Twice a Victim: How Have Attacks Affected Muslims in Europe?

The forgotten Muslim heroes who fought for Britain in World War 1

Algerian soldiers on the way to the western front arrive in Paris in 1914. Photograph: Photo 12/UIG via Getty Images

Good piece in The Guardian today about the Muslim Soldiers in WW1 that fought for the British Empire.

A biting wind whips across the rolling countryside, cutting through the crowd gathered on a hillside overlooking Notre Dame de Lorette, France’s national war cemetery. Huddled amid what remains of the 440 miles of trenches that made up the western front, they shudder out of shock and surprise rather than cold while listening about life for the men who endured the horrors of the first world war.

More than 1.5 billion artillery shells fell in this part of northern France, close to the town of Arras, prompting soldiers to nickname the farmland in which they fought “the hell of the north”, or poignantly, “the cemetery”. It is the experiences of some of their Muslim comrades, however, that particularly capture the crowd’s imagination, drawing looks of disbelief at a history that has never been fully told.

Having travelled thousands of miles from hotter climes, these soldiers went into the trenches with imams whose duties included leading group prayers and reciting the call to prayer into the ears of the dying. Special orders had been issued on when and how to pray. “If the war is intense and the Muslim does not have a moment of peace to fulfil his prayer he can just move his head and torso,” said a declaration from French high command. “In the case where there are moments of calm, one can complete the prayer together.”

Hot halal food was routinely served, prepared by cooks who had accompanied the men. When medical supplies ran out, some of these soldiers used traditional herbal medicines from their homelands to help treat injured comrades, whatever their faith. Others taught their folk songs to those serving alongside them, whatever their language, in between the brutal onslaughts of trench warfare.

The evidence of their sacrifice is on display in a corner of Notre Dame de Lorette, which contains the graves of 40,000 French soldiers who fell on the western front. The Muslim headstones are distinguishable not just by their Islamic inscriptions but because they also tilt eastwards towards Mecca. They were designed by the French painter Etienne Dinet, who converted to Islam in 1908.

The crowd of mainly British Muslims, who were at Notre Dame de Lorette before this weekend’s Armistice Day commemorations, ended their visit by praying over the graves of the north African soldiers who shared their faith. Their visit formed part of a groundbreaking project by an organisation called the Forgotten Heroes 14-19 Foundation, which has, for the first time, documented the contribution of all the Muslims who fought and worked for the allied forces during the first world war. The 19 in its name refers to the conflict that was caused by the French military presence in Syria in 1919 after the first world war ended.

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They were drawn from across Africa, India, the far and middle east, Russia and even America, but it is their heart-touching stories of living and dying alongside European Christian or Jewish counterparts that have resonated the most with Ferrier and his team. Knowing this history, they say, could help overcome some problems in the Europe of today.

Documents uncovered have shown instances of imams, priests and rabbis learning each other’s burial ceremonies and prayers to lay the dead to rest on the battlefront. There are reports of Muslim soldiers sharing food with hungry civilians, while French, Belgian and Canadian officers expressed surprise at their humane treatment of German prisoners of war. When asked to explain their conduct, the soldiers quoted the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad on how enemy combatants should be dealt with.

Ferrier, who is not a Muslim, said: “The far-right and Islamophobia is on the rise throughout Europe. Our project is about making all people across the continent understand that we have a shared history. This is not about politics or colonialism. We are simply presenting the facts because this is a story that the whole of Europe needs to know.

“Muslims are portrayed as the enemy within, that they are recent arrivals who have never made a valuable contribution to Europe. But we can show that they have sacrificed their lives for a free Europe, have helped to make it what it is and that they have a right to be here.”

Central to the foundation’s ethos is spreading knowledge of its findings to young Britons and Europeans in particular, with the aim that this will help future generations better understand the Muslim communities living among them. The battlefield tours, entitled The Muslim Experience in World War One, are organised in partnership with Anglia Tours, a company that specialises in battlefield visits for British schoolchildren.

In addition to visiting the trenches, memorials and graves, and hearing the human stories behind them, the tour also includes a visit to the El Badr mosque in Amiens for a presentation on the foundation’s research, followed by a traditional north-African meal. Non-Muslim visitors are also encouraged to witness evening prayers.

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The foundation’s work has already caught the eye of first world war experts. Last month, Ferrier addressed historians at Harvard University and he has also presented a paper to the UN. Plans are under way for a book next year that will contain extracts of the documents and images that have been uncovered, and an exhibition is to tour Europe. As the research continues, he estimates that the current figure of 2.5 million Muslims helping the allies during the first world war could increase.

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MUSLIM COMRADES

Soldiers

400,000 Indians (British Indian army)

200,000 Algerians , 100,000 Tunisians, 40,000 Moroccans, 100,000 West Africans, 5,000 Somalis and Libyans (French army)

5,000 American Muslims

1.3 million Russian Muslims

Labourers

100,000 Egyptians

35,000 Chinese Muslims

130,000 North Africans

200,000 Sub Saharan Africans

40,000 Indians

 Source

Four refugees in Europe describe the sickening racism they deal with every day

“My mother still gets nightmares and isn’t able to sleep at night after the incident,” Abdullah told Fusion about his attack. His mother was not the only one to see Abdullah bleed nearly to death: his nieces and nephew (ages 5, 6, and 8) walked in minutes after the attackers fled the scene. “The kids are afraid and traumatized from seeing their uncle covered in blood and pleading for help. They still can’t sleep at night,” said Abdullah.

