toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo, dubbed "Africa's world war", has been challenged, with a study claiming that it may be half the accepted 5.4 million. Counting the dead remains an inexact science.
David Smithguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds