Gary Younge (The Nation): Europe: Hotbed of Islamophobic Extremism
" The response of Europe’s political class to the presence of Muslim
minorities can be described most generously as a moral panic, and most
accurately as a repressive legislative and rhetorical onslaught.
A
number of states from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean have gone to
extraordinary lengths to ban what women can wear, what people can say,
and where and how they can worship. Disproportionate in scale and
disingenuous in conception, these laws—whatever their stated intent—were
not about tackling any serious threat of Islamic extremism.
Switzerland
passed a referendum in 2009 outlawing the building of minarets; the
country has four. In Denmark the same year, a call for a burqa ban
prompted a study revealing that just three women wore it, while only 150
to 200 wore the niqab, a third of whom were Danish converts. “The burqa and the niqab
do not have their place in the Danish society,” insisted Danish Premier
Lars Rasmussen a year later. That’s true, but then they never really
did.
Nor could these laws be about helping isolated communities that are
culturally incapable of integration. A Gallup poll in 2009 showed that
British Muslims were more likely to identify as British than British
people as a whole. A Pew Research Center survey in 2006 showed that the
principal concerns of Muslims in France, Germany and Spain were
unemployment and Islamic extremism.
Finally, these laws couldn’t be about some broader demographic
“threat” that Muslims pose to the continent. A Pew study, published in
January 2011, forecast the number of Muslims in Europe’s population
increasing from 6 percent in 2010 to 8 percent in 2030. There’s a higher
proportion of Asians in New Jersey than Muslims in France, the country
with the highest concentration in Western Europe."
***
Deutsche Welle: Turkey: Women Want Equality in the Mosque
"Up to now in Turkey, women entering mosques had to use side entrances
and sit in dimly lit corners in galleries. The institution in Ankara
known as the Presidency of Religious Affairs now wants to end this
discrimination.Turkey's Diyanet, or Presidency of Religious Affairs,
wants to encourage women to visit mosques and allow them to take part in
Friday prayers beside the men.
The institution, which presides over the
country's nearly 80,000 mosques, is hoping to change Islam's misogynist
image. This is a major change, and reaction to it has been reserved.
After all, for centuries, the mosques virtually belonged to men on
Fridays. But women's influence in Islam is growing: in some cities,
there are already even female muftis."
***
Akbar S. Ahmed (Silent Heroes, Invisible Bridges): The Forgotten Rohingya
" The image of a smiling Daw Aung San Suu Kyi receiving flowers from
her supporters is a powerful message of freedom and optimism in Myanmar,
the symbol of democracy in a country which has known nothing but
authoritarian oppression for decades.
Yet few ask one of the most pressing questions facing Daw Suu Kyi. How will she deal with the Rohingya?
"The Rohingya," you will ask. "Who are they?"
The Rohingya, whom the BBC calls "one of the world's most persecuted
minority groups", are the little-publicised and largely forgotten Muslim
people of the coastal Rakhine state of western Myanmar. Their historic
lineage in Rakhine dates back centuries, as fishermen and farmers. Over
the past three decades, the Rohingya have been systematically driven out
of their homeland by Myanmar's military junta and subjected to
widespread violence and the total negation of their rights and
citizenship within Myanmar. They are a stateless Muslim minority."
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