C L O S E R

CBS – Religie aan het begin van de 21ste eeuw

Posted on July 30th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Religion Other.

CBS – Herziene versie: Minder vaak naar kerk of moskee – Artikel

Ruim de helft van de Nederlandse volwassenen rekent zich tot een kerkelijke gezindte of een levensbeschouwelijke groepering. Eén op de vijf gaat regelmatig naar een religieuze bijeenkomst. Dat is fors minder dan voorheen.

Grootste daling onder islamieten

Het bezoek aan kerken, moskeeën en religieuze bijeenkomsten is de afgelopen jaren fors afgenomen. De daling is het grootst onder islamieten. Van 2004 tot en met 2008 ging gemiddeld 35 procent van de islamieten minstens een keer per maand naar de moskee, tegenover 47 procent in 1998 en 1999.

Ook onder katholieken nam het kerkbezoek aanzienlijk af. Van 2004 tot en met 2008 bezocht gemiddeld 23 procent minstens eens per maand een kerkdienst, tegenover 31 procent in 1998 en 1999. Onder protestanten liep de kerkgang nauwelijks terug.

Helft is katholiek

Van de Nederlandse bevolking van 18 jaar en ouder is 58 procent kerkelijk. De helft daarvan is katholiek. Verder rekent 9 procent zichzelf tot de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk, is 4 procent gereformeerd en geeft 6 procent aan tot de Protestantse Kerk in Nederland (PKN) te behoren.

Van de totale bevolking is 5 procent islamiet. Dat komt neer op 825 duizend mensen. Zo’n 95 procent van hen is van niet-westerse afkomst. De Marokkanen vormen met 296 duizend islamieten de grootste groep, op de voet gevolgd door de Turken met 285 duizend islamieten.

Vooral protestanten maatschappelijk betrokken

Vooral de PKN’ers, en in iets mindere mate de gereformeerden, tonen een sterke betrokkenheid bij de samenleving. Zij doen dat door zich in te zetten als vrijwilliger, actief te zijn in het verenigingsleven of hulp te bieden aan anderen. Mensen van andere gezindten en niet-kerkelijken zijn minder betrokken.

Ook de kerkgang houdt verband met de betrokkenheid bij de samenleving. De meeste informele hulpverleners behoren tot de groep die zeer regelmatig – twee tot drie keer per maand – naar de kerk gaat. De meeste vrijwilligers gaan zelfs elke week.

Hans Schmeets

Bron: Religie aan het begin van de 21ste eeuw. CBS (Den Haag/Heerlen 2009)

Het onderzoek laat vooral zien dat de ontkerkelijking (verbinding met religieuze instituties) afneemt. Het percentage moslims is de laatste vier jaar gelijk gebleven en ook onder deze groep zien we dus (al enige tijd) een teruggang in het moskeebezoek. Nu moeten we, en dat is een beetje een tricky punt bij dit onderzoek – moskeebezoek en kerkbezoek niet aan elkaar gelijk stellen. Moskeebezoek is, zeker voor de eerste generatie moslims, ook een sociale aangelegenheid. De moskee is een ontmoetingsplek en vaak ook nog een belangenbehartiger van (vooral eerste generatie) moslims. Daarnaast bezoeken vrouwen traditioneel gezien minder vaak een moskee dan mannen (onder meer omdat er lang niet altijd een vrouwenruimte is). De stelling dat de afname van kerkbezoek betekent dat gelovigen minder behoefte hebben aan instituten om uiting te geven aan hun geloof zoals Jan Latten in de NRC stelt, is evenmin terecht. Het gaat er allereerst niet alleen om om uiting te geven aan het geloof, maar ook om het geloof te ontwikkelen, een gevoel van verbondenheid te verkrijgen, ontplooien en koesteren en om aan de individuele ontwikkeling te werken. Dat beleving met de teruggang in kerkbezoek steeds meer een privé-zaak is geworden is ook twijfelachtig. Het onderzoek laat vooral een teruggang van traditionele instituties zien; welke ervoor in de plaats komen weten we nauwelijks hoewel we onder jongeren wel het bestaan van allerlei vluchtige netwerken en events zien. Hoe religie een privé-zaak kan zijn op het moment dat de positie van religie in de samenleving volop in discussie is, is mij al tijden een raadsel. Zeker in het geval van de islam, waar zo ongeveer iedereen wel een mening over heeft die ook nog eens gemeld moet worden, is de religieuze beleving wel degelijk een publieke zaak; of de individuele gelovige dat nu wil of niet.

3 comments.

Nederlandse jongeren in Kenia

Posted on July 29th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: ISIM/RU Research, Multiculti Issues, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

UPDATES ONDERAAN

Verschillende media weten vandaag te melden dat er in Kenia vier Nederlanders zijn ge-arresteerd op verdenking van het helpen van een moslimrebellenbeweging in Somalië.
Nederlanders gearresteerd in Kenia – Binnenland – Telegraaf.nl [24 uur actueel, ook mobiel] [binnenland]

Vier Nederlanders gearresteerd in Kenia
NAIROBI – De Keniaanse politie heeft vier mannen met een Nederlands paspoort gearresteerd bij de grens met Somalië. De Nederlanders worden ervan verdacht de islamitische opstandelingenbeweging al-Shabaab in Somalië te helpen, aldus een lokale functionaris woensdag.

