UK: Michael Gove (Education Sec’y) accused of using ‘Trojan Horse’ row to push anti-Islam agenda

2014/06/09 2 Comments

For those interested in UK debates, there has been a fair amount of coverage and concern about some schools and the increased influence of more traditional forms of Islam (e.g., ‘Wear hijabs in and out of class’: Pupils at state Islam school become the first to be forced to cover up with Muslim headscarf). In Canada, comparable concerns were expressed in the Thornhill School where Friday prayer segregated boys and girls, with girls menstruating being excused from prayer given they were “unclean” and expected to sit in the back row (Opposing prayer in Toronto public schools, with dignity):

One source said that part of the dispute between Ms May and Mr Gove was personal – in part fuelled by leadership ambitions. “They are trying to outwit each other and have had some real spats in the past within Cabinet, where Michael has just ripped into Theresa and has tried to set her up to look stupid.”

There was also a warning that the dispute was undoing some of the good that came out of the united response to the murder in Woolwich of Lee Rigby. An ally of Ms May said: “Woolwich was considered to be a high-water mark in terms of community involvement.

“A lot of people were very optimistic. The Prime Minister’s response was very positive until tragically the point where Michael got involved. Since then things have gone the pan. Twelve months ago was the high point but now we have a whole community that feels completely marginalised by what’s going on.

”The Home Office and Department of Education put out a statement saying: “There is no difference between the Education Secretary and the Home Secretary, who are both working energetically together to tackle the challenge posed by any form of extremism.”

Michael Gove accused of using ‘Trojan Horse’ row to push anti-Islam agenda – UK Politics – UK – The Independent.

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Canada’s young men joining foreign jihad: Are we doing enough to stop it?

2014/06/07 Leave a comment

More on home-grown radicalization and extremism (see Suicide bomber killed in Iraq part of wider jihadi base in Calgary):

Mahdi Qasqas, a Calgary Muslim youth leader and psychologist, says early intervention is key to preventing young men from going overseas to kill themselves and others.

“If a mother calls and says, ‘My son needs help,’ how will I look at it? Criminal perspective? Call the police. Risk to self-harm? We have to admit to hospital,” Qasqas said. “If she says, ‘Look, I’m seeing some warning signs.’ If your child listen to other people more than you? Then it’s time to connect him to a mentor.”

A prominent Calgary imam, Sayed Soharwardy, told CBC News he strongly believes that increased radicalization of young local men is happening at a “faster pace now” than a decade ago. He wonders why more potential jihadis have not been stopped at airports before even stepping foot on a battlefield.

“I am convinced that the intelligence people know who is recruiting, who is going overseas, who is fighting there,” the cleric said. “If they do not know every one of them, they know some of them.” …

In Ottawa on Wednesday, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander offered a warning to potential violent extremists.

“If you’re a dual national and you commit an act of terrorism in Canada or abroad, you will lose your Canadian citizenship,” he said.

Whether that will be enough of a deterrent is hard to know.

Canada’s young men joining foreign jihad: Are we doing enough to stop it? – Canada – CBC News.

And in Europe, following the terrorist attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels by a young radicalized Muslim who had fought in Syria, a new initiative to identify  and prevent potential jihadists.

Looks a bit like the RCMP initiative here in Canada (RCMP set to tackle extremism at home with program to curb radicalization of Canadian youth) but as the above article indicates, some are arguing that this is not enough:

Une série de mesures pour la « détection, la prévention et la dissuasion » ont été retenues au cours d’une réunion entre les ministres de l’Intérieur de neuf pays — Belgique, France, Allemagne, Royaume-Uni, Espagne, Italie, Danemark, Suède et Autriche — spécialement consacrée à cette menace djihadiste, en marge d’une réunion avec leurs homologues des autres pays de l’UE à Luxembourg.

L’UE va s’attaquer aux réseaux de recrutement de djihadistes | Le Devoir.

 

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Hatred of women, not Islam, fuels Pakistan’s honour killings

2014/05/31 Leave a comment

Two takes on the horrific stoning in Pakistan of  Farzana Parveen, another example of all too frequent “honour killings,” or as CCMW names them, “femicide.” Starting with Omar Aziz in the Globe:

What are we afraid of? Can we, for one second, acknowledge that there is a cultural problem here, or will we continue to sanctimoniously blame all of this on ‘those other men over there?’ Within five kilometers of my home, I can think of at least two cases of such extreme, impenitent misogyny. In one case, a Pakistani father beat his daughter after he discovered her long-distance relationship. In another, the case of Aqsa Parvez, her brother strangled her to death with the father’s consent because she objected to wearing the hijab. Everywhere there is an honour killing – a human sacrifice – there is a woman breaking off the chains of tradition. There is a woman demanding the right to live as she wishes, and in her way is a man demanding she get in line.