It all started when Abdullah decided to become an active member of his new society, holding gatherings for locals in Brösarp, a village on the southwestern tip of Sweden. At the local post office, he posted a public invitation to a Syrian dinner at his home. Abdullah also reached out to the mayor of the village to invite everyone to the Syrian dinner. He and his family prepared the famous Syrian shawarma and hummus for their guests. “Out of 500 residents in the village, 100 people showed up to the first gathering at my home,” said Abdullah, in Arabic, to Fusion. Swedish natives got to eat Syrian food and hear Abdullah explain to them his Syrian culture and faith. “Many people appreciated the gathering, the Syrian food, and simple talk about my culture and Islam,” he said.

Over time, Abdullah held several other gatherings at his apartment, and his goal of being accepted in Brösarp seemed to have been achieved. “People gradually accepted my existence among them and carried out conversations with me,” he recalled.

But that was not entirely the case. Along with positive reactions came very hateful responses and reactions from racists in the village. “Because my family and I proved to the racists that we are normal beings trying to live in harmony with everyone in the village, their hate increased toward us,” said Abdullah, who speaks seven languages. “We are educated people. We did not come to beg for money, we are here to work and accomplish ourselves in Europe,” he added.

After the attack took place, people in the village organized a candle vigil for Abdullah. They stood side by side to support and protect him. “People on the streets came to hug and kiss me to show support and acceptance,” said Abdullah.

But a week after that public show of solidarity, the Paris attacks happened. “And these same people that were hugging and kissing me completely changed,” said Abdullah. People on the streets ignored his greetings and stopped talking to him. “They gave me dirty looks and made me feel as if I was behind the Paris bombings. I felt as if I was going crazy. I still can’t understand how that happened,” he said.

Full article

The Syrian Refugee Crisis Explained Perfectly With a Simple Animation & Video

When You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren't Called 'Hitler'

Take a look at this picture. Do you know who it is?

Most people haven’t heard of him.

But you should have. When you see his face or hear his name you should get as sick in your stomach as when you read about Mussolini or Hitler or see one of their pictures. You see, he killed over 10 million people in the Congo.

His name is King Leopold II of Belgium.

He “owned” the Congo during his reign as the constitutional monarch of Belgium. After several failed colonial attempts in Asia and Africa, he settled on the Congo. He “bought” it and enslaved its people, turning the entire country into his own personal slave plantation. He disguised his business transactions as “philanthropic” and “scientific” efforts under the banner of the International African Society. He used their enslaved labor to extract Congolese resources and services. His reign was enforced through work camps, body mutilations, executions, torture, and his private army.

Most of us – I don’t yet know an approximate percentage but I fear its extremely high – aren’t taught about him in school. We don’t hear about him in the media. He’s not part of the widely repeated narrative of oppression (which includes things like the Holocaust during World War II). He’s part of a long history of colonialism, imperialism, slavery and genocide in Africa that would clash with the social construction of the white supremacist narrative in our schools. It doesn’t fit neatly into a capitalist curriculum. Making overtly racist remarks is (sometimes) frowned upon in polite society, but it’s quite fine not to talk about genocides in Africa perpetrated by European capitalist monarchs.

Mark Twain wrote a satire about Leopold called “King Leopold’s soliloquy; a defense of his Congo rule“, where he mocked the King’s defense of his reign of terror, largely through Leopold’s own words. It’s 49 pages long. Mark Twain is a popular author for American public schools. But like most political authors, we will often read some of their least political writings or read them without learning why the author wrote them (Orwell’s Animal Farm for example serves to re-inforce American anti-Socialist propaganda, but Orwell was an anti-capitalist revolutionary of a different kind – this is never pointed out). We can read about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, but King Leopold’s Soliloquy isn’t on the reading list. This isn’t by accident. Reading lists are created by boards of education in order to prepare students to follow orders and endure boredom well. From the point of view of the Education Department, Africans have no history.

When we learn about Africa, we learn about a caricaturized Egypt, about the HIV epidemic (but never its causes), about the surface level effects of the slave trade, and maybe about South African Apartheid (which of course now is long, long over). We also see lots of pictures of starving children on Christian Ministry commercials, we see safaris on animal shows, and we see pictures of deserts in films and movies. But we don’t learn about the Great African War or Leopold’s Reign of Terror during the Congolese Genocide. Nor do we learn about what the United States has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially killing in upwards of 5-7 million people from bombs, sanctions, disease and starvation. Body counts are important. And we don’t count Afghans, Iraqis, or Congolese.

There’s a Wikipedia page called “Genocides in History”. The Congolese Genocide isn’t included. The Congo is mentioned though. What’s now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo is listed in reference to the Second Congo War (also called Africa’s World War and the Great War of Africa), where both sides of the multinational conflict hunted down Bambenga and ate them. Cannibalism and slavery are horrendous evils which must be entered into history and talked about for sure, but I couldn’t help thinking whose interests were served when the only mention of the Congo on the page was in reference to multi-national incidents where a tiny minority of people were  eating each other (completely devoid of the conditions which created the conflict no less). Stories which support the white supremacist narrative about the subhumanness of people in Africa are allowed to be entered into the records of history. The white guy who turned the Congo into his own personal part-plantation, part-concentration camp, part-Christian ministry and killed 10 to 15 million Conglese people in the process doesn’t make the cut.

You see, when you kill ten million Africans, you aren’t called ‘Hitler’. That is, your name doesn’t come to symbolize the living incarnation of evil. Your name and your picture don’t produce fear, hatred, and sorrow. Your victims aren’t talked about and your name isn’t remembered.

