Anti-France Protests Draws [sic] Tens of Thousands across Muslim World

THE GUARDIAN: Demonstrations held in Pakistan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories and Afghanistan

Tens of thousands of Muslims in Pakistan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere joined protests on Friday over the French president Emmanuel Macron’s vow to protect the right to caricature the prophet Muhammad.

Demonstrations in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, turned violent as 2,000 people who tried to march towards the French embassy were pushed back by police firing teargas and using batons. Crowds of Islamist activists hanged an effigy of Macron from an overpass after pounding it with their shoes.

Several demonstrators were wounded in clashes with police as authorities pushed to evict activists from the red zone, a security area that houses Pakistan’s diplomatic missions. As night fell, demonstrators staged a sit-in on a main road to protest against authorities’ use of force. » | Associated Press in Dubai | Friday, October 30, 2020

Muslim Countries Denounce French Response to Killing of Teacher, Urge Boycott

THE NEW YORK TIMES: While the government’s moves against extremism have public support, they have opened France to criticism that its relationship with its Muslim citizens has taken an ugly turn.

BRUSSELS — Since a young Muslim beheaded a French schoolteacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a class, France has conducted dozens of raids against suspected Islamic extremists, closed a major mosque and shut down some Muslim aid groups.

In France, a nation still traumatized by some 36 Islamic State-inspired terrorist attacks in the last eight years, including two that together killed more than 200 people, those broad measures have found widespread support. President Emmanuel Macron, a fierce defender of French secularism and the right to free speech, went as far as to suggest that Islam was in need of an Enlightenment, and his interior minister spoke of a “civil war.”

In the Muslim world, these actions, and the tone coming from top French officials, have opened France to criticism that the nation’s complicated, post-colonial relationship with its six million Muslim citizens has taken an ugly turn. Leading the condemnation has been President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who called Mr. Macron mentally damaged in a speech over the weekend. “Macron needs mental treatment,” he said. “What is the problem of this person Macron with Muslims and Islam?” » | Steven Erlanger | Published Oct. 27, 2020; Updated Oct. 28, 2020

Steve Bannon’s War with Islam: Trump May Not Even Understand His Adviser’s Apocalyptic Vision

SALON.COM: Bannon has long yearned for a civilizational conflict between the West and the Muslim world. Now he may get it

There seems to be considerable urgency right now to enshrine Donald Trump’s Islamophobia into law. Talk of an immigration ban, a Muslim registry and even internment camps once sounded like the machinations of a spray-tanned salesman looking to indulge the electorate’s need for a good villain narrative. Amid an atmosphere of overwhelming chaos, the early days of Trump’s reign have made clear, however, that Islam is Public Enemy No. 1 and serves as the centerpiece of Steve Bannon’s ethno-nationalist agenda. (Trump’s ban on immigration and travel from certain Muslim-majority nations is currently on hold, thanks to a Friday federal court order. That does nothing to resolve the larger questions.) Read on and comment » | Jalal Baig | Sunday, February 5, 2017

Non-Believers in the Muslim World: A Tale of Two Identities | Ali A. Rizvi

Ali A. Rizvi is a Pakistani-Canadian writer, physician, and musician who resides in Toronto. He is currently writing his first book, The Atheist Muslim: A journey from religion to reason.

This talk is about the experiences of non-believers and apostates in the Muslim world. Ali’s communication with hundreds of ex-Muslims in Muslim-majority countries as well as in the West has provided valuable insights into how secularism could be promoted in the Muslim world.

Big Tobacco Takes on Islam in Effort to Promote Smoking

YAHOO! NEWS CANADA – DAILY BREW: Big tobacco has been waging a theological war to promote smoking in the Muslim world, targeting women in particular, says a news study.

A review of internal tobacco industry documents going back decades has uncovered a campaign to link abstinence from tobacco to extremism, says the international study co-authored in Canada.

The campaign went so far as to hire lawyers to make theological arguments against Islamic leaders opposed to tobacco use.

“The paper shows how the industry has sought to distort and misinterpret the cultural beliefs of these communities, and to reinterpret them to serve the industry’s interests. All to sell a product that kills half of its customers,” Kelley Lee, a professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University and co-author of the study, tells Yahoo Canada News.

