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‘No god but God’: The War Within Islam - New York Times
‘No god but God’: The War Within Islam
By MAX RODENBECK

THESE are rough times for Islam. It is not simply that frictions have intensified lately between Muslims and followers of other faiths. There is trouble, and perhaps even greater trouble, brewing inside the Abode of Peace itself, the notional Islamic ummah or nation that comprises a fifth of humanity.

News reports reveal glimpses of such trouble — for instance, in the form of flaring strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in places like Iraq and Pakistan. Yet the greater tensions, while similarly rooted in the distant past, are less visible to the wider world. The rapid expansion of literacy among Muslims in the past half-century, and of access to new means of communication in the last decade, have created a tremendous momentum for change. Furious debates rage on the Internet, for example, about issues like the true meaning of jihad, or how to interpret and apply Islamic law, or how Muslim minorities should engage with the societies they live in.

What is unfolding, Reza Aslan argues in his wise and passionate book, ”No god but God,” is nothing less than a struggle over who will ultimately define the sweeping ”Islamic Reformation” that he believes is already well under way across much of the Muslim world. The West, he says, is ”merely a bystander — an unwary yet complicit casualty of a rivalry that is raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story.”

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OM: two Chechens held in Van Gogh murder inquiries

AMSTERDAM � Two Chechen men have been arrested in recent weeks in connection with inquiries into the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

French police arrested 25-year-old Bislan I. at the request of Dutch justice officials earlier this month. His fingerprint was allegedly found on a document among the belongings of Mohammed B., the man who has confessed to Van Gogh’s murder.

Another Chechen man was arrested mid-April, the Public Prosecutor’s Office (OM) in Amsterdam revealed on Thursday. Marat J., 22, was arrested in Schiedam.
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Trouw, nieuws & achtergronden - Terreur / Franse AIVD vreest radicalisering
Terreur / Franse AIVD vreest radicalisering
van onze redactie buitenland
2005-05-26

Frankrijk is al jaren niet meer getroffen door aanslagen. Dankzij een effectief anti-terreurbeleid, claimt de regering. Zorgen zijn er over de radicalisering van jonge moslims. Vijf Franse djihadisten kwamen al om in Irak.

In the Daily Start in article on Muslim women who combine tradition and trendy fashion

Dr. Hassan Hammoud, associate professor of sociology at the Lebanese American University, explains that women in Lebanon are bombarded by messages and images of how fashionable a woman ought to be in terms of outfit and physical shape. “Young girls try to fit into this model,” he says. “They build an image of themselves made out of what they hear, see and expect themselves to be.”

And if veiled women come from an immediate environment that values fashion, then their clothes will be fashionable, too. “A veiled woman, like any other woman, holds an image of what is acceptable versus what is unacceptable, based on the values of her peer group, her family, her community,” Hammoud explains.

Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Shafii, assistant to the judge at the Sunni Sharia Court, gave the trendy veil phenomenon an even more significant denotation, affirming that it indicates a religious revival among liberal Muslim circles. “The veil is not limited to traditional communities anymore,” he explains. “It is now being embraced by liberal people who were originally trendy.”

Such religious revival among new social circles is all the more important because it isn’t only manifested in non-traditional veiling but also in more liberal viewpoints, politics and approach to religion among Muslim societies, Shafii adds.

In de Tweede Kamer morgen een Publieksbijeenkomst over misbruik van Internet onder leiding van Francisco van Jole

Deelonderwerpen van dit thema zijn: het voorbereiden van terroristische activiteiten, het verspreiden van kinderporno, hacking, islamitisch-extremisme, etc. Deskundigen uit diverse betrokken sectoren gaan tijdens deze bijeenkomst met elkaar en met Kamerleden in debat over aard en omvang van dit probleem.

De bijeenkomst wordt georganiseerd door de themacommissie Technologiebeleid. Deze heeft als taak (mogelijke) toekomstige politieke, economische en ethische vragen die gerelateerd zijn aan technologische ontwikkelingen in samenhang te inventariseren en te behandelen.

In het NRC een artikel over American Enterprise Institute dat met een delegatie in Nederland op bezoek is: ‘Moeite met moslims is uw eigen schuld’
Waarom slaagt Nederland er niet in om moslims te integreren? Conservatieve Amerikaanse intellectuelen zochten in Rotterdam naar een antwoord op die vraag. ,,Wat is Nederland?”

Door onze redacteur Froukje Santing

ROTTERDAM, 21 MEI. Het waren niet de aantallen waarvan vijftien Amerikaanse politici en intellectuelen van het neo-conservatieve American Enterprise Institute gisteren tijdens hun bezoek aan Rotterdan opkeken. 37 procent van de stadsbevolking bestaat inmiddels uit migranten uit niet-westerse landen, hield wethouder Marco Pastoors (Leefbaar Rotterdam) hun voor. ,,En de verwachting is dat dat percentage in 2017 tot 48 procent is opgelopen.”