Leopold was just one part of thousands of things that helped construct white supremacy as both an ideological narrative and material reality. Of course I don’t want to pretend that in the Congo he was the source of all evil. He had generals, and foot soldiers, and managers who did his bidding and enforced his laws. It was a system. But that doesn’t negate the need to talk about the individuals who are symbolic of the system. But we don’t even get that. And since it isn’t talked about, what capitalism did to Africa, all the privileges that rich white people gained from the Congolese genocide are hidden. The victims of imperialism are made, like they usually are, invisible.

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Prof. Tariq Ramadan: IRANIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS, BLASPHEMY AND CAN TONY BLAIR SAVE THE MIDDLE EAST?

What is the correct response to the protesters who have responded violently to the film that insults Mohamed? 

The protesters fell into the exact trap set by those who launched it. The Salafi literalists tried to mobilise the people against “The United States” by promoting a type of religious populism based upon a simplistic and dangerous generalisation: Americans hate us and we are better Muslims when we reject them. The best response would have been to ignore the video and to unite with all the people (Muslims and people of other religions or with no religion) who want to protect freedom of speech while asking individuals to use this right in a decent, respectful and reasonable way.

Is The Satanic Verses a blasphemous work?

If you assess it from within the religious framework, it can be considered as blasphemous. Yet it is not as simple as that for two reasons: the author no longer considers himself as a Muslim and he wrote a novel. Taking into account that he is speaking from outside the Islamic religious reference (as a non-believer) and that it is fiction, it can be argued that this qualification is questionable. In any case, as I wrote in 1989 when the controversy started, this fatwa was more political than religious and wrong and unacceptable in substance.

Should Western nations prosecute blasphemy against religion?

I do not think that prosecuting blasphemy will change anything. The current legal framework is enough and we need to protect our rights, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. Upstream from these rights, we need to educate people to learn how to nurture an ethical behaviour while they enjoy freedom. Just because something is legal does not necessarily mean that it is always good: you can ridicule the suffering of somebody (that is legal) but it is not really ethical. The same goes for a sense of humour: if you make a joke and you are the only one to laugh, it is no longer a joke. Only education can help us to manage pluralism positively.

How do you view the prominence of right-wing Christianity within the US Republican movement?

The right-wing American or European Christians should be considered for what they are: populists and racists with very dogmatic and dangerous minds. Just as the salafi literalists do not represent all the Muslims, the populist right-wing Christians do not represent Christianity. They distort the Christian message and build their rhetoric on the same simplistic polarisation “us versus them”. The Muslims are the new enemies, “the cancer”, and even if American, they are considered as foreigners or outsider insiders. They are a danger not only to Muslims but to all of us.

Is Tony Blair more part of the Middle East problem than the Middle East solution?

He cannot be part of the solution in the Middle East for three reasons. The first is historical, given the involvement of Britain in the colonisation and the problems generated by this. The second relates to the unilateral support Britain has always given to Israel (and not to the Arabs). The third and most important is his own record: following in the footsteps of George W Bush, he accepted the lies related to the WMD in Iraq and launched a dirty war. Who can still trust him among the Arabs – and the British citizens?

Is an Iranian nuclear weapons capability something to be deplored or tolerated?

No, they cannot be tolerated just as nuclear weapons anywhere cannot be tolerated. What we do not want for Iran should not be tolerated for Israel. We are told that Israel can have nuclear weapons because they are less dangerous for regional peace than if Iran has them. That is very disputable. A survey a few years ago showed that the majority of Europeans thought Israel was the most dangerous country for peace. Let us be consistent and demand all the countries, without exception, get rid of such weapons.

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The rise and fall of Geert Wilders’ ideology

After years of capitalizing on the fear of Islam, Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders’ ideology has been severely dented by the Arab Spring and far-right terrorism in Norway.

The year 2011 looked bright for Dutch MP Geert Wilders, founder of the Party for Freedom, or PVV. In the fall of 2010 his party won 16 percent of the seats in parliament and obtained a decisive role in the new government coalition, with the Christian Democrats and Conservative Liberals. Opinion polls early this year indicated that his Freedom party would even overtake the Labor party as the second largest. Wilders has maneuvered himself into the driver seat, becoming the most important politician in Dutch politics and is slowly starting to become a household name on the international terrain as well.

Fear of Islam

Wilders’ party program has been based on what we could call the Vienna school of thought – referring to the year 1683 when the Ottomans tried to overtake Vienna. By referring to this historical event, cultural conservatives argue that Muslims have, and will, always strive to take over Europe and enforce on it its “barbarian” rule.

The accompanying discourse of cultural conservatives is very civilizational. Wilders and his counter-parts repeatedly stress the difference between Christian-Jewish and Islamic values: Enlightenment versus barbarianism, democracy versus dictatorship and freedom versus oppression. This difference, Wilders argues, is intrinsic and makes Europe incompatible with Islamic values – leaving no other option than to counter the influence of Islam.

By constantly linking Islam with issues such as immigration, public safety and terrorism, a paradigm is created in which Islam is the problem, and erasing it becomes the solution. This paradigm facilitates Wilders to argue that the Quran is similar to Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ and should be banned, or describe over a million Muslims in the Netherlands as “Islamic voting cattle.”

The Arab Spring

The argument that Islam is incompatible with Western values, such as democracy, has in the past been defended by the number of Muslim majority states that harbor a dictatorial regime. Indeed, states in which Islam is the largest or sole religion, political freedom is often scarce.

