The Guardian World news: Islam

Thilo Sarrazin's chitchat has nothing to do with their lives. And that's why they feel neither disgusted or insulted

Who is central bank executive Thilo Sarrazin talking about when he accuses migrants from Islamic countries of unwillingness to integrate? Surely he can't mean my sister Ilkay, who celebrates Christmas every year. She's not religious, but she thinks that her two daughters could feel disadvantaged if they didn't get any Christmas presents. He can't be talking about my colleague Yasemin, who works for the public television channel NDR. During the World Cup, she dressed in German colours and didn't miss a single match to support her favourite team. And he definitely can't mean my friend Helin, who is just finishing her PhD about women's rights in Turkey. Every time she returns from a foreign country she remarks how much she approves of the cleanliness in this country and feels very "German".

Countless people like them live in Germany. Some call themselves Muslim, some don't. But most of them wouldn't call themselves "well integrated". They never ask themselves this question. And a few of them don't even want to be "integrated" – not because they are Turkish or Muslim but because they don't want to be part of the mainstream, for reasons of politics or lifestyle.

Sarrazin's chitchat has nothing to do with their lives. And that's why they feel neither disgusted or insulted, as the Turkish-nationalist daily Hürriyet (for example) is stating. If there is a reason for getting angry, it is the way the public discusses Sarrazin's thesis over intelligence, heredity and migration: the mass media is filling pages with passages of his book and trying to check if Turkish people are really more stupid or if Jews have a specific genetic code. A second reason for getting angry is the support Sarrazin will receive among public opinion.

So will Sarrazin's intervention, as many politicians or journalists warn, lead us to separate ourselves from German society? Of course not. We are part of this country, whether he likes it or not. And even whether we like it or not.

It's not the first time we've realised that it is hard for a part of German society to accept us. We're tired of explaining ourselves and being the objects of a problem-discourse which goes from A (for al-Qaida) to Z ("Zwangsheirat", or forced marriage). It makes no difference if people – including people who feel liberal – ask me: "Is your religion really so violent?" (It depends on the interpretation. But first of all: I have no religion.) Or if they say: "I don't mean you when I'm talking about problems with migrants, you're different." (Not really. We're all different.) But we are accustomed to this kind of talk.

Sarrazin's intervention is not evidence that Germany hasn't changed. But to the extent that German politics, and conservatives, accept the fact of immigration, a new gap is emerging in rightwing politics. It's a gap that somebody like Sarrazin – who appeals to a middle class that fears the loss of familiar privileges – fills. This discussion plays into the hands of the self-appointed representatives of the Turkish community: people who are interested in trivialising their problems – the relationship between education, class membership and Islamic background, for instance. These self-appointed spokesmen will find it easy to answer their critics with a new riposte: "Stop Sarrazining!" It will do nothing to illuminate the problems faced by some in the Turkish community – not Ilkay, Yasemin or Helin – but too many others.

• Germany
• Turkey
• Islam
• Religion
• Race issues

Deniz Yücel
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Losing my parents showed me culture is not something we teach ourselves. This Ramadan, I feel less Bangladeshi than ever

It's now a year since I was orphaned. Not only did I lose my dad on 1 September last year, but I felt as though I had lost the last link to my cultural identity.

As a child, I felt simultaneously English and Bangladeshi. I had a preference for indie music but liked going home to okra curry. At school I excelled in geography and art, and at home I made my parents proud when I recited passages aloud from the Qur'an. There were aspects of both cultures that I liked and loathed, but overwhelmingly it was the exoticism of Englishness that captivated me the most – things I couldn't be part of. While I was watching Top of the Pops on TV, my friends were in the audience, and as they rolled their school uniform kilts above their knees, mine practically touched my ankles. I couldn't wait until I left home.

At university I immersed myself in a world of miniskirts and clubbing, changing back into a floral tunic and trousers when I went home at the weekends. I closed my ears when my mum showed me yet again how to fold samosas and ignored her offers to show me how to make rice. Then, just before my 21st birthday my mother fell ill and died shortly afterwards. I felt a deep sense of loss, but having my dad around still made me feel complete. It wasn't until I lost him, too, that I realised just how privileged I had been to have two cultures in my life.

And now they are gone I feel neither English nor Bangladeshi. I've come to realise that my parents played a major role in shaping who I am, what I believe and the decisions I've made in my life. Without their physical presence, I am less cultured. Ramadan used to be the time of year that I felt most grounded. The emphasis was on home cooking and preparing traditional cuisine. Neighbours would deliver lentil pakoras and bowls of chick peas, while my mum would roll out dough to make coconut patties.

This year I didn't have anyone to tell me when the month of fasting started and I no longer break it with a spread of fresh hot snacks. My mum cooked every day and the flavours she captured can never be replicated again. Even when I taste other people's Bangladeshi dishes, or when my sisters try to recreate her specialities, without my mum doing the home cooking, I feel less of a Bangladeshi.

My father, on the other hand, was the upholder of religion. In his absence I find it hard to take in any new teachings on Islam: it's as though my own religious education has come to a standstill without him being there to tutor me. Hearing acquaintances talk about religion has no impact on me. We can't teach ourselves culture, no matter how desperately we try. It's something that's passed on from our parents and is far more powerful than anything we read or hear.

Later this year I am marrying an Englishman. Yet it hasn't given me a stronger connection to the English culture I craved as a child. We are trying to organise a multicultural celebration, but without my parents being present I'm finding it difficult to put my Bangladeshi side across – I feel like a fraud making up traditions as I go along.

Bereavement is difficult, but what no one ever talks about is the loss of identity that comes with it. When Eid falls in just over a week, I won't be celebrating. Instead I'll be reminiscing about the time I used to rise to the smell of my mother's sweet vermicelli while my dad got ready to go to the mosque. I'll text my sisters an "Eid Mubarak" greeting before I head off for an ordinary day's work; after all I've no parents to buy presents for or pop in and visit, just me, an individual trying to figure out who I am and where I belong.

• Bangladesh
• Islam
• Religion
• British identity and society

Momtaz Begum-Hossain
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As anti-Muslim hysteria in the US reaches a peak, its intellectual accomplices should start to reconsider their actions

In the New York Times last week, writing about the eruption of hatred for Muslims in the US, Frank Rich asked what seems an increasingly pertinent question: "How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?" Ameri cans who are shocked by what the columnist Maureen Dowd calls a "weird mass nervous breakdown" accuse the usual suspects – rightwingers whose "fear and disinformation" is "amplified by the poisonous echo chamber that is the modern media environment". But anti-Muslim toxins were injected into the mainstream well before August 2010, and not by rightwingers alone.

Bestselling authors like Ayaan Hirsi Ali may be the "new heroes", as the writer Peter Beinart puts it, of the Republican party's crusade against Muslims. But "professional" former Muslims have long provided respectable cover for the bigotry and, more often, plain ignorance of mainstream western commentators on Islam. This Monday Germany's Hirsi Ali, the Turkish writer Necla Kelek, stood shoulder to shoulder with the German central banker and Social Democratic party (SPD) member Thilo Sarrazin as he asserted that Muslims are out-breeding white, presumably "Aryan", Germans and that "all Jews share the same gene".

Most of these ex-Muslim "dissidents" lucratively raging against Islam in the west wouldn't be able to flourish without the imprimatur of influential institutions and individuals in the US and Europe. Hirsi Ali, who wishes to be the Voltaire of Islam, commands rapturous endorsements from not only rightwing crazies like Pamela Geller and Glenn Beck but also Tina Brown.

Certainly, the story of Hirsi Ali's life attests powerfully to the degradations suffered by many women in patriarchal cultures. There is no question that she should feel free to say that Muslims are programmed to kill infidels and mutilate female bodies, however much these opinions may offend some people. There is little reason, however, for most of her opinions to claim serious intellectual attention.

Declaring that the civilised west has no choice but to stamp out barbaric Islam in the clash of civilisations, Hirsi Ali seems useful only to her bellicose neoconservative employers in the US and their ideological kin in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan. And her recent exhortations to Muslims to convert to Christianity make her sound more like Billy Graham than Voltaire.

