Muslim Heretics Conference

In Germany, Islam is often equated with fundamentalism and fanaticism, a perception that imposes a heavy burden on the country’s 3 million Muslims. Their relationship to Western society is divided between integration and sometimes self-imposed exclusion.

The name of the salon is German — Goldene Finger (Golden Fingers) — but the services it offers are listed in the window in Arabic and Turkish. In the front of the shop, 40-year-old Palestinian Toufic al-Rifae gives men haircuts and trims their beards. Veiled women disappear into a back section behind a curtain, where female hairdressers do their hair and, using thick lines of the traditional Middle Eastern cosmetic preparation known as kohl, apply their makeup in the Arab style.

Diagonally across the street, Ris A, a restaurant specializing in grilled meats, advertises its poultry as “halal,” or slaughtered according to Islamic religious rules. The place is reminiscent of a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant, with its colorful plastic tables and chairs and tiled floor. In an open kitchen in the corner, 72 chickens are being roasted over coals on a large rotating grate. The name of the restaurant, explains the owner, a 35-year-old Lebanese man, “means in Islam: ‘What Allah has bestowed upon me’.”

Al Sundus is a shop specializing in “Arab lingerie,” Arab water pipes, known as shishas, are bubbling away in the El Salam café and neighborhood bakeries sell rectangular cakes coated in white cream or decorated with bright green pistachios. One Middle Eastern business after another lines the northern end of Sonnenallee, a prominent street in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood.

For some, Sonnenallee is a colorful, quirky shopping street. Others refer to it derisively as the Gaza Strip.

Most businesses that are not in the hands of Arabs are Turkish-owned: Mehmet Özçelik’s bakery, which sells sweet baklava; a Turkish Airlines travel agency; the supermarket run by Nazik Balabanoglu and her husband Ergin; the funeral home owned by Mustafa Mutlu, whose employee Islam Cenaze Servisi makes arrangements to send the bodies of deceased Muslims to their native countries or organizes their funerals in an Islamic cemetery (more…) next to the grand Sehitlik Mosque on Berlin’s Columbiadamm Street. The unemployed Turks killing time at the Taxi Café call the neighborhood “Little Istanbul.”

Being able to speak German is not a requirement for daily life in this immigrant neighborhood, where the street scene is one of bearded men wearing knit caps and women in headscarves. Not all businesses are Turkish or Arabic, however. German senior citizens congregate on Tuesdays for dance evenings at Zum Ambrosius, one of Berlin’s traditional corner pubs, which seems exotic in this environment. But even this traditional German establishment was recently purchased by a man of Lebanese descent.

Some would call the souk in downtown Berlin picturesque. The Neukölln Museum, an institution run by the district administration, now offers guided tours through the Muslim “kiez” or “hood.” Abeer Arif, an Iraqi-born German citizen, is in charge of the “Oriental Tour of Discovery.”

But there is also something oppressive and ghetto-like about this Middle Eastern business district in the middle of Germany’s most densely populated Muslim neighborhood.

The Neukölln district is home to 300,000 people, and half of them live in the northern part that Sonnenallee runs through. One-third of Neukölln’s population are immigrants — including about 60,000 Muslims, who are concentrated almost exclusively in the northern section.

There are 20 mosques in Neukölln alone, out of about 80 in all of Berlin. Few of these houses of worship are recognizable as such from the outside. Most are reached through gates or rear courtyards, where former workshops and factory buildings have been converted to prayer rooms with colorful patterned carpets laid out on the floor. Sweets, tea and soft drinks are sold in adjacent shops.

GRAPHICS GALLERY: GERMANY’S MUSLIMS BY THE NUMBERS

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Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (12 Photos)

Neukölln, like a specimen under a microscope, is proof positive of something that is slowly dawning on the rest of the country: Islam, this mysterious religion, both fascinating and alarming, has gained a foothold in Germany, which is now home to more than 3 million Muslims. But the close proximity between long-established Germans and outlandish Muslims is also a potential source of conflict, triggering resentment and fear on both sides.

