ISLAM IN EUROPE

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In Sunday’s decisive runoff election, they have a distasteful choice between Macron and Le Pen. They won’t necessarily back Macron.


The Mosque of Bondy, in the Seine-Saint-Denis region outside of Paris, where Muslim anger toward President Emmanuel Macron and challenger Marine Le Pen runs strong.Credit...James Hill for The New York Times

BONDY, France — Abdelkrim Bouadla voted enthusiastically for Emmanuel Macron five years ago, drawn by his youth and his message of transforming France. But after a presidency that he believes harmed French Muslims like himself, Mr. Bouadla, a community leader who has long worked with troubled young people, was torn.

He likened the choice confronting him in France’s presidential runoff on Sunday — featuring Mr. Macron and Marine Le Pen, whose far-right party has a long history of anti-Muslim positions, racism and xenophobia — as “breaking your ribs or breaking your legs.’’

Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen are now fighting over the 7.7 million voters who backed Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist leader who earned a strong third-place finish in the first round of the election. Were they to break strongly for one of the candidates, it could prove decisive.

Nearly 70 percent of Muslims voted for Mr. Mélenchon, the only major candidate to have consistently condemned discrimination against Muslims, according to the polling firm, Ifop.

By contrast, Mr. Macron garnered only 14 percent of Muslim voters’ support this year, compared to 24 percent in 2017. Ms. Le Pen got 7 percent in the first round this year. Nationwide, according to Ifop, the turnout of Muslim voters was a couple of percentage points higher than the average.

As the two candidates battle it out in the closing days of a tight race, Mr. Macron’s prospects may rest partly on whether he can persuade Muslim voters like Mr. Bouadla that he is their best option — and that staying home risks installing a chilling new anti-Muslim leadership.

In Mr. Bouadla’s telling, however, that will take some doing.

“If I vote for Macron, I’d be participating in all the bad things he’s done against Muslims,’’ Mr. Bouadla, 50, said over the course of a long walk in Bondy, a city just northeast of Paris. He vacillated between abstaining for the first time in his life or reluctantly casting a ballot for Mr. Macron simply to fend off someone he considered “worse and more dangerous.’’

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/worl ... iversified

[kmaherali]

The king, who once studied Arabic to better understand the Quran, has long spoken about Islamic history and theology


King Charles III, pictured on 19 November 2021, next to the 'mahmal', the palanquin formerly used to transport the 'kiswah', the cover that engulfs the Kaaba, during a visit to Egypt's Alexandria (AFP)

In 1996, the grand mufti of Cyprus, shockingly, accused Charles III - the new British king - of secretly being a Muslim.

"Did you know that Prince Charles has converted to Islam. Yes, yes. He is a Muslim. I can't say more. But it happened in Turkey. Oh, yes, he converted all right,” the late Nazim Al-Haqqani said.

“When you get home check on how often he travels to Turkey. You'll find that your future king is a Muslim.”

Buckingham Palace simply replied: “Nonsense.”

Charles, who became the new monarch last week following the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II, aged 96, is not a secret Muslim - but his admiration and knowledge of the Islamic faith is well documented.

The 73-year-old, who is now the head of the Church of England, has made several speeches whilst king-in-waiting on theological and historical subjects related to Muslims and Islam.

He even once revealed that he had been learning Arabic in order to understand the Quran better - a fact praised by Cambridge Central Mosque’s imam last week during a sermon.

Middle East Eye takes a look at some of Charles III’s most significant references to Islam over the decades.

The environment and natural world

Charles has long advocated on environmental issues and climate change, occasionally invoking Islamic theology on the subject.

In a 1996 speech entitled "A Sense of the Sacred: Building Bridges Between Islam and the West", he suggested that an appreciation of Islamic views on natural order would “help us in the West to rethink, and for the better, our practical stewardship of man and his environment”.

Charles elaborated on those views in a 2010 speech at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, which he has been a patron of since 1993.

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Charles III: How the new king became the most pro-Islam monarch in British history

Read More » https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/k ... sh-history

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“From what I know of [Islam’s] core teachings and commentaries, the important principle we must keep in mind is that there are limits to the abundance of nature,” he said.

“These are not arbitrary limits, they are the limits imposed by God and, as such, if my understanding of the Quran is correct, Muslims are commanded not to transgress them.”

He later describes Islam as possessing “one of the greatest treasuries of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge available to humanity” - a tradition he said was obscured by a drive towards “western materialism”.

“The inconvenient truth is that we share this planet with the rest of creation for a very good reason - and that is, we cannot exist on our own without the intricately balanced web of life around us.

"Islam has always taught this and to ignore that lesson is to default on our contract with Creation.”

He went on to mention examples of Islamic urban planning through the centuries, including irrigation systems in Spain 1,200 years ago, as examples of how “prophetic teachings” maintained long-term resource planning in favour of “short-term economics”.

Indeed, Charles III’s garden in his Gloucestershire home is inspired by Islamic traditions and plants mentioned in the Quran.


Danish cartoons and Satanic Verses

In 2006, during a visit to Al-Azhar University in Egypt’s Cairo, King Charles criticised the publication of Danish cartoons a year earlier which mocked the Prophet Muhammad.

“The true mark of a civilised society is the respect it pays to minorities and to strangers,” he said. “The recent ghastly strife and anger over the Danish cartoons shows the danger that comes of our failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others.”

It wasn’t the first time the former prince reportedly contributed to a debate on Islam and freedom of speech in the West.

In 2014, author Martin Amis told Vanity Fair that he had argued with Charles over his apparent refusal to support Salman Rushdie after a fatwa was issued against him following the publication of The Satanic Verses.

Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against Rushdie, whose 1989 novel was accused of insulting Islam.

Amis claimed that Charles told him that he would not offer support “if someone insults someone else’s deepest convictions”.

Following the publication of the book, Rushdie’s Norwegian publisher was shot, his Italian translator was stabbed and his Japanese editor was murdered.

Rushdie himself was severely injured last month after being repeatedly stabbed at a public appearance in New York.


Islam and the West

Charles has spoken of the need for those in the West to better understand Islam, particularly during a much-cited October 1993 speech.

“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilisation owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure which stems, I think, from the straitjacket of history which we have inherited,” he said at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies almost three decades ago.

He said that Islam had “preserved a metaphysical and unified view of ourselves and the world around us”, which the West had lost following the scientific revolution.

He also called on people to resist the temptation to associate extremism with Islam.

“We must not be tempted to believe that extremism is in some way the hallmark and essence of the Muslim. Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity,” he said.

“The vast majority of Muslims, though personally pious, are moderate in their politics. Theirs is the 'religion of the middle way'. The Prophet himself always disliked and feared extremism.”

Islamic finance

In a 2013 speech to the World Islamic Economic Forum in London, Charles III displayed detailed knowledge of Islamic finance, and the benefits he believed it could bring to global financial markets.

“It is surely a good idea to explore how the spirit inherent in the ‘moral economy’ of Islam could enable a just and ethical approach towards the management of systemic risk in economics, in business and finance,” he said.

'It is surely a good idea to explore how the spirit inherent in the "moral economy" of Islam could enable a just and ethical approach towards the management of systemic risk in economics, in business and finance'

- King Charles III

“The way risk-sharing, implicit in musharaka, works, for example, with lenders sharing the borrower’s risk, and the notion of mudharabah, the sharing of profit.

"This is very different from the way that conventional finance transfers the risk quickly and frequently onto someone else with profit going just one way.”

He went on to use the Islamic concept of riba (usury) to make a comment on the equitability of natural resource consumption.

“I suspect that if the strict injunction of the Quran against riba were to be applied to the economic system that prevails at the moment, then the debt we have effectively incurred for future generations by the depletion of the Earth’s natural capital would surely be found to be usurious and profoundly unacceptable,” he said.

“This is why financial and business organisations that keep to the principles embedded within Islam could be helpful in forging a more ethical approach that leads to equitable outcomes.”

Muslim influence on the world

Charles III has frequently remarked on the contribution of Muslims to science, art and academia.

