Defeat Tehran not with bombs but with culture

[Maccus Germanis]

Funny that French muslims, nominally anyway, themselves thought that islam could be enlisted to calm the overwhelmingly.... Western?... rioters.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article587834.ece

[Universe Prince]

Yes we have had riots, and I think it irresponsible to make excuses forriotous youth of either persuasion.

I'm not making excuses. I don't excuse rioting at all. But I don't believe understanding is served by irrationally ignoring every single factor except that Muslims were involved.

To suggest that a climate of disregard for French laws, that is propogated by mosques and underwritten by fundmental texts of islam played no part in the inspiration to riot is reckless. Rioting is done by all types of people who suppose themselves, or are provided with, a greivance and have no fear of prosecution.  In France muslims do fit that description best.

No, poor youth of immigrants who are routinely subject to prejudice fit that description. Again, not all the rioters are Muslims and at no point does the rioting seem to have anything to do with Islam. That is, at no point other than in the minds of people who want to rush to judgment and find the Muslim bogyman a convenient target.

[Universe Prince]

Funny that French muslims, nominally anyway, themselves thought that islam could be enlisted to calm the overwhelmingly.... Western?... rioters.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article587834.ece

This part is interesting: "Magid Tabouri, 29, who leads a team of municipal, secular, big brothers at Bondy, in the troubled Seine-Saint-Denis d?partement, said: 'It is a scandal that they have asked imams to calm down the kids. You can't apply a religious response to a social revolt.'" Again, I never said there were no Muslims among the rioters.

[Plane]

European Islam (French: Islam de l'Europe) or Euro-Islam is a hypothesized new branch of Islam, which some believe is or should be emerging in Europe. This new kind of Islam would combine the duties and principles of Islam with the contemporary European cultures, values and traditions (such as human rights, law system, democracy and gender equality).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Islam


Tariq Ramadan
Tariq Ramadan is considered to be one of the coiners of the term "European Islam". Ramadan calls for creating a new European-Muslim identity in his book "To Be a European Muslim" and he demands participation of Muslims in social and cultural life in conformation with European culture and Muslim ethics and says Muslims should disassociate themselves from Saudi-Arabia and from terrorism. He also thinks that European Muslims "need to separate Islamic principles from their cultures of origin and anchor them in the cultural reality of Western Europe."[2] However, Ramadan also says that "Europeans also must start considering Islam as a European religion."[3]

...............................

[edit] Academic community
In recent years, research on Muslim communities in Europe has shifted from labor and social policy concerns to issues of 'religion' and 'culture'. In particular, there has been a growing interest in the possible emergence of a specifically 'European Islam'.[4] The collective hypothesis that seems to be forming is - according to sociologist Nadia Fadil - that in coming years Islam will adapt to 'new' European structures in a way that will enable Muslims to consider themselves full European citizens.

................


Jocelyne Cesari
Jocelyne Cesari, research associate at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, says that while Islam is perceived as colliding with European secular values "Islam is simply a religion."[3] According to Cesari Muslims need to reveal the "genuine tolerant face of Islam, to show its diversity and reveal to the world that an intellectual as Mohamed Abdou is the best example for a modern thinker."[3]

Cesari talks of the secularization of individual Islamic practices and of Islamic institutions, as well as the efforts Muslims are making to maintain the relevancy of Islamic legal systems and what she calls the "gender jihad"[6] She thinks that Islam should be merged into European culture and that Islamic culture should be added to Europe's educational curricula.

...........


European Commission proposal
Following the failed car bomb attacks in London and the failed Glasgow airport attack in June 2007, the European Commission started pooling ideas on how to tackle radical Islam and create an "European Islam", i.e. an Islam which is a more tolerant "European" branch of the faith.[8] EU home affairs commissioner Franco Frattini also sent out an 18-question survey asking EU member states how they address violent radicalisation, mainly related to an abusive interpretation of Islam. In addition, Mr Frattini wants to pursue and further the idea of establishing a so-called "European Islam" or "Islam de l'Europe" ? something floated by France's then interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy in 2006.

[Plane]

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I want to highlight this passage;

that many of the habits Muslims display and that Europeans revile are not Islamic per se, but rather cultural traits specific to the Middle East, Africa, or Asia. "Muslims living in Europe have an opportunity to reread our [religious] sources," he says.