These women are the real freedom fighters in the Pakistani and wider South Asian and Middle Eastern community, not the cowardly males who use their physical advantage to assault women in the name of some illusory honour, or their supporters in the West and throughout South Asia who rationalize their decisions. One crime too many has been committed against women by the insecure, ignorant, hate-filled mob that is their own family. It is time that we be honest about the causes of such barbarity and begin seriously combatting it, or Farzana Parveen’s name may soon be forgotten like the many women who were sacrificed before her.

Hatred of women, not Islam, fuels Pakistan’s honour killings – The Globe and Mail.

And, via Farzana Hassan, this piece by Matthew Syed in The National Secular Society:

Turn your mind away from the brutality of honour killings and focus, for a moment, on the psychology. Consider the corrupting power of a religious ideology that can animate a father to perpetrate the most intimate and barbaric of assaults on his own daughter, a brother on his own sister, an uncle on his own niece.

“I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it,” the police investigator quoted the father of the murdered woman in Lahore as saying. Her crime, in case you were wondering, was to fall in love with the wrong man.

You cannot win against this kind of barbarism by being nice. You can’t win by beating a strategic retreat, as Sotheby’s plans to do by withdrawing nudes from arts sales because they are terrified of offending Middle Eastern clients. Fundamentalism is too fierce, too implacable, it takes too deep a hold on those who are infected by it, to reach any kind of compromise. Trying to find an accommodation with fanaticism is like trying to cuddle a virus.

A woman is stoned. We politely look away

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New York Times publishes Islamophobic ad by anti-Islam group

2014/05/24 Leave a comment

Contrasting high-brow Islamophobia in the NY Times for The Investigative Report on Terrorism and low-brow on Washington DC buses for Pamela Geller:

NYT Islamophobia

 

Geller Bus ads

The group also purchased a full-page display ad in Wednesday’s print edition New York Times. The all-text ad opened by “commemorating today’s official opening of the National September 11 Memorial Museum.” It went on to warn at great length that mainstream Muslim-American groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations were in fact part of a clandestine “radical Islamist” vanguard of a “holy war” that supports terrorism and wishes to continue the efforts of the September 11 attacks. “This is the new form of the jihadist threat we face,” the ad reads.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has long been criticized as Islamophobic for its campaign against what it describes as a clandestine effort by “radical Muslims” — which they allege includes mainstream rights groups — to infiltrate and destroy the United States from within. The group was founded in 1995 by Steven Emerson, whose 2002 book is titled “American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us.”

Just imagine, a similar ad stating:

Jewish Muslim Hatred: It’s in the Torah. $3 billion in US aid goes to Israel. Stop racism. End all aid to Israel.

New York Times publishes Islamophobic ad by anti-Islam group – Vox.

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When Culture Robs Girls of Role Models

2014/05/10 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Amira Elghawaby on the need, within Muslim communities,  to provide more role models and visibility for women in both institutions and in popular culture:

Just take a look at most North American Muslim conferences.  How many women are on stage? From Chicago to Toronto to Ottawa, the answer is, very few. This is not for a lack of successful women leaders in our communities. We have Canadian Muslim women who are doctors, scientists, academics, educators, lawyers, engineers, filmmakers, authors, journalists, activists, editors, entrepreneurs, etc. But for some reason, our community seems unwilling to showcase their talents. Just last year, after praising the success of the Reviving the Islamic Spirit conference which attracts over 20,000 people annually, the well-known American academic, author, and consultant, Dalia Mogahed, nevertheless lamented the dearth of female speakers. Mogahed is one of just over a handful of women who have ever spoken at this immense gathering, now in its 13th year.

What is behind this? Surely, young women and girls deserve to hear from women who are paving the way forward. And, certainly, women were not invisible in Islam’s earliest days as a pioneering faith that recognized gender rights and women’s agency. Why then are our communities today so reluctant in acknowledging and spotlighting female achievements?