"We need to remember that we in the West are in debt to the scholars of Islam, for it was thanks to them that during the Dark Ages in Europe the treasures of classical learning were kept alive," he said at Al-Azhar University in 2006.

Three years earlier, at the Markfield Institute for Higher Education in Leicestershire, he commented on Islam’s contribution to mathematics.

“Anyone who doubts the contribution of Islam and Muslims to the European Renaissance should, as an exercise, try to do some simple arithmetic using Roman numerals.

"Thank goodness for Arabic numerals and the concept of zero introduced into European thought by Muslim mathematicians!"

In his famous 1993 speech, he spoke of women’s rights advances in Muslim countries preceding that of some in the West.

“Islamic countries like Turkey, Egypt and Syria gave women the vote as early as Europe did its women and much earlier than in Switzerland! In those countries women have long enjoyed equal pay, and the opportunity to play a full working role in their societies.”

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/king ... am-muslims

[kmaherali]

For many in the crowd, including hundreds who could not fit in the mosque to mourn the teenager killed by a police officer, his story felt familiar.



PARIS — For two hours, in a mood of anguish and anger, hundreds of members of the large French Muslim community lined up outside the Ibn Badis mosque in Nanterre to mourn a teenager, one of their own, fatally shot by a police officer at a traffic stop.

The shooting of Nahel M. took place on Tuesday, followed by four nights of violent rioting in major French cities, and nothing suggested any return to calm as the young man’s funeral unfolded. His uncle, flanked by friends and security agents employed by the mosque, yelled abuse at anyone trying to film the proceedings. There were scuffles.

The police were nowhere to be seen, after 45,000 officers had been deployed overnight to confront the tide of rage provoked by a shooting at close range not far from the mosque that was caught on video. It would have been a dangerous provocation for any uniformed French police officer to appear.

For Ahmed Djamai, 58, it was a familiar story. The police lied, he said, alluding to initial news media reports that the young man had plowed into officers. They would have gotten away with it, he said, but for the appearance of the apparently incriminating video that went viral. “The government always protects the police, a state within the state,” he said.

Tension is so high that President Emmanuel Macron announced that he would postpone a state visit to Germany that was to have begun Sunday. More than 1,300 people were arrested during a fourth night of turmoil, violence and looting on Friday.

When the mosque, a modern building with unhappy palm and olive trees in front of it, was full, about 200 men left outside formed rows on the Avenue Georges Clemenceau, laid their hats and motorbike helmets and bags and mats in front of them, and prostrated themselves. They rose to their feet and dropped to their knees as the sound of prayer rose from the mosque.

Image
A shell of a burned car in the middle of a street, with several police officers on the sidewalk behind it.

Police officers in Nanterre on Saturday. They were conspicuous by their absence around the mosque where the funeral for Nahel M. was held.Credit...Yves Herman/Reuters

It was a vivid image of religious devotion and a reminder of the powerful presence of Islam in France, a presence that a secular and universalist democracy that prides itself on making no distinction between its citizens on the basis of religion or ethnicity has had great difficulty accommodating. The poisonous legacy of the eight-year Algerian war of independence that ended in 1962 has never been overcome.

Engraved on a school behind the long line of Muslim men who waited was the Enlightenment motto adopted by the revolutionary French Republic: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

There was consensus in the crowd: If Nahel M., a French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent, had been white rather than an Arab, he would not have been killed.

There was anger at all-too-frequent slurs. “My name is Usamah,” said one young man, “so of course my high school teacher would joke that I was bin Laden. She thought it was funny.”

There was resignation. To be Arab or Black, even with a French passport, was often to be made to feel second-class.

“When an Arab dies at the hands of the police without a video, that’s the end of the story,” said Taha Bouhafs, an activist who has been working with Nahel’s family to bring attention to the shooting. He said he is in contact with labor unions and human rights organizations in the hope of organizing a general strike against racism and police violence later this month.

Fatma Aouadi, a digital marketer of Tunisian descent, aged 26, stood outside the mosque for hours. Why? “Because Nahel was young,” she said. “Because he was an Arab. Because I live here. Because I work here.”

She said that she had not been able to stop herself thinking about something similar happening to her, and finding herself without family — her parents are in Tunisia — and at a loss. Her mother had just called with warnings to stay home and be careful. “They are afraid,” she said.

Bouquets of floweres lined up on a roadside.

Flowers were left close to where Nahel M. was shot by a police officer.Credit...Abdulmonam Eassa/Getty Images

All this is a very old story in France: a story of failed integration; of the shortcomings of a social model that worked well for a long time but has been unable to resolve the problems of lost hope and poor schools in the suburban areas where many immigrants live; of the tensions flaring into hatred between young Muslims and the police; of government promises to restore social cohesion that are never fulfilled.

The Algerian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it had learned “with shock and consternation of the brutal and tragic death of the young Nahel and the particularly troubling and worrying circumstances in which this happened.”

Recent French government statements, after an initial expression of outrage at the shooting, have focused on the subsequent rioting, which Mr. Macron described on Friday as having “no legitimacy whatsoever.” More than 300 police officers have been injured, a handful of them seriously.

The mutual incomprehension and tensions between the French state, and the many citizens who are convinced the protests have a legitimacy founded in a pattern of police violence against minorities, was palpable in Nanterre.

“Nahel helped me carry my shopping upstairs, and I would give him some change,” said Thérèse Lorto, a nurse. “He delivered pizzas. He did some stupid adolescent stuff. But the police, they are full of hatred. It is far too easy to kill and get away with it.”

After the service, men carried a white coffin out of the mosque and placed it on a vehicle. A long procession formed behind it of cars, motorbikes and people walking. A young man wearing a “Justice for Nahel” shirt rode a motorbike on one wheel as the crowd moved toward the Mont Valérien cemetery, which only the men were allowed to enter.

Women sat outside. “It’s terrible,” said one. “Only God should give and take away lives.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

The demonstrators, responding to a protest in Stockholm last month and ahead of one on Thursday, set fire to parts of the building.

VIDEO at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/worl ... 778d3e6de3

The demonstrators, angry over Quran burnings in Sweden, protested throughout the night, setting part of the embassy on fire.

Hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad early Thursday and set fire to parts of it ahead of a demonstration outside the Iraqi Embassy in Sweden, where recent Quran burnings have inflamed anger in the Muslim world.

The unrest was the latest ripple from a protest in Stockholm late last month where Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee, tore up and burned the Islamic holy book outside the central mosque on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, horrifying Muslims around the world. At the latest demonstration in Sweden on Thursday, Mr. Momika and another protester kicked around copies of the Quran and stomped on a replica of the Iraqi flag.

In response, Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, expelled the Swedish ambassador and directed Iraq’s chargé d’affaires to withdraw from the Iraqi embassy in Sweden, a government spokesman said.

The severing of diplomatic relations came “in response to the repeated permission of the Swedish government to burn the Noble Qur’an, insult Islamic sanctities and burn the Iraqi flag,” Mr. al-Sudani said in a tweet. The Iraqi government also suspended the operating license in the country of the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson.

Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, said in a statement that the country’s embassy in Baghdad had been vandalized and partially burned in the attack at about 2 a.m. local time. Footage shared on social media showed part of the embassy in flames and people with pieces of the building in their hands.

The Iraqi police fired water cannons to disperse the protesters, according to images shared on social media and news reports, and at least 15 protesters were arrested, an Iraqi security official said. A journalism monitoring group said that three photojournalists were also arrested while they were covering the protest and demanded their release.

After the protest, the embassy was closed and all staff members were safe in their residences, an Iraqi foreign ministry official said, adding that no one had been at the embassy at the time of the protest. Mr. Billström confirmed that all staff members were safe. Staff members at the Finnish Embassy, which is nearby, were also evacuated and were safe, according to the Finnish news agency STT.

The Swedish government planned to summon Iraq’s chargé d’affaires in Stockholm to express dismay.

“What has happened is completely unacceptable and the government strongly condemns these attacks,” Mr. Billström said. He said Iraqi authorities had an “unequivocal responsibility” to protect diplomatic staff and had “seriously failed in this responsibility.”