Since the religiously motivated terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, many Germans perceive the faith in Allah principally as a threat. There are growing fears that jihadists will begin launching attacks and suicide bombings in Germany, fears fueled in part by repeated warnings coming from German security agencies (more…). Amid such fears, suspicion is easily extended to include the entirety of the Muslim faithful, despite the fact that there are likely no more than a few hundred Muslims promoting terror in Germany.

These suspicions, in turn, prompt many Muslims to feel excluded and rejected by the German majority. Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble sees this as one of the central challenges of integration policy. “Muslims are part of society and our common future,” Schäuble, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), stressed at a February conference on the image of Islam in Germany. The difficulty, Schäuble pointed out, lies in the public’s growing tendency to equate Islam with fundamentalism and fanaticism.

Muslims in Germany: Life in a Parallel Society - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

By C. HOLLAND TAYLOR
FROM TODAY’S WALL STREET JOURNAL ASIA
June 24, 2008

My Friend the Fanatic
By Sadanand Dhume
(Text Publishing, 271 pp., A$34.95)

Terrorist acts perpetrated in the name of Islam have dominated news headlines for years, yet Western readers are often left wondering what motivates such radicalism, and how it spreads. Few nations are more strategically vital to the struggle for the “soul” of Islam than Indonesia. Home of the world’s largest Muslim population and democracy, Indonesia’s ancient traditions of pluralism and tolerance are under siege by a well-organized and heavily financed extremist movement.

The current radical trends in Indonesia are inextricably linked to Islam’s 700-year history in the East Indies. Sunni Islam arrived peacefully in what is now Indonesia, brought by Arab, Indian and Chinese merchants active in the fabled spice trade. Once they acquired sufficient economic power, such merchants established Islamic city-states that rebelled against, and ultimately destroyed, the pre-existing Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Majapahit. It was only the subsequent military and political triumph of indigenous Javanese in 1586 – following a bloody, century-long struggle – that preserved the region’s pluralistic and tolerant traditions, in the form of a deeply spiritual understanding of Islam that did not conflict with pre-existing faiths.

In “My Friend the Fanatic,” journalist Sadanand Dhume guides the reader deftly through the whirlpool these currents have created. Descriptions of a young, charismatic author titillating avant-garde audiences in the nation’s capital – with her sexually provocative short stories and performance art – alternate with on-the-scene reportage of Muslim radicals’ success at mobilizing grassroots support throughout the vast archipelago. Mr. Dhume took an unusual trek through Indonesia’s lush, tropical landscape with Herry Nurdi, the “fanatic” of the book’s title and editor of Sabili, a mass-circulation extremist magazine whose explicit goal is to undo radical Islam’s history of failure in Indonesia and assure its final triumph.

By some counts at least, Mr. Nurdi and his ilk are winning. In recent years, extremists have taken advantage of regional autonomy to impose Shariah-based regulations in nearly 70 of Indonesia’s 364 local regencies. These laws, among other things, compel women and girls to wear so-called “Muslim” clothing that reveals only the face, hands and feet, even if they are Christian; require students, civil servants and even couples applying for marriage to demonstrate an ability to read the Quran; and effectively restrict women from going out at night without a male relative.

Mr. Dhume’s description of the extremists’ rise will be dispiriting to those who view democracy as an antidote to radicalism. Indeed, one of the most striking facts he reports is the extent to which those leading the charge to institutionalize radicalism in Indonesia today are directly linked to postindependence rebellions and failed extremist movements from the past. Whereas their ideological forebears (and literally, in many cases, their fathers or grandfathers) were crushed by Indonesian nationalists committed to upholding Indonesia’s secular constitution and pluralist state ideology, the new generation of radicals use democracy and the symbols of Islam to erode and ultimately destroy Indonesia’s heritage of religious pluralism and tolerance. This phenomenon is rendered possible and dramatically accelerated by the tendency of opportunistic politicians and political parties – often corrupt and lacking in Islamic legitimacy – to engage in a “chase to the lowest common denominator” of Islam, in a cynical attempt to prove their Muslim bona fides.

Unfortunately, the current government in Jakarta – led by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono – has done little to retard the rapidly metastasizing phenomenon of political Islam. This threatens not only religious minorities such as the Muslim Ahmadiyah sect and Christians, but also the safety and security of the Indonesian nation-state itself. Just this month, in fact, religious extremists beat a group of moderates marching for religious freedom on the grounds of the national monument, in full view of onlooking police and the nearby state palace.