As the Arab Spring erupted early this year in Tunisia, Egypt and many other states in the Middle East and North Africa, it exposed that not Muslims but merely Arab regimes are incompatible with democracy. The protest scene was very much secular in nature as the protesters called for more political freedom, not more religion.

In Syria, every Friday hundreds of thousands of Muslims continue to risk their life for freedom. Even though the regime employs death squads, tanks, snipers and torturers, ordinary men are bold enough to face death to fight for their ideals. The Arab Spring is their “Bastille”, knocking at the gates of dictatorship and oppression. The Arab age of enlightenment has started, which Wilders tends to ignore as it severely undermines his ideology.

Christian-fundamentalist terrorism

Norway’s Christian terrorist, Anders Breivik, also adhered to the Vienna school of thought and his views are shockingly similar to Wilders’. Breivik’s over 1,500 pages-long manifest encompasses the urge to purify Christian Europe from Islam and calls for support for Israel. In essence, the manifest reads as a violent adaptation of the Freedom Party’s program.

Breivik was unmistakably inspired by Wilders, labeling the PVV as the “only true conservative party” in Europe. Although it is unfair to stain Wilders’ “guilty by association”, it does raise the question of the (unintended) consequences of protracted hate speech directed at a race, religion or ethnicity.

Moreover, Breivik’s mass murder exposed the fallacy that merely Islamic fundamentalism is violent.

His terrorist act was inspired by the images of Medieval Christian Europe, just like the Muslim Caliphates inspired al-Qaeda. Breivik is as much a product of Christian fundamentalism as Bin Laden is from radical Islam.

2011, therefore, dawned as the year in which millions of Muslims peacefully marched for political freedom and a Christian, Islam-hating terrorist killed dozens of innocent children. Consequently, Wilders’ ideology is finally shattered to pieces.

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*Anno Bunnik, a political commentator living in the Netherlands, is a graduate from King’s College London and interned at the Carnegie Middle East Center and the International Centre for Counter-Terrrorism.

Origins of poisoning of the Western mind against Islam

Muhammad Asad, Leopold Weiss, was born in Livow, Austria (later Poland) in 1900, and at the age of 22 made his first visit to the Middle East. After his conversion to Islam he traveled and worked throughout the Muslim world, from North Africa to as far East as Afghanistan. After years of devoted study he became one of the leading Muslim scholars of our age.

Following is an excerpt form the introduction to his book "The Road to Mecca" in which he outlines a discussion about the root causes of bias against Islam and the Muslim world in the West with a non-Muslim friend. He describes his friend as "an American friend of mine - a man of considerable intellectual attainments and a scholarly bent of mind." Although he wrote this in 1954, you can decide if it is still valid today.

When it comes to Islam - Western equanimity is almost invariably disturbed by an emotional bias. Is it perhaps, I sometimes wonder, because the values of Islam are close enough to those of the West to constitute a potential challenge to many Western concepts of spiritual and social life?'

And I went on to tell him [non-Muslim friend of Muhammad Asad] of a theory which I had conceived some years ago - a theory that might perhaps help one to understand better the deep-seated prejudice against Islam so often to be found in Western literature and contemporary thought. 'To find a truly convincing explanation of this prejudice I said, 'one has to look far backward into history and try to comprehend the psychological background of the earliest relations between the Western and the Muslim worlds. What Occidentals think and feel about Islam today is rooted in impressions that were born during the Crusades.'

'The Crusades!' exclaimed my friend. 'You don't mean to say that what happened nearly a thousand years ago could still have an effect on people of the twentieth century?'

'But it does! I know it sounds incredible; but don't you remember the incredulity which greeted the early discoveries of the psychoanalysts when they tried to show that much of the emotional life of a mature person and most of those seemingly unaccountable leanings, tastes and prejudices comprised in the term "idiosyncrasies"- can be traced back to the experiences of his most formative age, his early childhood? Well, are nations and civilizations anything but collective individuals? Their development also is bound up with the experiences of their early childhood. As with children, those experiences may have been pleasant or unpleasant; they may have been perfectly rational or, alternatively, due to the child's naive misinterpretation of an event: the moulding effect of every such experience depends primarily on its original intensity. The century immediately preceding the Crusades, that is, the end of the first millennium of the Christian era, might well be described as the early childhood of Western civilization . . .'

I proceeded to remind my friend - himself an historian - that this had been the age when, for the first time since the dark centuries that followed the breakup of Imperial Rome, Europe was beginning to see its own cultural way. Independently of the almost forgotten Roman heritage, new literatures were just then coming into existence in the European vernaculars; inspired by the religious experience of Western Christianity, fine arts were slowly awakening from the lethargy caused by the warlike migrations of the Goths, Huns and Avars; out of the crude conditions of the early Middle Ages, a new cultural world was emerging. It was at that critical, extremely sensitive stage of its development that Europe received its most formidable shock - in modern parlance, a 'trauma' - in the shape of the Crusades.

The Crusades were the strongest collective impression on a civilization that had just begun to be conscious of itself. Historically speaking, they represented Europe's earliest - and entirely successful - attempt to view itself under the aspect of cultural unity. Nothing that Europe has experienced before or after could compare with the enthusiasm which the First Crusade brought into being. A wave of intoxication swept over the Continent, an elation which for the first time overstepped the barriers between states and tribes and classes. Before then, there had been Franks and Saxons and Germans, Burgundians and Sicilians, Normans and Lombards - a medley of tribes and races with scarcely anything in common but the fact that most of their feudal kingdoms and principalities were remnants of the Roman Empire and that all of them professed the Christian faith: but in the Crusades, and through them, the religious bond was elevated to a new plane, a cause common to all Europeans alike - the politico-religious concept of 'Christendom', which in its turn gave birth to the cultural concept of 'Europe'. When, in his famous speech at Clermont, in November, 1095, Pope Urban II exhorted the Christians to make war upon the 'wicked race' that held the Holy Land, he enunciated - probably without knowing it himself - the charter of Western civilization.