Waar de Amerikanen benieuwd naar waren, was waarom Nederland toch zo’n moeite heeft met de integratie van moslims. Waarom lukte dat bijvoorbeeld in Canada, Australi� en de VS veel beter? Was Nederland daar wellicht z�lf niet grotendeels schuldig aan, opperde onder meer Reuvel Marc Graig, die lange tijd bij de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst CIA op de afdeling Midden-Oosten werkte.
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In the Jamestown.org Terrorism Monitor an article on The ‘Virtual Hand’ of Jihad

The presidential commission on WMDs and the 9/11 commission have condemned the status quo mentality of the intelligence community, which they see as being preoccupied with today’s “current operations” and tactical requirements, and inattentive to tomorrow’s far-ranging problems and strategic solutions. Both commissions call for steps to improve analysis and encourage diversity, including routine critiques of finished intelligence and alternative assessments by outside experts. But the overriding emphasis in both commissions’ reports is on further vertically integrating intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Such proposals to centralize intelligence and unify command and control are not promising given recent transformations in Jihadist networks in the wake of al-Qaeda’s operational demise.

[…]

But radicalization usually requires outside input from, and interaction with, the larger Jihadist community. Radicalization is proceeding apace with exponential growth in internet connections (in the last five years active Jihadist websites has increased from 14 to over 4000). Personal bonds formed without physical contact on the internet appear to generate solid reputations for trustworthiness [6] and all the deep commitment that physical intimacy does, but often faster and over a wider set of personal relations.

It is written by Scott Atran, director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, and Professor of anthropology and psychology at the University of Michigan.
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In the Terrorism monitor of Jamestown.org an article on The Islamist Movement in Morocco

Prior to the Casablanca attacks of May 2003, Morocco appeared to be relatively immune to the type of home grown Islamic militancy experienced by other North African countries. The Moroccan monarchy, which claims direct descent from the prophet, appeared to have successfully contained its political Islamists, either by co-opting them into the system or by limiting their space for manoeuvre. Traditionally Moroccans had prided themselves on being part of the moderate Maliki school of Islam embodied in the figure of the King as “Commander of the Faithful”. However, the Casablanca attacks, as well as those in Madrid in March 2004, were to shatter this image and to uncover a complex and diverse array of militant Islamist groups and ideologies that had been operating in the Kingdom for at least the past two decades.

[…]

It seems that all of these groups have no overarching formal structure as such. Instead these militant cells are made up from small numbers of individuals who have grouped around the teachings of a particular Sheikh and who may or may not have links and contacts with those in other cells both inside the country and abroad. Whether the Moroccan regime has succeeded in its recent campaign to eliminate these radical Islamist trends has yet to be seen. However, the underlying problems that gave rise to militancy in the first place continue to fester. This is something that the Moroccan authorities will not be able to blame on outside forces.

It is written by Alison Pargeter, a Research Fellow at the International Policy Institue, Kings College London.
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In de NRC een interview met Amina Wudud: ‘Ik ben deel van nieuwe islam’

De Amerikaanse moslimtheologe Amina Wadud veroorzaakte grote opschudding in de islamitische wereld toen zij 18 maart in New York als eerste vrouw voorging in een publieke islamitische gebedsdienst waaraan ook mannen deelnamen. Vrouwen mogen wel vrouwen leiden, en dan liefst achter gesloten deuren, maar ,,vrouwen leiden mannen niet in religieuze verplichtingen”, verwoordde de invloedrijke Egyptische geestelijke sjeik Yusuf Qaradawi de storm van protesten. Zelf relativeert Wadud haar initiatief. ,,Ik vecht op vele fronten tegen de hegemonie van mannen”, zegt ze in een vraaggesprek, haar eerste sinds die gebedsdienst.

nu.nl/algemeen | Amsterdam gaat anti-radicale boeken stimuleren
AMSTERDAM - De gemeente Amsterdam gaat de vertaling en publicatie van werken met een gematigd gedachtegoed in het Nederlands stimuleren om radicalisme en extremisme in te dammen. De alternatieve zienswijze dient als ‘tegengif’ voor de verspreiding van extremistisch gedachtegoed in de stad.

De gemeente doelt hierbij op boeken met een extremistisch karakter of die een inspiratiebron kunnen zijn voor radicaliserende jongeren.

Terrorisme

Dit staat in de donderdag gepubliceerde voortgangsrapportage over het actieplan ‘Wij Amsterdammers’. De gemeente heeft dit plan opgesteld na de moord op Theo van Gogh en bevat maatregelen ter bestrijding van intolerantie, extremisme, radicalisme en terrorisme.

Opiniemakers

Een ander tegengif dat de gemeente wil gebruiken, is “het faciliteren van websites met een heldere alternatieve boodschap om tegenwicht te bieden aan websites die onverdraagzaamheid propageren in de stad.” Ook wil de gemeente belangrijke opiniemakers uitnodigen om een tegengeluid te laten horen.