While Mr. Dhume argues convincingly about the radicals’ current strength and momentum, he is strangely silent about their most vocal and effective opponents, who represent the world’s best hope for a truly democratic and tolerant Islam. Virtually absent from Mr. Dhume’s book are the valiant efforts of Indonesian Muslim leaders to stem the Arab petrodollar-funded tide of radical Islam, and thereby uphold the secular foundations of the Indonesian nation-state. Former President Abdurrahman Wahid, a member of the LibForAll Foundation which I head, has vigorously opposed the Islamist agenda and succeeded at blocking many of their initiatives. So, too, have other key leaders of the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, the world’s biggest Muslims organizations, which are based in Indonesia and boast 70 million followers.

Islam’s future – as a religion of peace and tolerance, or of hatred, violence and supremacy – may well hinge upon Indonesia’s destiny, as Middle East financial backers and their indigenous allies well know. Mr. Dhume is pessimistic, sensing that the “totalitarian cast” of the extremist movement will “grind what remained of a once proud culture to a hollow imitation of Arabness.” Yet while the situation is undoubtedly grave, it is far from hopeless. Indonesia boasts a moderate public and self-confident Muslim leaders who do not conflate Islam with arrogance, extremism, supremacy or violence. Mr. Dhume’s book shows that the battle is raging, but its conclusion is far from preordained.

Mr. Taylor is the chairman & CEO of the LibForAll Foundation, a nonprofit that works to reduce religious extremism worldwide and discredit the use of terrorism.

Unfriendly Fanatics - WSJ.com

By By Atif Nadeem
6/24/2008

LAHORE
A Muslim girl who had converted from Christianity seeks protection of the government for her life and her husband from her family members who have threatened to kill the couple on the grounds of converting to Islam.
Asghar, a Muslim boy and Qaisra, a Christian girl, both were working in a local garments factory where they developed an emotional relationship compelling them to tie the wedding knot. Qaisra, a resident of Nishtar Town, while talking to The News said that she and her husband, Asghar, were earning their livelihoods while fixing zips to the sewn shirts and trousers at a local garment factory where they were acquainted with each other.
She said, as their religions were different so they did not think about getting married that time. “Later on, we started working in different factories situated next to each other and our relationship developed into a deep love affair,” she said. “I realised that I was deeply in love with Asghar and his feelings for me were also the same,” she added.
Qaisra who had now adopted a Muslim name, Rabia Fatima, said that she revealed her emotional feelings to her aunt, Rubina, ands told her that she had decided to accept Islam and marry a Muslim boy, Asghar.
“My mother warned me not to get married a Muslim boy but I kept on convincing my mother,” she said. My sisters were also aware of my attachment with Asghar as I used to talk to him until late night on mobile phone, she added.
She said that she had decided to elope with Asghar so that they could get married. “I stayed with Asghar’s family for one night at his home in Chunian and his family whole-heartedly welcomed her as their daughter-in-law,” she added.
Qaisra said that she had also got a certificate for acceptance of Islam at the hands of a religious figure hailing from District Bahawalnagar in April in which it was stated that she had converted to Islam from Christianity on her own will. The couple reached Bahawalpur where they got their marriage registered and Qaisra through her counsel filed a writ petition in The Lahore High Court Bahawalpur Bench pleading the Court to may issue directions to the respondents, Inspector General of Police, Punjab, SHO Police Station, Ameen s/o Fouja and others not to harass and humiliate the petitioner, Qaisra and her husband, Asghar, while saying that the couple were leading a happily matrimonial life and no one should be allowed to interfere into the personal legal rights of the petitioner, Qaisra, as well as of her husband, Asghar.
The counsel also pleaded that if any case of abduction had been registered by SHO Police Station Nishtar that case should be quashed as no offence was made out against the petitioner, Qaisra and her husband.
The Court ruled that the couple should not be harassed or humiliated by any person, as they had married after their own will. The Court disposed of the case while ruling that in case there was some criminal indictment against either of two, their statements should be recorded and investigation be carried out on those lines.
Earlier, Nishtar Police Station had registered an abduction case against Qaisra’s husband, Asghar, and conducted many raids at his house located in Chunian while harassing and humiliating his family members, she said.
She said that her father, brother and uncle were inveigling her to come back and stay with them while on the other hand they were harassing and humiliating Asghar’s family members. She said that her family had threatened to kill her as she had converted to Islam from Christianity.
Asghar said that Qaisra’s family members including her father, brother and other relatives along with the police officials had raided his house repeatedly while harassing his family members and other relatives. The police officials kept my uncle and younger brother, Ashraf, 10, under unlawful custody while asking them about my whereabouts so that they could seize me. He said that Qaisra’s family would kill my wife and me as they were constantly threatening my family in collaboration with the police.
He said that his family also had an abduction case registered against him for which the police had been humiliating his family members. He said that his wife, Qaisra, had stated in the court that she had got married after her own will and nobody had compelled her to accept Islam. The couple demanded of the provincial government to provide them protection from Qaisra’s family besides quashing abduction case against Asghar.