The traumatic experience of the Crusades gave Europe its cultural awareness and its unity; but this same experience was destined henceforth also to provide the false colour in which Islam was to appear to Western eyes. Not simply because the Crusades meant war and bloodshed. So many wars have been waged between nations and subsequently forgotten, and so many animosities which in their time seemed ineradicable have later turned into friendships. The damage caused by the Crusades was not restricted to a clash of weapons: it was, first and foremost, an intellectual damage - the poisoning of the Western mind against the Muslim world through a deliberate misrepresentation of the teachings and ideals of Islam. For, if the call for a crusade was to maintain its validity, the Prophet of the Muslims had, of necessity, to be stamped as the Anti-Christ and his religion depicted in the most lurid terms as a fount of immorality and Perversion. It was at the time of the Crusades that the ludicrous notion that slam was a religion of crude sensualism and brutal violence, of an observance of ritual instead of a purification of the heart entered the Western mind and remained there; and it was then that the name of the Prophet Muhammad - the same Muhammad who had insisted that his own followers respect the prophets of other religions-was contemptuously transformed by Europeans into 'Mahound'. The age when the spirit of independent inquiry could raise its head was as yet far distant in Europe; it was easy for the powers-that-were to sow the dark seeds of hatred for a religion and civilization that was so different from the religion and civilization of the West. Thus it was no accident that the fiery Chanson da Roland, which describes the legendary victory of Christendom over the Muslim 'heathen' in southern France, was composed not at the time of those battles but three centuries later-to wit, shortly before the First Crusade - immediately to become a kind of 'national anthem' of Europe, and it is no accident, either, that this warlike epic marks the beginning of a European literature, as distinct from the earlier, localized literatures: for hostility toward Islam stood over the cradle of European civilization.

It would seem an irony of history that the age-old Western resentment against Islam, which was religious in origin, should still persist subconsciously at a time when religion has lost most of its hold on the imagination of Western man. This, however is not really surprising. We know that a person may completely lose the religious beliefs imparted to him in his childhood while, nevertheless, some particular emotion connected with those beliefs remains, irrationally, in force throughout his later life '-and this,' I concluded, 'is precisely what happened to that collective personality, Western civilization. The shadow of the Crusades hovers over the West to this day; and all its reaction toward Islam and the Muslim world bear distinct traces of that die-hard ghost ...'

My friend remained silent for a long time. I can still see his tall, lanky figure pacing up and down the room, his hands in his coat pockets, shaking his head as if puzzled, and finally saying: 'There may be something in what you say . .. indeed, there may be, although I am not in a position to judge your "theory" offhand ... But in any case, in the light of what you yourself have just told me, don't you realize that your life, which to you seems so very simple and uncomplicated, must appear very strange and unusual to Westerners? Could you not perhaps share some of your own experiences with them? Why don't you write your autobiography? I am sure it would make fascinating reading!'

Laughingly I replied: 'Well, I might perhaps let myself be persuaded to leave the Foreign Service and write such a book. After all, writing is my original profession

In the following weeks and months my joking response imperceptibly lost the aspect of a joke. I began to think seriously about setting down the story of my life and thus helping, in however small a measure, to lift the heavy veil which separates Islam and its culture from the Occidental mind. My way to Islam had been in many respects unique: I had not become a Muslim because I had lived for a long time among Muslims - on the contrary, I decided to live among them because I had embraced Islam.

Might I not, by communicating my very personal experiences to Western readers, contribute more to a mutual understanding between the Islamic and Western worlds than I could by continuing in a diplomatic position which might be filled equally well by other countrymen of mine? After all, any intelligent man could be Pakistan's Minister to the United Nations - but how many men were able to talk to Westerners about Islam as I could? I was a Muslim - but I was also of Western origin: and thus I could speak the intellectual languages of both Islam and the West. . .

And so, toward the end of 1952,1 resigned from the Pakistan Foreign Service and started to write this book. Whether it is as 'fascinating reading' as my American friend anticipated, I cannot say. I could do no more than try to retrace from memory - with the help of only a few old notes, disjointed diary entries and some of the newspaper articles I had written at the time-the tangled lines of a development that stretched over many years and over vast expanses of geographical space.

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Viewpoints: Anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe

Baroness Warsi, the chairman of the main party in Britain's governing coalition, has said that anti-Muslim prejudice has "passed the dinner table test" and become socially acceptable in the UK.
Here are the views of Muslims from around Europe on whether they think anti-Muslim attitudes are now considered acceptable in their countries.

Sweden
Prof Anne-Sofie Roald, professor of religious studies at Malmo University and a Muslim convert
I would say in Sweden there is much more sensitivity around this than, for example, in Denmark. Even when there was a suicide bombing in Stockholm, there was much in the media saying we should not blame Muslims and terrorists. Many were talking about him as one lonely person who was fed up with life and wanted to commit suicide.
In Sweden, there is this negative idea that we haven't integrated immigrants in a proper way, which I think is not accurate. It becomes self-fulfilling, it makes Muslims feel there is no good in integrating.
I used to wear a headscarf but I found that my work was not being accepted or taken seriously. I had put myself in a situation where I isolated myself, whereas when I took my headscarf away and became very secular, I suddenly became part of society in a different way - I let myself be accepted.
Muslims feel accused and stigmatised - that's why they creep into their own minority thinking: that we are discriminated against, they don't like us. It is not only the majority discriminating against the minority, it is the minority isolating themselves from the majority. It's not a coincidence that the [anti-Islam party] Swedish Democrats came about now - they are playing on this anti-Muslim sentiment.