Iraq’s foreign ministry condemned the embassy attack in a statement on Twitter and said the government had instructed the security authorities to conduct an urgent investigation to identify the perpetrators and hold them legally accountable.

Sweden in recent years has struggled with whether to allow protests involving the burning of the Quran, which have heightened diplomatic tensions during its bid to join NATO. Sweden’s foreign ministry called last month’s burning Islamophobic and said it disagreed with it, while officials warned that Quran burnings could affect national security and foreign policy.

While the Swedish authorities have denied several permits for anti-Quran protests before, citing disruptions to public order, courts have overruled those refusals, saying they did not have enough grounds to stop the actions. The Swedish police have said they had charged Mr. Momika with agitation against an ethnic or national group.

With a small crowd of onlookers watching on Thursday, Mr. Momika denounced his critics through a megaphone, telling them to “learn Swedish law” before they spoke against his authorized rally.

“The Muslim countries gathered because some paper was burned. But they never assembled when people were burned there and non-Muslims were killed or forced to emigrate,” he said, adding that he disagreed with Islam’s teachings. “I am not fighting anyone. I am fighting an idea with all means legally available.”

ImageIraqi security forces trying to disperse protesters outside a section of the Swedish Embassy under construction.

Iraqi riot police officers tried to disperse protesters outside the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, hours after the building was set ablaze.Credit...Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In Stockholm in January, Rasmus Paludan, a dual Danish-Swedish national, led a protest in which he set fire to the holy book, angering Turkish officials. Turkey, which had for a time blocked Sweden’s bid to NATO amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, had expressed displeasure at the desecration of the Quran.

Turkey has apparently cleared the way for Sweden to join NATO, though President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the country’s Parliament would make the final decision, and Sweden needed to take more steps to win Turkish support.

The protest overnight in Baghdad was staged at the urging of Muqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shiite cleric who called for the Iraqi government to break off diplomatic relations with Sweden. He said that the Scandinavian country was “hostile” to Islam.

As part of his protest in Stockholm on Thursday, Mr. Momika also rubbed a photo of Mr. al-Sadr on his feet.

In a statement released on Mr. al-Sadr’s Twitter account, the cleric said Sweden was flouting diplomatic and political norms by allowing the burning of the Quran and the Iraqi flag. If the flag were burned, he wrote, the Iraqi government “should not be content with denunciation, for that indicates weakness and submissiveness.”

Image
Two people in dark clothing stand in the foreground as smoke billows from a fire. More people can be dimly seen in the background.

Supporters of the influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr protesting outside the embassy last month. Credit...Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ali Jaafar Ghailan, a 40-year-old resident of Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, was one of the protesters at the embassy.

“Sweden has allowed the burning of Quran, so we will burn all their interests in Iraq if they repeat their act,” he said. “We, the followers of the Sadrist movement, are determined to put an end to this farce.”

A host of other Muslim countries also condemned last month’s burning of the Quran in Sweden.

Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, said on Twitter earlier this month that while the country had appointed a new ambassador to Sweden, it would refrain sending him in protest over the Quran burning. Morocco summoned Sweden’s representative in its capital, Rabat, and recalled its ambassador in Sweden, according to its state news agency.

Egypt called the burning of the Quran “a disgraceful act,” and Saudi Arabia said that such “hateful and repeated acts cannot be accepted with any justification.” Malaysia’s foreign minister said the desecration of the holy book during an important holiday was “offensive to Muslims worldwide.”

Falih Hassan and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzC5u9AQHKE

Do you know The London Trocadero? Back in the day it was a palace of arcade games, cinemas and fast food: a teenager’s heaven. The entertainment center closed down in 2014 and London was worse for it, but the building will live to see another day.

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[kmaherali]

When the French education minister declared that the abayas favored by some Muslim women “can no longer be worn in schools,” he stoked a fierce debate over the country’s secular ideals.


A person in northern France wearing an abaya, which Gabriel Attal, the French education minister, declared in late August “can no longer be worn in schools.”Credit...Denis Charlet/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The mass French return to work, known as the “rentrée,” is often marked by renewed social conflict. This year has been no exception as the summer lull has given way to yet another battle over a recurrent national obsession: How Muslim women should dress.

Late last month, with France still in vacation mode, Gabriel Attal, 34, the newly appointed education minister and a favorite of President Emmanuel Macron, declared that “the abaya can no longer be worn in schools.”

His abrupt order, which applies to public middle and high schools, banished the loosefitting full-length robe worn by some Muslim students and ignited another storm over French identity.

The government believes the role of education is to dissolve ethnic or religious identity in a shared commitment to the rights and responsibilities of French citizenship and so, as Mr. Attal put it, “you should not be able to distinguish or identify the students’ religion by looking at them.”

Since then, organizations representing the country’s large Muslim minority of about five million people have protested; some young women have taken to wearing kimonos or other long garments to school to illustrate their view that the ban is arbitrary; and a fierce debate has erupted over whether Mr. Attal’s August surprise, just before students went back to their classrooms, was a vote-seeking provocation or a necessary defense of the secularism that is France’s ideological foundation.

“Attal wanted to look tough, and draw the political benefits, but this was cheap courage,” said Nicolas Cadène, the co-founder of an organization that monitors laïcité in France, which is broadly the idea of a nondiscriminatory society where the state upholds strict religious neutrality. “Real courage would be to tackle the lack of social mingling in our schools, leading to segregated development and separate ethnic and religious identification.”

France banned “ostentatious” religious symbols in middle and high schools almost two decades ago. This, like the Second Amendment in the United States, left much room for interpretation.

The issue has been whether the 2004 law took aim equally at Muslim head scarves, Catholic crosses and Jewish kipas, for example, or was in effect a means to target an Islam viewed as increasingly threatening. The abaya, a garment that generally reflects Muslim religious affiliation but may merely amount to the choice of modest attire, had inhabited a gray area until Mr. Attal’s pronouncement.

In practice, “ostentatious,” as interpreted by school officials, has tended to mean Muslim. France’s concern over the fracturing of its secular model, fueled by a series of devastating attacks by Islamist terrorists, has focused on the perceived danger that Muslims will shun purportedly universal “Frenchness” in favor of their religious identity, and fanaticism in its name.

The niqab, the veil, the burkini, the abaya and even the head scarves worn by Muslim women accompanying children on school trips have all been pored over in France to a degree unusual in Europe — and much more so in the United States, which posits freedom of religion in contrast to French freedom from religion.

Image
Mr. Attal, wearing a dark gray suit, a black tie and a white shirt, standing in a doorway.

Mr. Attal arriving at a news conference this month. The political ramifications of his order banning the abaya remain to be seen. Credit...Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Over recent years, laïcité, set out in a 1905 law that removed the Roman Catholic Church from public life, has hardened from a broadly accepted and little debated model that permitted freedom of conscience into a rigid and contested dogma. It has been passionately embraced on the right, and supported by a wide spectrum of society, as the French defense against everything from Islamist fundamentalism to American multiculturalism.

“This should have been done in 2004, and would have been if we did not have gutless leaders,” Marine Le Pen, the far-right, anti-immigration leader, said of Mr. Attal’s announcement. “As General MacArthur observed, lost battles can be summed up in two words: too late.”

The question is: too late for what? To ban the abaya from schools, as Mr. Attal now demands? Or to stop the spread of inferior, understaffed schools in ghettoized, drug-plagued neighborhoods on the outskirts of big cities, where the opportunities for children of Muslim immigrants are diminished and the possibility of radicalization increased?

Here is where France splits — not down the middle, because Mr. Attal’s ban has an approval level of over 80 percent, according to polls, but in critical ways for the country’s future sense of itself.

Where some still see laïcité as the core of a supposedly colorblind nation of equal opportunity, others see a form of hypocrisy that masks how far from unprejudiced France has become, as illustrated by those troubled suburbs with large Muslim populations.

Hence the explosiveness just beneath the surface of French life.

Fury still lingers over the beheading by an Islamist extremist of Samuel Paty, a teacher who in 2020 showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class to illustrate how free speech works in a secular France.