Yet the mildest criticism of Hirsi Ali's naivety triggers a tsunami of vitriol from her army of prominent supporters. In recent months Clive James as well as Melanie Phillips have rebuked Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash for not joining the chorus of praise for Hirsi Ali, a defender of the western Enlightenment, and for being "soft" on apparently closeted jihadists like the Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan.

Those who tirelessly cheerlead Hirsi Ali's war on totalitarian Islam today did not have much, if anything at all, to say about the original despoiling, by western-backed Muslim fanatics, of Pakistan and Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet jihad in the 80s. The long-gathering backlash that finally arrived in the west on 9/11 sent them scampering to bone up about "Islam" – about as gainful a mode of knowing your enemy as Afghans sitting down to read Kant's essay What is Enlightenment? after a US drone has destroyed their village.

Many of these Islam watchers championed the misbegotten wars that have already killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims and ruined innumerable more lives. But they still present themselves as virtuous and lonely warriors, indefatigably rooting out the internal enemies of western civilisation, who tend to be either Muslims sinisterly reluctant to embrace the true American patriot's worldview, or politically correct liberal-lefties too scared to hear, let alone speak, the real truth about Islam.

Thus the writer Paul Berman, a self-described "laptop general" who first stalked Ramadan and hounded Buruma and Garton Ash in the New Republic – once the principal periodical of liberal America – and then expanded his 28,000-word indictment into a much-reviewed book, could recently lament in the Wall Street Journal, the Murdoch-owned US newspaper, that we are living in the "age of the zipped lip".

Oddly, this persecution complex afflicts people with the easiest access to mass media and the greatest influence on public opinion. Defending Martin Amis, who had fantasised in the Times about subjecting Muslims to multiple humiliations, Ian McEwan protested that leftwingers were closing down "debate" on Islam.

As it turns out, millions of angry Americans have opened up an equally unedifying "debate" on Islam. "You look them [Muslims] in the eye and flex your muscles," Hirsi Ali exhorted the west recently, "there comes a moment when you crush your enemy." Well, that much-awaited moment is here. Populist sentiment, which Democrats as well as Republicans clamour to represent, fully endorses the scapegoating of a religious minority for America's recent military and economic failures.

It remains to be seen how the previously besieged critics of Islam respond to the mob of Koran-immolators. Certainly their critiques of Islam, always redolent of tabloid wisdom, can no longer be passed off as acts of moral courage. And it may be too optimistic to expect them to go to Muslim countries, or befriend a few Muslims, and then discover, as EM Forster did, that: "Islam is more than a religion … it is an attitude towards life which has produced durable and exquisite civilisations."

Even a conservative figure like Henry James, while recoiling from Jewish immigrants in Manhattan, manifested a curiosity about America's new population that transcended the bigotries of his time. In comparison, the liberal assumptions of superiority today have seemed experience-proof. The mass anti-Muslim hysteria has now thrown them into crisis – finally, long after it has become clear that Hirsi Ali-style denunciations, vigorously amplified by mainstream intellectuals and politicians, have potentially terrible consequences for the millions of Muslims in the west.

Writing about another "foul, ignoble" episode in America's recent history – Joe McCarthy's witch-hunts against America's internal enemies – James Baldwin marvelled at the "ignorance and arrogance" of intellectuals who went on discussing the threat to the "free" world while "every hour brought more distress and confusion – and dishonour – to the country they claimed to love".

The stigmatisation of racial and religious bigotry counts as one of the very few instances of moral progress in the previous half-century. It's not, alas, an irreversible advance, and the witch-hunters of today can still occasionally have a field day. But it is their intellectual accomplices who will invite the severest contempt of posterity.

• United States
• Middle East
• Republicans
• Democrats
• Islam

Pankaj Mishra
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There's no other way to put it. What's happening in Murfreesboro, Tennessee is sickening and shameful. TPM:

The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro reportedly received threats in the week before the fire on its property, according to a local TV station, including one that was recorded on voicemail.

News Channel 5 reports that someone called the Islamic center a few days before the fire and left a message saying, in part, "You need to get out of the country now."...

...Saleh Sbenaty, a member of the [Islamic] center's planning committee and a college professor, told TPMmuckraker last night that some protesters have called for the boycott of any contractors who agree to work on the mosque...

...Sbenaty expressed shock over the atmosphere in a town he's lived in for 30 years. For most of that time, he said, the community has been extremely supportive and welcoming. Even after Sept. 11, 2001, he said, neighbors came up to him and said, "Please do not feel scared. We know your religion has nothing to do with this."

"It's a wide shift, and a shock," he told TPM. "It's just mind-boggling."

Sbenaty, who is also a member of the Middle East Center at Middle Tennessee State, pinpointed the shift to the 2008 elections and allegations that President Obama is a Muslim.

How about Obama goes there and gives a speech? It may costs some Democrats some seats, and the conventional wisdom would say it's crazy. But nobody'd ever say again he didn't have guts.

• United States
• Tennessee
• Islam

Michael Tomasky
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Islamist group linked to al-Qaida mounts a mortar attack on the presidential palace in Somali capital

Four Ugandan peacekeepers were killed and eight wounded in Mogadishu today when Islamist rebels fired mortars at the presidential palace. Six civilians were killed and 19 wounded in a separate shelling incident in the city involving African Union troops and the al-Shabaab Islamist group, which is linked to al-Qaida. Last week, al-Shabaab vowed to intensify its fight against the UN-backed government, led by President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, which it denounces as a puppet of the west. Its insurgents then stormed a hotel in Mogadishu, killing 31 people, including MPs.

Uganda and Burundi have deployed more than 6,300 troops in Somalia to guard the port and airport and shield President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed from attack.

Ahmed said he needed more international assistance to deal with the Islamist militants who launched their first attack on foreign soil in July, killing 79 people in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, in twin bomb attacks.

"It is quite impractical to expect Somalia alone to contain the evil al-Qaida-al-Shabaab alliance, as Somalia is emerging from 20 years of destruction and a chaotic political environment," Ahmed said.

Political analysts say the presence of foreign troops in Somalia allows militants to pose as nationalist champions with a mandate for the kind of devastating attacks such as last week's. The African Union said it had reinforced security on the strategic Maka al-Mukaaram road, which runs from the centre of Mogadishu near the presidential palace to the port. Its loss would be a severe blow to the government.

• Somalia
• Islam
• Uganda
• Burundi

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Mercy Mission UK says Zakat religious contributions should help poor within Britain

An Islamic charity says British Muslims should fulfil their religious obligation to help the poor by giving money within the UK rather than abroad – despite the devastation caused by the floods in Pakistan.

Muslims are required to pay 2.5% of their wealth above a minimum amount to the poor and needy each year. The Zakat, as it is known, is often paid during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, which ends next week. Many British Muslims traditionally donate the Zakat to help the needy in their mother countries and with the floods that have devastated Pakistan, the country would seem an obvious choice for help this year, especially for the 43% of British Muslims who are of Pakistani origin.

But Mercy Mission UK, a charity set up three years ago to encourage Muslims to play an active part in their communities, is launching the National Zakat Foundation this week to encourage British Muslims to give to local causes rather than overseas. "Although it hurts us to see what's going on around the world, the Zakat is meant to be given locally. The idea is to reach out to the poor right here," said Azim Kidwai, Mercy Mission UK general manager.

British charities such as Muslim Aid and Islamic Relief UK are currently encouraging Muslims to pay Zakat to help fund their overseas operations, including in Pakistan, which aim to help people regardless of their faith. But the National Zakat Foundation points to the high number of Muslims living below the poverty line in Britain and is pledging to distribute donations received towards local communities where Muslims are in need.

