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Demonising Islam and Muslims
Editor of The Muslim News in London Ahmed J Versi, expressed alarm Friday about a new pernicious wave of provocative attacks from both politicians and religious leaders to vilify Islam.
"In the last few months, the discourse has changed and it became an open season to demonise Islam," he says.
The warning came as leader of the House Commons, Jack Straw, provoked new controversy Friday by calling on Muslim women to expose their faces by lifting their veils. He said he tells those Muslim women visiting his surgery if they would uncover their faces.
Straw, whose constituency in Blackburn, north-west England, has a 20 per cent Muslim population, claimed that veils (niqab) made community relations "more difficult” and “barrier to community relations.”
“On the contrary, Straw’s action will exacerbate the fragile community relations. It will also send signals to Muslim women to keep away from his surgery leading to refusal to participate in the democratic process,” said Versi.
He added that this will once again be seen as attack on Islam.
Straw’s call came after controversy was provoked by the media on Thursday over a Muslim police officer being granted special dispensation to guard the Israeli Embassy in London because he felt “uncomfortable” and “unsafe” during the invasion of Lebanon where he has relatives.
On Wednesday, opposition Conservative leader David Cameron was also seen jumping on the bandwagon by vowing to break up what he called Muslim "ghettos" in British cities and calling only on Muslim schools to admit a quarter of their pupils from other faiths.
In what was seen as part of a campaign to replace Tony Blair as Prime Minister, Home Secretary John Reid earlier called on Muslim parents to spy on their children as potential terrorists.
The campaign against Islam reached new heights with the tactless comments made by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Germany in September.
"It should not be necessary to remind both political and religious leaders that it is vitally important to respect each other's beliefs and not to demonise them for ulterior motives," Versi warned.
Open season for attacking Islam
There have been regular attacks to demonise Islam for many years, but until recent weeks, it has been expressed either in the form of gutter language by bigots, racists and extremist elements or voiced more discretely and subtly by more presentable sectors of society. Whenever political or religious leaders wanted to revile Islam they often have often used phrases like Islamic terrorists, Islamic extremists, Islamic radicals, etc. They often add such anti-Islamic provisos to say that though Islam does not teach and support terrorism, phrases like terrorists are using a ‘twisted form of Islam’ (Prime Minister, Tony Blair, after July 7 terrorist atrocities) or that terrorists subscribe to “a branch of Islam that condones violence” (The Times, September 30, 2001) or “Muslims have to look at why their religion breeds so many violent militant strains” (The Guardian, October 6, 2001) are deemed acceptable.
However, in the last few months the discourse has changed and it became an open season to demonise Islam. The watershed was US President George W Bush’s intemperate language last month when he described terrorists as “Islamic fascists” – provocatively evoking, comparisons between Islam and the tyrannical fascist regimes of the past, effectively demonstrating that the war against terror is in reality a war against Islam and Muslims.
The new series of attacks on Islam reached new heights with the tactless comments made by Pope Benedict XVI during a visit to Germany earlier this month. Previously it had been inconceivable that the spiritual head of one billion Catholics could make such an outspoken attack on Islam. In his speech in Cologne, the Pope repeated inflammatory comments made by 14th Century Christian Emperor Manuel II Paleologos, asserting that what the Prophet taught was “only evil and inhuman” and that commanded his followers to spread Islam “by the sword.” The Pope did not explicitly state he agreed with the emperor’s disparaging statement. But neither did he distance his own opinion from such insults and actually alluded in the lecture that Islam defied reason and logic and that only Christianity believed in reason. His malicious argument implied that the Prophet had to force people to convert by sword because, he quotes, “one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat,” was the verse of the Qur’an – ‘There is no compulsion in religion.’ Needless to say such a claim is totally incorrect and misleading as the verse was revealed later on in Madinah when those who had converted to Islam wanted to force their children to convert too. The Pope also stooped to argue that because Islam is irrational it therefore encourages its followers into violence, while Christianity does not.