At the same time, the nights of violent rioting in June this year that followed a police officer’s shooting of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, demonstrated the pent-up rage stirred by the feeling that to be Muslim in France is to be at greater risk.

“The French government that invokes the laws of 1905 and 2004 to ‘protect the values of the Republic’ from an adolescent dress reveals its great weakness and lack of initiative in creating a peaceful form of living together that would ignore differences,” Agnès de Féo, a sociologist, wrote in the daily Le Monde.

To which Éric Ciotti, a leader of the Republicans, a center-right party, retorted that “communautarisme” — or identification first and foremost with a religious or ethnic identity — is “a leprosy that threatens the Republic.” Mr. Attal, he said in a statement, had given the appropriate response.

The views of the Republicans are important to Mr. Macron because his Renaissance party and its centrist allies do not have an absolute majority in Parliament, and their likeliest ally in passing legislation is probably Mr. Ciotti’s party.

In this sense, Mr. Attal’s decision has a clear political dimension. Mr. Macron governs from the center but leans right.

Mr. Attal took over one of the most sensitive of French ministries in July, after his predecessor, Pap Ndiaye, the first Black education minister, was effectively hounded from office by a torrent of rightist abuse, with thinly veiled racism appearing to lace much of the vitriol against him.

He was targeted for his supposed importation into France of America’s “doctrine of diversity” and his “reduction of everything to skin color,” as Valeurs Actuelles magazine, an extreme-right publication, put it this spring.

Image
Pap Ndiaye, wearing a dark suit and tie, standing either by a window or a glass door.

Pap Ndiaye, who preceded Mr. Attal as education minister, had rejected a sweeping ban on the abaya. Credit...Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In June, just before he was ousted, Mr. Ndiaye rejected a sweeping ban on abayas of the kind adopted by Mr. Attal and upheld by a top French court last week. He said, “We are not going to edit a catalog of hundreds of pages with dresses of different colors and forms of sleeves.”

Rather, Mr. Ndiaye said, decisions about abayas should be left to the discretion of school principals.

Outside a high school in the northern Paris commune of Stains, Sheik Sidibe, a 21-year-old Black teaching assistant, said he had until recently worked at a school where the principal “showed a lack of respect” to Muslim students, “putting in place checkpoints where she arbitrarily decided which students could enter and which not” and criticizing Muslim women who chose to wear head scarves in the street.

“We should focus on real problems, like lousy teachers’ salaries,” said Mr. Sidibe, who is Muslim. “We have students living in states of extreme precariousness and we marginalize them even more. Our mission should not be to police clothes.”

The political ramifications of Mr. Attal’s measure remain to be seen. What appears clear already is that in a restive French society, it has been more polarizing than unifying, the declared aim of laïcité.

“Laïcité must be a form of liberty, the equality of everyone whatever their convictions,” Mr. Cadène said. “It must not turn into a weapon to silence or block people. That is not how you make it attractive.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

President Emmanuel Macron said France had been “hit by the barbarity of Islamist terrorism” in an attack that recalled the brutal murder of another teacher by an Islamic extremist.


The scene on Friday outside the high school in the northern French town of Arras, where the attacks took place. Credit...Denis Charlet/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The French government raised its terrorist threat alert to the highest level on Friday after a knife-wielding man killed a teacher and injured three other people at a school in northern France in what officials described as an Islamist terror attack, deeply disturbing the country.

The attack put President Emmanuel Macron’s government under intense pressure as officials acknowledged that the main suspect in the attack and several of his family members had been identified by intelligence services as radicalized or had been convicted on terrorism charges.

The suspect was even taken in for questioning the day before the assault, officials said, but was let go after it was determined that he did not pose an immediate threat.

The stabbing took place at the Gambetta-Carnot public school in Arras, a town of about 42,000, roughly 25 miles southwest of Lille, near the Belgian border.

The suspect was identified by officials only as Mohammed M., a Russian immigrant born in 2003, who had previously attended the school. He was quickly arrested at the scene, which includes a middle and a high school, and antiterrorism prosecutors opened an investigation.

Attacks on schools are rare in France, but this one struck a particularly raw nerve. The country is still haunted by the murder of Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history teacher who showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class to illustrate free speech and was beheaded by an Islamist extremist because of that on Oct. 16, 2020.

“Almost three years to the day after Samuel Paty’s murder, terrorism has struck again in a school,” President Emmanuel Macron, looking somber, told reporters in Arras after rushing to the scene.

Government officials and school colleagues identified the victim as Dominique Bernard, a French literature teacher, and those injured as a physical education teacher and two other school employees.

“We stand together and stand tall,” Mr. Macron said, against the “barbarity of Islamist terrorism.”

The victim was killed in a “brutal and cowardly way,” said Mr. Macron, who praised the surviving teacher for trying to stop the assailant.

Lawmakers in the lower house of Parliament rapidly suspended their work in solidarity with the victims and then observed a moment of silence.

The government announced, after an emergency cabinet meeting later on Friday, that it was putting the country on the highest of its three threat levels.

Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, said in an interview on TF1 television that the move was precautionary and authorities had not detected any specific threats.

But Mr. Darmanin added, without elaborating, that based on information gathered by French authorities, there was “probably” a link between the attack and the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas — part of an “extremely negative atmosphere,” he said.

More officers and soldiers, already a familiar sight in many parts of France, will patrol the streets, he said.

Image
President Emmanuel Macron, who is wearing a dark blue suit and looking somber.

President Emmanuel Macron, who rushed to the scene of a fatal stabbing, praised the teacher and the two people who were injured while trying to stop the assailant.Credit...Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The attack quickly raised questions about security in schools — a teacher was killed by a student at a high school in February, although terrorism was ruled out in that case. Gabriel Attal, the education minister, said security would be reinforced at schools around the country.

Jean-François Ricard, France’s top antiterrorism prosecutor, said at a news conference in Arras on Friday that the assailant arrived in front of the school around 11 a.m. There, he stabbed two teachers: the one who later died, and another who tried to intervene.

The assailant then entered the school — which was in between periods, meaning the doors were open to let students in or out — and shortly afterward arrived in a courtyard, where several school employees tried to stop him. Two of them, a technical employee and a cleaning worker, were wounded, Mr. Ricard said.

Several witnesses heard the assailant shout “God is great” in Arabic during the attack, he added.

“Many investigations are ongoing and must continue to determine exactly how the events unfolded, how the assailant prepared his crime and what potential help he was given,” Mr. Ricard said, adding that several people were currently in custody for questioning.

Martin-Roch Doussau, a philosophy teacher who has taught at the school for five years, described the school as usually calm and with a positive atmosphere.

In a phone interview, Mr. Doussau said that he confronted the attacker in the schoolyard. The attacker had two knives and turned to him, asking if he was a history professor, he said. Mr. Doussau barricaded himself behind a door with another teacher until police officers arrived and used stun gun devices to apprehend the assailant.

Mr. Doussau said that the man did not appear to be targeting specific people, though he seemed intent on finding a history teacher. Mr. Paty’s killing immediately came to mind, Mr. Doussau said.

A teacher’s job in France, he said, is to embody France’s universalist values and to promote fraternity among students.

“Our job is to avoid things like this,” he said.

France was struck by large-scale Islamist terror attacks in 2015 and 2016, followed by a string of smaller but still deadly shootings and stabbings in subsequent years, often carried out by lone assailants.

The country remains on high alert, and the government says that the police and intelligence services have thwarted over 40 terrorist plots since 2017.

“We are in a moment where police protection is extremely strong and extremely firm,” Mr. Darmanin said.

Image
Police officers holding guns in a parking lot.

Police officers secured the area around the Gambetta-Carnot public school in Arras, France.Credit...Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

But the profile of the suspect in the attack in Arras quickly sparked a firestorm of criticism from Mr. Macron’s political opponents, who said the authorities should have seen it coming.

Mohammed M. had been flagged in France’s S Files, a database of people believed to be threats, but who are not necessarily being monitored around the clock.

“This new attack symbolizes the powerlessness of our State in the face of the Islamist scourge,” Olivier Marleix, a top lawmaker for the right-wing Republican party, said in a statement.

