Muslim Heretics Conference

Views That Islam Monopolises Others Misleading, Outdated - Raja Nazrin

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 22 (Bernama) — The view that Islam monopolises any one culture, country, region or continent is not only outdated but also misleading, said the Raja Muda of Perak, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah.
He said Islam had a global presence as a universal faith and it could only be properly understood in that framework.
“There is also a need to recognise that Islam is not just about rituals and rules interpreted in a narrow legalistic sense. It encompasses practically every aspect of human life that deals with the temporal as well as the spiritual.
“Islamic studies, therefore, will be severely constrained and too circumscribed, if it does not seek to address the problems of this life in addition to dealing with those of the hereafter,” he said in his opening address at the “International Conference on New Horizons For Islamic Area Studies” here Saturday.
Raja Nazrin said from the beginning, this was what Islamic studies was supposed to be, and indeed it was this attitude and approach that had led to the flowering of all fields of knowledge in the golden days of the early Muslim civilisations.
Past achievements of the Muslims in science, architecture, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, literature, history, arts and calligraphy could not have been accomplished without this conceptual framework of knowledge, he said.
Raja Nazrin, who is University of Malaya Pro-Chancellor, said while the place of the classical texts such as the al-Quran, hadiths and commentaries of scholars, and subjects such as Islamic jurisprudence, syariah, usuluddin and tafsir would remain as the irreducible core of Islamic studies, the tools and methodologies used and the references employed should be continuously improved and updated.
“Likewise it is also necessary to try to understand the different spatial and chronological contexts within which Islam has evolved in order to understand its uniqueness,” he said.
He said that in Malaysia, Islamic studies were not new. In fact, he said, it was as old as the history of Islam’s presence in the region.
“But what is probably new is the attempt, especially but not exclusively, by the government to review and renew Islamic studies to make it more relevant to the needs of the present without undermining its original mission,” he said.
He said Malaysia had been widely recognised as an exemplar of a modern, progressive and moderate Muslim country and had demonstrated that economic development and technology were not incompatible with Islam.
Malaysia can thus become a voice in the global debate, helping to correct the current inter-religious misunderstandings that are dangerously dividing the world,” he said.
Raja Nazrin said in recent years, Islam and Muslims had come under intensive and critical global scrutiny while among non-Muslims, there was a desire to learn more about the religion.
The interest was motivated not only by intellectual curiosity but also by the recognition that Islam constituted a dynamic force in the contemporary world order, he said.
As a result, Raja Nazrin said, publications on subjects related to Islam had increased phenomenally.
For instance, he added, the publication of the Quran and its translations into various languages had witnessed a marked increase.
“In Japan itself, I understand there are no less than seven different translated versions of the Quran. Research centres, institutions and projects focusing on Islam have mushroomed everywhere,” he said.
Islamic studies had also become a popular course in universities and colleges all over the world, with many Islamic universities and colleges established including in non-Muslim countries, he added.
The conference was organised by Japan’s National Institute for the Humanities (NIHU) in partnership with the Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya (UM).
Also present were UM Vice-Chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Ghauth Jasmon, NIHU General Director Prof Sato Tsugitaka and Japanese Ambassador to Malaysia Horie Masahiko.
The three-day conference was attended by about 200 participants from 20 countries representing more than 60 universities and research institutions worldwide.

Bernama.com ver 5.0

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Election 2008: Who Won, Who Lost?

A few weeks ago, I was in a meeting at work when, while discussing a rather contentious issue, someone casually joked along the lines: “You’re sounding as if you’re going to be put in Gauntanamo.” A Muslim female colleague, whom I have known from college, responded something like this: “Actually that’s not funny ? for some of us, it is not that farfetched.” This is the kind of fear many Muslims live in America today. And this was not one isolated feeling.

An article published shortly after elections in Newsweek reported that Muslims had overwhelmingly voted for Obama in the election. According to exit poll data and estimates, 7-8 million Muslims live in America and of all the Muslims eligible to vote, 95% actually went out to vote with 89% voting Democratic. More Muslims have usually voted Republican in the past because the Republican stance on various issues is closer to the Muslim view. Although majority of the Muslims cited economy as the primary reason, politics of fear by Republicans, and a massive anti-Islam campaign played a major role too.

Early last year, I had gone to the screening of the movie “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West” in a local church. Unfortunately, the movie was a piece of intense propaganda campaign against Muslims. After making a few statements about ‘all Muslim not being terrorists’, the movie did not leave any way for the audience to not believe that Muslims are nothing but terrorists ? assaults were constantly made on Islam and Muslims, instead of on terrorists. Everything was somehow linked back to Islam although many scholarly studies have unveiled root causes of terrorism and established a lack of link with Islam. But the real damage came when 28 million copies of the movie were distributed in just months before the election primarily in the swing states to influence the vote.

During the election campaign, there were also accusations that Obama was a Muslim as if being a Muslim makes him dangerous or any less American. This was stressed by the media and tacitly as well as explicitly supported in Republicans conventions. Perhaps, by this time, people had seen the movie, and along with smear casting that continued in some of the media outlets, it seemed that the allegations were effective in instilling fear in people. These tactics backfired though because it seems that smears against Obama and distribution of the movie led Muslims to come out in large numbers and vote against the Republican candidate. The percentage of Muslims who voted in this election is probably the highest of any community, race or religious group.