Public health campaigns against smoking have been very successful in western countries. But as smoking rates have declined in North America and Europe, cigarette manufacturers have increasingly turned to low- and middle-income countries for growth. » | Dene Moore | Daily Brew | Monday, April 20, 2015

Muslims Combating Anti-Semitism
YNET NEWS: At Jerusalem conference, British-born Muslim compares KKK rallies in US to anti-Israel protests in London. 'During my visit I saw Israel wasn't some apartheid state,' he says

A small, but increasingly vocal number of Muslims are rejecting radical hate speech and combating anti-Semitism in the Muslim world. In the recent Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism held this week in Jerusalem, Palestinian Media Watch director, Itamar Marcus and Dr. Boaz Ganor organized a panel discussion with Muslim activists actively rejecting hate rhetoric.

Two of the panel speakers included Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim who runs The Israel Campaign and Rev. Majed El Shafie, a human rights advocate originally from Egypt. Ahmad Mansour, a Palestinian living in Berlin, who is a policy advisor for the European Foundation for Democracy, was also scheduled to speak but was unable to attend.

"When people say that anti-Semitism exists in the Muslim world because of Israel, that is simply an excuse," says Kasim Hafeez, born in Britain to a Pakistani Muslim family.

"People here (in Israel) get Islamic anti-Semitism. In Europe, we deny it," Hafeez expounded.

"As a university student, I would attend radical anti-Israel rallies in Trafalgar Square. Here I am standing in London in the middle of a European capital - chanting 'death to Israel' and nothing was ever done."

He compares those rallies with the Ku Klux Klan. "An Al-Quds Day rally in London is equivalent to a KKK rally in the US," he stressed. Hafeez told Tazpit News Agency that he began to change his thinking when he read A Case for Israel, by Alan Dershowitz.

Hafeez explains that he read the book in order to learn how to further deconstruct Zionist propaganda. "But I began to see that I could no longer support my convictions because I had no answers to the arguments that were made for Israel," he explains.

"I found that the radical Islamic doctrine that I grew up with and my own belief in violent jihad could no longer support the truth I once believed in." » | Anav Silverman, Tazpit | Thursday, May 30, 2013

Muslim Persecution of Christians: January, 2013
GATESTONE INSTITUTE: Egypt: A court sentenced an entire family – Nadia Mohamed Ali and her seven children – to fifteen years in prison for converting to Christianity.

The year 2013 began with reports indicating that wherever Christians live side by side with large numbers of Muslims, the Christians are under attack. As one report said, "Africa, where Christianity spread fastest during the past century, now is the region where oppression of Christians is spreading fastest." Whether in Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, or Tanzania—attacks on Christians are as frequent as they are graphic.

As for the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, a new study by the Pew Forum finds that "just 0.6 percent of the world's 2.2 billion Christians now live in the Middle East and North Africa. Christians make up only 4% of the region's inhabitants, drastically down from 20% a century ago, and marking the smallest regional Christian minority in the world. Fully 93% of the region is Muslim and 1.6% is Jewish."

How Christianity has been all but eradicated from the region where it was born is made clear in yet another report on the Middle East's largest Christian minority, Egypt's Christian Copts. Due to a "climate of fear and uncertainty," Christian families are leaving Egypt in large numbers. Along with regular church attacks, the situation has gotten to the point that, according to one Coptic priest, "Salafis meet Christian girls in the street and order them to cover their hair. Sometimes they hit them when they refuse." Another congregation leader said "With the new [Sharia-heavy] constitution, the new laws that are expected, and the majority in parliament I don't believe we can be treated on an equal basis."

