Closing the week 30
Closer
Most popular on Closer this week
- The tragic death of Marwa El Sherbini
- Islamizing Europe – Muslim Demographics
- De kost gaat voor de baat uit
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Featuring fashion & politics
The niqab, fact v fiction -Times Online
How much do you really know about the niqab? An insider guide to common misconceptions
Fatima Barkatulla
1.The niqab is a symbol of female subjugation.2. Women who wear the niqab cannot possibly contribute to society
3. The niqab isn’t in the Qur’an
4. Wearing the niqab implies that all men are predatory
5. The niqab poses a security risk at banks and airports
6.Niqab wearers can’t possibly be teachers.
7. Banning the niqab will free those Muslim women who are coerced into wearing it.
Fatima Barkatulla is a regular columnist on SISTERS, the magazine for ‘fabulous Muslim women’
Danish military unit involved in headscarf row – Yahoo! News
A Danish military unit has become embroiled in a dispute about Muslim headscarves after it allowed a hijab-wearing woman to complete a training course.
The Home Guard, a home defense corps of thousands of volunteer soldiers, does not allow headscarves and violated that rule when it allowed Maria Mawla, 27, to wear one during its 10-day basic training program, spokesman Joergen Jensen said Monday.
“We made a mistake internally,” Jensen told The Associated Press.
The issue became national news in Denmark after the populist Danish People’s Party, known for its anti-Muslim outbursts, expressed shock over an article about Mawla posted on the Home Guard’s Web site.
The July 14 article, which has now been removed, described Mawla as a devout Muslim of Lebanese origin who said her headscarf posed no practical obstacles during training. A picture with the article showed her wearing a green headscarf under a camouflage hat.
Video: Muslim fashion – ‘Anyone can wear these clothes’ | Life and style | guardian.co.uk
Muslim fashion: ‘Anyone can wear these clothes’
Riazat Butt meets the designer behind Elenany, a new fashion label for Muslim women that blends modesty and street cred
Personal note: I like the several of the clothes. But do they have something for men as well? 🙂
Media terror – debate
New Statesman – Know your enemy
Terrorism, we know, is not the exclusive preserve or franchise of dark-skinned, bearded Muslims. But nowadays you might not know it from following the news.
Harry’s Place » A cracker of a lie about a bomber
Um, I blogged about this a fortnight ago, and David T blogged about this last November, and both of us got our information from ‘the mainstream press’, so this simply did not ring true.
Harry’s Place » The Senior Editor (Politics) of the New Statesman Writes…
My two favourite bits from your ‘post’ is 1) when you try and cite your own random, unread blogging as evidence that the “media” covered the Cottage, Worrell, Lewington and other stories that I cited in my column. Er, you’re not quite the front page of the Daily Mail, yet, mate. But you certainly don’t lack modesty. And 2) when you say your research is based on ‘Google News’ which, as you say, only goes back a few weeks. If you were a proper journalist, and not a self-appointed rumour-monger, you would know what Lexis-Nexis is and you would note, as I did, in my column, that the number of stories on the likes of Lewington, Gilleard, Cottage and co is miniscule (and includes not a single front page!)
By the way, do you see any mention of the Lewington guilty verdict on the front pages of any national newspaper this morning? Or on the BBC News at Ten headlines or Channel 4 News headlines last night? No? Neither did I. I did see it buried on page 23 (!) of the Telegraph today. Case closed, methinks.
–Pickled Politics » Harry’s Place in selective hysteria shocker
I mean it’s not like there’s a media panic about Muslims is there? It’s not like there’s been stories of Muslim bus drivers chucking people off the bus so he could pray. Obviously there’s not been any on Muslims drawing up a hit-list of prominent Jews to get them back over Gaza. No one could ever imagine a story of Muslim youths attacking a soldier’s house after Afghanistan.
You certainly would not believe that these stories would make the front page AND they turned out to be lies. That would never happen because are media is so balanced. Neither would you see prominent right-wing columnists writing about Eurabia and the ‘coming Muslim threat and all that’. Our press is the paragon of equal treatment to all nasty people. In group bias? That would never happen!
HuT and sex-education
Keep the faith: Should Muslim children receive sex education? – Schools, Education – The Independent
Keep the faith: Should Muslim children receive sex education?
A group run by a member of a radical Islamic organisation is opposing plans to give five-year-olds sex education.
Blogosphere: Tsuredzuregusa
tsuredzuregusa
The husband and I are now full-time travelers: we gave away most of our stuff, threw a few boxes in storage, and since July 1 (2008) we’ve been traveling the continent in our Mini Cooper.