And this one;

"There is a struggle for the soul of Islam," says Dr. Winter, also known as Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad. Even as young European Muslims seek new ways of living their religion, "Gulf embassies ... spend tens of millions of pounds to ensure that the most fundamentalist form of Islam prevails in schools and bookshops," he laments. "Liberal Islam - economically, culturally, and socially - is crying in the wilderness."

The stronger fundamentalist Islam grows, the harder it will be for most Muslims to integrate, Ramadan says. "It is important for us as Muslims to be unambiguous that we respect the law and the secular framework," he insists.

On the other hand, he adds, Europeans "must start considering Islam as a European religion, and stop building a European identity against Islam as something external."

The rest of the article is good too.

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As the three young North African women talked about their Muslim faith at a cafe here one recent evening, they could not help noticing how patrons at the next table were reacting.
One French man leaned so far back in his chair to hear the animated discussion that he almost joined the group. Suspicion and disapproval darkened his look.
 

 http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0224/p10s01-woeu.html
 

 
Nadia Mirad, a psychology student who works at a children's activity center, knows that look. Last year, she recalled, when she asked for a day off to celebrate the end of the annual Ramadan fast, her boss exploded.
 

"She said I was being unprofessional," Ms. Mirad explained, sipping a Coke. "She said the world didn't stop turning just for a Muslim holiday. I'm French, but I felt I was not a full French citizen at that moment. I really did not feel at home."

Her two student friends, both of them also born and raised in France, nodded in sympathy. "We feel as French as France will let us feel," said Boutha?na Gargouri. "But it's true, I can't live my religion fully here."

None of them, for example, wears a head scarf, though they all say they would like to do so one day. Making such a visible show of their religion, however, would make it almost impossible for them to get a job, they agreed.

"I can't afford to put up barriers to what I want to be," said Le?la Bouste?la, who hopes to become an interpreter for deaf mutes.

Religion's place in public life has shot to the top of the agenda in France, and in the rest of Europe, for one reason: Islam, and the growing millions of people on the Continent who practice it.

Shocked by the discovery of Islamic terrorist networks on their soil, Europeans have suddenly woken up to the existence of an often marginalized Muslim minority that takes religion more seriously than they do.

Today, the relationship between native Europeans and their Muslim neighbors is fraught with tension. Mistrust on both sides threatens to explode into violence. Late last year, arsonists destroyed two mosques and a Muslim school in the Netherlands after an Islamic radical there was arrested for murdering filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who had criticized Muslim treatment of women.

Particularly unnerving are the violent messages spread by a number of radical Muslim preachers. "I believe the whole of Britain has become Dar ul Harb [land of war]," Syrian-born cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed told followers in a webcast on "PalTalk" last month. "The jihad is halal [acceptable] for the Muslims wherever they are." [ Editor's note: The original version of this article mistranslated Dar ul Harb.]

"Active Christians in mainstream churches across the Continent are worried by the rise in fundamentalist nationalism," says Jorgen Nielsen, a professor of Islamic studies at Birmingham University in England.

"Secularists tend to be more worried not just about Islam but the return of religion to the public space," he adds.

Europe's Muslim population has tripled in the past 30 years, fueled by immigration from North Africa, Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This rapid growth "questions our ... ability to integrate" them, warns Patrick Weil, a French sociologist.

"This is the first time for a long time ... that we have had to show that we can adapt and accept religious diversity," he adds. "That is a challenge."

   
 
  "Many European politicians ... are prone to thinking that the only safe Muslims are those who neither practice their religion nor manifest their Muslim identity."
- Tariq Ramadan, Islamic author
KROC INSTITUTE/AP
 
 
At the same time, acknowledges Tariq Ramadan, one of the foremost Islamic thinkers in Europe, Muslims must change their thinking on many customs that alienate Europeans, such as their attitudes about women. "From Arab Islam, or African Islam, we have to come to European Islam," he argues.