The biggest loss in the last few months has been for the Muslims in America. The sentiment that existed right after 9/11 is returning, and is polarizing American people ? except that this time around, fear is purposely being developed in people. A few weeks back, I was speaking at a senior center where the audience was very hospitable and understanding. Towards the end, one person in the audience handed a pamphlet on Jihad and explicitly asked me to comment on it. I was not at all uncomfortable with the fact that the person referred me towards that pamphlet ? in fact, I thank him for bringing up an issue that was important to him. However, that pamphlet was an indication of how heavy this campaign against Muslims in America is, a factor that is troublesome to me because it eventually results into hatred against Muslims and breaks the society. Aziz Junejo, a Muslim writer for Seattle Times, noted incidents where fellow citizens accused Seattle Muslim residents as terrorists simply because of their appearance. Such campaigns and acts undermine the unity of the country and implicate the 7-8 million Muslims living in America today.

The biggest win of this election is victory of the candidate who supports unity of this country. Barack Obama’s stance from immigration to the economy has been to solve the issues faced by the people, and unite the country to work together. This unity, of course, requires people of all faiths, all races, and all colors to come together and join hands, and that is, in fact, the biggest strength of this country. It also requires people to get across stereotypes and rise above prevailing differences. This is perhaps why millions of Muslims voted for him. You have to have right ideas, and a desire to get people to work together to fulfill those ideas ? and he has both.

I sincerely hope that within the next few years, Obama administration will undo at least some, if not all, of the damage, and strengthen ties between America’s peoples. I also hope that Republicans in general, and we in America in particular, move from people’s stereotyping to addressing real issues that are important for the country and the people.

If anything, the attempted McCarthyism of 2008 failed on Obama, but the tactic lives ? at least for now.

Ironically, famous words of the first Republican president Abraham Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Election 2008: Who Won, Who Lost?

crises. Foremost among his challenges will be to address the attrition that two Bush terms wrought on America’s image, especially in the Arab world, that area that is so economically and strategically important to the United States.

Following 11 September, official and public opinion in the US became increasingly obsessed with two interrelated questions: “Why do the Arabs hate us?” and “How do we improve the image of the US in the Arab world?” The Bush administration gave high priority to what it termed “public diplomacy” aimed at better familiarising Arab and Muslim opinion with the US, out of the conviction that if the Arabs/Muslims knew the US better they would not hate it so much.

So, in the battle to win Arab hearts and minds, the Bush administration inaugurated Sawa Radio in 2002, HI magazine in 2003 aimed at Arab youth and supposedly reflecting the American way of life, and Al-Hurra (Freedom) TV in 2004. It also stepped up networking in Arab societies through organisations that sponsor scholar grants, training and awareness-raising programmes, and conferences, such as the Fulbright Commission.

Yet, as many and diverse as the strategies and instruments of Washington’s public relations campaign towards the Arab world were they still failed to achieve their objective. The US’s image not only did not improve, but according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre between 27 March and 21 April last year of 24,000 respondents in over 24 countries, it deteriorated further. In Jordan, one of Washington’s closest allies in the region, 79 per cent of respondents had a negative view of the US. In Egypt, another major US ally, 22 per cent of respondents had a negative image of the US and 39 per cent of them regarded it as an enemy. In Turkey, a NATO member, 70 per cent of respondents ranked the US as an enemy and only 12 per cent acknowledged having a positive image of the US.

Proof of the failure of Bush’s public diplomacy campaign is also to be found in the spate of resignations tendered by officials responsible for it, starting with Charlotte Beers in February 2003, only a year and a half after having been put in charge of improving the US’s image in the Arab and Islamic world. Ambassador Margaret Tutwiler did not fare better; she lasted only six months before handing in her resignation. Beers and Tutwiler were quickly joined by Karen Hughes and Egyptian Dina Habib Paul. Further testimony can be found in the dismissal of Norman Pattiz, who had originated the ideas of Sawa Radio and Al-Hurra TV, and then of the director of Al-Hurra, Mufaq Harb, who was replaced by a former CNN official, probably because the latter would agree to policies that Harb would not.

The train of resignations and dismissals were the natural consequence of the Bush administration’s determination to cling to the very policies and modes of behaviour that had alienated so much of the Arab world.

If anyone stands a chance of improving the US’s image in the Arab world, Obama does, especially when compared to his pre-4 November rival, Republican candidate John McCain. Firstly, President-elect Obama is extremely popular in the Middle East at both the official and people levels. If given the opportunity to vote, the overwhelming majority of Arabs would have voted for him over McCain, in spite of his campaign statements concerning the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Arab press and media, including various Internet sites, were also clearly pro-Obama.

Secondly, during the campaign Obama was consistently critical of the Bush administration and neoconservative policies. His “anti-Bush” position, as it was called, earned him kudos as the candidate for change in both style and substance. He is viewed as the one most determined to roll back Bush’s policies in the region; to steer away from Bush’s arrogant heavy-handedness and towards a more cooperative approach to regional problems within the framework of US alliances and of international organisations.