Most disconcerting was that whilst the Pope raised such a false platform, many Catholics leaders and even Anglicans voiced support. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, defended the Pope’s speech by extending the notorious claims made by controversial political scientist Professor Samuel Huntington in warning that “the fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam.” Huntington’s discredited thesis of a clash of civilisations, Carey invoked, had some “validity”. An “awkward question which I believe was hovering in the background of the Pope’s thesis, ‘Why is Islam associated with violence?’,” he asked.
Following a worldwide outcry by Muslims across the globe, the Pope relented to offer his regret only about the response to his offensive comments. He did not offer any apology for repeating the insulting remarks or withdraw the malicious allegations that Islam preaches violence, even though he did say that the quote did not reflect his personal thought. His regret was only for the “reactions in some countries to a few passages” “which was considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.” The Pope has also been previously critical of Islam in Europe. Before becoming papal leader he opposed Turkey’s membership in the European Union as he believed this would dilute the Christian heritage in the continent. In effect, what the Pope was dangerously trying to say was that the belief in Europe is that Islam cannot be part of the European/Western culture as it is irrational, preaches violence, and is not inclusive. So what is needed is reform of the religion to bring it nearer to Christianity.
So it was not surprising that Franco Frattini, the Vice President of the European Commission, could say during a press conference on European security in London on August 16, that Europe should have a “European Islam,” indicating a wish for a new form of Islam suited to the Judeo-Christian views.
What the Pope and other Christian leaders, as well as various political leaders are saying is that Islam will lead to a clash of not only civilizations, but also of Muslims and non-Muslims in the West. It leads to suppositions about what the so-called war on terrorism is really about, and whether, as many fear, it has a hidden agenda.
It should not be necessary to remind both political and religious leaders that it is vitally important to respect each other’s beliefs and not to demonise them for ulterior motives. As history relates, unlike the Pope’s quotation, Islam is a civilizing force and has influenced not only Christianity but Western thought as well. It should also be remembered that it was Islam that helped the Catholics to reconcile the apparent contradiction between faith and reason as has been reflected in the works of Thomas Aquinas.
The Pope’s Racist Rant about Islam
POPE BENEDICT XVI angered Muslims around the world when he used a recent address at the University of Regensburg to publicly attack Islam. The pope quoted 14th-century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel II Paleologus: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
Coming amid George W. Bush’s self-described “crusade” against terrorism, the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and escalating threats of a war on Iran, the pope clearly took sides in the war on Muslims.
After reactions of outrage, Benedict said that the passage he read “doesn’t express in any way whatsoever my personal opinion.”
That’s hard to believe. Benedict’s life, both in and out of the Church, has been one long story of intolerance. As a teen in the early 1940s, Benedict was both a member of the Hitler Youth and a helper on a Nazi anti-aircraft unit.
While a cardinal, his ultra-conservative views on Church doctrine earned him the nicknames “Cardinal Enforcer” and “God’s rottweiller.” He was a driving force behind the canonization of Josémaria Escriva--an unrepentant fascist who served in the government of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco.
The pope’s statements against the use of violence to spread religion are especially hypocritical considering his former role as head of the Vatican office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith--formerly known as the Inquisition, the office responsible for the torture and death of Jews, Muslims and other “heretics” during the Middle Ages.
As for religious violence, the Catholic Church has a long and horrific history--whether it was using brutality to spread its doctrine (and loot foreign lands) during the Crusades, or inciting prejudice and violence against Jews and other religious minorities.
More recently, the Church supported--or at least took an ambivalent or bloody attitude toward--the most repressive and brutal dictators, including the Nazi Party under Hitler and Franco’s regime in Spain. And Benedict has been part of a Church hierarchy that has resisted calls to take responsibility for this collaboration.
The mainstream media are compounding the bigotry of the pope’s remarks, focusing on angry protests of Muslims and some possibly related attacks on Christian churches in the Middle East.