Elsewhere, Christians are not allowed to flee. In eastern Syria, for example, 25,000 Christians, including Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholics, Chaldeans and Armenians, were prevented from fleeing due to a number of roadblocks set up by armed Islamic militia groups, who deliberately target Christians for robbery and kidnapping-for-ransom—then often slaughtering their victims. » | Raymond Ibrahim | Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Drying Out: Islam and the Rise of Prohibition Culture
THE INDEPENDENT: In the Middle Ages Islam had no problem with alcohol, now - from Sharia Patrols in the UK to flat out bans in Egypt - the crackdown is gathering strength

In the last few weeks, Al Jazeera has been posting videos on its global web site of Islamic vigilantes “patrolling”, as it puts it, the streets of Whitechapel ensuring that the various British citizens inhabiting its pavements are doing their best to conform to shar’ia law. A notorious instance involved an unfortunate, and wholly innocent, gay man who was told that he was “dirty” and should get out of the neighborhood immediately. “Yes,” he was forced to say, presumably under the threat of a boot in the groin, “I am dirty.”

The British mosques duly condemned the patrols, and the Metropolitan Police made its usual ineffectual vows. But the videos themselves, as far as I could see by watching them in Dubai that week, evoked very little disgust in readers sharing the Faith. It struck me immediately that there was very little reason that such patrols should not progress from the rarified joys of beating up homosexuals to demanding that people stop drinking in public in the same neighborhoods. Lo and behold, other videos show drinkers being forced to pour the contents of their cans on to the streets.[.]

It would be easy to dismiss these patrols as outliers. But then again, who twenty years ago would have foreseen them ever happening in the first place? The Islamic revival, for want of a better word, which is changing the face of two civilizations at once – ours and Islam’s – has not been flexible on the question of alcohol, any more than it has on the question of gay love.

Writing about Cairo recently, I made so bold as to mildly observe that the number of “baladi” bars in that once bibulous city has noticeably diminished. A few grizzled ex-pats chose to deny it, but most Cairenes are all too ready to lament the gradual erosion of their once free-ranging alcoholic night-life (the sale of alcohol has recently been bannedaltogether from settlements around the capital). The world of Om Khaltoum and Mafouz and Youssel Chahin was saturated in drink, but the Cairo of 2013 is headed in a very different direction. One might even claim that a link exists between the diminishment of overflowing bars and the increase in covered female heads. It is far from preposterous. » | Lawrence Osborne | Monday, February 18, 2013

Shimon Peres: Israel's Government Does Not Want to Make Peace with Muslim World

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Shimon Peres, the Israeli president and Nobel laureate, has attacked the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming it is unwilling to make peace with the Muslim world and instead risks the outbreak of a new Palestinian uprising.

Intervening in the country’s general election campaign, Israel’s elder statesman warned of the perils of his country isolating itself from America.

President Barack Obama was “not convinced” that Israel’s current leaders truly wanted peace, he said.

“If there is no diplomatic decision, the Palestinians will go back to terror. Knives, mines, suicide attacks,” Mr Peres said in an extensive interview with the New York Times Magazine.

“The silence that Israel has been enjoying over the last few years will not continue, because even if the local inhabitants do not want to resume the violence, they will be under the pressure of the Arab world. Money will be transferred to them, and weapons will be smuggled to them, and there will be no one who will stop this flow.”

Most of the world would then blame Israel for the violence and brand it a “racist state”, warned Mr Peres. » | Robert Tait, in Jerusalem | Thursday, January 10, 2013

How Many Muslim Women Martyrs Do We Need Before Muslim Leaders Speak Out?
TELEGRAPH – BLOGS – CRISTINA ODONE: A 20-year-old Afghan girl has been beheaded, by her in-laws, for refusing to become a prostitute. Her mother-in-law and and a hired man cut off Mah Gul's head in the province of Herat last week.

The horrific case has confirmed the plight of women and girls in Taliban-strongholds such as Herat: it comes in the wake of the Taliban's attack on 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who campaigned for girls' education in Pakistan.

Surely, enough is enough? How many women martyrs do Muslim leaders need before they speak out against such misogyny?

Human Rights Watch, in its report on Afghanistan, does not mince its words: "The situation for women’s rights is particularly bad, with threats and attacks by insurgents on women leaders, schoolgirls, and girls’ schools, and police arrests of women for 'moral crimes' such as running away from forced marriage or domestic violence." That report was published two years ago, but the situation has not improved in the intervening years: so far this year, 100 attacks on girls and women have been reported. » | Cristina Odone | Thursday, October 18, 2012

New Dark Age Alert! Islamic Leaders Slam Obama Defence of Freedom of Speech

TIMES LIVE: Muslim leaders demanded international action to stop religious insults in a challenge to US President Barack Obama’s defense of freedom of expression at the UN General Assembly.

