Muslim Heretics Conference

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A former Dutch lawmaker and outspoken critic of Islam published a children’s book on Thursday, about a friendship between a Muslim boy and a Jewish girl, that seeks to fight prejudice in both communities.

Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been living under heavy guard since the murder in 2004 of fellow Islam critic Theo van Gogh, who directed a film she wrote which accused Islam of condoning violence against women.

Her new book — “Adan and Eva” — tells the story of a Moroccan boy and a rich Jewish girl living in Amsterdam. Adan takes Eva to Koran school, while Adan gets drunk on wine served at a Jewish meal.

Their families eventually decide to break up the friendship and Eva is sent to boarding school in Switzerland, while Adan is banished to Morocco.

“Everything starts at school. That is where children learn about each other and learn to respect each other. We live in a world of adult prejudice,” Hirsi Ali told De Telegraaf daily. “Reconciliation starts with children.”

Hirsi Ali’s spokeswoman said she hoped the book would also be published in English and said the Spanish, Italian and Danish rights had already been sold. Hirsi Ali’s autobiography “Infidel” is one of the New York Times top 20 bestsellers.

She moved to the United States in 2006 after leaving the Dutch parliament following a row about her citizenship was triggered when she admitted she had lied to win asylum.

Hirsi Ali said she was still spent a lot of time trying to raise funds to pay for her security after the Dutch government decided to stop paying for protection abroad.

She accused the government of stifling debate about Islam and leading a “systematic campaign against free speech” after a cartoonist was detained earlier this month on suspicion of offending Muslims due to his provocative drawings.

In March, Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders stoked Muslim anger around the world with a film accusing the Koran of inciting violence and saying the 1 million Muslims living in the Netherlands posed a security threat.

Children’s book by Islam critic to fight prejudice | U.S. | Reuters

Radical Islam taking advantage of Christianity’s decline, says bishop

Hollye Blades

Radical Islam is threatening to fill a “moral vacuum” in Britain as a result of a decline of Christian values, a senior Church of England bishop has said.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, claims that the Church dissolved its influence over the country’s morals during the social and sexual revolution of the 1960s. He said that the waning influence of Christianity had created a lack of principles that was allowing radical Islam to push its “comprehensive” claims.

Mohammed Shafiq, of the Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, criticised the Bishop, saying that there was no evidence that the vacuum left by Christianity was being filled by extremists; it was being filled by secularists and an obsession with celebrity, fame and money, he said.

Dr Nazir-Ali said in his article for the political magazine Standpoint that Christianity had brought together a “rabble of mutually hostile tribes, fiefdoms and kingdoms” into a nation conscious of its identity and able to make an impact on the world.

He quoted an academic who blamed the 1960s cultural revolution for bringing Christianity’s role in society to an abrupt end. It was said that, instead of resisting the social and sexual revolution, church leaders had capitulated. The Bishop said: “It is a situation which has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we find ourselves. Whilst the Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence, was put in its place.”

Marxism had been shown to be a “nonsense”, he added. “We are now, however, confronted by another equally serious ideology, that of radical Islamism, which also claims to be comprehensive in scope. It remains the case, however, that many of the beliefs and values which we need to deal with the present situation are rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.”

Earlier this year the Bishop argued in a Sunday newspaper that Islamic extremists were creating “no-go areas” for non-Muslims in Britain, over which he received death threats. Last weekend he was quoted as claiming that the Church was not doing enough to convert Muslims to Christianity.

In his Standpoint article he said: “The question is not ‘should faith have a role in public life?’ — but what kind of role? Every temptation to theocracy, on every side, must be renounced. There is no place for coercion where the relationship of religion to the State is concerned.”Government would have to be more open to religious concerns and to make room for religious conscience, the Bishop said.

“The integrity and autonomy of public authority and of the law will also have to be recognised and it would be best if religious law in its application was left to the communities. Public law should, however, continue to provide overarching protection for all.”

Mr Shafiq countered the Bishop’s argument on extremism, saying: “Another day and another attack on Islam and Muslims by Mr Nazir-Ali.

“Everything this man says is based on fiction and promoting intolerance and fear among communities.

“Islam is on the rise because people recognise and are inspired by the trueness of our faith, whilst recognising that we live in a majority Christian country. We all have a duty to work together to build cohesive communities and not establish division,” Mr Shafiq added.