Muslim convert harassed by family, seeks protection

As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.

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Alex Brandon/Associated Press

Barack Obama spoke at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago on Fathers’ Day. Mr. Obama has visited churches and synagogues, but he has yet to appear at a single mosque.

Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.

“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”

When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace.

While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque. Muslim and Arab-American organizations have tried repeatedly to arrange meetings with Mr. Obama, but officials with those groups say their invitations — unlike those of their Jewish and Christian counterparts — have been ignored. Last week, two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred by campaign volunteers from appearing behind Mr. Obama at a rally in Detroit.

In interviews, Muslim political and civic leaders said they understood that their support for Mr. Obama could be a problem for him at a time when some Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslims. Yet those leaders nonetheless expressed disappointment and even anger at the distance that Mr. Obama has kept from them.

“This is the ‘hope campaign,’ this is the ‘change campaign,’ ” said Mr. Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota. Muslims are frustrated, he added, that “they have not been fully engaged in it.”

Aides to Mr. Obama denied that he had kept his Muslim supporters at arm’s length. They cited statements in which he had spoken inclusively about American Islam and a radio advertisement he recorded for the recent campaign of Representative Andre Carson, Democrat of Indiana, who this spring became the second Muslim elected to Congress.

In May, Mr. Obama also had a brief, private meeting with the leader of a mosque in Dearborn, Mich., home to the country’s largest concentration of Arab-Americans. And this month, a senior campaign aide met with Arab-American leaders in Dearborn, most of whom are Muslim. (Mr. Obama did not campaign in Michigan before the primary in January because of a party dispute over the calendar.)

“Our campaign has made every attempt to bring together Americans of all races, religions and backgrounds to take on our common challenges,” Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman, said in an e-mail message.

Mr. LaBolt added that with religious groups, the campaign had largely taken “an interfaith approach, one that may not have reached every group that wishes to participate but has reached many Muslim Americans.”

The strained relationship between Muslims and Mr. Obama reflects one of the central challenges facing the senator: how to maintain a broad electoral appeal without alienating any of the numerous constituencies he needs to win in November.

After the episode in Detroit last week, Mr. Obama telephoned the two Muslim women to apologize. “I take deepest offense to and will continue to fight against discrimination against people of any religious group or background,” he said in a statement.

Such gestures have fallen short in the eyes of many Muslim leaders, who say the Detroit incident and others illustrate a disconnect between Mr. Obama’s message of unity and his campaign strategy.

“The community feels betrayed,” said Safiya Ghori, the government relations director in the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Even some of Mr. Obama’s strongest Muslim supporters say they are uncomfortable with the forceful denials he has made in response to rumors that he is secretly a Muslim. (Ten percent of registered voters believe the rumor, according to a poll by the Pew Research

In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Mr. Obama said the rumors were offensive to American Muslims because they played into “fearmongering.” But on a new section of his Web site, he classifies the claim that he is Muslim as a “smear.”

“A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way,” Mr. Ellison said.

Mr. Ellison, a first-term congressman, remains arguably the senator’s most important Muslim supporter. He has attended Obama rallies in Minnesota and appears on the campaign’s Web site. But Mr. Ellison said he was also forced to cancel plans to campaign for Mr. Obama in North Carolina after an emissary for the senator told him the state was “too conservative.” Mr. Ellison said he blamed Mr. Obama’s aides — not the candidate himself — for his campaign’s standoffishness.