Kidwai acknowledged that the campaign would prove controversial, given the situation in Pakistan, but said that there was a religious basis for the position of the National Zakat Foundation. "It's 2.5% [the Zakat], you can still give to other countries over and above the 2.5%," he said. "We genuinely believe Zakat should be given locally. We [also] genuinely believe extra support should be given to Pakistan. You need to support different types of giving. There's some that is required [under the religion] and other that is extra."

Haroun Atallah, finance director of Islamic Relief, said: "There is the religious basis that you should spend the Zakat on the land that it is collected. However, there is very strong Islamic belief for saying where in a land where people have enough provision for themselves, the Zakat can be moved to another land. We have [in the UK] a social welfare system, a health system. We do spend some Zakat in Britain but when you have disasters like we're having in Pakistan some people are giving specifically for Pakistan and, as a charity, we have to give the money to where they want it to go."

A spokeswoman for Muslim Aid said the charity spends 10% of Zakat funds on education and social ills in the UK, but added: "Every day 1.02 billion people go hungry; one sixth of humanity. Zakat spent in these [developing] countries addresses a greater need for humanity than addressing causes in the UK. Zakat can be spent on the deserving anywhere in the world, including the UK, taking into consideration elements of proportionality and maximising the beneficiaries."

Despite generosity in Britain, where the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal has reached £40m, the UN says the relief operation in Pakistan is still underfunded.

• Pakistan flood
• Islam
• Religion
• Natural disasters and extreme weather
• Pakistan

Haroon Siddique
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The destruction I saw made me question everything I had previously thought about religion

Luke Allsopp was a friend of mine. The last time we spoke for any length was in February 2003. Around three in the morning I woke hearing him struggling to stand and giggling. I saw him confused and braced against the wall. I called out, he turned and asked me why I was sleeping in the toilets. I told him it was my bedroom. He needlessly told me he was drunk.

We were both soldiers in the Royal Engineers. He was what you might imagine your average squaddie to be: hard-drinking and full of life. I was not so much your average squaddie: a Pakistani immigrant who had joined the British Army looking for adventure. He sat on the end of my bed and told me he was worried. We had just been told we were going to Iraq.

The lads had responded to this news by going out into the local town to drink the bars dry. Now, here was Luke, his behaviour the result of a heavy night numbing reality. I prepared myself to hear my friend talk about how he was worried about his family. But, he didn't want to talk to me about that. He told me he was worried about me.

He asked me why I didn't drink or sleep with anybody. I told him it was my religion. He laughed and asked if I actually believed in all that. He told me how life was too short, how we were off to Iraq soon and how embarrassing it would be to die a virgin. Only a soldier could have put it so well.

I found myself struggling to fault his logic. I had followed Islam for years, having grown up in an area of Burnley that was almost exclusively Asian. My street, a little Pakistan, had rows of terraced houses full of Muslims getting their halal meat from the cash and carry at one end and praying five times a day at the mosque at the other end. Now here, hundreds of miles away from it all, Luke made me question it. Did I really believe in a God?

Fast forward a month to the last time I saw Luke. We were painting Land Rovers yellow in Kuwait and preparing to head over the border into Iraq and to war. I took a picture of little Luke standing in that big desert and we said our goodbyes. I ended up being based with the United States marines and he went off as part of a bomb disposal team. Luke was killed in an ambush on 23 of March 2003.

With Luke's words ringing in my ears I asked myself how could there be some guy in the sky watching over this mess? How was there a God who was fine with Luke being killed, fine with the dead, burnt bodies of Iraqis I drove past on my way to Basra? How was he fine with the people who waved crying at us hoping we'd throw some rations and water into their desperate lives?

I went to see the padre. Sitting with this devout Christian in the cradle of civilisation, I had the most honest conversation I had ever had about religion. I'd never had the courage to say these things out loud before, but the Padre made it easy. He listened to my angry words and I knew it was okay for me to not believe. For the rest of the tour I spoke to the lads about it constantly, and as Saddam's empire came tumbling down so did any belief I had in God.

Back from Iraq, I met my first girlfriend at the age of 26 and started living my life. It felt right. I didn't believe in God and wasn't scared of admitting it any more. I didn't need a religion and was at my happiest and most content. It might be a hard thing to hear but my religion held me back for years and only when I had the courage to get rid of it did I really start living my life. My new-found honesty gave me freedom and strength. I had realised that I don't do God.

• Atheism
• Islam
• Religion
• Middle East

Adnan Sarwar
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Police praise calmness of local people during weekend's far-right protest over 'militant Islam'

Thirteen people were arrested after far-right activists threw missiles and smoke bombs during last weekend's rally in Bradford by the English Defence League, police said yesterday. But, with politicians and community leaders, police today praised the calmness of residents during the protest, which drew 700 EDL activists. Alison Rose, the chief superintendent, said: "The people of Bradford should be proud." Paul Meszaros, of the Bradford Together campaign, said: "In the face of provocation and racist chanting, the way all the people of Bradford, particularly the Muslim people, reacted, was wonderful." Matthew Taylor

• English Defence League
• The far right
• Islam
• BNP
• Police

Matthew TaylorMartin Wainwright
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Saudi Arabia could show its vaunted friendship with President Obama now by granting the religious freedoms US citizens enjoy

At a recent Iftar dinner in the White House two weeks ago, President Obama reaffirmed America's commitment to religious freedom and protection for all citizens, regardless of their faith, when he defended the right of American Muslims to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City. The president should be commended for the courageous stand that he took in the face of so much opposition fueled by past tragedy, fear and sometimes plain bigotry.

Yet there is more the president could do to uphold the values of religious freedom, lift his slipping approval ratings and protect valuable votes in the November midterm elections. He can take his conviction and courage to the international arena and embarass his adversaries by calling on the America's allies to provide similar rights and freedoms for their citizenry.

And no nation's policies on religious freedom and tolerance today stands in starker contrast with America's than those practised in Saudi Arabia – the country that President Obama recently described as one of America's closest and trusted allies.

The only religion that can be openly practised in the kingdom is Sunni Islam in the Wahhabi/Salafi tradition – an austere Muslim sect that views non-Muslims and non-Wahhabi Muslims as heretics with very few rights. Millions of non-Muslim visitors and guest workers in Saudi Arabia, including thousands of Americans, are banned from public worship or celebration of their religious rituals and cultural festivals. The kingdom is the only Arab and Muslim country that has no churches.

In addition, houses of worship for its Shia and Sufi Muslim citizens are often suppressed or function under dismal conditions; in fact, a dozen Shia mosques were recently closed. The country's public education system indoctrinates Saudi children with hatred and intolerance by teaching them that Jews and Christians are eternal enemies of Islam.

President Obama's close relationship with King Abdullah was reflected in the mutual statement of praise from the two leaders. "I have been struck by his [King Abdullah's] wisdom and his graciousness," said the president. The king responded by saying, "Obama is an honourable and a good man."

If these words are true, then Obama should call on his trusted and wise friend King Abdullah to implement more tolerant and inclusive policies towards non-Muslim residents of Saudi Arabia, especially the American communities in the desert kingdom. These communities trace their history back to the 1940s and have contributed much to the welfare and prosperity of Saudi Arabia and to the security of the monarchy itself.

There is no reason why the kingdom cannot follow the example of other Middle East countries like Kuwait, Bahrain and even Iran, all of which have churches and synagogues and allow non-Muslims to worship openly.

Assuming the "Ground Zero mosque" goes ahead, it will stand as a testament to freedom of worship and tolerance extended to all American citizens even in the toughest of times. The president should use this example of American commitment to freedom of worship to call on the Saudi Monarch to support similar freedoms and protection to non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Obama is tasked with protecting the freedoms of Americans here and around the world, including in Saudi Arabia.

As a Saudi dissident living in the United States since 1991 and awarded political asylum in 1998 on religious freedom grounds, I feel a special duty to advocate for the rights of Americans living in my country to practise their religion as freely and openly as I do in their land. I want for Americans in Saudi Arabia the freedom of religion I have had here for the past 20 years.