Thirdly, Obama has been against the war in Iraq from the outset, giving credence to his call to withdraw US forces and to his pledge to take a diplomatic instead of a confrontationist approach in dealing with the various contentious issues of the Middle East. In sharp contrast to the Bush administration and even McCain, Obama is in favour of dialogue with Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas, albeit with certain preconditions with regard to the latter two that have borne arms against, or do not officially recognise, Israel.

However, it still remains the case that if Obama is to improve the US’s image in the Arab world he has to change those policies and attitudes that were directly responsible for sewing anti-US hatred:

- The Bush administration’s complete identification with almost every Israel position in dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its indulgence of virtually every Israeli whim, from allowing Tel Aviv to sabotage the roadmap and build the separation wall, to turning a blind eye to stepped-up Israeli settlement activity and the confiscation of more Palestinian territory. Under Bush, US double standards also reached new heights, with Washington continually exempting Israel from standards of accountability that it exacts from other countries in the region.

- The US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003. These actions caused Arabs to regard US policy as an extension of British and French colonial enterprises in their countries, complete with all the attendant cruelties. The horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay remain imprinted on people’s minds as proof of the Bush administration’s flagrant abuse of human rights in the course of pursuing its imperial goals in the region. Washington’s relentless escalation of tensions with Syria and Iran heightened the sense among the Arab public that the US was determined to fulfil that vision for the “American Century” drawn up by the neoconservatives surrounding Bush.

- The Darfur crisis, towards which the US began to bring to bear the same confrontationist approach in spite of the fact that the Sudanese government had yielded to US pressure and accepted a power-sharing formula with the south.

- The deterioration of US-Arab relations in general. On the one hand this was the product of Washington’s harsh attacks on Arab governments for their human rights records or, in the case of some, for their alleged sheltering of terrorist organisations. On the other, it resulted from Washington’s frequent disregard for the opinions of Arab parties or its refusal to consult with them on the core issues of the Middle East, aggravating misgivings towards the US.

- The perception that Washington was deliberately linking Islam with terrorism also contributed to alienating Arab/Muslim opinion. Statements to the effect that Islam bred terrorism, and Bush’s purported “slips” referring to the American “crusade” in the region and to Islamic “fascists” could not have been better calculated to sew anger and hatred.

- The campaign to spread democracy is devoid of substance. This campaign exposed the cynicism of the current administration, especially when it actively opposed the arrival to power through democratic mechanisms of forces that Washington regards as inimical to its interests. A case in point was the Hamas victory in the Palestinian legislative elections in early 2006. Although these elections had been observed by international monitors and found to have been largely clean, officials in Washington issued statements to the effect that the Arab people were not ready for democracy. Increasingly it became clear to the Arab people that the democracy that the Bush administration was interested in had less to do with democratic principles and practices than producing outcomes that served US interests.

Obviously, Obama has a formidable hill to climb. Improving the US’s battered image in the Arab world will not be easy, especially in view of the fact that negative impressions in the Arab mind were not formed overnight but rather as the product of a relatively long pattern of American behaviour and policy. To alter this image, Obama will ultimately have to introduce radical changes in Washington. After all, it is impossible to separate national policy from public diplomacy. The latter cannot succeed where the former fails. The only type of public diplomacy that can succeed in the long run is one founded on sustainable policies, and policies are sustainable only if they continue to promise to fulfil mutual interests.

* The writer is a political researcher in American affairs and coordinator of Taqrir Washington website.

Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Revitalising America’s image

Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power

By Tariq Ali

Scribner, 288 pages, $29.99

Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi and Mehsud. And, of course, the Taliban and al-Qaeda. We now recite effortlessly these inventories of politics and wars, fear and survival, unknown to most of us a decade ago.

But incantation is not comprehension. The focus of our global engagements has moved from old alliances and customary enemies to a vague collection of insurgents, ideologues and borderless forces that is hard to identify and harder to understand. The first years of this violent century have underscored the fallibility of our state system, and the deep fault lines within states. Governments, armies, spies and money - diplomacy’s traditional arsenal - seem weak, unfocused and distressingly unprepared to cope with the passing of everyday global politics.

Like other moments of deep political transformation - the fall of Rome and the rise of Islam in the eighth century, the sack of Eurasia by the Mongols, the rise and fall of European colonialism and the end of Pax Americana - only retrospection illuminates change. French scholar and author (Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam) Gilles Kepel, in Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East, and British-Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker and activist Tariq Ali, in The Duet: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, set out to map this evolving terrain. Exploring the misconceptions that beset policy-makers and powerbrokers in Europe and the United States, the Middle East and South Asia, they depict fundamental and mistaken shifts in the ways that old power has met new political movements.

Beyond Terror and Martyrdom is the more ambitious of these two volumes, and Kepel’s efforts to decipher the meaning of political Islam - or more precisely, the political languages embedded in Islam - frame his treatment of today’s militants. He crisply identifies two narratives, often erroneously conflated, that are rooted in the jihadi tactics of terror and martyrdom. The first, expostulated by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden from their Pakistani mountain retreats, is triumphalist and grand, seeking to bring Islam to its “heralded victory.” The second, a narrative of global Islamic resistance outlined in the writings of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Abu Musab al-Suri, conceived a global Islamist struggle that surfaced in the Middle East and Europe.