Belgium
Sami Zemni, professor of political science at the University of Ghent
There is nothing new there. This kind of anti-Islamic sentiment has been going here for years with the [anti-immigration party] Vlaams Blok.
They suddenly realised that going on about anti-Islamic sentiment is easier than talking about racism. "We criticise a religion," they say, "not the people themselves." The argument they use has become widespread, and it has spread to all political parties.
There was a study in Flanders a year ago on anti-Islamic views - more than half of the Flemish population said they had no problem with anti-Islamic views. "It's the Muslims' fault because they are uncritical of their religion, which is backward," they say.
"Muslims are anti-'people who think differently'," they say. "It's because of their Islam, it's not adapted to modernity."

Germany
Kubra Yucel Gumusay, freelance journalist and columnist
Ever since Thilo Sarrazin's book [which said Muslim immigrants were a drain on German society], people began to think that a group like Muslims are genetically incapable of being successful and integrating. He was trying to prove scientifically that having prejudice against Muslims was OK. Before this, people could not say those thoughts openly, but now it looks like there's scientific proof for what they think.
My friends have stories of people shouting at them, being spat at, not getting seats in restaurants. A year ago people would have said this is not OK, but these days people just tolerate these situations. This for me is proof that being anti-Muslim is becoming OK in society, even in academic circles.
It does not matter if you are a practising Muslim or not, you just have to look like you're from a country where Muslims are from.
We say racism has now become "salonfahig", meaning it is acceptable in polite society.
I personally do not get upset, because it's my work, even though I received a death threat a couple of days ago. But other Muslims - they feel personally affected. Many of my friends feel like leaving for the UK or Canada where things are better.
Italy
Mario Scialoja, retired Italian diplomat to the UN who converted to Islam, currently with the Islamic Cultural Central in Rome
Apart from in northern Italy, there is very little anti-Islamic feeling and there have been no acts of Islamophobia; it is not socially acceptable. Personally, I have no experience of such acts, but it might be different for immigrants from North Africa.
The absence of anti-Islamic feeling may be because, up to now, there has not been the kind of massive immigration seen in other large European countries such as France. It started much later in Italy than it did in other European countries, and this might explain the situation.
In northern Italy, where the right-wing Northern League is prevalent and they don't like immigrants in general, there may be some anti-Islamic feeling. There have been some isolated incidents, such as when some stones were thrown at the mosque in Treviso, or when someone brought a pig before the mosque in Pisa.

The Netherlands
Laila al-Zwaini, Dutch-Iraqi lawyer specialising in Islamic law
Many of the problems in our society that are related to Muslims and Islam are more often immigration problems, not about Islam as a religion.


At a political level, and with the presence of the Freedom Party (FP), the language on this issue has become very negative and confrontational. The FP speak first and everyone has to react to them. They're looking for guinea pigs, not solutions. Muslims are not treated as individual people - they are treated as a group.
The media don't chose to speak to scholarly Muslims, who speak on behalf of these issues. But also, there are not as many Muslims in Holland as in England who are highly educated and willing to speak on these issues.

The Dutch history of a "pillarisation" of society - where if you are Catholic you vote for one party, if Protestant for another - is the way they now treat Islam, as if it's a pillarisation with a church-like hierarchy, which is not the case.
Dutch society has changed how it looks at me - it didn't used to care if I was Muslim, Catholic, Jewish - but now it matters. Before, I was a Dutch native with an exotic background, but now my identity has changed without me changing at all, putting Islam as my primary identity. It's not a problem, but it is different.
The political language has certainly changed for the worse, with the Freedom Party at the forefront, but still the majority of the public do not accept this language.
It's the minority that is negative, but it's the minority that gets the attention.

Denmark

Naser Khader, MP in the Danish Conservative Party and founder of Democratic Islam Organisation
I do not agreed that we have anti-Muslim sentiment in Denmark. We have it among a few but it is not the general option.
To be anti-political Islam is not the same as being anti-Muslim. Our challenge is to underline that, as a Muslim, you have to accept that your religion is challenged, that any religion should be challenged. Any religion that does not accept criticism is, in my opinion, weak. It becomes stronger if you criticise it.
One of the most positive results of the cartoon crisis in Denmark is that we no longer say "the Muslims". The Danish people discovered that there are different kinds of Muslims - and that the majority supported Denmark.
A well-known Danish company owner told me that before the cartoon crisis, he didn't want to hire any Muslims - it was the same as accepting trouble, he said. The crisis was an eye-opener for him, it showed him that Muslims were Danish and were democrats. It made him more tolerant - before, we were a heterogonous group that only wanted trouble.

I and my friends established the Democratic Muslims Organisation for those Muslims in Denmark who are successful, who are educated, who are loyal to Denmark. Before they cartoon crisis they didn't have a platform, they were not well-organised. But the Islamist groups were, so when the media went to speak to Muslims, they spoke to Islamists who only represented the minority.
I think you need a cartoon crisis in the UK!

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Across Europe racism is becoming the law for Muslim women

A woman in Italy has become the first to be fined for covering her face. Known only as Amel, she was fined £430 under laws that ban covering your face in public places, after she was spotted by police in the Post Office.