• Barack Obama
• Religion
• Saudi Arabia
• US foreign policy
• Freedom of religion
• Civil liberties - international
• Islam
• United States
• Middle East

Ali al-Ahmed
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US State Department favourite he might be, but his plans to open a cultural centre for Muslims close to the site of the Twin Towers have seen him reviled

For the first time in a long while, Feisal Rauf is avoiding the press. The imam behind the planned "Ground Zero mosque" is on a trip to the Gulf states, after the US State Department shelled out $16,000 to fund a bridge-building series of meetings between Rauf and various local figures. Normally, that is the sort of low-level diplomacy that would fly under the radar. Indeed, Rauf might have been expected to try to publicise the trip, which is his fourth to the region on behalf of a US government which uses him as an ambassador to the Islamic world. But not this time.

Rauf's first stop was a dinner in Bahrain at the US ambassador's residence at which he chatted with carefully selected guests. Reporters, who might usually have ignored such a banal event, were kept at arm's length. Attempts to talk to Rauf's dining companions were stymied. That is what happens when you become the centre of a political storm such as that which has engulfed the Ground Zero mosque project which, for the record, is neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero. Instead, it is a planned Islamic cultural centre – with a restaurant and swimming pool as well as a place of worship – a few blocks from the giant building site that once housed the Twin Towers. The planned centre, now known as Park51, after its street address, is a large project. But it is not the "super-mosque" its detractors claim.

Yet Rauf, as the driving force behind Park51, is one of the most divisive figures in the American political landscape. To critics, he is an anti-American supporter of terrorists who refuses to condemn Hamas and who believes America was responsible for its own tragedy on 9/11. Park51 is nothing less than a deliberate slap in the face of America and another indication of the creeping Islamisation of the US.

The vitriol is staggering. Rightwing blogger Pamela Geller has dubbed Rauf a "stealth radical" and the Republican party has piled in behind her. But it is not just the extremists. Jewish groups, influential Democrats and even the current Miss USA (a Muslim) have spoken out against Park51. It is a startling alliance against a self-styled moderate, who has led countless inter-faith meetings and is so trusted by the US government that he counsels the FBI.

But these are the signs of the times. After all, one in five Americans believes their president is a Muslim. It is a nation dominated by media that feed on rage. It is a place where a handful of rightwing bloggers can drag the debate over Park51 so far from reality that a man such as Rauf is seen as a threat to national security. To nearly everyone now engaged in the argument over Park51, the truth seems irrelevant. That is a huge misfortune for a man who, like millions of other immigrants, has actually so fully embraced America.

Feisal Abdul Rauf was born in Kuwait in 1948. His father, a respected Egyptian cleric called Muhammad Abdul Rauf, had been part of a wave of Islamic scholars sent out by the Egyptian government to posts around the world. That led to a wandering childhood as Rauf's father took up positions in Britain, Malaysia and the Gulf. His accent still retains clipped tones from the time he spent in Cambridge with his father. But it also led to a certain sense of rootlessness that only ended when the Raufs went to the US. It was 1965 and Rauf was 17. "I did not know if I was Egyptian, Malay or English," he has said. He soon found he was, in fact, destined to be American.

Landing in New York, the family moved into a small apartment above Rauf senior's mosque on West 72nd Street, tending to a small congregation of immigrant Muslims and black American converts. He studied physics at university before taking on postgraduate work in New Jersey. Though the Rauf family was a conservative one (Rauf's mother was not allowed to drive), Rauf was a typical student, with a wide circle of friends and a fondness for cars and girls. He had Jewish friends who, during the Six Day war, remember Rauf striving to understand the conflict's meaning for American Jews.

"There was a genuine openness," a classmate, Alan Silberstein, told the New York Times. Rauf has always welcomed others. He still talks of the profound influence of his childhood in Malaysia.

That disparate nation has many ethnic groupings and practises a gentle form of Islam. But it was America that Rauf truly embraced. In all his speeches, Rauf, like any other American, says "we" and "our country". He became a citizen in 1980. In his writings on Islam, Rauf has emphasised common links between Judaism, Christianity and Islam (which, he says, share Abrahamic ideals). He sees their quarrels as a family dispute.

Yet it was not always certain that Rauf was destined to be an imam. He first taught remedial English in a school in Harlem; then he was a salesman, though he was always on a spiritual journey. He travelled and met Islamic scholars and eventually became a Sufi, a form of Islam that emphasises the mystic.

A Sufi scholar in Turkey asked him to create a Sufi mosque in New York and in 1983 Rauf left the working world to found the Masjid al-Farah in Manhattan. From the start, it was a moderate place, friendly to women and attracting a diverse crowd. Among that crowd was interior designer Daisy Khan, who had been born in Kashmir, but, like Rauf, arrived in America as an immigrant teenager.

Khan had been searching for a moderate form of Islam and found it at al-Farah. She also found her future husband. The pair married in 1997. But Rauf and Khan became far more than just a couple. They became a working team, especially after 9/11. Suddenly, all America was trying to understand Islam. Journalists and politicians were desperate for a moderate voice to explain it. Rauf and Khan filled that void. Rauf had set up the American Society for Muslim Advancement in 1997. Khan, who, in her 25 year interior design career had worked for various Fortune 500 companies, spoke in favour of women's rights.

Suddenly, the Raufs were big news. They went on TV and advised politicians. They became the face of moderate American Islam. When a memorial service was held for murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, Rauf declared: "I am a Jew." When the scandal of Abu Ghraib broke, Rauf was among those asked to appear in an apology advert that was broadcast on Arabic television. The Raufs were an industry of moderate Islam: writing books, giving speeches, travelling to the World Economic Forum.

The Raufs were the epitome of those most American of traditions: the salesman and the motivational speaker. But these are now dangerous waters to swim in if you're a Muslim. It matters little what are the Raufs' intentions. What matters is the views others project onto them. Park51 was originally called Cordoba House, after Rauf's inter-faith Cordoba Initiative. The name Cordoba is a nod to the Moorish emirate known its for religious tolerance. But rightwingers believe it is a reference to the Muslim conquest of Spain (some radical Islamists also take it that way).

The same goes for any number of Rauf's statements. When he says American foreign policy has angered many Muslims, he is stating a belief shared by liberals and voiced by some conservatives, such as Glenn Beck. But critics say Rauf thinks America deserved to be attacked on 9/11. When he speaks of wanting to see Islam spread in America, it is seen as a sign of Islamisation. But any religious person wants to see their faith grow.

In this atmosphere, the Raufs cannot win. Yet far from being a radical plot, planning Park51 was a rather amateurish exercise. Rauf had no media campaign, no PR. To critics, that just shows how secretive the Raufs are. Yet all the evidence seems to suggest two moderates, happy to brand themselves as such, who wandered naively into a hornets' nest. "I don't really think they knew what would happen. Which is worrying in itself but not in the way most people worry about it," said one New York religious notable who supports Park51.

No wonder Rauf's minders in the State Department were keeping him under wraps. In one of the few moments in Bahrain when he did directly address the Park51 issue, Rauf kept things simple. He read out a statement that included this plea: "With God's help, inshallah, we shall pass through this stormy season." Delivered in Rauf's cool voice tinged with a British accent, it sounded heartfelt. But calming this particular storm might be beyond even the powers of the Almighty (whichever one you believe in).

• Ground Zero
• Islam
• US politics

Paul Harris
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More and more British Muslim women are packing their bikinis, thanks to the growth in holiday companies with Islamic values

My taxi driver was not impressed with my choice of hotel. "Do you like a beer?" he asked me. "I like a few beers when I'm not working but this hotel I take you to it is no good, no beer is available." It didn't seem to occur to him that I might have chosen this resort for that very reason.

I was on my way to the Club Familia hotel, 20 minutes' drive from the port city of Cesme, west of Izmir – one of Turkey's main party resorts.

British tourists flock to Turkey's coast for cheap bars, clubs and beaches. And yet, as a Muslim country, Turkey has been selected as the main destination for a new breed of holiday, one that targets Muslims who want the same things as everyone else on the beach, bar a few concessions, and minus the alcohol.