Jordan Bardella, the head of the far-right National Rally party, said the government was responsible for a “moral, political and security failure.”

“It is no longer acceptable for the government to inflict upon the French an impossible coexistence with human bombs,” Mr. Bardella said in a video statement.

Mr. Darmanin, the interior minister, said that intelligence services had recently been tipped off that Mohammed M. had been in touch with other radicalized people, including his brother.

That prompted intelligence services to tap his phone and place him under surveillance, Mr. Darmanin said. But they did not detect any immediate plans to stage an attack.

The police briefly took Mohammed M. into custody on Thursday to verify that he did not have a weapon and to check his phone, but the officers did not find any signs of an immediate threat, Mr. Darmanin said.

Still, Mr. Darmanin acknowledged that Mohammed M.’s family had repeatedly come across the radar of French security services.

Mohammed M.’s father, who had also been flagged for radicalism, had been deported in 2018, he said. Under French law, although there are exceptions, Mohammed M. could not be deported because he had arrived in France before the age of 13, Mr. Darmanin said, adding that he hoped to lift that obstacle with an upcoming immigration bill.

Mr. Ricard, the prosecutor, said that Mohammed M.’s older brother was in prison after being convicted in April for taking part in a terrorist criminal conspiracy and again in June for glorifying terrorism, and that the two brothers were close. He did not provide more details about those cases.

“We knew that there was fertile ground, and radicalization difficulties,” Camille Chaize, the interior ministry spokeswoman, told BFMTV on Friday. But without intelligence pointing to a specific plot, she added, “how do you detect the moment when someone acts?”

Catherine Porter contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/worl ... chool.html

[kmaherali]

The party of Geert Wilders, a longtime political provocateur with a history of antipathy toward immigrants and Islam, held a wide lead, according to early results, an outcome that could send shock waves through Europe.


Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom, speaking after the first preliminary results of general elections on Wednesday in The Hague, Netherlands.Credit...Peter Dejong/Associated Press

The Netherlands on Wednesday took a startling turn in national elections with the potential to ripple through Europe, as Dutch voters threw most support behind the party of a far-right icon with an incendiary reputation who had campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform.

Geert Wilders, a political provocateur long known for his anti-Islam and anti-Europe stances, appeared poised to come out significantly ahead with the most parliamentary seats, according to some early results and exit polls, which were expected to be dependable, especially given the margin of victory they indicated.

“The Dutch voter has spoken,” Mr. Wilders said in a speech on Wednesday night, declaring himself the winner. “The voter has said, ‘We are fed up.’” He added that he wanted to return “the Netherlands to the Dutch.”

If the preliminary results hold up, the Netherlands will be at the threshold of uncertain new political terrain after 13 years of stewardship by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a stalwart of Dutch politics and a dependable presence on the E.U. stage.

Mr. Rutte had helped the small European nation punch above its weight in the European Union, especially after the British exit, as he advanced an agenda of rules-based free trade and commerce, fiscal prudence and liberal social values.

Mr. Wilders, on the other hand, has argued for a Dutch exit from the bloc, in addition to promoting positions so extreme — such as ending immigration from Muslim countries, taxing head scarves and banning the Quran — that he requires a security detail.

“The Netherlands will be tougher and more conservative in Europe,” including on budgets and migration, said Simon Otjes, an assistant professor who teaches Dutch politics at Leiden University.

But the Dutch position in the European Union did not feature prominently in the campaign, Mr. Otjes said, and he predicted that an actual Dutch exit from the bloc was unlikely, because a majority of lawmakers would not support it.

A victory for Mr. Wilders would lengthen a string of advances for far-right parties in northern Europe, including Sweden, where the government now depends on the parliamentary votes of a party with neo-Nazi roots, and Finland, where the right has ascended into the governing coalition.

The elections came two years ahead of schedule after Mr. Rutte’s governing coalition collapsed over disputes over immigration policy in July. Early indicators gave Mr. Wilders’s Party for Freedom 35 seats in the 150-seat Parliament, so even if it comes out on top it will be necessary for it to partner with other parties.

Image
Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced that he would leave Dutch politics entirely after his government collapsed because it failed to agree on migration policy.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced that he would leave Dutch politics entirely after his government collapsed because it failed to agree on migration policy.Credit...Nhac Nguyen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Forging a coalition could take weeks or months of haggling and its shape is far from clear, but it now seems certain to test the tolerance of the Netherlands’ mainstream parties for dealing with a politician they have often ostracized.

On Wednesday, Mr. Wilders addressed other parties in a speech, saying that as the biggest political party of the Netherlands, his party could no longer be ignored and imploring them to work together.

The election outcome left the Dutch political establishment dismayed.

“For us this result is a disappointment,” Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, the lead candidate of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, said in a short speech on Wednesday night. She added that her party had not listened well enough to voters.

As voting neared, Mr. Wilders seemed to have moderated his stances against Islam. Last week, he told a Dutch television show that he was willing to make concessions on his anti-Islam policies, saying that “there are more important priorities.” The change of tone seemed to have worked in softening up voters.

The election was one of the most competitive and unpredictable in the country’s recent past, with four of the country’s largest parties jockeying until the very last minute.

A coalition between the Green Party and the Labor Party had the second-strongest showing, with an estimated 25 seats. The Green-Labor coalition, led by Frans Timmermans, a former European Union climate czar, has said it will not govern with Mr. Wilders’s party.

Pieter Omtzigt, the man who dominated the campaign and served as its chief protagonist, won 20 seats, fewer than some early polls had indicated. His party, New Social Contract, was formed in August and had seemed to be drawing protest votes from left and right in a country where voters had grown disillusioned with their political leadership after Mr. Rutte’s government was hobbled by several scandals.

Instead, it appeared, the disaffected sought a more dramatic change than usual and gravitated toward Mr. Wilders, delivering a relative landslide for the far right for the first time in a national election for the House of Representatives.

Image
Frans Timmermans’ Green-Labor coalition had the second-strongest showing at the polls.

Frans Timmermans’ Green-Labor coalition had the second-strongest showing at the polls.Credit...Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters

In July, Mr. Rutte announced that he would leave Dutch politics entirely after his government collapsed because it failed to agree on migration policy. He will stay on as caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed.

It was long hard to imagine the country under a different leader, and for much of his tenure Mr. Rutte had the reputation of a sober leader while populists sprouted up in other countries. Nicknamed “Teflon Mark,” he seemed to survive any scandals his government faced.

Because of a scandal in which Mr. Rutte’s government failed to protect thousands of families from overzealous tax inspectors, his government resigned in early 2021. But he was easily re-elected in the national vote that followed.

The elections had been hard to predict until the last minute. With the new players and the creation of a brand-new party, the atmosphere of this election cycle had been more intense and unpredictable than in prior years, voters said, especially after more than a decade of little to no change in leadership.

“I find it very exciting,” said Katja Henneveld on Wednesday, after casting her vote in Amsterdam. “I’m nervous.”

The climate and a lack of housing in the country ranked among the most important issues in this campaign for her, she said.