Kepel’s detailed analysis of the conflicting tactics, strategies, justifications and goals that underscore these ideologies is among the clearest available to date. His tour of the global political landscape illuminates not only the broad contours of Islamist thinking since 2001, but also the nuanced political theologies that pit sects, tribes, jihadis and governments against one another.

The bin Laden-Zawahiri vision prompted the West’s war on terror, a failed utopian crisis that, as Kepel notes, pitted a quest for universal democracy against one for a universal Islamist state. These failed “transformative fictions,” as Kepel aptly calls them, have nonetheless dramatically altered the way the modern state system confronts challenges to its habitual writ. Zarqawi’s and Suri’s action agenda - a systematic counterpoint to the U.S.-prosecuted Iraq war that underscores the fatal weaknesses of U.S. foreign policy - has targeted Europe’s people and governments as well.

Indeed, the consequences of multiple Islamisms for Europe’s societies leads Kepel to dissect Europe’s immigration policies, its varied models of social incorporation and exclusion, and the effects of distant insurgencies on its Muslim youth. It is not simply that would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid found his religion in England, or that Islamist groups have bombed Spain’s trains, or that Kashmiri immigrants demonstrated against Salman Rushdie in Bradford, England. Europe’s policies and practices toward its own diverse populations - France’s toward Muslim dress, Denmark’s conflict between cartoonists and Muslim sensibilities, Germany’s diffidence toward its Turkish population - have become a part of a complex, global Islamist puzzle. Others, including Ian Buruma, Ruth Mandel and Riva Kastoryano, have treated this question in detail, but Kepel ties together cause and effect, and inward- and outward-looking policies, quite deftly.

This is where Kepel and Ali find common ground. Just as Kepel notes that “the war on terror embodied the same policy objectives that the United States had pursued in the Middle East since 1945,” so Ali tells a six-decade tale of failed governance in Pakistan and failed U.S. policy toward Pakistan.

There was a time when this story was encapsulated in the fractious politics of the post-partition Indian subcontinent, but no more. Ali’s reading of Pakistan’s strangely emblematic place in Islamic politics is no less telling for is familiarity. Pakistan is an exemplar of an intentional state that draws its cultural roots from Islam but its governance from an autocratic and self-defeating colonialism.

Pakistan’s history is its present. “A conflict of myriad wills sometimes results in the creation of something that nobody willed,” Ali writes. As weekly bomb blasts along its Afghan border and in Pakistan’s major cities attest, it is a state quintessentially conflicted, at once home to disaffected Islamists and a victim of the philosophies of both Zawahiri and Zarqawi.

With Pakistan caught between the rock of extremism and the hard place of ill-formed governance, Ali’s “flight path” metaphor has become real: Its relationship with the United States is rocky, militancy has overtaken portions of the state and civil society, and successive governments cannot see their way through the thicket of opportunistic, often duplicitous alliances - domestic and foreign - to notice that its interests and those of its allies are not always the same.

Worse still, Pakistan’s governments rarely have enough public support to change allies, or the conduct of their own politics. When they do - as happened during Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s brief, socialist, pro-nuclear rule in the 1970s - triumph is quickly squandered by political manipulation and downright arrogance.

The Duet has a long reach, from the beginning of the state to this year’s headlines. A breezy, occasionally repetitive read, it chronicles expectations trumped by wars, pieties trumped by politics, and the pieties of politics trumped by a world that often takes account of Pakistan only when Pakistan seems to get in the world’s way.

Ali’s Pakistan - more moderate than outsiders believe, more complicated than accounted for, and increasingly fearful of the toll poor governance will take on its future - sometimes sounds a bit like France as Kepel describes it: a place that has “failed to offer certain marginalized populations full participation in a vast culture.” Pakistan’s problem, of course, is more central to its idea of itself and to the deep failures of imagination that have kept it trapped in the crosswinds of religion and the crossfire of proxy wars. After all, just how do weak, compromised governments tell orthodox Islamists that their religion is getting in the way of a self-professed Islamic state?

Kepel’s response to such questions is to argue for a new multipolarism, a “framework of commitments” for peace and prosperity that overtakes routine enmities and alliances in Europe and the Middle East. His proposal is at once innovative and familiar, a way of extending regional interests without succumbing to the ambiguities of globalism. Mostly, however, he seeks a way to move beyond terrorism and U.S. unipolarism, all at once, and return to a world bound by politics rather than ideology.

Of course, this is easier said than done. The Duet reminds us that “politics in a land of perpetual dictatorships and corrupt politicians is undoubtedly depressing.” Should international relations ever provide this new space, Pakistan should be among its first beneficiaries.

globeandmail.com: Does anybody know how to deal with political Islam?

Sarah Barmak
Special to the Star

Debate about Muslim integration in Canada has been back in the headlines, bolstered by stories hinging on perceived conflicts between Muslim communities and Canadian society, especially when it comes to the status of women.