The laws were originally brought in during the 70s to prevent political activists from hiding their faces. However, the mayor of the town of Novara, where Amel lives, now is using the law as a pretext to attack Muslim women.

Mayor Massimo Giordano is a member of the Northern League party, which takes a far right position on immigrants. Leader Umberto Bossi once called for boats containing immigrants from Africa (who he called “bingo bongos”) to be shelled, while another mayor from the party said “we should dress them up like hares and bang-bang-bang”. Party members have also been convicted of incitement to racial hatred for their part in trying to expel an encampment of Roma people.

Giordano has made sure the Italian laws, which have never been fully enforced before, are now being used against Muslim women. He’s said he wants Italian law to be amended so that it specifically outlaws wearing Muslim veils. He said:

“I signed the new regulations for reasons of security but also so that people who came to live in our city are aware and respect our traditions. The people of Novara do not want to see people walking around in the city wearing a burka. This is the only way to stop behaviour that makes the already difficult process of integration even harder.”

Meanwhile, Giordano’s ambitions have almost already been fulfilled in Belgium, where the lower house just voted through a plan for a complete ban on veils and headscarves. This is despite the fact that parties representing Belgium’s different regions have been at each other’s throats, leading to the recent collapse of the government. However, MPs put their differences aside to give near unanimous cross-party support to racist measure. Hopefully however, the political crisis will mean it is months before the Senate can meet to give the law approval.

Several Belgian towns already have similar local laws. Another knobhead Mayor, Jan Creemers, of the Belgian town of Maaseik, said: “It became a problem in our town because we had about 50 women who walked around like that, which really annoyed many other residents. They kept coming to me to ask me to do something about it. I spoke to a couple of these ladies to ask them very simply not to wear this kind of clothing. But one in particular refused point-blank so eventually the police opened legal proceedings against her.”

And in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing declining popularity, has decided pushing for a ban on veils is a good way of shoring up his right wing support, and is determined to try and push one through over the summer. The response of the opposition “Socialists” (the French equivalent of New Labour) has been to present their own bill, which would ban veils in public buildings such as hospitals or banks.

However, the most radical proposal has come from a German member of the European Parliament, who has called for Europe wide ban on veils. Silvana Koch-Mehrin, and MEP for the right wing Free Democrats (who are part of Angela Merkel’s coalition government) used an editorial in in Germany’s Bild newspaper (the German equivalent of The Sun) to make the extreme demand.

What all this shows is that after almost 10 years of the demonisation of Muslims, anti-Muslim racism has become mainstream for European governments. Many claim that the bans are aimed to protect women’s rights, but the comments by those who are enforcing these laws shows their real motivation: using the veil as a way to attack Muslim people. The fact is that racist politics across Europe finds it hard to come to terms with the fact that Muslims are Europeans too, and should be allowed to dress however they wish.

The idea that white politicians should be the ones to “save” Muslim women from oppression is itself racist. It also will make it more difficult for Muslim women who want to stand up for women’s rights within their own communities, if all Muslims feel they are subject to racist attack from outside. What women wear is not and should never be a matter for politicians to decide. It should be for women themselves to decide.

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Al-Jazeera: Riz Khan- DrTariq Ramadan

Poland's tiny Muslim Tatar community taps deep roots

By Maja Czarnecka

KRUSZYNIANY, Poland — Tucked in a tiny village, the small wooden building looks just like any other house of worship dotted across the Polish countryside.

But three crescents mark it out as a mosque, and a rare footprint of Islam in this overwhelmingly Catholic nation of 38.5 million people.

Kruszyniany is home to the descendants of Muslim Tatars who came here three centuries ago.

The village of 160 people on the Belarussian border played host Tuesday to Britain's Prince Charles, on an official visit to Poland.

The mosque lacks the minaret typical of Islamic architecture.

But there is little need for a muezzin to call the faithful to prayer -- Kruszyniany is now home to just four Tatar families, or 10 people, living among Catholic and Orthodox neighbours.

At the end of World War II, some 300 lived here. Although their community has shrunk over time as youngsters moved away seeking better opportunities, Kruszyniany remains a spiritual home for Poland's 5,000 Tatars.

"We're descended from the Tatars of Kazan, who were the successors of the Tatars of the Golden Horde," said Mustafa Jasinski, proudly, referring to ancestors with roots in Asia.

At 99, he is the oldest member of the community.

He is also the imam of Bialystok, a city of some 295,000 people, 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Kruszyniany and home to most of Poland's Tatars.

On Friday, the Muslim holy day, Jasinski dons his robes and leads prayers in Bialystok's Islamic centre, a former city library.

The sermon is in Polish, although the verses of the Koran and the prayers are in Arabic. A curtain separates male and female worshippers.

"The youngsters are at work on Fridays," said Halina Szachidewicz, one of a handful of retirees at a recent service there.

Fellow-worshipper Lila Smolska, in her seventies, added: "I pray in Polish in my heart and recite the prayers in Arabic, the ones our grandparents taught us."

Afterwards she handed out halva made to her grandmother's recipe. The sweet delight, common in the Islamic world, has long been a Polish favourite.

There have been Tatars in Poland since at least the 14th century. Local rulers employed them due to their reputation as fearsome horse-borne warriors.

In 1679, Poland's King Jan Sobieski, lacking money to pay his Tatar troops, awarded them land in an area including Kruszyniany.

In the village cemetery the oldest grave dates to 1699. Visible despite the snow, the headstone is etched in Arabic, the liturgical language of Islam.

The Tatars' tongue was related to Turkish, but it gave way to Polish after intermarriage with locals.