Under the slogan "Sun, sea and halal!", a handful of hotels in Turkey are offering what are being dubbed halal holidays – beach holidays that adhere to Islamic values. That means no alcohol and no wearing a bikini in front of a man who is not your husband.

Crescent Tours and Islamic Travels, which both started trading last year, are two operators selling the concept to Britain's estimated two million Muslims.

Until recently, the Muslim travel market was dominated by agencies specialising in pilgrimages to Mecca. Flights to countries such as Pakistan and India account for the rest of the market; first generation immigrants, for whom holidays mean trips home to see close relatives.

However, British-born Muslims are less shackled by an obligation to visit the relatives "back home". Their home is the UK and their desire is to travel to other countries. Among my generation of under-40s, I don't know anyone who doesn't take at least one holiday a year in a foreign country, just like our non-Muslim counterparts. For many, though, these destinations involve compromise – not using the mixed swimming pool or beach, for example. My sister has her own pragmatic solution: she'll wait until everyone has left for the day before taking a swim.

Muslim women often go to Dubai, Egypt or Morocco because that is what their husbands and children want – but they cover up on the beach. On these new Islamic beach holidays you don't have to. So no surprise it is women who are booking holidays with Crescent Tours and Islamic Travels. At first I was sceptical about the idea of an Islamic beach holiday in Turkey. How could you separate men and women on an open beach, in what is a relatively liberal country, I wondered.

The Club Familia has been designed with an Islamic ethos, including a prayer room. I found it comfortable but the rooms were not particularly stylish or luxurious. Its best asset is its location – a quiet bay with no competing hotels to spoil the view. From my balcony, I could look across to Greece.

My room also overlooked the women-only beach, where I could see women in bikinis. And if I could, then so could the male guests. But then, as the hotel manager, Livant, told me later: "We're not as conservative as the media like to make out. We let the women decide how much they want to show of themselves but we draw the line at men and women sharing a beach or swimming pool." To be fair, the women's beach is far enough away that men would get no more than a glimpse of a female body. And I later discovered there was the option for the kind of seclusion and dress that wouldn't compromise one's modesty in the slightest.

Livant pointed at a young girl playing in the open-air pool with her father. "It is OK for young girls to swim in it but if she is 10, or looks 10, she would not be allowed in." Instead, she would be directed, like me, to the women-only pool. Livant knocked on the thick wooden doors and stood out of sight as one of his female staff opened it and led me down, through a basement room with a gym and a relaxation area, to an outdoor pool safe from prying eyes.

On the beach I discovered another neat option devised to offer women complete privacy. Bamboo screens about 20m high created a cloistered beach area, where I was met with the sight of half a dozen Turkish women on sunloungers, chatting among themselves and sunbathing topless. One of them explained that she and her friends had chosen the hotel because it was the only way they could enjoy a beach holiday like anyone else.

For a swim in the warm, blue Aegean where they could be seen by men, they changed into their burqinis. These consist of a tunic, leggings and head scarf, usually made of a light polyester that allows them to swim but keep covered.

The one time men and women are allowed to be together at the hotel is at meal times, in the vast dining room that overlooks the sea. The only drinks available were soft. I'm no fan of buffets but the lamb kofte were the best I've ever tasted. Each night there was a barbecue with a different option – fish, chicken, liver – and a dozen desserts, including jelly and cake as well as the traditional baklava. After dinner I drank mint tea in the shaded gardens.

My trip to Turkey ended with two nights in Istanbul, where the tour operator provided me with an English-speaking tour guide. The Turquhouse Boutique Hotel Istanbul was alcohol-free – and the only hotel I've stayed where the information board reads (in English): "Dear Guest, direction of Kiblah and praying carpets are in the wardrobe."

This reflects the philosophy of Mizan Raja, one of the founders of the London-based Islamic Travels, who says he doesn't just sell holidays; the aim is to create a general sense of Muslim ummah (solidarity). "We are distinctive because all our tour leaders are Muslim community leaders, scholars and academics, and our package also includes a night with local Muslim families," he says. Islamic Travels takes groups, which tend to be about 80% female and professional, in jobs such as medicine or banking, to Bosnia, Spain and central Asia.

Only the unreliable weather and the fear of being attacked in the tabloid press has put him off offering Islamic beach holidays in Britain. He remembers the reactions of the Sun and the Mail to plans for a Muslim fun day at Alton Towers in 2006.

Crescent Tours has only booked 100 British holidaymakers on to its halal holidays to date but Yasser Mohammed says bookings are increasing, and the company is "gaining momentum as people find out about us on the internet". Although so far its only destination is Turkey, it plans to expand to Dubai and Egypt, and will tailormake itineraries.

When I got back from Turkey I compared notes with Uzma Akram, a hijab-wearing English teacher from Birmingham who had also experienced the trip. Uzma had nothing but praise for her halal holiday in Antalya. "I had an amazing time," she said. "It makes me feel more comfortable knowing we don't have to worry about people getting drunk around us and that what you are doing is not un-Islamic. It is really fun for women, as we have our own private beach and the chance to enjoy ourselves, which we couldn't otherwise do."

• An eight-night two-centre holiday with (crescenttours.co.uk) from £895. The price includes three nights' B&B at Turquhouse Boutique Hotel Istanbul, five nights' all-inclusive at Club Familia Hotel, flights from Heathrow, Manchester or Birmingham, transfers and a private tour of Istanbul. Islamic Travels (islamictravels.com) runs a range of trips aimed at Muslims

• Turkey
• Beach holidays
• Islam

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The alleged Taliban attack on Totia high school reflects how the conflict is now about interpretations of Islam vying for power

This week's Guardian article about an alleged poisoning incident at a girls' school in Kabul reminded me of a similar incident during the Soviet occupation. I was at primary school and remember watching girls being carried over to an adjacent hospital.

The rumour that later spread at school explained the incident as follows: one of the pupils, from a family of mujahideen sympathisers, had poisoned the school's well in protest against the communist-inspired syllabus. The story sounded plausible at the time, in the absence of free media, reliable investigation or international witnesses offering a different, perhaps more objective, take on it.

The parents' reaction was pragmatic. The following day, pupils returned to school, carrying plastic flasks filled with water from home. But this response did not mean parents supported the government. It was true that the syllabus was inspired by communist ideology. But there was a way around that, too. Children simply learned to differentiate between useful scientific knowledge and political propaganda. To receive an education, Afghans – then as now – had no choice but take the risk of exposing children to state propaganda and its spin-off, insurgent violence.

The two incidents – with the water and the "poison gas" – are separated by decades but their similarity makes it tempting to repeat the old cliche that nothing changes in Afghanistan. But in some ways they are strikingly different, revealing profound changes in three decades of conflict and the way it is perceived.

The key difference is that in the old story the conflict was neat, involving two clearly opposite sides: a communist regime of non-believers versus an Islamist resistance of believers.

In the new story, all parties involved in the perceived incident are believers, including the Islamic Republic that is responsible for the school, the pupils who attend it and the perpetrators who allegedly carried out the attack.

Another striking difference between the two stories relates to the gender issues. The old story had a female protagonist who was a school insider. In the current story, by contrast, girls appear only as victims and the perpetrator is perceived to be an outsider. We can assume that the girls of my school were still able to sympathise with the mujahideen, since they had never lived under their command. But the current generation of schoolgirls knows better and there has been no suspicion of an insider act carried out by a girl. These differences are subtle but reveal shifts in the emotional landscape of the people, and the way they relate to the present conflict.

Judging by the parents' reaction to the current story, ordinary Afghans expect the Taliban to break all sorts of traditional religious taboos, including the ban on violence during the month of Ramadan. The parents' reasoning is plausible. After all, a serious taboo such as suicide has been reinterpreted and reintroduced as an act of piety without apparently raising a single eyebrow in Kabul or beyond. Judging by such precedents, Ramadan, too, could have been reinterpreted without notice and declared a month in which jihad by violent means carried on.