Radical Islam taking advantage of Christianity’s decline, says bishop -Times Online

Speaker says goal of Islam is freedom
BECCA BONTHIUS
Special to The Messenger

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Messenger photo | John Halley
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na?im, a progressive muslim, argued against the Islamic state at a public lecture in Ohio University?s Bentley Hall Tuesday night

Progressive Muslim thinker Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im argued against the notion of the Islamic state during his lecture “Imagining and Realizing Progressive Islam: A Framework and Call to Action,” Tuesday night in Bentley Hall.
“If you leave the possibility of an Islamic state alive, then someone is always going to try to make it happen. And when they do, you’ve got disasters, like what happened to Sudan,” An-Na’im, who is from Sudan, said.
An-Na’im is a Professor of Law at Emory University and is the author of “Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari’a.” His lecture was the first of the Mohmoud Mohamed Taha Progressive Islam Lecture Series, put on by the Centers for African Studies and Southeast Asian Studies and supported by a two-year Social Science Research Council grant.
The public lecture series honors Taha, a Sudanese Islamic social reformer “who sacrificed his life in the name of tolerance, women’s rights in Islam and a universal message of peace,” Steve Howard, Ohio University Director of African Studies, said. Taha was executed in 1985, and next year marks the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Taha, as An-Na’im explained, said the goal of being a Muslim is absolute individual freedom, which is “to think as we choose, and to speak as we think, and to act as we speak.” An-Na’im, who was a student of Taha, used that concept of consistency of thought, speech and action as the basis of his lecture.
“I am trying to evoke a vision of Islam…that will inspire Muslims out of their current state of…regression,” An-Na’im said. He defined “progressive Islam” as “improving the quality of our lives…provided it is we who decide that it improves our lives and how it improves our lives.” The way to honor Taha, who serves as a model for “living the values of transformative Islam,” is to “facilitate that ability to live, to think freely, to speak as we think and to act accordingly,” he said.
States must be secular, or neutral to religious doctrine, An-Na’im said, and must allow Muslims the options of belief and disbelief. He said that framework for individual freedom can only be achieved when people accept responsibilities and negative consequences and work collectively to make transformations based on their convictions.
“We can start making things go right immediately here and now. Wherever we are. Whoever we are. It is not a matter of waiting for regime change, for perfect conditions, in order to achieve transformation,” he said.
Howard said the way Islam is described in the West leads to “misunderstanding, perpetuation of stereotypes and ignorance of many possibilities for East-West dialogue and mutual communication.” The lecture series aims to dispel some of these misconceptions by increasing people’s exposure to the subtleties of Islam, and will address the possibilities for progressive change and reform.
“This is the first time that I have clearly heard a Muslim talking about - I’ll use the Christian language - separation of church and state,” Art Gish of Athens said of An-Na’im’s lecture. Gish has worked for 12 years with Christian peacemaking teams in Iraq and Palestine. “I so deeply appreciate a progressive Muslim voice. So often religious people are reactionary, and I’m a religious person myself,” he said.
Sri Murniati, a political science graduate student from Indonesia, has followed An-Na’im’s work for several years, and took his Human Rights and Islam class when she studied in Jakarta. “To listen to it in person, it’s much more compelling, and I had an opportunity to ask my own questions,” she said, adding she thought he addressed the audience’s questions very carefully.
Howard said he considers An-Na’im a mentor. They met 30 years ago when Howard was working on his dissertation in Sudan. “He’s saying things that take a lot of courage to say and, in a lot of these contexts, they’re very dangerous things to say,” Howard said.
An-Na’im’s lecture was the first and last of this academic year. The rest of the Progressive Islam Lecture Series will start in the fall.

Speaker says goal of Islam is freedom

Islam’s growth result of western relativism, warns Muslim convert

Magdi Christian Allam

Rome, May 28, 2008 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- Italian journalist and Muslim convert to Catholicism, Magdi Allam, warned this week that Islam is growing as a result of the ideology of relativism that pervades the West and claims that there are many truths instead of one unique Truth.

In an article published by the magazine Mundo Cristiano and quoted by Analisis Digital, Allam explained that relativism, which attributes “equal dignity to everything regardless of the content” has made it possible for extremism and Islamic terrorism “to be introduced and to take root” in Europe, to the point that there are Islamic extremists with European citizenship who “act upon and spread an ideology of hatred and violence.”

Likewise, Allam, who was recently baptized by Benedict XVI, said it was impossible to be a moderate Muslim, because the religion of Islam is “physiologically violent, as confirmed by certain verses from the Koran that defend an ideology of hatred, violence, death and condemnation of those who are not Muslims.  This way of thinking comes from Mohammed,” Allam said, adding that Islam is an “intrinsically violent” religion.

Asked about his conversion to the faith, Allam said he was convinced by the preaching and testimony of Benedict XVI, whose “strong affirmation of the relationship between faith and reason as a foundation for understanding the authenticity of true religion” fascinated him.

Islam’s growth result of western relativism, warns Muslim convert

MARRAKECH: You will not see g-strings, revealing leotards, or nudity at Claude Thomas’ newly created cabaret revue in Marrakech. Instead, dancers’

bodies are demurely hidden and kisses are only allowed on the cheek. “Les Folies de Marrakech.” launched earlier this month, is an unusual blend of Western decadence and Islam.