For Marieke Schunselaar, a 24-year-old voter, climate was also the biggest issue this campaign. She also said that she was surprised by a seeming rise of populist parties — such as Mr. Wilders’s Party for Freedom and the Farmer Citizen Movement, which swept regional elections this year, something she called a “worry for many young voters.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/worl ... lders.html

[kmaherali]

Dam Mast Qalandar - Orchestral Qawwali | Rushil | Abi Sampa | The Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZndJNdJ1WDY

Recorded live at Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow

Melody by Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Ustad Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan

Arranged for Orchestra by Rushil Ranjan
Sung by Abi Sampa
Conducted by Clark Rundell

Solo Cello by Lydia Alonso
Tabla Dhamma by Amrit Dhuffer
Harmonium by George Kakas
Bass by Samer Sharawi

Chorus Vocalists:
Vibhati Bhatia
Shahid Abbass Khan
Jatinder Kwatra
Varun Ayez

English Translation: To understand this Qawwali, you need to know a little about the History of the Sufi Saints. Jhoole Lal – A saint from Sindh who as a child was always found on a swing reciting the name of God. Shahbaaz Qalander (Red Falcon) another Sufi Fakir renowned for amazing poetry in love for God

Mast Mast –

Dam Mast Qalander Mast Mast – Upon My breath and in my intoxication is the great Qalander
Dam Mast Qalander Mast Mast

Mera vird hai dam dam Ali Ali – My worship and upon my breath is the name of Ali
Saqi Laal Qalander Mast Mast – I am intoxicated with the beloved Qalander
Jhoole Laal Qalander Mast Mast – I am intoxicated with Jhoole Laal who is intoxicated with Qalander
Aakhi Ja Malanga Akhi Ja Malanga – Keep repeating his name you follower of Ali
Tu Ali Ali Ali Akhi Ja Malanga – You Ali !!! Keep saying his name

These lyrics mirror exactly the name of the Qawwal – to be in intoxication "Mast"

[kmaherali]

Shabana Mahmood becomes UK’s first woman Muslim Lord Chancellor



LONDON: In a historic ceremony at the Royal Courts of Justice, MP Shabana Mahmood was sworn in as the first female Muslim Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom.

The event marked a milestone in British history, with Ms Mahmood swearing her oath on the Holy Quran. By law, the Lord Chancellor is secretary of state for justice and the minister of the Crown responsible for the administration of the courts and legal aid in England and Wales.

Presiding over the ceremony, Dame Sue Carr, the first female Chief Justice, highlighted the multiple historic elements of the occasion. She noted: “Today marks a ‘triple first’: the first Lord Chancellor to swear on the Quran, the first female Lord Chancellor, and the first time a female Chief Justice has sworn in a Lord Chancellor. These milestones represent the ongoing evolution of our constitution to mirror the society it serves.”

Ms Mahmood, known for her “shrewd advocacy and deep knowledge of professional ethics”, expressed gratitude and commitment. She reflected on her journey from a young girl in Small Heath, Birmingham, working in her parents’ corner shop to her current role.

“Being the ‘first’ is both a privilege and a burden. Getting this right can open doors for future generations, showing that even the oldest titles of the land are within reach for us all,” she stated. She also noted that she is the first Lord Chancellor who can speak Urdu.

The event was attended by prominent figures, including Law Society President Nick Emmerson and Bar Chair Sam Townend KC, who praised Ms Mahmood’s dedication to justice and anticipated her positive impact on the legal system.

Ms Mahmood pledged to continue “defending the international rule of law and upholding human rights” as she was sworn in at a ceremony in London. She also said that the judiciary must make decisions “without political pressure and undue influence”, pledging to be a “champion for the rule of law” during the event at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2024

https://www.dawn.com/news/1846111/shaba ... chancellor

[kmaherali]

Thousands of Shia muslims carry enormous banner in London to mark Ashura Day

Thousands of Shia muslims marched through London's West End to mark Ashura (July 17). The event is held to mourn the passing of Imam Hussain - the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad after he was killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680AD. Participants dressed in black carried a giant banner as the procession passed through Oxford Street and Piccadilly

Video: https://www.msn.com/en-ie/video/viral/t ... i-BB1qaS46

[kmaherali]

Germany Bans Islamic Group, Accusing It of Supporting Hezbollah

The authorities also searched dozens of properties linked to the Islamic Center Hamburg, which has long faced accusations of being a front for the Iranian government.


Nancy Faeser, Germany’s interior minister, accused the I.Z.H. of promoting Islamic extremism.Credit...Lisi Niesner/Reuters

Germany banned the Islamic Center Hamburg on Wednesday, saying that it is an extremist organization that supports Hezbollah and acts as a front for Iran’s supreme leader.

The German authorities have been investigating the Shiite Muslim group — also known as the I.Z.H., an abbreviation of its German name — for years, including what they say are links to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that Germany outlawed in 2020.

The group promotes an Islamist extremist ideology, Nancy Faeser, Germany’s interior minister, said in a statement announcing the ban. She also accused the I.Z.H. and its affiliates of supporting Hezbollah and spreading antisemitism.

Her ministry said the authorities had begun court-ordered searches of 53 properties linked to the I.Z.H. across Germany, including in Berlin and Hamburg, and were seizing the organization’s assets. The government will also shut down four Shiite mosques, including what is known as the Blue Mosque in Hamburg, which is the group’s headquarters.

The mosque is considered one of the main centers of the Shiite Muslim community in Europe, according to the Hamburg authorities.

The interior ministry described the I.Z.H. as a direct representative of Iran’s supreme leader and said that it seeks to bring about an Islamic revolution in Germany.

The I.Z.H., which was founded in 1953, could not be reached by phone and did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. The group has denied the accusations against it in the past. It failed last year in a legal challenge to the German government’s characterization that it was controlled by Iran.

The group said in a statement in October that it “condemns all forms of violence and extremism and has always been committed to peace, tolerance and interfaith dialogue.”

The interior ministry said the searches and ban were linked to evidence found in searches of dozens of locations in November, when cash, laptops and cellphones were confiscated.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/worl ... ollah.html

[kmaherali]

German Prosecutor Says Islamic State Terrorist Link Is Suspected in Festival Stabbings

The police say they have arrested a man they believe killed three people and wounded eight others at a festival in the town of Solingen, in western Germany.


Police officers late Saturday with a suspect in the killings at a festival in Solingen, Germany.Credit...Christoph Reichwein/DPA, via Associated Press

An attack by a man armed with a knife that left three dead at a local festival in a western German city is being treated as terrorism, with possible links to the Islamic State, German prosecutors said on Sunday

The suspect is a 26-year-old man from Syria who was living in a refugee residence less than a few hundred yards from where the attack took place in the city of Solingen, the police said on Sunday. The man, wearing bloodstained clothes, approached a police car and gave himself up after 11 p.m. Saturday, according to law enforcement officials.

The police said the assailant aimed for his victims’ necks to inflict as much damage as possible.

On Sunday afternoon, the federal prosecutor’s office said it believed the suspect, identified only as Issa Al H. in keeping with strict German privacy rules, had joined the Islamic State. Officials are also investigating him on possible charges of murder and attempted murder, though so far no official charges have been filed.

The suspect “shared the ideology” of the terrorist organization and “joined the group at an undeterminable” time before Friday’s attack, Ines Peterson, spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor, said in a statement Sunday.

The Islamic State took responsibility for the attack, praising the attacker as a “soldier of the Islamic State,” according to Site Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist organizations.

On Sunday, the site of the attack was still cordoned off and guarded by the police, but mourners gathered at an adjacent church to light candles, lay flowers and leave condolence messages on a large white banner.

“This is the first year we skipped the festival and then this happens,” said Tanya Zastrov, 50, a resident of Solingen, referring to the town’s 650th birthday festival that the attack so tragically upended. “I’m shocked and speechless,” she added.

Solingen, a city of over 150,000, is ethnically diverse and some condolence messages were written in other languages besides German, such as Turkish and Greek. During its boom years in the 1960s and 1970s, the city relied on foreign workers to fill its production plants.

“If someone opens the door for you, then you should be grateful,” said Ahmet Kalayci, 58, who moved to Solingen from Turkey when he was 16. He added: “Then you should behave.”

The attack on Friday occurred less than three months after a similar attack by an Afghan refugee in Mannheim, another ethnically diverse city in the country’s west, about 130 miles south of Solingen. In that case, an Afghan refugee attacked an anti-immigrant rally with a knife and killed a police officer who tried to intervene.

Earlier this month, three Taylor Swift tour dates were canceled in Vienna after U.S. intelligence officials warned their Austrian counterparts that two teenagers were planning on attacking the crowds gathered for the event. The main suspect in that plot had radicalized online, officials said, and had filmed himself swearing allegiance to the Islamic State.

The far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has campaigned largely on an anti-immigrant platform and is poised to make significant gains in three state elections next month, jumped on the news of the Solingen attack. Even before the identity of the attacker was confirmed by the police, one of its leaders called for changes to “migration and security policy.”

The authorities had earlier arrested two people who were later determined unlikely to have been the actual attackers, Herbert Reul, the state interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Solingen is, said in an interview on Saturday with a German broadcaster, ARD.