There seems to be a disconnect, or, more specifically, confusion around the role of Muslim women in society. There is a deep and ingrained cultural fear about intermingling. That fear is so strong that it has essentially led to the erasure of the female presence from many community institutions.  Take the barriers that have popped up at mosques across North America over the past few decades, making many women feel unwelcome and apart, as chronicled in the 2005 Canadian film Me And the Mosque. While some Muslim women themselves have internalized concerns over intermingling, so much that they cling to the barriers, the fact is that these barriers have come to represent an unwillingness to model respectful interactions between the genders. This emerges out of misplaced concepts of modesty and piety and is perhaps the attitude that led a York University student to famously ask to be exempted from working with female peers.

When Culture Robs Girls of Role Models – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Farzana Hassan: Islamic Reform – Daunting But Needed

2014/05/05 Leave a comment

Interesting interview with Farzana Hassan, by the Clarion Project (see Sheema Khan: We can end honour killings, but not with films by anti-Muslim zealots and Film wages ‘interfaith campaign’ against abuse of Muslim women for more information on Clarion):

I see little clerical support for an “Islamic Reformation.” Even educated Muslims believe that Islam is perfect and therefore needs no reformation. Reformist Muslims, on the other hand, repudiate sharia provisions and attempt to understand Islamic belief and practice mainly as metaphor. Traditionalists see them as constituting the fringes of Muslim society, even as heretics.  Few heed their call for an Islamic reformation.

From my experience in dealing with Muslims of various stripes and persuasions, I have come to the conclusion that while there is movement toward and away from Islam, the main body of Muslims has remained largely orthodox due to recognizable inertia in Islamic theology. Muslims who challenge traditional interpretations often end up repudiating Islam, at least intellectually. New converts to Islam, on the other hand, embrace the orthodox view simply because it is the entrenched view. The result is stasis within the community of Muslims across the world.

An Islamic reformation is therefore a daunting task. Mullahs and clerics would have to abandon the literalist approach to Islam in favor of its broad principles, especially when there is a blatant contradiction between the two.

I think there is more diversity within the Muslim community, particularly in North America, than Farzana, and other religions (e.g., Catholicism) have some analogous challenges, but this interview gives her more space and nuance than the limitations of a short op-ed.

Farzana Hassan: Islamic Reform — Daunting But Needed | Clarion Project.

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The interfaith agreement on the ‘errant weeds’ of Christianity, Islam and Judaism

2014/04/29 Leave a comment

Interesting piece by Marc Ellis on extremism in all Abrahamic religions – “errant weeds” as he calls it:

But terror in the name of religion – and religious and ethnic identity – is widespread historically and today. Since most believers are not involved directly in the violence that some partake in, we shouldn’t paint with too broad a brush. The September 11th museum video may indeed walk this disturbing fine line. But to hold Islam as a religion, in its expression and in some of its core principles, innocent of violence historically or in the present is absurd.

It’s like pretending that violence in the name of Christianity contradicts Christianity and some of Christianity’s core values as they developed. Thus any violence done in the name of Christianity represents the “hijacking” of Christianity. Taking this perspective, then, through much of Christian history, Christianity has been hijacked. Perhaps we should distinguish the Christianity many Christians want today from – shall we call it – Hijacked Christianity?

Rather than pretending to an innocent tradition, call it Innocent Islam and Innocent Christianity, perhaps it is better to think of a desired separation from Hijacked Islam and Hijacked Christianity. But then how does religion support itself, go global and play its part in the affairs of the state in a way that benefits them and their followers without being hijacked?

To preserve the sense of innocence, religion’s collusion with power is unannounced and behind the scenes. To put it bluntly, you don’t get mosques or churches in the town square without being fully corrupted and embedded in the state while pretending to innocence.

Nor do you get Passover Seders in the White House without being a power to be reckoned with.

Which means we can’t leave out Hijacked Judaism.

The interfaith agreement on the ‘errant weeds’ of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

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Western Jihadists in Syria Threaten to Bring Their War Back Home – The Daily Beast

2014/04/29 Leave a comment

Maajid Nawaz of the Quillam Foundation on the risks of jihadists currently fighting in Syria and possible blowback upon their return to the West:

We are watching the largest mobilization in a generation of volunteers traveling abroad to join a war. An estimated 11,000 foreign fighters have been mobilized in Syria, according to a just-published study by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (PDF). More than a quarter of those combatants are from Western countries, mostly from Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and Belgium. Australians, Canadians and U.S. citizen also have joined the ranks.