“This is the first time I have so many beautiful bodies to show and I have to hide them,” said Thomas. “Here I am doing a cabaret in the Muslim style because the goal is to have an end result that is 100 percent Moroccan, but also 100 percent Folies.”

For the producer, the change was a radical one. Throughout the past 15 years, he put on music-hall performances - first in the northern French city of Lille, then in Japan, Canada, Reno and Las Vegas. Now it is time to create a new category of such shows for Muslim audiences, he said.

“This is not Moulin Rouge because we are not in Paris,” said the 49-year old Thomas. “This is not the Cirque de Soleil because we are not in Las Vegas. Here I’m offering a dream while still respecting the country’s culture.”

After facing tough French social laws and unforeseen challenges, he sold his cabaret in France in May 2006, and came to spend a few days in Marrakech where he found a “new Las Vegas.”

Advised by the Moroccan consul in Lille to call the event a “music hall” instead of a “cabaret,” Thomas’ production lasts an hour and a half and takes the audience on a world tour with magicians, acrobats, pirates, a falconer, magic fountains, dance, music and comedy.

While Thomas may be the creative force behind the show, it seems it’s Islam that lays down the law here. As such, his performers also serve as in-house consultants who let him know during rehearsals what will fly with local mores and what will not.

“When she tells me the costume could shock,” said Thomas, “I modify it while still keeping its magic.”

Along with his cousin, he bought five hectares of land and constructed a 2,000-square-meter hall to host an audience of 1,100 for a dinner show costing 550 dirhams [$78].

Thomas auditioned 300 acrobats, flame-throwers and break-dancers from across the country - finally selecting 47 from among them, of which 12 are girls aged 17 to 32.

“They come from all walks of life,” he said, “from the Casablanca bourgeoisie to street kids from Sale.”

Thomas also recruited five choreographers to train the troupe for 14 hours a day for nine months. While the grueling physical training was a challenge, perhaps harder still was overcoming mental obstacles.

“The most difficult thing is that Moroccans do not think they are capable of feats and so are astonished when they succeed,” said Canadian choreographer Santiago Martinez.

He says he also had to adapt his choreography to the rules of Islam. “One day, I had asked them to hold their arms in second position [resembling a curved cross], but they refused because they said it was too much like the Christ. So I told them to lift their arms higher,” said Martinez cheerfully.

However, on issues of gender equality, Thomas won’t budge and refuses to have only women clear the tables. “I respect your religion and I’ve even created a prayer room,” he said, “but here everyone is an artist regardless of their gender.”

Nineteen-year-old Imad al-Machriki was a tightrope walker at a circus school in Sale before joining Thomas’ troupe. Now, while training, he is also taking up school work again, after having dropped out at 13.

“It was very hard to become a professional,” said Machriki, “but today I think we are about to succeed.”

The Daily Star - Arts & Culture - French cabaret king modifies show to suit Islam

Muslim leaders must be more outspoken about violence in the name of religion, a senior Vatican official urged yesterday.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Pope’s principal adviser on Islam, said that while the majority of Muslim clerics condemned acts of terrorism, they needed to be more vocal about jihad, especially because of its frequent appearances in the Qur’an.

The cardinal made the remarks after a lecture, given in London to an audience of students, Catholic clerics and figures from other religions. It was one of several public appearances during a rare visit to the UK.

He said: “In the Qur’an you have several interpretations of jihad - violent and holy. Most Muslims are condemning war made in the name of religion. The problem is that in the Qur’an you have good and bad jihad, so you choose.

“There is no worldwide authority who can interpret the Qur’an, so it depends on the person you have in front of you. Sometimes you should like religious authorities to be more outspoken about violence in the name of religion. But Muslims believe the Qur’an is the divine word of God, so it is a problem.”

He said it would be “easier” if there were a single Islamic authority to negotiate with. “It’s a great difficulty there are many voices of living Islam.”

The cardinal is president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and has been tasked with improving relations between the Vatican and Islam.

Tauran, the former Vatican foreign minister, has not shied away from difficult issues since his 2007 appointment. He has criticised countries, notably Saudi Arabia, which do not allow freedom of religion.

He expressed hope, however, that a summit of Islamic scholars and Catholic officials, to be held in November, would yield positive results.

The meeting, organised following an appeal from hundreds of Muslim scholars for closer ties with Christianity, will not be attended by representatives from Saudi Arabia or Iran, two regimes that place severe restrictions on religious freedom. “Of course we would like to see someone from Saudi Arabia. But we will meet them in another context. We talk to the interlocutors who come, we do not choose them.”

His remarks came as the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said that radical Islam threatened to fill a “moral vacuum” in Britain arisen as a result of a decline of Christian values. Writing in the newly launched political and cultural magazine Standpoint, the bishop claims that the church dissolved its influence over the country’s morals during the social and sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Cardinal urges Muslim leaders to oppose violent jihad | World news | The Guardian