Despite the complications of wooing Muslim voters, Mr. Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, may find it risky to ignore this constituency. There are sizable Muslim populations in closely fought states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.

In those states and others, American Muslims have experienced a political awakening in the years since Sept. 11, 2001. Before the attacks, Muslim political leadership in the United States was dominated by well-heeled South Asian and Arab immigrants, whose communities account for a majority of the nation’s Muslims. (Another 20 percent are estimated to be African-American.) The number of American Muslims remains in dispute as the Census Bureau does not collect data on religious orientation; most estimates range from 2.35 million to 6 million.

A coalition of immigrant Muslim groups endorsed George W. Bush in his 2000 campaign, only to find themselves ignored by Bush administration officials as their communities were rocked by the carrying out of the USA Patriot Act, the detention and deportation of Muslim immigrants and other security measures after Sept. 11.

As a result, Muslim organizations began mobilizing supporters across the country to register to vote and run for local offices, and political action committees started tracking registered Muslim voters. The character of Muslim political organizations also began to change.

“We moved away from political leadership primarily by doctors, lawyers and elite professionals to real savvy grass-roots operatives,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, a political group in Washington. “We went back to the base.”

In 2006, the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee arranged for 53 Muslim cabdrivers to skip their shifts at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to transport voters to the polls for the midterm election. Of an estimated 60,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, 86 percent turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Jim Webb, a Democrat running for the Senate who subsequently won the election, according to data collected by the committee.

The committee’s president, Mukit Hossain, said Muslims in Virginia were drawn to Mr. Obama because of his support for civil liberties and his more diplomatic approach to the Middle East. Mr. Hossain and others said his multicultural image also appealed to immigrant voters.

“This is the son of an immigrant; this is someone with a funny name,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, who is a Christian who has campaigned for Mr. Obama at mosques and Arab churches. “There is this excitement that if he can win, they can win, too.”

Yet some Muslim and Arab-American political organizers worry that the campaign’s reluctance to reach out to voters in those communities will eventually turn them off. “If they think that they are voting for a campaign that is trying to distance itself from them, my big fear is that Muslims will sit it out,” Mr. Hossain said.

Throughout the primaries, Muslim groups often failed to persuade Mr. Obama’s campaign to at least send a surrogate to speak to voters at their events, said Ms. Ghori, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Before the Virginia primary in February, some of the nation’s leading Muslim organizations nearly canceled an event at a mosque in Sterling because they could not arrange for representatives from any of the major presidential campaigns to attend. At the last minute, they succeeded in wooing surrogates from the Clinton and Obama campaigns by telling each that the other was planning to attend, Mr. Bray said. (No one from the McCain campaign showed up.)

Frustrations with Mr. Obama deepened the day after he claimed the nomination when he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel. (Mr. Obama later clarified his statement, saying Jerusalem’s status would need to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians.)

Osama Siblani, the editor and publisher of the weekly Arab American News in Dearborn, said Mr. Obama had “pandered” to the Israeli lobby, while neglecting to meet formally with Arab-American and Muslim leaders. “They’re trying to take the votes without the liabilities,” said Mr. Siblani, who is also president of the Arab American Political Action Committee.

Some Muslim supporters of Mr. Obama seem to ricochet between dejection and optimism. Minha Husaini, a public health consultant in her 30s who is working for the Obama campaign in Philadelphia, lights up like a swooning teenager when she talks about his promise for change.

“He gives me hope,” Ms. Husaini said in an interview last month, shortly before she joined the campaign on a fellowship. But she sighed when the conversation turned to his denials of being Muslim, “as if it’s something bad,” she said.

For Ms. Ghori and other Muslims, Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach is not surprising in a political climate they feel is marred by frequent attacks on their faith.

Among the incidents they cite are a statement by Mr. McCain, in a 2007 interview with Beliefnet.com, that he would prefer a Christian president to a Muslim one; a comment by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that Mr. Obama was not Muslim “as far as I know”; and a remark by Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, to The Associated Press in March that an Obama victory would be celebrated by terrorists, who would see him as a “savior.”