But judging by our complacency, you would be forgiven for not knowing this. Partly, that’s because some on the left in Britain and elsewhere have been busy downplaying the conflict or romanticizing it as something akin to the international brigades during the Spanish Civil War that attracted George Orwell and other idealists. But unlike Orwell in the 1930s, these fighters on their way to Syria are not traveling to fight against fascists. Many are young Western Muslims rushing to join a fascist group that is too extreme even for al-Qaeda: the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Members have been known to behead even fellow fighters. And it’s not much consolation that the more “moderate” volunteers are joining, Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Western Jihadists in Syria Threaten to Bring Their War Back Home – The Daily Beast.

Within Canada, a RCMP initiative to reduce the number of potential extremists traveling to Syria or other hotspots:

The tactics used to disrupt extremists varied depending on whether they were preparing to leave Canada, were already abroad or had returned after training or fighting, Assistant Commissioner Malizia said.

By working with other federal agencies, the RCMP was able to determine what “enforcement or mitigation action would be most appropriate depending on the circumstances, grounds and the threat,” he said.

“Amongst others, this could include the removal of a passport. If there is a threat to aviation it could involve a referral for the Specified Persons List led by Public Safety. And in cases where the subject of investigation is not Canadian, the cancellation of a visa.”

But the program may not be able to stop determined extremists. After serving a prison sentence for his role in the Toronto 18 terrorist group, Somali-Canadian Ali Dirie was still somehow able to travel to Syria, where he died last August.

RCMP tracking ‘high-risk’ Canadians to prevent radicalized youths from joining foreign terrorist groups

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Film at 9/11 Museum Sets Off Clash Over Reference to Islam – NYTimes.com

2014/04/25 Leave a comment

Good article on the challenges in explaining 9/11, Al-Qaeda, and Islamists. One can never please everyone, and I tend to agree that being too careful on language can be as harmful as being too careless, given the need to educate. Holocaust education generally does not shy from clarity in telling the story, and the film appears to be careful in how it tells the story:

In interviews, several leading scholars of Islam said that the term “Islamic terrorist” was broadly rejected as unfairly conflating Islam and terrorism, but the terms Islamist and jihadist can be used, in the proper context, to refer to Al Qaeda, preferably with additional qualifiers, like “radical,” or “militant.”

But for Mr. Elazabawy, and many other Muslims, the words “Islamic” and “Islamist” are equally inappropriate to apply to Al Qaeda, and the word “jihad” refers to a positive struggle against evil, the opposite of how they view the terrorist attacks.

“Don’t tell me this is an Islamist or an Islamic group; that means they are part of us,” he said in an interview. “We are all of us against that.”

For his part, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, defended the film, whose script he vetted.

“The critics who are going to say, ‘Let’s not talk about it as an Islamic or Islamist movement,’ could end up not telling the story at all, or diluting it so much that you wonder where Al Qaeda comes from,” Dr. Haykel said.

Film at 9/11 Museum Sets Off Clash Over Reference to Islam – NYTimes.com.

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West and Russia must unite to tackle radical Islam, says Tony Blair

2014/04/25 Leave a comment

While it is hard to disagree with Blair’s premise that fundamentalism poses serious risks to security, stability, human rights and prosperity, it is harder to think of ways to engage and influence to reduce the risk in an effective manner. As we have learned from Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Syria, there are limits, some self-imposed, some reflecting the complexity of the societies concerned, to what Western countries can do. There is something paternalistic in Blair’s attitude, in some cases we have to let societies work things out themselves and have more policy modesty, while of course addressing our security issues and providing some capacity building where appropriate:

”Consider this absurdity: that we spend billions of dollars on security arrangements and on defence to protect ourselves against the consequences of an ideology that is being advocated in the formal and informal school systems and in civic institutions of the very countries with whom we have intimate security and defence relationships.

”Some of those countries of course wish to escape from the grip of this ideology.

”But often it is hard for them to do so within their own political constraints. They need to have this issue out in the open where it then becomes harder for the promotion of this ideology to happen underneath the radar.

”In other words they need us to make this a core part of the international dialogue in order to force the necessary change within their own societies.

”This struggle between what we may call the open-minded and the closed-minded is at the heart of whether the 21st century turns in the direction of peaceful coexistence or conflict between people of different cultures.”

West and Russia must unite to tackle radical Islam, says Tony Blair – Telegraph.

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