"The Tatars married Polish women, but their children kept to the Muslim religion and Tatar customs," said cemetery-keeper Dzemil Gembicki, 35, whose dark, almond-shaped eyes give away his roots.

"My wife is Catholic, and we decided that our boys will be Muslims and our girls Catholics," said Gembicki, whose spouse is pregnant with their first child.

Tatars from across Poland still chose Kruszyniany as their last resting place, and the graveyard is a visible trace of their adaptation.

On the headstones in Polish, the names mix Islamic tradition and local style. Szachidewicz, for example, with its classic Polish "icz", is derived from "shaheed", Arabic for witness, or martyr, of the faith.

"Other names are typically Polish, taken from a village or the name of a Polish wife," said Gembicki, whose mother's family name Poplawski masked Tatar roots dating back to 1679.

Dzenneta Bogdanowicz runs a guesthouse serving Tatar cuisine, which Prince Charles was treated to.

"I feel Polish first, then Tatar, then Muslim," she said.

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Wilders goes for headscarf ban in the Hague

A ban on headscarves for city council workers and in all institutions and clubs which get local authority money will be the most important point in the PVV´s negotiations to join governing coalitions in Almere and the Hague, says party leader Geert Wilders.

Speaking to RTL news, Wilders said the ban would be central to talks to form new local authority executives in the only two cities where the party is contesting the March 3 local elections.

The ban will apply to 'all council offices and all other institutions and clubs which get even one cent of council money,' he said.

The PVV is tipped to emerge as the biggest party in Almere and second biggest in the Hague.

Speech

Wilders brought up the ban again in a speech to supporters in Almere, where he entered the room to the Rocky theme tune Eye of the Tiger.

The ban will not apply to other religious items such as Christian crosses and Jewish skull caps because these are symbols of our own Dutch culture, Wilders said in his speech, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.

The speech began with a 'lengthy tirade' against the 'arrogant Labour party', according to the Volkskrant report of the meeting. 'If you translate the PvdA's Arabic language election brochures they say 'bring your family here. You get benefits, we pay for everything', the Volkskrant quoted the PVV leader as saying.

'Almere must become the safest city in the Netherlands,' he said. 'There will be an end to subsidies for Turkish macramé and Arabic finger painting. Not just the Netherlands but all of Europe will look to Almere.'

Discrimination

Wilders is currently facing charges of discrimination and inciting hatred against non western immigrants and Muslims. He always maintains he is opposed to Islam, not Muslims themselves.

Earlier this week, Wilders told the Telegraaf the PVV´s commitment to maintaining the current retirement age of 65 would be crucial in negotiations to form a new national government, following the collapse of the CDA, Labour and ChristenUnie alliance last weekend.

Most parties have already ruled out forming a coalition with Wilders. Only the Christian Democrats and right wing Liberals VVD have not done so.

Opinion polls make it likely that four parties will be needed to form a new government after the June 9 vote.

© DutchNews.nl

Mr Wilders has previously demanded in parliament that women who wear hijab should be subject to a 'head rag tax'.

Research into Islamophobia across Europe

A new report launched on 28 January reveals the trends behind underreported violence against Muslims in London.

It illuminates how contexts of fear and prejudice against Muslims are providing a basis for violence against Muslim communities.

This is the first step in a ten year research project led by the European Muslim Research Centre at the University of Exeter that will investigate Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime in towns and cities across Europe.

Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Dr Robert Lambert MBE, of the University of Exeter co-authored ‘Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: a London Case Study’ the first study from the new European Muslim Research Centre. This report is being launched today in partnership with Muslim community groups to provide research for and about Muslims in Europe. The authors call for anti-Muslim hate crimes to be taken more seriously by government, media and the police.

The report finds that Muslim Londoners face a threat of violence and intimidation from three groups. Firstly from a small violent extremist nationalist milieu that has broadly the same political analysis as the British National Party (BNP). Secondly from London gangs who have no allegiance with or affinity to the BNP. Thirdly from a small number of Londoners and visitors to London who appear to be acting on prejudices gained via negative media portrayals of Muslims as terrorists and security threats.

The report illustrates how perpetrators of hate-crimes against Muslims are invariably motivated by a negative view of Muslims acquired from mainstream or extremist nationalist media reports or commentaries. These spread stereotypes and fears that stigmatise, alienate and isolate Muslims as threats to safety, security and social cohesion. As political commentator and journalist Peter Oborne, says in a foreword to the report that British Muslims now perform an ‘unenviable outcast role’ previously played by ‘Germans, Roman Catholics, Jews and West Indians’.

Dr Githens-Mazer of the University of Exeter, co- author of the report said, “Anti-Muslim hate crimes in London have caused death and serious injuries and have generally inflicted suffering, fear and distress just like racist hate crimes aimed at other minorities in the capital. However, the motivation for anti-Muslim hate crimes is not as well understood by government, media or the police as racist hate crimes.”

He added, ‘Additional problems arise because a significant number of Muslim Londoners don’t report crimes to the police, and that makes it difficult to assess or quantify the scale of the problem.”

The evidence for the report arises from original in-depth interviews with victims of anti-Muslim hate crime, and in some cases perpetrators of racist crimes. The report is intended to introduce politicians, public servants, police, media and public to Muslim community perspectives that are often hidden.

A more detailed follow-up report Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Crimes in the UK is due out in July 2010 which will analyse the situation in other UK towns and cities as well as London.

Note to Editors: Full report of Islamophobia and Anti- Muslim Hate Crime a London case study is available for download on Thursday 28 January from www.exeter.ac.uk/emrc.