Be that as it may, what we see is theological chaos and various conflicting interpretations of Islam vying for power and influence in Afghanistan. The result is an Islamic Republic in charge of a Muslim people, which is under attack by an Islamist insurgency.

Little wonder, then, that parents of Totia school girls have been left wondering who is representing Islam, and who defaming it. But this type of chaos is an expected outcome when Muslim states lose control over religion. Faced with the Taliban, the old mujahideen who are in power now are getting a taste of their own medicine. After all, they too had once used Islam to legitimise violence against civilians, schoolchildren included.

Another striking difference between the two stories is content related. In the old story, the poison incident was explained as an act of protest against the school's syllabus but not girls' education per se. Could it be that the old mujahideen leaders were less rigid by comparison to their contemporary reincarnation, the Taliban? Unfortunately, we cannot verify this assumption because the old jihad was highly dispersed, lacking in a coherent, clearly defined political vision, providing answers to the question of gender and public education.

Be that as it may, the Totia school incident, where Muslim believers are said to have come under attack by fellow believers during the holy month of Ramadan, is yet another example of Afghanistan's theological chaos. Rather oddly, the chaos has been ignored, despite the trouble it is obviously causing.

But maybe ignoring the problem is deliberate. After all, the relationship between Islam and nationhood is particularly complex in Afghanistan. Religion having always been a key component of nationalism, fighting for religion tends to be automatically interpreted as a legitimate act of patriotism.

This formula worked well as long as the conflict involved Muslim believers versus non-believers. But since the 1990s, the conflict is no longer about Muslims versus non-believers but various interpretations of Islam vying for power and influence. As a result, religion no longer works as a binding force but has become a trigger of conflict in Afghanistan.

But since acknowledging this truth amounts to dismantling the most sacred of the country's recent myths, Islam is likely to continue being regarded as the solution rather than the source of conflict.

• Afghanistan
• Islam
• Taliban
• Religion
• Middle East

Nushin Arbabzadah
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Why is Michael Bloomberg the only senior politician to have condemned the unprovoked knife attack on a Muslim taxi driver?

After all of the anti-Muslim rhetoric surrounding the debate about Park51, it didn't come as a surprise to many that someone took it to the next level. As Michael Tomasky reported on his blog, a New York City cab driver, Ahmed Sharif, was stabbed yesterday after the perpetrator asked "Are you Muslim?"
 
Initial reports on Michael Enright, the young man who has been charged with attempted murder as a hate crime, among other things, show him as an untroubled young man who was working as a volunteer with an interfaith project and who had travelled to Afghanistan to film a documentary on US soldiers. His neighbours and colleagues have gone to the media to tell them Enright is "a nice boy". Multiple reports have referred to him as "baby-faced".

Two more incidents on the same day, though less violent, point to a rapidly escalating trend. In Queens on Wednesday night, a drunken man entered a mosque and urinated on the prayer rugs while yelling "terrorists!" On the same night, in Fresno, California, a mosque was vandalised: a window broken and a sign posted that read "No temple for the god of terrorism".
 
Is anyone surprised? For weeks, the rightwing media, politicians and citizens have been speaking out against the building of a Muslim community center in what has been, for a long time, a neighbourhood populated by Muslims. And though not all opposition to Park51 is bigotry, or even necessarily invalid, much of it is. Calling Park51 the "9/11 Monster Mosque", as Pamela Geller has done, is irresponsible.

Calling it the "Ground Zero Mosque" intentionally to stir the emotions of those for whom the scars of 9/11 are still raw is hurtful and untruthful. And don't get me started on the protests in New York, of which photographs show men and women with Confederate flags and signs that read "Sharia" in dripping blood-red ink. There is a new red scare, and this time it's aimed at Muslims.
 
Despite all of the rhetoric, much of which borders on hate speech, almost no one in power, with the notable exception of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has spoken out against it. Bloomberg, for his part, has been vocal since the beginning, and following yesterday's attack, has invited injured cab driver Ahmed Sharif to a meeting (Sharif has accepted). For that, I commend him.
 
But where are the rest of our politicians and leaders to stand up for the Muslim American community? Where is our leadership? 

Last summer, when Dr Henry Louis Gates was arrested by Cambridge police for attempting to "break in" to his own home, President Obama stated that police had "acted stupidly"; and subsequently invited Gates and the arresting officer to the White House for a "beer summit".
 
Yet, the president, who has spoken publicly only to say that Muslims have a right to religious freedom (a point on which he then backtracked somewhat), shows no signs of standing up for the American Muslim community. Just as the arrest of Henry Louis Gates at his own home was (or was, at least, perceived as) an act of racism, there should be no doubt that President Obama understands that this is an issue of bigotry, of intolerance. Why, then, has he not spoken up for Muslims?
 
The fact of the matter is, Michael Enright may have committed this crime without the abetting national theme of a "Muslim scare". But the circumstantial facts suggest otherwise, so we need to stop the anti-Muslim rhetoric dead in its tracks. And for that, we need our leadership to stand up.

• Islam
• United States
• New York
• Religion
• September 11 2001

Jillian C York
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Muslims are marking the third Friday in the holy month of Ramadan

When I was growing up in Gainesville, Florida, the Klan was still a force. Now a pastor wants to burn the Qur'an, what's changed?

The New York Times is reporting that a pastor in my hometown of Gainesville, Florida is planning to "commemorate" 11 September 2001 by publicly burning the Qur'an. The photograph that accompanies the story showed the pastor, Terry Jones, standing in a field of grass behind signs that read "Islam is of the devil."

The tall pines of my childhood tower behind him and I was shocked to see those two images together. From my apartment in Tel Aviv, I searched the edges of the photo for something else familiar, something that would soothe me.

Where is my hometown? I thought. This is not the Gainesville I grew up in. 

Gainesville is quintessential America. It's swimming pools and popsicles. It's kids scooting about on bikes on lazy summer days. It's Norman Rockwell America.

It's also Tom Petty's hometown, the place that gave rise to his famous song "American Girl". If I've had a bit too much to drink and I sing along, I find a southern accent I never knew I had. And if a Jewish girl can discover a southern accent for herself in Gainesville, anyone can find a home there. Right?

Then I remember.

When I was a child, some of my evangelical Christian classmates urged me to convert. Because I was Jewish and didn't accept Jesus Christ as my personal lord and saviour, they told me, I was going to hell. 

When I was a teenager, I had a close friend whose father was in the Ku Klux Klan. For years, I hid my ethnic and cultural background from the family. Shame began to seep into me and I learned to hide my roots from everyone.

The summer after 11th grade, we were home alone, watching a movie with an African American friend of ours. The gravel in the driveway rumbled under a car's tires – it was my other friend's father, the Klansman, arriving unexpectedly. Our black friend hid in a closet. He climbed him out the window later and I met him down the road, tucked him into my car, and drove him home. 

My last year of high school, the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in a local park that happened to be less than a mile from my house. As I left to go for a run, my mom warned me to steer clear of the park. Just in case.

An obedient daughter, I respected her wishes. When I heard later that counter-protesters outnumbered the KKK, I felt a thrill in my chest. This is my hometown.

I felt the same this morning when I read that the city of Gainesville had rejected Jones's request for permission to build a bonfire. While the city denied that the decision had anything to do with Jones's intention to burn sacred books, Gainesville's mayor, Craig Lowe, voiced his discomfort with Jones's ideology.

So, which is my hometown? And which is America?

Gainesville's struggle is a mirror for the country. And so are my memories. In the past, there was antisemitism, roiling just below the surface. Now, there is Islamophobia. If Terry Jones burns copies of the Qur'an in Gainesville, he'll leave a shameful scorch on us all.

• Islam
• Religion
• Florida
• United States
• Race issues
• Judaism

Mya Guarnieri
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A focus on women's rights is being used to justify intervention in religious and public life that would otherwise be unacceptable

If there were any doubt about the motivation for the ban on Islamic face coverings passed by the French national assembly in July, the Sarkozy government's actions in August have laid them to rest.