But according to law professor Natasha Bakht, such discussions grossly simplify the issues. The editor of Belonging and Banishment: Being Muslim in Canada, a new collection of essays by commentators such as Toronto Star columnist Haroon Siddiqui and sociology professor Carmela Murdocca, Bakht argues the problems are more complex, partly because the Muslim community is far from the unified group the media makes it out to be.

The Star’s coverage of eight Muslim women who alleged their employer discriminated against them by requiring they hike their skirts above the knee over their pants for safety reasons is just one story that has provoked heated discussion recently. So have others about the so-called “honour killing” of Toronto teen Aqsa Parvez; the debate over girls wearing the hijab during sports; and “veiled voting” legislation.

The Star spoke with Bakht about the status of women in Islam, integration in Canada, and whether there is a single Muslim identity.

The topics in your book seem particularly urgent now.

I wanted this book to portray a diversity of views. The things (contributors) have chosen to write about appear to be things that have been thrust on Muslims, like the war on terror, but other things are things you don’t hear about, like what it’s like to raise Muslim children or to be a scientist and Muslim.

The piece I wrote in the book looks at Muslim women and their attire. Look at young girls who have been forbidden from wearing hijab at sporting events. Usually this (debate) is about the imperiled Muslim woman being saved from the Muslim man, and usually the saving is being done by a civilized European. In this case, it’s about saving them from the danger of the scarf itself. What’s amazing is that it’s made despite any evidence showing that any woman has been strangled by the hijab ever. The second issue is the woman who wears the niqab. (Look at) the failed voting legislation that was proposed by the Conservative government a few months ago (banning voting with veils, alleging it would lead to voter fraud). In fact, there is no voter fraud problem in Canada, or at least not a significant one. Of course the people this affects are Muslim women … The stereotype is not that women are victims, but the aggressor; that Canadians need to be protected from this woman who is going to defraud the voting system.

(Syed Mohamed Mehdi) wrote a really lovely piece that’s full of humour. We get so bound up in outward symbols in discussions of what a Muslim is. For him, he sees Islam as a social justice movement, and the outward symbols (are not as important).

That sounds much like debates within Judaism over the years about whether you must wear certain garb to be Jewish.

You can make those kinds of parallels with what people are doing in other religions. Not every Muslim might agree with everything Mohammed says. It makes the question of “who is a Muslim?” such a difficult question to answer. Whenever a white man speaks, it’s never assumed they’re speaking for all white men.

Many reading about these stories ask if the policy of multiculturalism in Canada has gone too far. Is this fair?

Posing the question that way is highly problematic. It evokes the idea that it’s because these immigrants come from where they come from, and they brought their sexism with them.

I’m not denying the sexism in certain Muslim communities, but by emphasizing the Aqsa Parvez incident in the way the media and other Muslims have … this ignores the significant problem with sexism in Canada beyond immigrant communities. It suggests Canada has never had sexism beyond immigrant communities. Some of the most horrible crimes against women are committed by white men. We don’t see it as indicative of white culture when a white man says, “She was just nagging me.”

What this does is make Muslims feel vulnerable, feel they need to isolate themselves from the community.

This has side effects that the media doesn’t understand.

Some have raised the idea that issues with Muslims should prompt us to rewrite the Charter of Rights.

I’m afraid it’s a very shallow argument. The charter has mechanisms – what it entrenches is never absolute. There is the reasonable limits clause. Your right to practise may be limited by someone else’s rights. The limits are going to depend on the particular situation that arises before us.

I really think we should accommodate people where possible. We want to make our society as viable for as many people to live in it as possible.

TheStar.com | News | Why `who is a Muslim?’ has no easy answer

Hosting FAIR communications director Isabel Macdonald on his religion radio show State of Belief (10/25/08), Rev. Welton Gaddy raised the issue of corporate televangelist Pat Robertson’s “really significant role in aiding and abetting Islamophobia.” Macdonald pointed out how

Robertson made some of the most outrageous comments about Muslims and Islam, and in addition to his broadcast on the Christian Broadcasting Network, he also appears regularly on Fox News as a guest. And he has called Islam a “bloody, brutal type of religion,” has referred to Muslims as being linked to Satan on-air. He has made repeated extraordinarily racist and offensive remarks about Muslims.

Gaddy talked “about how these attitudes show up… when newspapers use terms like ‘Islamic terrorism’ instead of just ‘terrorism.’ Or… the use of the word ‘Islamofascism.’” Macdonald pointed out the double standard:

In the mainstream media, we hear repeated references to Muslim terrorists, whereas we don’t see references to Christian terrorists, if you have a group that says they’re taking the word of a Christian god as a rationale for bombing an abortion clinic, for instance…. I think it’s really playing out noticeably in this election in which we have this campaign to portray Obama as a Muslim, and we know it’s not true–these are false rumors. Normally, if you had a campaign that was portraying a politician as being secretly a member of a religious group, you would not expect the first reaction of the press just to be to correct that information. You would also expect them to raise questions about why this tactic was being used–and to raise the issue of bigotry and prejudice that is central in this kind of a campaign like the one we’ve seen to portray Obama as a Muslim.