“All you have to say is Barack Hussein Obama,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer and contributing editor at Islamica Magazine. “You don’t even have to say ‘Muslim.’ ”

As a consequence, many Muslims have kept their support for Mr. Obama quiet. Any visible show of allegiance could be used by his opponents to incite fear, further the false rumors about his faith and “bin-Laden him,” Mr. Bray said.

“The joke within the national Muslim organizations,” Ms. Ghori said, “is that we should endorse the person we don’t want to win.”

Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama - NYTimes.com

LAMIA QAZI
As a liberal Muslim, my feelings towards religious Islamic organisations, where women congregate like droves of sparrows wearing abaiyas and hijabs, has always ranged somewhere between bemused tolerance and slight impatience.

It seems to me quite understandable that such groups would make their neighbours feel slightly insecure with so many Muslims gathering together - especially in today’s political climate.

Al-Meezan is an organisation run by Muslim women focusing on women’s Islamic education, situated in a large detached house in the Southside of Glasgow.

The centre had created some tension in the locality - objections have included the fact that it is an educational organisation in the middle of a residential area; and parking issues when large numbers get together for annual events.

The house in Dumbreck is what estate agents would call a very large well-maintained period property. On the inside it has been sectioned into classrooms and office facilities, along with a well-run cafeteria, a crèche and play areas for children.

The Al-Meezan student body is comprised of women of all ages, starting from three month-old infants to classes for children and adults with no upper age limit. (The children’s classes are for boys as well as girls).

It began a decade ago as an informal group of 20 women who would get together to study the Quran. The student body expanded and different venues had to be hired to accommodate the large number of participants.

Eventually they bought their current premises in 2005 for £1.1m, a sum raised completely through participant donations.

My feeling was: “Why couldn’t they be less obtrusive, tone down the overtly religious symbolism and blend in with the rest of us?” Were the participants oblivious to such sensitivities?

Perhaps the organisation was the reaction of a community under attack, unable to face the world except by retreating into the shadows of hijab and women-only congregations?

Considering these and other very real prejudices I decided to approach Al-Meezan. My understanding prior to going was that there was a strict uniform of white hijab with a black abaiya. What reaction would my jeans and cropped top get in a place where all participants wore these black cloaks and white scarves?

Later I discovered that it was only the uniform for the longer-running courses and was not compulsory for the short courses or other social activities like the mother and toddler group.

I was expecting disgust at the sight of me - clearly an Asian Muslim, sans hijab. Instead I was struck by the warm welcome I received. The committee were also quite willing to talk about their apparent role in exacerbating local divisions, and address my concern that they might discourage Muslims, particularly women, from taking part in mainstream society.

Indeed, they had very well-formed opinions on these subjects. They were certainly aware of the critical position they occupy within the current political climate.

So, is Al-Meezan a symptom of Muslim “extremism”? These women were adamant in their condemnation of “so-called” Muslims who espouse violence.

“We are trying to redress the weaknesses of previous generations where an ignorance of the teachings of Islam created a vacuum for children to be misled into committing crimes in the name of Islam,” explained Salma Sheikh, retired social worker and Al-Meezan chairperson. “We focus on women, as they are responsible for the religious beliefs that are imparted to children.

“Suicide bombings are haram wrong, and punishable in the next life and any act that is against the law and social norms of the society in which you live is condemned in Islam,” she adds. “But the religion doesn’t need to be abandoned because of a few miscreants - in fact it needs to be re-appropriated and returned to its true, purely peaceful, spirit.”

But my view of such organisations is that they are outdated. Couldn’t groups such as Al-Meezan offer Asian women tools for dealing with modern life?

The committee see what they do as empowering the women who attend. They argue that prior to Al-Meezan, religion was the prerogative of men residing in mosques and through this religious monopoly they were able to control the life choices offered to women.

“Lack of knowledge of Islamic values has resulted in the cultural oppression of women and their marginalisation,” reads one Al-Meezan leaflet.

By educating themselves these women are breaking free from misconceptions that are commonly used to suppress women in a number of social situations. I have heard men say, with the utmost religious authority, that Islam has no room for female equality, arguing that for women to work is in direct contradiction to Islamic teachings.

