Friday, April 25, 2014
'Gays Are a Lost Cause' Says Moderate Muslim
Giuliani: Iran Leader Has 'No Respect' for US Administration
France Unveils Plan to Prevent Radicalisation
The plan of action presented by Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve aims to "dissuade, prevent and punish" the radicalisation of troubled French youths.
The government estimates that around 300 French nationals or residents are currently enlisted with jihadist groups in Syria, with a further 130 en route to the country and another 130 having already returned.
Twenty-five French people have died in the conflict.
The movement, which has swept along teens as young as 14 – some of whom are recent converts to Islam – has accelerated in recent months, according to the interior ministry.
Didier Francois, one of the four French journalists who were released from captivity in Syria at the weekend after being held for 10 months by a jihadist group, said some of his captors spoke French.
France is particularly fearful of the threat such people pose to national security upon their return. » | DPA/Paris | Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Hijab Couture
FEW sartorial choices are scrutinised as closely as those of Muslim women. Their clothing is regulated both in countries where Islam is a minority religion, and in those where it is professed by the majority. France bans face coverings, thus outlawing the niqab, which leaves just a slit for the eyes. In Iran, a theocracy, and Saudi Arabia, a monarchy reliant on clerical support, women must wear a hijab (head covering) and abaya (long cloak) respectively. Only last year did Turkey partially ease a ban, dating from Ataturk’s founding of the modern secular state, on female civil servants wearing headscarves.
Most Muslim women want to dress modestly in public, as Islam prescribes. But increasing numbers want to be fashionable, too. That is partly because of the relative youth and rising prosperity of the Islamic world. A growing sense of religious identity also boosts Islamic style. The Islamic revival of the 1970s, and then a shared sense of persecution in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, led many Muslim women to wear their hearts on their sleeves, says Reina Lewis, an academic at the London College of Fashion and editor of “Modest Fashion: Styling Bodies, Mediating Faith”. Many say that Islamic dress is better suited than their country’s traditional garb to modern life. “The hijab helps women be treated for their minds, not their looks,” says Aziza Al-Yousef, a Saudi professor. » | Saturday, April 26, 2014 | Cairo, Jeddah and Riyadh | From the print edition
Close Adviser to Geert Wilders Resigns from Freedom Party
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| Freedom Party (PVV) leader Geert Wilders speaks during an interview in The Hague on April 17th. |
One month from the European elections, Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders suffered another major setback yesterday when one of his closest advisers resigned – suggesting as he left that a row over anti-Moroccan chanting had left his party marginalised.
The Freedom Party has lost its dominant position in the polls and there have been a series of resignations, including the loss of two MPs, since Mr Wilders led the chanting at a rally last month – the first time he’d focused on a particular nationality rather than on “Muslims”.
National outrage, even among his own more conservative supporters, has prompted suggestions that the chanting was a huge political gaffe – which could effectively put paid to plans for a pan-European right-wing Euro-election alliance with Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France. » | Peter Cluskey | Thursday, April 24, 2014
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Benjamin Netanyahu Interview: In Full
The Persecution of Tony Blair
ONE of the most hated men in Britain gave a speech on April 23rd that was fated to remind Britons why they so hate him. Listening to Tony Blair talk on “Engaging the Middle East”, at a plush City venue, your columnist could almost sense the gathering invective. The former prime minister’s familiar yet still odd mannerisms— the glottalised accent, designed to erase any trace of his privileged roots, the paddle-wheeling hand movements—seemed almost to invite it, so thoroughly is he reviled. But the main problem was the speech itself, in which Mr Blair showed amazingly little appreciation of this.
The big problem in Syria, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere is militant Islam, he suggested, as if this was previously unremarked upon; and the world needs to do something about that, he said, as if it had not tried. Yet Mr Blair, in this self-promoted “keynote speech”, delivered to a small audience of investors and journalists, suggested no new cure for the blight other than “an international programme to eradicate religious intolerance”. That at least sounded better than reinvading those troubled countries; but surely the United Nations is doing something of the sort already?
If Mr Blair appears obsessed with the great scab on his record, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is no wonder. But he will do himself no good by scratching it. He has little credibility, and will probably never have more, on intervention, the Middle East or Islam. He is busted on such issues—and not only with the pacifists who periodically “arrest” him in return for a crowd-funded bounty from ArrestBlair.org, which now stands at £7,414 ($12,438).
The armed forces, stricken by the overstretch and consequent cuts wrought by Mr Blair’s adventurism, also resent him; the Foreign Office distrusts him. Even his own Labour Party, filled with self-loathing over the wars it was persuaded to agree to, considers its former leader an embarrassment. “What he needs to understand,” says a senior Labour figure, “is that people do not want to hear from him.” » | From the print edition | Bagehot | Saturday, April 26, 2014
Up to 700 Britons Feared Fighting in Syria
Up to 700 Britons could now be fighting in Syria and police are powerless to stop would-be jihadists heading there, the UK’s counter-terrorism chief has admitted.
But Helen Ball, the police senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism, warned anyone who takes part in any form of fighting, even for the Free Syrian Army, will face arrest on their return.
Metropolitan Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball said it was likely the number of Brits in Syria is now in the “mid” rather than “low” hundreds as previously thought, including some as young as 16.
The warning came as police launched a national campaign to urge mothers, wives and sisters to report on their loved ones and stop them travelling to the war[-]torn country. » | Tom Whitehead, Security Editor | Thursday, April 24, 2014
Tony Blair: Radical Islam Threat 'Spreading'
Related material here and here
Nick Clegg Backs Met’s Call for Muslims to Stop Sons Joining Syria Conflict
Former FBI Agent: CIA Director John Brennan Is a Muslim
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