Obama made a strong condemnation of “violence and intolerance” in his speech at the UN headquarters on Tuesday. He said world leaders had a duty to speak out against the deadly attacks on Americans in the past two weeks caused by an anti-Islam film made in the United States.

But Muslim kings and presidents and other heads of state said Western nations must clamp down on “Islamophobia” following the storm over the film which mocks the Prophet Mohammed.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, said the film was another “ugly face” of religious defamation.

Yudhoyono quoted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as saying that “everyone must observe morality and public order” and commented: “Freedom of expression is therefore not absolute.”

He called for “an international instrument to effectively prevent incitement to hostility or violence based on religions or beliefs.” King Abdullah II of Jordan, a close US ally, spoke out against the film and the violence it sparked.

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari condemned what he called the “incitement of hate” against Muslims and demanded United Nations action. » | Sapa-AFP | Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Islamic Protests Sweep Pakistan Over Anti-Mohammed Video and Cartoon
Protesters took to the streets of several Muslim countries as demonstrations gathered pace over a low-budget anti-Islamic video and cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by a French magazine.

Read the article here | Rob Crilly, in Islamabad and Devorah Lauter in Paris | Thursday, September 20, 2012

Attacks on Embassies Spread in Wake of Anti-Islamic Film
THE GUARDIAN: British, German and US envoys targeted as riots erupt from north Africa to south-east Asia

A wave of anger that saw British, German and American embassies in Khartoum attacked by rioters swept across the Muslim world on Friday, with violent scenes playing out on streets from north Africa to south-east Asia.

The worst violence of the day was in the Sudanese capital, where protesters targeted the German embassy first, storming through the outer wall and setting fire to buildings and a car near the gates before they were pushed back by police firing teargas. German diplomats fled to the British embassy next door, which became the next target of the mob.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, said: "Sudanese police attended the scene, but demonstrators were able to break down a perimeter wall and cause minor damage to the compound. They did not attempt to gain access to the British embassy building." No staff had been harmed, he added. Reports said at least one of the rioters had been killed in clashes with police.

The US embassy in Khartoum, which appears to have been the next target, announced that protesters had been expelled from its compound.

Protests, mostly aimed at US embassies and galvanised by the emergence of a crude anti-Islam video made in California, were also reported in Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, Jerusalem and the West Bank, Kashmir, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Nigerian city of Jos. In Tunis, crowds of rioters throwing stones clashed with police outside the US embassy, who responded with teargas. A fire could be seen within the embassy compound and the American school in Tunis was also reported to be ablaze. Reports said two demonstrators had been killed. (+ video) » | Julian Borger | Friday, September 14, 2012

Anti-US Protests Continue
Protests against an anti-Islam video continue across the Middle East.

Mass Protests Intensify Across Muslim World
Demonstrations against US, sparked by anti-Islam video, continue in Egypt, Yemen, Bangladesh, Iraq and other countries.

New Dark Age Alert: Turmoil Spreads across Muslim World over Controversial Mohammed Film
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: An angry mob forced its way into the American embassy in Yemen as violence linked a film denigrating the Prophet Mohammed spread turmoil across the Muslim world.


Still reeling from the killing of its ambassador to Libya and three of his colleagues, Washington scrambled to protect its diplomats elsewhere as protesters laid siege to US diplomatic missions in six Muslim states.

Four people were reportedly killed and dozens injured in clashes between police and Yemeni security forces in Sana’a, raising fears of a repeat of the maelstrom unleashed by a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed during which scores of people were killed.

More than 200 people were injured as Egyptian police fended off attempts by stone-throwing protesters to breach the perimeter of the US embassy in Cairo, as they had done the previous day when the American flag above the building was set on fire.