It isn’t a view that is given credence at Al-Meezan. When I asked about opposition from within the Muslim community they immediately assumed I was referring to early opposition to the centre from Muslim clerics. “Men can’t deal with the fact that these women have managed to create and run this organisation completely without their help,” says Mahnoor Campbell, Primary School teacher and student at Al-Meezan.

At Al-Meezan most of the teachers hold full-time jobs and teach here on a part-time basis. This example alone gives the women who attend positive role models who manage to reach an equitable balance between their religious, worldly and social duties.

Muslims like me who are seen by some as having given up fundamental aspects of our religion by abandoning hijab, can insist until we’re blue in the face that Islam does guarantee rights for women. We will be disregarded and will have no real impact. But Al-Meezan and organisations like it may offer a platform through which to address such issues.

I end up feeling that an Islamic organisation that is setting the record straight and in a non-controversial way about the rights and life choices available to Muslim women is like rain in the desert.

But I still wonder if it isolates its students, denying them social opportunities? The participants I spoke to were adamant that their dress code or strong religious beliefs have no impact on their social interactions.

“There might be an initial hesitancy when people see that you wear a Hijab but once you approach them and start a conversation they deal with you as a person” says Asma Sheikh, a pharmacist and teacher at Al- Meezan.

However there are two opinions on whether society at large is accepting of Muslims. The Scottish Asians I interviewed who were born and brought up here have a very secure sense of belonging and inclusion; however Pakistani Muslims who immigrated here for education or through marriage speak of a very different experience. These women talk of living in extreme isolation before they came to Al-Meezan; of a feeling that Scottish society was completely closed to them.

For some, the reason for joining Al-Meezan was to meet people; the religious interest was secondary. They have become part of a huge social network with a large number of friends from all ages and social groups. “We were speaking before class about how it happens that a person has been dead for weeks and no-one has noticed,” says Mahnoor Campbell. “This could never happen at Al-Meezan.If I miss one Sunday class I receive at least half a dozen phone calls to find out if I’m alright.”

Sheikh adds: “I encourage my students to reach out to people around them. There is no harm in attending social events with non-Muslims - this is something which a lot of my students had regarded as being taboo.”

Al-Meezan has broken a lot of the stereotypes I had regarding Asian women. Organisations that are focused around educating women so that they are able to be better carers for their children along with providing them with a social network have a clear value for the whole of society.

Al-Meezan itself points to the value of such work. Another leaflet reads: “We recognise that lack of knowledge of Islamic values has resulted in the breakdown in communication between parents and young people; the collapse of the family unit due to strain in relationship between youth and parents; feelings of disenchantment amongst Muslim youth; and depression and isolation faced by parents dealing with these problems.”

It is interesting that if you remove the words Islam and Muslim, these are the very same problems which are faced by wider society.

A Place To Learn About Islam And Much More Besides (from The Herald )

RIYADH, June 23 (Reuters) - The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a league of 57 Muslim nations, said on Monday a Danish court’s rejection of a suit against a paper for printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad could provoke “Islamophobia.”
The High Court for western Denmark on Thursday rejected a suit against Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that first published cartoons of Islam’s prophet, leading to deadly protests in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The court said the editors had not meant to depict Muslims as criminals or terrorists, the cartoons had not broken the law, and there was a relationship between acts of violence and Islam — comments that provoked outcry among Muslim groups in Denmark.
“It is a known fact that acts of terror have been carried out in the name of Islam and it is not illegal to make satire out of this relationship,” the court said.
The Saudi-based OIC, the largest grouping of Muslim countries, said the ruling could encourage “Islamophobia”, a fear or dislike of Islam, which the group has identified as existing in the West.
“The Danish ruling came as a surprise to the OIC at a time when almost all Western governments including the USA had made categorical statements rejecting any linkage between Islam and terrorism,” an OIC statement said.
“The linkage drawn by the Danish court … could create a precedent for exacerbation of Islamophobia.”
Many Muslims regard depictions of the Prophet as blasphemous. The Islamic Faith Society, one of the groups that brought the lawsuit against the Danish newspaper, said it might take its case to the European Court of Human Rights. (Writing by Andrew Hammond; Editing by Tim Pearce)

Danish cartoon ruling may prompt “Islamophobia”-OIC | Reuters