A 15-year-old boy, who was arrested early Saturday, is being investigated for not having alerted the police when he learned about imminent plans to attack, prosecutors said. A man arrested by a heavily armed police unit on Saturday evening in the refugee housing facility where the main suspect also lived is being treated as a witness, the police and Mr. Reul said.

On Saturday, Solingen’s mayor, the state governor and other political leaders gathered on a downtown square several hundred yards from where the attack took place to mourn the victims. It was an eerie repeat of a similar impromptu service held in Mannheim after the attack there.

On Sunday, which was supposed to be the final day of joyous festival celebrating a city best known for making knives and scissors, the downtown was mostly deserted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/25/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

The Italian town that banned cricket

Sofia Bettiza - BBC World Service, Monfalcone
Fri, September 6, 2024 at 8:52 a.m. MDT·6 min read

Miah Bappy
Miah Bappy and other Bengalis have to play cricket outside the town of Monfalcone [BBC]
Under the scorching sun on Italy’s Adriatic coast, a group of friends from Bangladesh are practising their cricket skills on a small patch of concrete.

They are playing on the outskirts of Monfalcone, close to Trieste airport, because they have in effect been banned by the mayor from playing in the town itself.

They say those who try can face fines of up to €100 (£84).

“If we were playing inside Monfalcone, the police would have already got here to stop us,” says team captain Miah Bappy.

He points to a group of Bengali teenagers who got “caught” playing their national sport at the local park. Unaware they were being filmed by security cameras, their game was broken up by a police patrol who gave them a fine.

“They say cricket is not for Italy. But I’ll tell you the truth: it’s because we are foreigners," Miah says.

The ban on cricket has come to symbolise the deep-seated tensions that are flaring up in Monfalcone.

The town has an ethnic make-up unique in Italy: of a population of just over 30,000, nearly a third are foreigners. Most of them are Bangladeshi Muslims who began to arrive in the late 1990s to build giant cruise-ships.

As a consequence the cultural essence of Monfalcone is in danger, according to mayor Anna Maria Cisint, who belongs to the far-right League party.

She swept to power on the back of anti-immigration sentiment - and has gone on a mission to “protect” her town and defend Christian values.

“Our history is being erased,” she tells me. “It’s like it doesn’t matter anymore. Everything is changing for the worse.”

In Monfalcone, Italians in Western clothes mingle with Bangladeshis wearing shalwar kameez and hijabs. There are Bangladeshi restaurants and halal shops, and a network of cycle paths mostly used by the South Asian community.

In her two terms in office, Ms Cisint has removed the benches in the town square where Bangladeshis used to sit and railed against what Muslim women wear at the beach.

“There’s a very strong process of Islamic fundamentalism here," she says. "A culture where women are treated very badly and oppressed by men.”

When it comes to her ban on cricket, the mayor claims there is no space or money to build a new pitch and says cricket balls pose a danger.

She told the BBC she refuses to grant the Bangladeshis the privilege to play their national sport - and claims they offer “nothing in return”.

“They’ve given nothing to this city, to our community. Zero,” she says. “They are free to go and play cricket anywhere else… outside of Monfalcone.”

The Fincantieri shipyard
The Fincantieri shipyard is one of the world's largest [BBC]
The mayor has received death threats because of her views on Muslims - and that’s why she’s now under 24-hour police protection.

Miah Bappy and his fellow cricketers have moved to Italy to build ships at the Fincantieri shipyard – the biggest in Europe, and one of the largest in the world.

The mayor accuses the company of “wage dumping” - the practice of paying wages below the market level, often to foreign workers - arguing that its salaries are so low no Italian would want to do the work for the same money.

But the director of the shipyard Cristiano Bazzara is adamant that salaries paid by the company and its contractors are aligned with Italian law.

Listen: The Italian town where praying is a political issue

“We are not able to find trained workers. In Europe it’s very difficult to find young people who want to work in a shipyard,” he tells me.

Italy has among the lowest birth rates in Europe. Last year only 379,000 babies were born in Italy with an average of 1.2 children per woman.

Italy is also facing labour shortages and researchers estimate Italy will require 280,000 foreign workers a year until 2050 to make up for a shrinking work force.

Anna Maria Cisint
Anna Maria Cisint was elected mayor of Monfalcone in 2016 [BBC]

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy, has increased the number of permits for non-EU workers despite previously saying she wanted to reduce immigration.

But Anna Maria Cisint firmly believes that the way of life of the Bangladeshi Muslim community is “incompatible” with the life of native-born Italians.

In Monfalcone, the tensions came to a head when the mayor in effect banned collective prayer at the two Islamic centres in the town.

“People from the town started sending me shocking photos and videos which showed a huge number of people praying in the two Islamic centres: as many as 1,900 in just one building,” the mayor says.

“There are so many bikes left on the pavement, and loud prayers five times a day - even at night.”

Mayor Cisint says this was unfair to local residents - and argues her ban on collective prayer comes down to an issue of urban planning regulations. The Islamic centres are not designated for religious worship, and she says it’s not her job to provide them.

Islam is not among the 13 religions that have official status under Italian law, which complicates efforts to build places of worship.

Bangladeshis in Monfalcone say the mayor’s decision has had an enormous impact on the Muslim community.

“The mayor thinks that Bengalis are trying to Islamify Italy - but we are just minding our own business,” says 19-year-old Meheli. She’s originally from Dhaka in Bangladesh but grew up in Italy, wears Western clothes and speaks fluent Italian.

She says she has been sworn at and harassed in the street because of her Bengali heritage.

"I’m going to leave this town as soon as I can"
", Source: Meheli, Source description: , Image: Meheli

"I’m going to leave this town as soon as I can" ", Source: Meheli, Source description: , Image: Meheli
Miah Bappy is expecting to receive his Italian passport this year, but he’s not sure he will continue to live in Monfalcone.

“We don’t cause any trouble. We pay taxes,” says the shipyard worker. “But they don’t want us here.”

The mayor believes the way of life of the Bangladeshi community is “incompatible” with the life of native born Italians.

But Miah Bappy points out that if they all returned to their homeland tomorrow, “it would take the shipyard five years to build a single ship”.

Over the summer a regional court ruled in favour of the two Islamic centres and annulled the town council’s order banning collective prayer.

But Monfalcone’s mayor has vowed to continue her campaign against what she calls “the Islamisation of Europe” beyond Italy.

She has now been elected to the European Parliament and will soon have a chance to take her message to Brussels.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/italian-town- ... 05578.html

[kmaherali]

Albania Is Planning a New Muslim State Inside Its Capital

Prime Minister Edi Rama says he wants to give members of the Bektashi, a Shiite Sufi order, their own Vatican-style enclave as a way of promoting religious tolerance.


The compound in Tirana, the Albanian capital, that would become the Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

The Muslim cleric preparing to lead what, if everything goes as planned, will become the world’s smallest state, has laid-back plans for the tiny new country.

His hoped-for Muslim state in Tirana, Albania’s capital, will be a Vatican-style sovereign enclave controlling territory about the size of five New York City blocks, and it will allow alcohol, let women wear what they want and impose no lifestyle rules.

“God does not forbid anything; that is why he gave us minds,” said the cleric, Edmond Brahimaj, known to followers as Baba Mondi, explaining how he intends to rule over a 27-acre patch of land that Albania wants to turn into a sovereign state with its own administration, passports and borders. The Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama, says he will announce plans for the entity, to be called the Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order, in the near future.

The map locates the Albanian capital of Tirana, and Kruje, a city north of Tirana.

KOSOVO

Kruje

NORTH

MACEDONIA

Tirana

Adriatic

Sea

ALBANIA

GREECE

50 MILES

By The New York Times

“All decisions will be made with love and kindness,” said Baba Mondi, 65, a former Albanian Army officer who is revered by millions around the world by his official title, His Holiness Haji Dede Baba. He is the paramount leader of the Bektashi, a Shiite Sufi order founded in the 13th century in Turkey but now based in Albania.