The issue isn't women's emancipation, for all the pious rhetoric we've heard about equality being a "primordial value" of the French nation. It isn't the danger that terrorists and robbers will hide behind burqas in order to blow up buildings or rob banks – the exemptions in the law for motorcycle helmets, fencing and ski masks, and carnival costumes quickly dispel that argument. And it isn't about enforcing openness and transparency as an aspect of French culture.

Outlawing what the French call "le voile intégral" is part of a campaign to purify and protect national identity, purging so-called foreign elements – although many of these "foreigners" are actually French citizens – from membership in the nation. It is part of a cynical bid by Sarkozy and his party to capture the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim animus that has brought electoral gains to the rightwing National Front party and to disarm the Socialist opposition, which has so far offered little resistance to the xenophobic campaign.

The national assembly's action came on July 13, as the country prepared to celebrate the birth of republican democracy in the revolution of 1789. Banning the burqa on the eve of the Fête Nationale provided a clear affirmation of true Frenchness.

It followed a year in which President Sarkozy included a minister of immigration and national identity in his cabinet. The title of the new post conveyed the message that if national identity were in trouble immigrants were the source. The president and his minister called for a countrywide conversation on the meanings of national identity. There were to be contests and town-hall meetings to articulate what it meant to be truly French. When that effort fizzled, they came up with more draconian measures. Sarkozy proposed, this month, to take away the citizenship of foreign-born French citizens if they were convicted of crimes such as threatening the life of a police officer. Children born in France to foreign parents (once presumed to automatically qualify for citizenship) would be denied citizenship if there were any evidence of juvenile delinquency.

This month, too, began the expulsion of the Roma, said to be illegally camped throughout the country and responsible for all manner of crimes. Despite an outcry from those who denounced the expulsions as echoes of Vichy (the government that collaborated with the Nazis in the 1940s), these activities have made "security" a prime focus for politicians and public opinion pollsters. Whether it will deliver another term to Sarkozy in 2012 remains to be seen.

The immediate effect is to conjure a fantasy spectre in which foreigners endanger France and are made to take the blame for all its economic, social and political problems. Instead of real solutions to economic stagnation, high unemployment, discrimination against minorities, violence in the banlieue, and a deteriorating educational system, to name a few, the country is offered a nightmare vision of veiled women and their male handlers, an enemy within the borders who must be uncovered and, in this way, disarmed.

That only a few thousand women wear face coverings in a country that has 4-6 million people from Muslim countries in its population raises the question of why this issue has become the focus of nationalist campaigns, not only in France, but in other western European countries as well. What is it about covered women that so draws the ire and fear of so many, some western feminists included? How have politicians, many of whom have worked hard to keep women out of political office, been able to use feminist themes of emancipation and equality in the politics of the "clash of civilisations"? Why has it been so easy to identify the veil as an instrument only of oppression, even when ethnographers and historians tell us it has multiple meanings, and when some women who wear it insist that they have chosen it because it positively signifies their femininity and their devotion to God?

One answer – and there are many more to be explored – is that the focus on Muslim women's rights covers over some of the dangerous elements of the "security state". The claim to be protecting women justifies state intervention in religious, family, and public life that would otherwise be unacceptable.

The same politicians who have long resisted laws on sexual harassment and the punishment of domestic violence become advocates for women when these are identified as Muslim offences. This puts aside the continuing issue of gender inequality as a national problem. And politicians demonstrate their prowess to their national constituencies by acting to protect these supposedly vulnerable women from the men who are said to violate their rights: the proposed law levies a small fine of €150 on a woman wearing a burqa in public, while the men presumed to have forced her compliance get a year in prison and a fine of €30,000.

The state's role is figured as the protection of its citizens (the analogy is to gallant men protecting the weaker sex), even if that requires the suspension of liberties in the name of security – now the country's highest priority.

Joan Wallach Scott is Harold F Linder professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study (US). She is the author, most recently, of The Politics of the Veil.

• Religion
• Islam
• France

Joan Wallach Scott
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The Qu'ran reminds us animals and birds are 'communities like you'. So why do so many Muslims break their fast with meat?

For most of the billion-plus Muslims who sit down each evening to break their Ramadan fast, meat will be on the menu. Lots of it. But how Islamic is eating meat?

Not very, according to Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, who argues that historically Muslims ate so little meat they were almost vegetarian. "Meat is not a necessity in sharia, and in the old days most Muslims used to eat meat – if they were wealthy, like middle class – once a week on Friday. If they were poor – on the Eids."

In today's world, meat-eating has taken on a new fervour, with many Muslims demanding animal flesh as part of their daily diet. Just the other day, an Egyptian journalist was relating to me how he attended a dinner at a local organisation here in Cairo. When people arrived, questions began to fly across the hall: "Where is the meat? We aren't going to have enough for everyone."

According to a recent study by the Egyptian cabinet's Information and Decision Support Centre, 89% of Egyptians eat more than 2kg of meat monthly. This figure rises along with social class. The study revealed that wealthy Egyptians often consume more than 8kg of meat each month.

The prophet Muhammad was not an advocate of daily meat-eating. Instead, the Islamic Concern website says, he warned his followers against constant meat consumption as it could become "addictive". It seems that 1,500 years later his concerns are not being heeded.

Early Islamic leaders and scholars repeatedly emphasised that animals were to be cherished and treated in a humane manner, but many Muslims nowadays view animals as the dominion of people. A sheikh at the Egyptian ministry of religious endowments told me: "Animals are slaves for human purposes. They were put here for us to eat, so talk of vegetarianism is un-Islamic."

This statement by the ministry official goes against everything the prophet stood for, in the opinion of Gamal al-Banna, a prominent Islamic scholar who has come under attack in recent years for his "liberal" stance. Al-Banna told me that being a vegetarian and Muslim does not break any tradition and is in no way un-Islamic.

"When someone becomes vegetarian they do so for a number of reasons: compassion, environment and health reasons," he began. "As a Muslim, I believe that the prophet would want the followers to be healthy, compassionate and not destroy our environment. If someone believes not eating meat is that way, it is not like they are going to go to hell for it. It may be the right thing to do."

Al-Banna continued, when I asked him about the Eid al-Adha sacrifice (which many argue is obligatory), that any Muslim who believes in being vegetarian does not have to slaughter a sheep. "In today's modern world, ideas and religion change and Islam is no different. We must not remain rigid in our understanding of faith to mean the blind acceptance of anything, killing living beings included. There is no obligation to kill."

Others disagree, arguing that meat-eating is part of the Islamic tradition and, thus, vegetarianism is a foreign notion for the Middle East. Muslims who eat meat at every iftar (fast-breaking evening meal) this month undoubtedly believe they are doing the right thing. On the other hand, the idea that animals are merely slaves to humans is not only abhorrent to animal-rights advocates, but seems to be at odds with the prophet's teaching.

Some would argue that the prayer said before halal slaughtering is part of Islam's humanity when animals are killed for food. This may have been true historically, but in today's "halal" slaughterhouses, a pre-recorded prayer often blares nonstop as the animals are lined up and killed. That is a cop-out from what Islam teaches about "humane" slaughter.

Ultimately, the argument is simple. The Qur'an reveals that all living animals are sentient beings, just as human beings are.

"There is not an animal on earth, nor a bird that flies on its wings – but they are communities like you." (Qur'an, 6:38)

• Islam
• Vegetarianism
• Ramadan
• Religion
• Middle East

Joseph Mayton
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Anyone surprised that a Muslim cab driver was stabbed in New York? If you are surprised, you've been sleepwalking the last two weeks.

The man, Ahmed Sharif, will survive. But from reports it seems clear that he was stabbed because of his religion. The passenger, Michael Enright, from an upstate town, asked the driver if he was Muslim. When he said yes, Enright produced a Leatherman tool and stabbed him repeatedly.

Sharif said:

"I feel very sad. I have been here more than 25 years. I have been driving a taxi more than 15 years. All my four kids were born here. I never feel this hopeless and insecure before," said Mr. Sharif. "Right now, the public sentiment is very serious. All drivers should be more careful."