Arguments over how to integrate Muslims into modern European life, and how much Islam Europe can accept without betraying its values, have been tainted by the link to terror. Governments have reacted by tightening controls on Muslim preachers, many of whom do not speak the language of their adopted country. Britain has introduced civics tests for imams. French authorities are planning to set up a school that would also send preachers in training to secular universities. And in Denmark, the right-wing People's Party, a government coalition member, urges a ban on all foreign imams.

Such moves have won support even in some Muslim quarters. "It is not xenophobic for Europeans to be genuinely worried about the radicalization of Islam," says Tim Winter, a British Muslim convert who teaches at Cambridge University and preaches at a mosque. "But it is not acceptable to say that Islam cannot adapt to European life."

Being religious at all, however, is unusual in European life. Though Muslims make up only 3 percent of the British population, more people attend Friday prayers than go to Sunday church, a recent survey found.

That scares many Europeans who fear that Europe could soon lose its Christian identity. The prospect of Turkey joining the European Union (EU) in 10 years' time, which would add an expected 83 million Muslims, deepens their fear.

"Europe is becoming Islamicized," warned Fritz Bolkestein a few weeks before he left his job as the EU's competition commissioner last December, noting that the two biggest cities in his native Netherlands, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, will be minority European within a few years.

That sounds like scaremongering to some Islamic leaders, who note that less than 5 percent of Europe's population is Muslim. To others, it sounds like a call to abandon their faith.

"Many European politicians, as well as average people, are prone to thinking that the only safe Muslims are those who neither practice their religion nor manifest their Muslim identity," wrote Mr. Ramadan in his book, "To Be a European Muslim."

Ramadan is the leading proponent of "European Islam," a school of thought intended to meet the needs of descendants of immigrants who have few ties to their ancestral cultures.

Last spring, Time magazine named him one of the 21st century's most influential people. But last summer, the US Department of Homeland Security controversially revoked his visa days before he was to begin teaching at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana. A department official said Ramadan had been barred in accordance with a provision of the Patriot Act.

Ramadan insists that many of the habits Muslims display and that Europeans revile are not Islamic per se, but rather cultural traits specific to the Middle East, Africa, or Asia. "Muslims living in Europe have an opportunity to reread our [religious] sources," he says.

"We are going through a reassessment," he adds, "and the most important subject is women. Our experience in Europe has made it clear we must speak about equality."

"Europeanizing" Islam, says Professor Nielsen, whose home town, Birmingham, is knows as the "Muslim capital of Britain," "requires changes in relations between the sexes, in relations between parents and children, significant changes in attitudes to people of other religions, and in attitudes toward the state."

That is happening, Nielsen says. A few Muslims are assimilating completely with secular European culture, "but the majority are sticking to their religion but divorcing it from the cultural tradition and redressing it in a new culture."

At the same time, a small minority has turned toward a hard-line version of their religion, and a handful have taken up jihad, or holy war against the West. Police in several European countries have arrested hundreds of young Muslim men in connection with alleged terrorist plots since 9/11.

In Britain, Scotland Yard is investigating Mr. Bakri Mohammed after reporters heard him proclaiming that "death will be inevitable ... if people reject the call of mighty Allah" at a secret rally in London in January.

"There is a struggle for the soul of Islam," says Dr. Winter, also known as Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad. Even as young European Muslims seek new ways of living their religion, "Gulf embassies ... spend tens of millions of pounds to ensure that the most fundamentalist form of Islam prevails in schools and bookshops," he laments. "Liberal Islam - economically, culturally, and socially - is crying in the wilderness."

The stronger fundamentalist Islam grows, the harder it will be for most Muslims to integrate, Ramadan says. "It is important for us as Muslims to be unambiguous that we respect the law and the secular framework," he insists.

On the other hand, he adds, Europeans "must start considering Islam as a European religion, and stop building a European identity against Islam as something external."

That will not be easy, given the secular European tradition of keeping religion out of the public space for fear that it might undermine democracy, a tradition developed in the face of an often reactionary Roman Catholic Church. It will be harder in the case of an unfamiliar religion often preached in a foreign tongue.

But Islamic thinkers hope that they can persuade Europeans that Islam has something to offer. "We are accused of encouraging the return of religious people to the public sphere," says Ramadan. "The question is whether we are ... contributing to society with concerns about values and ethics."