ImageA man sitting at a desk in green and white religious clothing, including a round hat, is attended by a man and a woman. All three are viewing papers.

Edmond Brahimaj, known to followers as Baba Mondi, center, meeting with workers to discuss the museum on the grounds of the Bektashi compound.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

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A paved area with steps bounded by trees and other vegetation.

The sovereign enclave of the Bektashi order would be the size of about five New York City blocks. Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

In an interview, Mr. Rama, the prime minister, said the aim of the new state was to promote a tolerant version of Islam on which Albania prides itself. “We should take care of this treasure, which is religious tolerance and which we should never take for granted,” he said.

An avowedly moderate Islamic microstate, the prime minister said, would send a message: “Do not let the stigma of Muslims define who Muslims are.”

The territory of the proposed new Islamic state is a compound in a low-rent residential district of eastern Tirana. It is just a quarter of the size of Vatican City, currently the world’s smallest country, governed by the pope, an absolute monarch.

Baba Mondi said that “size doesn’t matter,” adding, “I don’t need to be a dictator,” though he conceded that the only significant constraint on his authority will be God. After toasting visitors with raki, a fiery drink distilled from grapes, he noted that he made no claim to infallibility.

“Only God,” he said, “doesn’t make mistakes.”

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The skyline of Tirana seen from a wooded hillside with a gold-domed structure visible at the edge of the city.

A view of the compound and the surrounding area. The Bektashi state would be just a quarter of the size of Vatican City, currently the world’s smallest country.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

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A security officer looking at a cellphone walks along a street beside a tree and a wall with soccer graffiti.

The territory of the proposed new Islamic state is in a low-rent residential district of Tirana. Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

The Bektashi domain features a domed meeting and prayer hall, a museum showcasing the order’s history, a clinic, an archive and the administrative offices of Baba Mondi, a cheery man with a white beard and waspish disdain for rigid dogma. Muslim extremists who set off bombs and use violence to spread their version of the faith, he said, “are just cowboys.”

Combining a loose interpretation of the Quran with mysticism, elements of Turkey’s pre-Islamic faiths and devotion to their deceased wise men, known as dervishes, the Bektashis moved their headquarters to Tirana from Turkey nearly a century ago after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of the Turkish Republic, shut down their operations.

Viewed as heretics by many conservative Shiites and Sunnis, and subjected to centuries of persecution in Muslim lands, the Bektashis have been a force in Albania and neighboring countries such as Kosovo and Macedonia since the Ottoman Empire’s conquest of the Balkans in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Members of the sect played a prominent role in Albania’s nationalist awakening against Turkish rule, promoting a relaxed version of Islam that helped rally the country’s large Muslim and Christian communities behind the secular cause of independence.

Though one of Europe’s poorest countries, Albania has a long history of helping people in need, sheltering Jews during World War II and Afghans fleeing the Taliban in 2021. Its international airport is named after Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian nun who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her charity work in India.

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A Ferris wheel on a city square beside a yellow multistory hotel. A statue of a figure on horseback is in the foreground on a grassy area.

In downtown Tirana. Members of the Bektashi sect played a prominent role in Albania’s nationalist awakening against Turkish rule.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

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People with backpacks crossing a street.

Tourists in Tirana. There is a widespread view of the Bektashi sect, even among some Christians, as Albania’s national religion.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

A team of legal experts, including international lawyers, is drafting legislation defining the new state’s sovereign status inside Albania. That will need to be endorsed by Parliament, controlled by Mr. Rama’s governing Socialist Party. It is unclear which, if any, countries will agree to recognize the Bektashis’ sovereignty.

So far, Mr. Rama, a nonpracticing Roman Catholic, said, only a few of his closest aides know about the plan and NATO allies like the United States have not been consulted.

One country that is highly unlikely to recognize it is Iran, which has many mostly underground followers of Sufi Islam, including some Bektashis, but views itself as the guardian of Shiite Islam against heterodox readings of the faith.

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A bald man in a black long-sleeve T-shirt stands with his arms folded, looking at the camera.

Prime Minster Edi Rama of Albania. He said that an avowedly moderate Islamic microstate would send a strong message.
Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

“The Iranians are frankly my last thought,” Mr. Rama said, noting that Albania broke off diplomatic relations with Iran in 2022 after linking it to a cyberattack on Albanian government and banking networks.

Baba Mondi has long campaigned against extremism. After Islamist militants killed 12 people in a 2015 attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the Bektashi leader traveled to Paris along with Mr. Rama, the prime minister, to join a march against terrorism.

He said the new Bektashi state might need a small intelligence service “because we have enemies too” but won’t have an army, border guards or courts. Details such as who will be eligible for passports still have to be worked out, he added, but the passport color has been decided: green, an important color in Islam. Albania allows dual nationality.

Committed to soothing rather than stoking tensions, the new state has already sworn off the curse of many nations — that of territorial ambition. Baba Mondi vowed not to make any attempt to expand his territory by grabbing back land his order once held in the Albanian capital.

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Baba Mondi, in his green-and white robes, speaks to a small crowd.

Baba Mondi addressing visitors at the Historical Museum of the Bektashi in Tirana. Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

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Baba Mondi, in a white robe, joins a line of people on a red carpet leading up some steps.

Baba Mondi, in a white robe, attending a funeral this month.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

The Tirana compound, which originally covered nearly 90 acres, has shrunk by two-thirds since Albania’s former communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, outlawed all religion in 1967 and his government began building warehouses on Bektashi territory in the capital. After the collapse of communism in 1991, the Bektashis lost yet more land when private developers built homes on the edge of the compound without permission.

Mr. Rama said the borders of the proposed Bektashi state would be defined by what the sect has: “What was seized is not part of that,” he said. Squabbles over property ownership, he said, would only undermine the state’s purpose as a “model of coexistence.”

“This is not a property issue but a spiritual issue,” he said.

Baba Mondi, for his part, declared the statehood plan “a miracle” and expressed hope that the United States and other Western powers would recognize his state’s sovereignty if Parliament endorses the prime minister’s plan.

“We deserve a state,” he said, “We are the only ones in the world who tell the truth about Islam” and “don’t mix it up with politics.”

How many Bektashi believers there are in the world is unclear, and even their number in Albania is subject to wildly different estimates, ranging from just a few percent of the country’s population of less than three million to many times that.

Baba Mondi said that around half the total population was Bektashi, the rest being Sunnis, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and evangelical Christians. That is almost certainly an exaggeration, but it reflected a widespread view of the sect, even among some Christians, as Albania’s national religion.

In Kruje, a town north of the capital that is the site of a castle used in the 15th century by Skanderbeg, Albania’s national hero, Ismet Kaciu, a retired Bektashi teacher, said that he had not heard of Mr. Rama’s plans to give his sect Vatican-style sovereignty over the Tirana site.

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A view of a mountainside lighted in soft orange hues with buildings at the foot of the cliffs.

Kruje, a town north of Tirana that is the site of a castle used in the 15th century by Skanderbeg, Albania’s national hero.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

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Candles burning in a trough in a rocky area with an opening to a room visible in the far wall.

Candles at a Bektashi shrine in Kruje.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

But, he said during a visit to a Bektashi shrine near Skanderbeg’s castle, he would be overjoyed if that happened. It would, he said, help to keep younger Albanians, including his own four children, who work in Italy, from drifting away from their faith and their country.

Nuri Ceni, a 79-year-old Bektashi historian, hailed the offer of statehood as “a hugely important gift” that would not only strengthen tolerant Islam inside Albania but also help spread “our message of peaceful coexistence regardless of religion or race.”

“We are against all the forms of extremism that are today so dangerous,” he added

Mr. Rama acknowledged that creating a sovereign Islamic state in Tirana would take time. “Maybe everyone will say: ‘This guy is crazy,’” he said. But, he added: “They have said that many times before. I don’t care. The important thing, crazy or not, is to fight for good.”

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Baba Mondi walks along an open area paved with bricks of various colors.

Baba Mondi in Tirana. “We deserve a state,” he said, “We are the only ones in the world who tell the truth about Islam” and “don’t mix it up with politics.”Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/21/worl ... 778d3e6de3