Check out FAIR’s special report: Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting » Blog Archive » Campaign Media’s Religious Preferences

UN tackles pillars of intolerance

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
“Asia is the cradle of great religions that share noble values pursued by all humanity - values such as mercy, justice and peace. And yet, mankind has created so many conflicts in the name of religion … All the great religions have a role to play in building peace.”
- Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general
NEW YORK - A high-level, two-day conference on the “culture of peace” is being held this week at United Nations (UN) headquarters this week. Attended by some 70 world leaders and senior officials from dozens of nations, including US President George W Bush and Israeli President Shimon Peres, the enlightening initiative come as recent UN reports have highlighted growing levels of xenophobia, gender, ethnic and racial discrimination, and outright cultural intolerance and religious bigotry around the world.
The conference’s stated aims are to promote the world’s “common humanity” and the “innermost values of tolerance, diversity, and reciprocity”, and aims to tackle these notions from the perspective of “faith-based” as well as other “ethical, philosophical traditions”, said the head of UN’s General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto. Although he emphasized that the event is not strictly about religion, which he said “can be a very divisive subject”.
“Our world is experiencing an extremely difficult period, the worst since the founding of the United Nations,” D’Escoto said in his opening remarks. “It is a time of numerous bankruptcies, but the worst is the moral bankruptcy of humankind’s self-proclaimed ‘more advanced societies’, which has spread throughout the world.”
The fact that the “faith-based” conference is an initiative of Saudi Arabia, which forbids the public practice of other religious faiths, and which is regularly accused of systematic discrimination against women and religious minorities, has fueled controversy at the UN. The recent news that Riyadh has been brokering dialogue between the Taliban and Afghan government has also not helped, given the Taliban’s appalling record of human-rights violations against women and ethnic and religious minorities.
It is also unclear whether the conference will become less of an opportunity to promote global peace than a chance for various governments, including Israel, to expound political propaganda. This especially in light of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s severe statement last week “deploring the plight of Palestinians in Gaza”. Perhaps after attending this conference, Peres will be more amenable to lifting some of the restrictions in Gaza which cause daily suffering to many of its population of 1.5 million.
As in the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict today, which has lost a lot of its initial secular underpinnings and has increasingly been seen in a Jewish versus Islamist fundamentalism context, most divisions in the world today are increasingly not caused by religion or culture, but are more based on economics and politics. As a pivotal issue in the contemporary, post 9/11 debates on Islam and “Islamic terrorism”, the plight of Palestine epitomizes divisions in the Middle East, which has long been a bastion of anti-Americanism due to the widespread perception that the US government has followed unbalanced, pro-Israel policies.
The outgoing Bush, who was due to address the conference on Thursday, may be the wrong US leader to speak there, given his legacy of unilateralism, interventionism and benign neglect of Israeli expansionism - not to mention his administration’s past lapses into incendiary rhetoric against “Islamofascism”.
The term, which equates Islamism with the European fascist movements of the early 20th century, has often used by pro-Israel pundits in the US, such as Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes, when they attempt to promote a culture of intolerance vis-a-vis Muslim-tolerant multiculturalism in the West.
The times are changing, and president-elect Barack Obama’s election as the 44th president of the United States may be the harbinger of a more prudent US foreign policy that, in turn, could conceivably translate into a fading of anti-Americanism - not just in the Middle East, but also in Latin America and elsewhere. But for Obama to cause a sea-change in the world’s view of America, he must persuade it that Washington’s passage to a new post-hegemonic mindset is real and tangible, as opposed to merely cosmetic.
This depends on multiple factors, such as whether the US will be prepared to accept a substantial dose of multilateralism without fearing the loss of its “pre-eminence” in world affairs, and whether or not it will adopt a more balanced approach to the Israel-Arab conflict. It must also push more vigorously for a viable Middle East peace conference, depart from its traditional addiction to hard power - particularly when dealing with adversaries that have challenged US hegemony - and use more soft power diplomacy.
As president, Obama could move quickly to overcome the post 9/11 “West versus Islam” culture of suspicion, by openly refuting the dangerous discourse of “clashing civilizations” that is tantamount to a defamation of Eastern religions. He could also embrace the UN initiative of “Alliance Among Civilizations”, which has been created to promote “cross-cultural tolerance” as one of the “pillars of the world today”, to paraphrase Ban’s recent praise for this initiative. [1]
Certainly, Obama is well pre-disposed to join the UN-led fight against the scourge of racism - that is alarmingly on the rise per the latest reports by UN officials.
The UN’s special rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Discrimination and Xenophobia, in November pointed out a connection between racism, poverty and rising discrimination against refugees, asylum-seekers and internally-displaced ethnic minorities. Another recent UN report cites the threat of rising neo-Nazism in Europe and Russia.
As for gender- and religion-based discrimination, a new UN report by the special rapporteur on the freedom of religion paints a particularly gloomy picture, especially of negative developments in the Indian sub-continent. Religious minorities there are increasingly finding themselves subject to acts of bigotry, intimidation and violent attacks - often with the tacit assent of government officials, said the UN.
This escalation of “incitement to racial and religious hatred” is not exclusive to India of course, but rather represents a global trend that will likely worsen as the global economic recession hits the developed and the developing nations.
A successful war on poverty is an important precondition of winning the war on intolerance and discrimination, and this was reflected in a new UN survey that found two-thirds of Latin American youth feel they are discriminated against because they are poor. Another prerequisite to victory in the war against intolerance is the cultivation of a UN cosmopolitan culture of peace, a UN-based “identitarian” movement which promotes humanist values enshrined in the UN charter. [2]
The importance of events such as the UN conference, and other similar efforts, like the recent interfaith summit in Istanbul that led to the creation of a new Global Interfaith Network devoted to combating religious intolerance, poverty, AIDS, etc are raising the prominent role that religious groups can play in global affairs.
Another important prerequisite, at least on the part of the world’s Muslims, is to deepen their current peace-related efforts and to do a better job in disseminating Islam’s message of peace, a message that has been much buried under piles of Western Islamophobia recently.
But, in conclusion, perhaps the real protean value of the Saudi initiative is to highlight the rich sources of a culture of peace in the essential teachings of Islam, including the holy Koran: “If they resort to peace, so shall you.”