"If Islam cannot sit comfortably within the liberal European mainstream," says Winter, "it will raise the question whether Europe ... can accept substantial differences" among its citizens.

Back in the Paris cafe, Ms. Gargouri and her friends say it would not take much to make them feel more comfortable as European Muslims. For a start, suggests Gargouri, "people must stop confusing Islam with Islamism and even with terrorism. Islam was here long before 9/11."

Ms. Bouste?la agrees. "It would help," she says, "if I did not have a label stuck on me wherever I show up."

[Plane]

Funny that French muslims, nominally anyway, themselves thought that islam could be enlisted to calm the overwhelmingly.... Western?... rioters.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article587834.ece

Ouch ! that article is specific .

[Maccus Germanis]

Funny that French muslims, nominally anyway, themselves thought that islam could be enlisted to calm the overwhelmingly.... Western?... rioters.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article587834.ece

This part is interesting: "Magid Tabouri, 29, who leads a team of municipal, secular, big brothers at Bondy, in the troubled Seine-Saint-Denis d?partement, said: 'It is a scandal that they have asked imams to calm down the kids. You can't apply a religious response to a social revolt.'" Again, I never said there were no Muslims among the rioters.

Marco

[Universe Prince]

Polo?

I don't get it.

[Cynthia]

"Not really. I imagine that they believe that every society should be able to withstand the free movement of labor and ideas. It isn't really all that difficult to grasp."

Disagree, JS.

THEY", if you are speaking about the Iranian People=THEY, have few IDEAS that survive the world order, i.e. patents.

Not difficult to grasp, true...but not easy to hug and clasp when it comes to the society that dictates every damn thing going north.

[Universe Prince]

Anyway, I find interesting that although when I wanted (in another thread) to talk about moderate/liberal Islam, I could not get any recognition that it even existed, and now I'm being presented quote after quote from moderate/liberal Muslims about Islam in Europe. This is fascinating. What is even more fascinating is that I'm being presented with quotes about discrimination and prejudice, and somehow this is supposed to be proof that the Muslims are rioting because they're Muslim. While I am sure the notion that if the Muslims would just give up being Muslim then they would be accepted seems generous to some, I find it inanely hypocritical in this culture of the U.S. where Christians routinely complain about the encroachments of secular culture. Yes, I know, there are no Christian fundamentalist terrorists, but then most of the cases of discrimination being presented to me here are not of terrorists either.

For example:

Nadia Mirad, a psychology student who works at a children's activity center, knows that look. Last year, she recalled, when she asked for a day off to celebrate the end of the annual Ramadan fast, her boss exploded.   "She said I was being unprofessional," Ms. Mirad explained, sipping a Coke. "She said the world didn't stop turning just for a Muslim holiday. I'm French, but I felt I was not a full French citizen at that moment. I really did not feel at home." Her two student friends, both of them also born and raised in France, nodded in sympathy. "We feel as French as France will let us feel," said Bouthaina Gargouri. "But it's true, I can't live my religion fully here." None of them, for example, wears a head scarf, though they all say they would like to do so one day. Making such a visible show of their religion, however, would make it almost impossible for them to get a job, they agreed.

Just consider that for a moment. These women are not terrorists. Not shouting "Death to America" or advocating terrorism.They're just ordinary people trying to get along in society, and they are living with discrimination everyday. But apparently this is something I'm not supposed to mention because it supposedly denies the supposedly real threat of Muslim hordes jihading their way across Europe.

Something else I should point out here, because I'm getting the impression that there is mistaken notion that I'm some how denying that there are Muslims in Europe. I'm not denying that there are Muslims in Europe. Of course there are. And in France too. And some portion, perhaps a majority of the rioting youth were Muslims. That they are there is not question. That they took part in the riots was not in question. The problem is with the notion that riots were specifically Muslim riots over Muslim issues or hatreds. That notion is not in any way borne out by the facts.

When I mentioned in another thread the "Yellow Peril" as a comparison, I was clearly not wrong. Some Muslims are guilty of crimes, and so people are now painting all Muslims as dangerous. (Unless they have provided a useful quote to prove... that there are Muslims in Europe I guess.) These riots in France were perpetrated by poor youth from low income neighborhoods and who live with discrimination every day. Many of them were Muslim, but many of them were apparently also Christians. Yet, all some people seem to want to see is Muslim rioters threatening Western civilization. This is patently ridiculous. And somehow I'm the one being accused of being in denial. I was not aware that looking at all the facts rather than just one or two assumptions was being in denial. In fact, I'm pretty sure it isn't.