But at a time when millions of Arabs and Muslims are suffering both the threat and reality of war, occupation and repression, Benedict’s remarks must be seen as a calculated attempt to incite prejudice.
Muslims Slam Straw's Comments on Hijab
LONDON, Oct. 7--Revelations that former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asks Muslim women visiting his office to remove their veils have raised a storm of protests among the community.
Adding insult to injury, Straw said in a newspaper column published Thursday that he believes the veils favored by Muslim women inhibit communication and are a sign of division in society.
At his constituency office, he said he asks that veiled women reveal their faces.
On Friday, British media quoted Straw as going further, saying that he would prefer that Muslim women not wear veils at all.
"I just find it uncomfortable if I'm trying to have a conversation with someone whose face I can't see," Straw told the British Broadcasting Corp.
Many Muslims in Straw's parliamentary district of Blackburn, in northwestern England, reacted angrily.
"It is trivial to suggest that you need to see someone's face to speak to them freely. People can still communicate with a veil on," Fauzia Ali, 23. Ali, who chooses not to wear a veil told AP.
"I know some women would refuse to leave the house if they had to remove them."
Straw spoke as Britain digested news that London police had excused a Muslim officer, of Syrian descent and with a Lebanese wife, from standing guard at the Israeli occupation regime's embassy, during the recent Lebanon conflict.
Officials claim they excused him because he cited concerns about his family's safety and denied it was religiously or politically motivated.
Britain has for decades prided itself on a growing multiculturalism - the belief that embracing different cultures enhances the richness of a society.
But under the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, things have changed.
Blair himself antagonized many Muslims and scores of people in his center-left support base by taking a harder line on integration -- proposing a "Britishness test among measures to encourage immigrants to accept British values".
Straw echoed that view, telling BBC that "everybody in society, too, has got a responsibility toward the cohesion of our society and so I just wanted to put that on the table".
Muslims, mainly from Pakistan and India, make up 19 percent of the population in Straw's district, compared to 2.8 percent nationally. Many of those constituents dismissed the notion that Straw might be trying to encourage integration.
"His comments are misjudged and are not helpful in the current climate. Rather than encourage integration, they promote feelings of separation within the community," said Blackburn resident Shazia Ahmed, 19.
Muslims expressed a sense of being under siege, with the week's events following closely the uproar over Pope Benedict XVI's citation of a medieval emperor's hostile comments on Islam in September and the August arrest of Muslims who were claimed to be plotting to blow up US-bound airliners.
"In the last few months, the discourse has changed and it became an open season to demonize Islam," Ahmed J. Versi, editor of The Muslim News, said.
Muslims in Europe have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years and been subjected to the most extreme security measures.
France outraged many Muslims when it banned headscarves and other religious symbols from public places two years ago.
France's tradition of assimilation came under siege a year ago, when youths in squalid, mostly immigrant-populated suburbs ringing Paris went on a three-week rampage, burning cars, smashing windows, and fighting with police.
Many people blamed a system that forced minorities to integrate -- then kept them out of the top positions in business, politics and media anyway.
Meanwhile, in the most recent attack on Islam, Denmark's national TV2 channel broadcast excerpts from a video made by members of an extreme-right party showing the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) in the most outrageous manner.
Filmed in August, the video shows young adherents of the Danish People's Party mocking the Holy Prophet during a summer party.
The story, first reported by the daily newspaper Nyhedsavisen Friday, came in the aftermath of violent protests after 12 drawings of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) were published last year.
Kenneth Kristensen, chairman of the Danish extremist People's Party Youth, known for its anti-immigration stance, refused to apologize for the actions of its members.
Zubair Butt Hussain, a spokesman for Danish group called Muslims in Dialogue, said his organization is not surprised by the recent video clips.
"The Danish People's Party has through its history made a virtue to make humiliating and generalized statements about minority groups, especially Muslims," Hussain said.
The report came close on the heels of a conference held in Denmark to mark a year since the publication of blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
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