Notes
1. For more on the Alliance of Civilizations, see Afrasiabi’s interview with the former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami: UN Chronicle.
2. See Afrasiabi, Listening, Inclusiveness, Tolerance, Reciprocity: Dialogue Among Civilizations, UN Chronicle.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran’s Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry, click here. His latest book, Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) is now available.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

An estimated 12,000 volunteers performed good deeds on Sunday on the first nationwide Mitzvah Day. Across the country, synagogues, youth organisations and other groups were involved in 250 charitable projects, helping Jews and non-Jews alike.

Gift wrapping presents at London Jewish Cultural Centre for young patients in Whittington Hospital

Shadow Charities Minister Nick Hurd visited Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue to support the 200 people giving blood in a joint initiative with Northwood United shul.

In total, 450 Northwood Liberal members were involved in the day, prompting Rabbi Hillel Athias-Robles to declare that “in these credit crunch times, it’s good to know we can all still do our bit for charity by giving not cash but a little time”.

Children from the NPLS religion school provided entertainment for the congregation’s senior members as well as working on promotional material for Fairtrade. Other youngsters got together with the confirmation class of a Catholic church to collect over 10 trolley-loads of goods from Waitrose shoppers for donation to the Northwood Live at Home charity.

Another interfaith collaboration was the redecoration of Homeless Action Barnet’s drop-in centre by young volunteers from Finchley Reform, Edgware Reform and Alyth with paint supplied by the local parish church. Finchley Reform teens worked in the Oxfam shop in Finchley Central and other congregants cleared and spruced up Victoria Park.

In Muswell Hill, volunteers covered the age scale from two-year-old Aaron Taylor to octogenarian Stella Sandzer as they engaged in activities including a tea party for residents of Rosetree care home, packing donated items for World Jewish Relief, making and delivering sandwiches to a local soup kitchen and tidying up the Dursford recreation ground. In addition, 36 gift boxes were filled with seasonal presents for Barnardo’s teenagers and 40 boxes crammed with items donated by Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury shoppers for people in need.

Muslims and Jews cooked up an appetising menu at Westminster Synagogue with the dishes prepared by the culinary team served to an audience of over 150 at an evening featuring musicians and comedians from both religions. Ayesha Hazarika and Josh Howie were the comic turns.

The London Jewish Cultural Centre project to collect gifts for child patients at Whittington Hospital was so well supported that a trolley had to be commandeered from the hospital’s post room to take the gifts up to the wards.

Immanuel College in Bushey launched its social action projects for the year at a special assembly for Mitzvah Day. Pupils were urged to bring in food for the needy or to visit a Jewish Care home. Camp Simcha’s Ariella Lew asked for help in fulfilling the charity’s motto - “Today’s treat helps you get through tomorrow’s treatment” - by purchasing toys for children in hospital at Chanucah. As a longer-term project, Immanuel’s star sandwich-maker, Mossy Wittenberg, announced that each form in turn would prepare sandwich lunches for the local homeless over the academic year.

One hundred adults and 120 children from Wimbledon and District Synagogue visited the elderly in hospital, cooked soup for the Merton homeless drop-in centre, worked in the Mortlake community garden and packed toiletries and school materials for the Separated Child Foundation. Local co-ordinator Marian Conn is already talking about a more ambitious programme next year.

The Separated Child Foundation - helping young refugees who come to the UK on their own - was additionally the focus of Belsize Square religion school. Pupils brought in essentials for welcome packs for the refugee children.

At a Neasden warehouse, 400 volunteers filled 382 boxes with humanitarian aid for World Jewish Relief clients across Eastern Europe. The volunteers, aged from five to 85, sorted thousands of new and nearly new goods donated by individuals, manufacturers and wholesalers.

The charity estimates that the items packed will benefit more than 8,000 people.

Mitzvah Day activities were part of a social action weekend by LJY-Netzer members, organised by 16-year-olds inspired by their experiences on the movement’s recent Israel tour. The weekend was based at Southgate Progressive Synagogue and its highlight was a charity ball in aid of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality.

The Gift charity arranged for over 20 shops around London to collect food for Jewish Women’s Aid and families in need. More than 100 young volunteers distributed the provisions.