[Cynthia]

Several articles I read seemed to be stepping lightly round the involvement of Islam in the problems of riot in France.
http://eldib.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/france-over-a-1000-french-riot-police-raid-housing-projects/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4413964.stm

http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2008/02/paris-french-police-swoop-on-paris-riot.html



Not this one , this author goes into great detail on how Islam and failure to assimilate is causeing two societies to rise alien to each other in France and Germany.

http://www.signandsight.com/features/470.html

"They used to burn dustbins and cars ? now they burn girls." These were the words of Kahina Benziane after her sister Sohane was raped, tortured and burned alive by schoolmates on October 4, 2002 in the Parisian suburb of Vitry.

wow, Plane.....

[Cynthia]

For example:
       Nadia Mirad, a psychology student who works at a children's activity center, knows that look. Last year, she recalled, when she asked for a day off to celebrate the end of the annual Ramadan fast, her boss exploded.
 

"She said I was being unprofessional," Ms. Mirad explained, sipping a Coke. "She said the world didn't stop turning just for a Muslim holiday. I'm French, but I felt I was not a full French citizen at that moment. I really did not feel at home."

Her two student friends, both of them also born and raised in France, nodded in sympathy. "We feel as French as France will let us feel," said Bouthaina Gargouri. "But it's true, I can't live my religion fully here."

None of them, for example, wears a head scarf, though they all say they would like to do so one day. Making such a visible show of their religion, however, would make it almost impossible for them to get a job, they agreed.


UP, where's your source for this? Interesting.

[Universe Prince]

UP, where's your source for this? Interesting.

Sorry about that. Plane posted it in reply #64. The original source is http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0224/p10s01-woeu.html.

[Plane]

This is fascinating. What is even more fascinating is that I'm being presented with quotes about discrimination and prejudice, and somehow this is supposed to be proof that the Muslims are rioting because they're Muslim. ......... Yes, I know, there are no Christian fundamentalist terrorists, but then most of the cases of discrimination being presented to me here are not of terrorists either.


I'm not supposed to mention because it supposedly denies the supposedly real threat of Muslim hordes jihading their way across Europe.

just one or two assumptions was being in denial. In fact, I'm pretty sure it isn't.

Where do you get this hordes business?and who has said that all Muslims area a threat?

Of course you can mention something that I just mentioned myself.

I am looseing track of all the thigs you are looseing track of.

France has a serious problem caused by the incompatability of French and Islamic culture , I suppose you can quite well blame these problems on French culture , but that is a change of perspective and not a change of the facts.

Religion is a peice of the problem , but expand this to say "culture" ,of which religion is a part ,and the picture is clearer.

Islam encourages seaprateness , the French encourage assimilation , the French feel beset by ungratefull foreighners who would mostly have died or lived in squalor if left behind in the old colonies , the Muslims feel shut out even if they are not orthodox serious worshippers.

[Plane]

Several articles I read seemed to be stepping lightly round the involvement of Islam in the problems of riot in France.
http://eldib.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/france-over-a-1000-french-riot-police-raid-housing-projects/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4413964.stm

http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2008/02/paris-french-police-swoop-on-paris-riot.html



Not this one , this author goes into great detail on how Islam and failure to assimilate is causeing two societies to rise alien to each other in France and Germany.

http://www.signandsight.com/features/470.html

"They used to burn dustbins and cars ? now they burn girls." These were the words of Kahina Benziane after her sister Sohane was raped, tortured and burned alive by schoolmates on October 4, 2002 in the Parisian suburb of Vitry.

wow, Plane.....

Did you open that last link?

Pulls no punches does she?

One of the serious incompatabilitys between the imported culture and the French Culture is the last two centurys worth of evolution in Womens status and rights that has happened at a faster pace in Europe than in Africa or Asia.

If a time machine mixed citizens of 16th century France with modern French Women the incompatability would be simular.