I wondered where she went, but I know: Your Mileage May Vary
Dutch news
nrc.nl – International – Features – Dutch photographer travelled as boat refugee
Dutch photographer travelled as boat refugee
Published: 22 July 2009 17:17 | Changed: 22 July 2009 17:36
By Rosan Hollak
Joël van Houdt followed a Moroccan who made the journey to Europe as an illegal immigrant. The photographer did not want to think too much about the dangers of the boat trip.A young man in a white T-shirt wearing a white cowboy hat on his head and a smile on his face stands on a pedestrian crossing. Behind him palm trees wave in the breeze, expensive cars are parked along the roadside.
Nothing in this picture, taken by Dutch photographer Joël van Houdt in October 2008, betrays the difficult path this apparently cheerful boy had to take in order to walk in the Spanish sun.
Dutch news – Mosques Refuse Dutch ‘State Imams’
The universities and college courses supply Imams that speak Dutch and understand Dutch society. But the Imams trained in the Netherlands should not count on a job for now. “Poor mosques have no money for expensive, qualified Imams. Additionally, the older generation of mosque-goers, who pay contributions and therefore decide what happens there, do not want a Dutch-speaking Imam at all,” says Trouw.
Netherlands: Muslim youth fear forced marriage | EuropeNews
Many Dutch Muslim youth are afraid that they’ll be married off during vacation and then left in their homeland by their parents. This according to the increasing number of youth who find their way to social workers and hotlines. The government is only slowly moving to help.
Misc.
BBC NEWS | Programmes | Newsnight | Enforced marriage law forces couple apart
Nineteen-year-old Canadian Rochelle Wallis married her Welsh husband Adam in November 2008, two years after they first met and fell in love.
But now Rochelle is about to be deported from the UK and has been told that she will not be able to come back to see Adam until she is 21.
[…]
The UK Border Agency wrote: “This may cause the couple some inconvenience”, but that they had increased the minimum age for spousal visas to 21 to reduce the chance of “forced marriages”.
So an Israeli cell phone company made a commercial showing Israeli soldiers playing football (soccer) over the wall with Palestinians.
Always wanted to try a commercial ad for real? See MR what happened in this case.
Fears of an Islamic revolt in Europe begin to fade
Five years ago bombings and riots fuelled anxiety that Europe’s Muslims were on the verge of mass radicalisation. Those predictions have not been borne out.
[…]
The dire predictions of religious and identity-based mayhem reached their peak between 2004 and 2006, when bombs exploded in Madrid and London, a controversial film director was shot and stabbed to death in Amsterdam, and angry demonstrators marched against publication of satirical cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad.
[…]
Yet a few years on, though a steady drumbeat of apocalyptic forecasts continues, such fears are beginning to look misplaced. The warnings focus on three elements: the terrorist threat posed by radical Muslim European populations; a cultural “invasion” due to a failure of integration; and demographic “swamping” by Muslim communities with high fertility rates.
A new poll by Gallup, one of the most comprehensive to date, shows that the feared mass radicalisation of the EU’s 20-odd million Muslims has not taken place. Asked if violent attacks on civilians could be justified, 82% of French Muslims and 91% of German Muslims said no. The number who said violence could be used in a “noble cause” was broadly in line with the general population. Crucially, responses were not determined by religious practice – with no difference between devout worshippers and those for whom “religion [was] not important”.
“The numbers have been pretty steady over a number of years,” said Gallup’s Magali Rheault. “It is important to separate the mainstream views from the actions of the fringe groups, who often receive disproportionate attention. Mainstream Muslims do not appear to exhibit extremist behaviour.”
[…]
In the Netherlands, tension between the majority and the Muslim minority has redefined national politics in the past five years. The threat level last year was raised to the second highest level – in part because of the impact on Muslim communities of the success of the anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders. Yet even here security services say they see “the activities of homegrown [militant] cells being stable or diminishing because of a lack of leadership, and internal quarrelling”. This is the view of Judith Sluiter, of the National Co-ordinator for Counterterrorism agency, who adds: “The appeal of the radicals is declining. In the Moroccan community there is growing resistance to Islamic rejection [of Dutch society].”
The Dutch AIVD intelligence service recently reported that among the country’s other main Muslim immigrant community, from Turkey, “resistance to radical Islamic ideologies remains strong … In the short and medium term, there is no danger these [extreme] religious ideas will find many receptive ears in the Dutch Turkish community”.
Reflections on the Revolution in Europe
Caldwell frames the issue of Muslim immigration to Europe as a question of whether you can have the same Europe with different people. The author, a columnist for the Financial Times and a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, answers this question unequivocally in the negative.
Dutch
Hadith database
hadiths zijn in Nederlands slecht toegankelijk. Ik vertaal zelf vanuit Engels naar Nederlands. Inch’Allah probeer ik een zo goed mogelijke weergave te geven van vele ahadith, gerangschikt op onderwerpen. Commentaar en verbeteringen welkom!
Voor zover ik weet zijn er geen Nederlandstalige hadithvertalingen op het web. Dan is dit dus de eerste.