Protests took place outside US missions in Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and Bangladesh. About 500 Iranians chanting “death to America” tried to converge on the Swiss embassy, which handles US interests in the absence of formal diplomatic relations, while demonstrators burnt American flags on the streets of Baghdad. » | Adrian Blomfield, Adam Baron in Sana'a | Thursday, September 13, 2012

The weaker Western governments will be perceived to be, the more this nonsense will go on. – © Mark

A Global War on Christians in the Muslim World?
THE HUFFINGTON POST: Religious minorities in the Muslim world today, constitutionally entitled in many countries to equality of citizenship and religious freedom, increasingly fear the erosion of those rights -- and with good reason. Inter-religious and inter-communal tensions and conflicts from Nigeria and Egypt and Sudan, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia have raised major concerns about deteriorating rights and security for religious minorities in Muslim countries. Conflicts have varied, from acts of discrimination, to forms of violence escalating to murder, and the destruction of villages, churches and mosques.

In the 21st century, Muslims are strongly challenged to move beyond older notions of "tolerance" or "co-existence" to a higher level of religious pluralism based on mutual understanding and respect. Regrettably, a significant number of Muslims, like many ultra conservative and fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Hindus are not pluralistic but rather strongly exclusivist in their attitudes toward other faiths and even co-believers with whom they disagree.

Reform will not, however, result from exaggerated claims and alarmist and incendiary language such as that of Ayan Hirsi Ali in in a recent a Newsweek cover story, reprinted in The Daily Beast. » | John L. Esposito, Professor of Religion and International Affairs, Georgetown University | Thursday, February 23, 2012

2012 Valentine's Day Special - Burka Woman

Islam and Valentine’s Day
Mohamad Tajuddin Mohamad Rasdi says he does not believe in such celebrations, but because others do and it makes them happy, what is the big deal?

ALIRAN: I wish to contribute my thoughts on the Valentine-Christian issue with respect to the renowned speaker Ustazah Siti Nor Bahyah.

The main message of my thoughts is simply that Muslim scholars and clerics must be made to understand that they are not experts in everything … particularly a good many things about other faiths like Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism.

Muslim clerics like the Ustazah merely receive their education from traditional Islamic Institutions that do not have the subjects of Philosophy, Civilisation and Religious Studies.
All they know and have learnt are only from a single source of Muslim Studies.

As an academic, I will admit and clearly explain what I do know and what I do not know. If I had to respond to a certain question or comment with respect to knowledge that I do not possess much, then I am most humble in answering and never in an absolute or commandeering tone … much lest in a sarcastic or demeaning manner.

It is most unfortunate that in Malaysia, as well as perhaps in other Muslim countries too, Muslims think that it is their ‘divine’ duty to hate people of other faiths.

This is done to the point that a non-Muslim chief minister is despised despite his excellence in governance but a Muslim minister is supported and protected when allegations of rape, murder or bribery seem apparent. » | Aliran | Monday, February 13, 2012

Baghdad's Romance Grows with Valentine's Day
CBS NEWS: BAGHDAD — Iraq's capital is embracing Valentine's Day this year with a huge public display of affection in what its residents say is the nation's most amorous celebration of the holiday ever.

Street corners across Baghdad are blanketed with the synthetic red fur of teddy bears, while silken nighties and lip-shaped satin pillows hang in store fronts.

It's a vivid counterpoint to a place that's still a far cry from warm and fuzzy — with bombings remaining a fact of life since the withdrawal of U.S. forces two months ago.

"Valentine's Day is for everybody — not only for lovers," said Lina, a school administrator who would only identify herself by her first name. She was among the throngs browsing through an array of plush kittens, scented candles, red lamps and heart-shaped purses outside a store this weekend in the Baghdad downtown shopping district of Karradah.

"It's for you and I, for me and my brother, even for someone on the street. It's not just about me and my fiance," Lina said. "Iraqis need happy moments to make them forget what they have been through — we have had enough sadness."

After decades of war and dictator rule, and with improving security, Iraqis say they are able to relax and enjoy Valentine's this year. Others believe the recent burst of text messages, mobile phones and use of the Internet among Iraqi youth has helped foster romance like never before.

But Valentine's Day may come with its own baggage.

Conservative Muslims, from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia, have strongly frowned on the holiday's growing popularity around the world as an encouragement of perceived Western decadence and premarital sex. » | AP | Monday, February 13, 2012