London Mayor Boris Johnson complimented all who had given their time in the capital on “a fantastic job”.

In a message of support, Tony Blair noted that “working together for the common good is a core principle of my Faith Foundation’s approach to interfaith relations and Mitzvah Day volunteers are setting an example.”

Mitzvah Day chair Laura Marks said the response had way exceeded expectations. “It clearly shows that even though times may be tough, there is still huge appetite for charitable works.”

Volunteers out to help the less fortunate | TheJC.com – The Jewish Community Online

Jacko Wacko is at it again. The King of pop manages to make waves in the media for his bizarre lifestyle. This time Michael Jackson has reportedly converted to Islam.
Michael Jackson is now ‘Mikaeel’, name of one of the angels of Allah. The 50-year old legend wore the traditional Islamic attire as he pledged his allegiance to the Koran at a friend’s home in Los Angeles. He rejected the name ‘Mustafa’, which means “the chosen one,” the source added.
The Pop star, who was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, showed interest in Islam after discussing the religion with a music producer and songwriter on his new album - both of whom were converts to Islam, says reports. “They began talking to him about their beliefs, and how they thought they had become better people after they converted. Michael soon began warming to the idea,” a source said. “An Imam was summoned from the mosque and Michael went through the shahada, which is the Muslim declaration of belief. Jacko rejected an alternative name, Mustafa meaning “the chosen one,” the source added.

Michael Jackson is now ‘Mikaeel’, name of one of the angels of Allah.

He was joined for celebration by British singer Yousef Islam, 60, who was called Cat Stevens until he famously converted. However, Jacko is currently faced with charges against him by Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, second son of the King of Bahrain. Reportedly Sheikh Abdulla had lend 7 million dollars to the singer after he faced the child molestation trial.
Wacko Jacko believed it was a ‘gift’ to him, while Abdullah claims Jackson had promised to return the money back.

Michael Jackson Muslim Convert | Islamic Belief | Child Molestation Trial | Mikaeel

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:47AM GMT 22 Nov 2008

Nicky Reilly: White Muslim convert Photo: PA

Nicky Reilly, 22, who called himself Mohamad Abdulaziz Rashid Saeed-Alim after two of the September 11 hijackers, walked into the Giraffe restaurant in the Princesshay shopping centre in Exeter and tried to set off his homemade nail bombs.

Reilly, who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome and had been groomed over the internet by Islamic extremists, could not open the door of the toilet cubicle where he assembled them and they blew up in his face.

The Old Bailey heard police found a suicide note in a folder at his mother’s flat in Plymouth where he lived complaining about sex and drunknenness in British society and the suffering of Muslims around the world.

The note, printed in red type, said “Why I did it. Everywhere Muslims are suffering at the hands of Britain, Israel and America. You have imprisoned over 1,000 Muslims in Britain alone in your war on Islam.”

He added: “In Britain it is ok for a girl to have sex without marriage and if she gets pregnant she can get an abortion so easily. When you are getting drunk on Friday and Saturday night your behaviour is worse than animals.

“You have sex in nightclub toilets and you urinate in shop doorways. You shout your foul and disgusting mouth off in the street. It is unacceptable to Allah and the true religion Islam.”

Mentioning Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay he said Britain, the US and Israel had “no real rules.”

Reilly added: “Sheikh Usama [Bin Laden] has told you the solution on how to end this war between us and many others have as well but you ignore us.

“Our words are dead until we give them life with out blood.”

He went on: “I have not been brainwashed or indoctrinated. I am not insane. I am not doing this to escape a life of problems or hardships. I’m doing what God wants from his Mujahideen.”

Prosecutor Stuart Baker said Reilly had become interested in Islam in 2002 and had wanted to be a terrorist since 2003.

Using an Islamic chat room, Reilly spoke to a man in Pakistan in June 2007 who said he was “with the mujahideen,” had visited Afghanistan and would introduce him to his ‘boss.’

Reilly started researching bomb-making in January 2008, searching the internet for ‘How to make bombs’ and ‘bomb ingredients’ and saving links on the video sharing website Youtube to 49 videos of the September 11 attacks, five of bomb making, seven of the Iraq war and nine of the war in Afghanistan.

On April 11 this year, Reilly was asked when he would start his mission.

“He was then told in detail how to use the device and how to set off the advice,” said Mr Baker.

Reilly talked of targeting the police or an army officer and researched the Devonport Dockyard and Charles Cross police station in Plymouth.

He talked of attacking a bus and was asked if there was a market in his city by the contact who told him: “so blast there.”

Reilly signed off his last chat on Yahoo Messenger on May 21 by telling his contact “I want to die quick. I’m feeling happy” and finally: “I love you too.”

The next day he loaded a rucksack with three caustic soda bombs and three bottles of paraffin containing nails, together with prayer books and the Koran.

Reilly then walked into Plymouth and had coffee with his mother and her friend before heading to the bus station.

After the devices blew up in his face, he told paramedics: ‘I did it and I’m not sorry. It’s you, the system. It needs teaching a lesson.”

The hearing was adjourned for further medical reports and Reilly will be sentenced on January 30.

White Muslim convert who bombed restaurant blamed Britain’s ‘war on Islam’ - Telegraph