The full statement, describing just what Enright allegedly did, is here, and you should read it.

I'll be interested to read the excuses on this thread. Just one nut. Obviously didn't mean to kill him. Et cetera.

It's worth observing also the way the liberal and conservative partisan media play this kind of thing. TPM is playing this story. But the liberal press isn't really hyping it. As of right now, around 2:30 pm east coast time, it's barely on the HuffPo home page. If the cab driver had blamed Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, they'd be bannering it, I'm sure!

Maybe it's correct not to hype it too much, not make it too political. But it's certainly news (and sure seems to be a political act). And meanwhile, it's not on Drudge at all. Now imagine a Muslim American had stabbed a "regular" American in Manhattan, and think about what the conservative media would be doing...

Remember the guy who drove to San Francisco to kill liberals a few weeks ago, thwarted only because he got popped for drunk driving on the way. Just isolated incidents, right? Right.

Update: TPM's initial reporting is that Enright doesn't fit the profile at all of an angry Foxer. He's a film student who recently went to Afghanistan and who's been working with a project that supports the building of the Cordoba House (no word on his own position if any). Strange. He's been charged, so the police believe he did what's described. Stay tuned.

• New York
• Islam

Michael Tomasky
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Have you noted the return to the public sphere of tea party movement honcho Mark Williams, the man who a few weeks ago wrote that twisted "letter to Abe Lincoln from the NAACP"? Well, his specialty seems to be passing ethnic and racial judgments on ethnicities and races to which he doesn't belong, because now he's back, calling Mike Bloomberg and another New York Jewish pol, Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer, "Judenrat" because they support the mosque. You know what the Judenrate were, right?

This guy is beyond contempt, but that's not the point of this post really. Saudi Arabia is. Williams, on CNN, said he will "personally commit myself to coming up with funding" for what he called a "mirror image" of Cordoba built in Mecca "that would be dedicated to showcasing American values."

This of course echoes what Newt said a few weeks ago, and I saw that some of you took issue with me on the comment thread, arguing that I'd misdescribed Gingrich. It wasn't that he wants America to be more like Saudi, you said; it's just the opposite.

Come on people. First of all, no church is going to open in Mecca. Everyone knows this. But even if one were to open there tomorrow, would Gingrich support the lower Manhattan mosque? Nonsense. He'd find another reason. I mean after all, he's now compared the builders to Nazis. It was just a talking point, and an unctuous one at that.

As for Williams, he's just aping Gingrich. One might argue that American values are amply on display already in Saudi Arabia. If you're standing in Mecca and you happen to see a Sikorsky Black Hawk fly overhead, you are seeing, alas, American values at work in Saudi Arabia. The country is the US's biggest arms customer, and a massive proposed new deal was announced just this month.

Or, of course, Williams might consider the News Corp.'s recent investments in the kingdom as another example of American values at work there. Murdoch & co. now own 9% of Rotana, the kingdom's biggest media empire, and it owns 7% of the News Corp. When arms and money are at stake, the kingdom's lack of churches doesn't seem to matter quite as much.

• New York
• Islam
• Saudi Arabia

Michael Tomasky
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From Arizona to Ground Zero via birthers, the Republicans are riding a wave of white resentment. It's reckless and frightening

The August madness into which America has descended is about several things. It's about the still-sputtering economy, of course, and the fear it engenders. It's about xenophobia, never far below the surface. And it's about a rightwing media-political complex that plays on the public's ignorance.

But there's a unifying theme that few wish to acknowledge. What we are witnessing at the moment is the full, ugly furore of white backlash, aimed directly and indirectly at our first black president.

The case was made, inadvertently, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece last week by Republican congressman-turned-lobbyist Dick Armey, the godfather of what might be called the Tea Party movement's corporate wing. Armey and his co-author, Matt Kibbe, proudly dated the birth of the Tea Party to 9 February 2009.

Barack Obama's $800m stimulus bill was not approved until three days later. Which is my point. The most notorious political movement of the Obama era, grounded in racial fears if not flat-out racism, sprung into being within weeks of Obama's inauguration, before he'd had a chance to do anything, really. If Obama was for it, they were against it.

The Tea Party winter and spring of 2009 led to the "death panels" of summer, and to rightwing hero Glenn Beck's declaration that the president harboured "a deepseated hatred for white people or the white culture". Minor issues involving Acorn, a heretofore obscure agency that helped register urban, mostly minority voters, became a cause célèbre. A little-known African American bureaucrat, Van Jones, was hounded out of office for having allegedly expressed offensive views about the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 – views he later said he had never voiced and did not hold. Protesters spat upon and directed racial epithets at African American congressmen as the healthcare debate reached its climax.

And now we come to the full fruition of all this race-baiting. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 18% of Americans – and 34% of conservative Republicans – believe Obama is a Muslim, proportions that have actually risen since the 2008 campaign. Another poll, by CNN/Opinion Research, finds that 41% of Republicans believe Obama was definitely or probably not born in the United States.

Far worse is the racial, ethnic and religious hatred that has been unleashed, starting with the proposed Islamic centre to be built in New York several blocks from the devastated World Trade Centre site, which Obama endorsed and then (to his discredit) unendorsed, sort of, the next day.

Yes, we've all heard Newt Gingrich draw an analogy between Muslims and Nazis, and we all know that more than 60% of the public has expressed its opposition to what is inevitably, and inaccurately, referred to as the "Ground Zero mosque".

But to experience the pure fury, you have to watch this video of a black man who had the temerity to walk through a group of people protesting the centre. It is a terrifying moment.

There is more – so much more. The anti-immigration law approved in Arizona, which made a star of Republican governor Jan Brewer, notwithstanding the inconvenient truth that illegal immigration across the Mexico-Arizona border is at its lowest level in years. The political crucifixion of Shirley Sherrod. The continuing phenomenon of Sarah Palin, who, at long last, feels empowered enough to reach inside the deepest, darkest recesses of her tiny little heart and embrace a fellow rightwinger's repeated use of the N-word.

It's a frightening time to be an American and to watch this insanity unfolding all around us. There's a sense that anything could happen, none of it good.

What's all too easy to forget is that though Obama was elected with the strongest majority of any president in recent years, he received only 43% of the white vote. Now, it's true that no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 has won a majority of whites. But it's also true that 100% of voters who would never support a black presidential candidate cast their ballots for someone other than Obama. Now they're roaming the countryside, egged on by the Republican party and the Tea Party and Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, looking for new objects on which to unload their bitterness.

The traditional media, built as they are on the notion of fair-minded coverage of equally responsible, equally reasonable political forces, can barely process what's going on. You literally cannot understand the current moment without watching the political satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But, hey, they're only comedians.

Not that there's anything new about the Republican party's playing racial politics. Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 on the basis of his infamous "southern strategy", designed to appeal to white voters alienated by the historic civil-rights legislation shepherded through Congress by Lyndon Johnson. Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign against the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil-rights workers had been murdered, by invoking the toxic phrase "states' rights".

As the economy slides into another trough, with no prospect of another stimulus passing political muster, it's only going to get worse.

Strangely, there are virtually no political observers who hold out the prospect that the folks whom the right has alienated will turn out to vote against the Republicans this November. George W Bush, after all, worked mightily to appeal to Latino voters. That's gone. Bush even won 70% of the Muslim vote in 2000. That's long gone.

The Republicans hope to ride the white backlash back to power, and perhaps they will. But they may also find that the hatred they have embraced will come back to haunt them this November – and well beyond. For the rest of us, though, the consequences of that hatred have yet to play out.

• Barack Obama
• Race issues
• US politics
• United States
• Obama administration
• Ground Zero
• New York
• Arizona
• Immigration and asylum
• Islam
• Religion
• US midterm elections 2010
• Tea Party movement
• Glenn Beck
• Fox News
• Jon Stewart
• Republicans
• Democrats

Dan Kennedy
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