Drie van de vier 21-jarigen zijn in Marokko geboren, de vierde in Somalië. Ze zijn maandag aangehouden, toen ze in een gehuurde truck onderweg waren naar de Noord-Keniase plaats Kiunga. De verdachten zeggen toeristen te zijn, maar volgens de functionaris zijn er in het gebied geen toeristische attracties.

Het viertal wordt voor het einde van week naar de Keniaanse hoofdstad Nairobi overgebracht.

Een woordvoerder van het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken kon woensdag bevestigen dat op 24 juli drie Nederlanders en een Marokkaan met een Nederlandse verblijfstitel zijn opgepakt in Kenia bij de grens met Somalië. Volgens de woordvoerder heeft de Nederlandse ambassade in Kenia contact met de vier personen en zitten zij vast voor nader verhoor. Buitenlandse Zaken kon geen uitspraken doen over de reden waarom de vier zijn opgepakt en wacht het onderzoek af.

Nou lijkt mij de kans groot dat de Keniaanse autoriteiten ook afgaan op informatie van Nederlandse autoriteiten (AIVD?), maar voorlopig is het dus nog afwachten.

Wat is Al Shabaab eigenlijk? Al-Shabaab oftewel ‘de jongeren’ is een moslimrebellenbeweging in Somalië die ook wel bekend onder de naam Ash Shabaab, Hizbul Shabaab (partij van de jongeren) en Volksverzetsbeweging in het land van de twee migraties (PRM) ontstaan uit de ondergang van de islamitische raden in Somalië in 2006 als gevolg van het optreden van het Somalische leger (of wat daarvoor doorgaat) en het Ethiopische leger. De hardline jongerenbeweging binnen die islamitische raden gingen ondergronds en vormden de Al-Shabaab. Zij presenteren hun strijd vooral als een strijd voor rechtvaardigheid en orde in een land waar wetteloosheid en chaos de boventoon voeren. Zij willen de rechtvaardigheid en orde, naar eigen zeggen, terugbrengen door de sharia in te voeren. Vorig jaar kondigde de shabaab beweging aan in de regio van Lower Shabelle het islamitische provincie van Shabelle gevestigd te hebben, nadat men al eerder de Islamitische Provincie van Juba gevestigd zou hebben. Eén van de ideeen daarbij lijkt te zijn dat men erop gokt dat de bevolking zo blij is met de terugkeer van gezag en orde, en het verwijderen van de criminelen, dat ze de heerschappij van de shabaab beweging zullen accepteren. Dit zou best eens zo kunnen werken. Voor veel mensen in Somalië is de Al Shabaab een legitieme bevrijdingsbeweging tegen buitenlandse (Ethiopische) bezetting en geen terreurgroep. De shabaab beweging staat er inmiddels om bekend mensen van buiten Somalië te rekruteren voor hun strijd. Dit lijkt echter erg recent te zijn, vanaf 2006, en het lijkt vooral te gaan om Somalische jongeren buiten Somalië en veel minder om een mondiale jihad. De redenen voor jongeren om zich bij deze beweging aan te sluiten zijn onder meer zoeken naar een hoger doel in het leven en identiteit, drang naar avontuur en romantiek en een mengeling van jihadisme en Somalisch nationalisme.

Hieronder zie je een nasheed Ya Shabaab (Oh jongeren) met daarin beelden van de Shabaab beweging (met Nederlandse ondertiteling).

Dat mensen naar andere landen trekken om daar te vechten voor rechtvaardigheid en bevrijding (in hun ogen althans) is niets bijzonders. Dat gebeurde al tijdens de Spaanse burgeroorlog en we zien het klaarblijkelijk ook bij joodse jongeren uit Nederland. Verder hebben we natuurlijk ook onder moslimjongeren in Nederland diverse zaken gehad en de belangstelling voor Somalië is in bepaalde kringen zeker aanwezig en zeer levend(ig). Nou ja eigenlijk is het wel bijzonder want het gaat altijd om relatief kleine groepen; de overgrote meerderheid, als ze zich er al mee identificeert, blijft lekker in het land waar ze wonen en zelfs van degenen die erover praten (vaak in erg romantische termen) probeert maar een enkeling te gaan. Van diegenen die gaan, faalt ook nog eens gedeelte omdat het allemaal toch wat lastiger is dan in eerste lijkt.

Voor de goede orde of dit ook in dit geval zo is (dat er sprake is van jongeren die deelnemen aan de jihad aldaar) weten we niet. Wellicht waren ze inderdaad toeristen op weg naar Kiunga aan de Keniaans/Somalishe grens en bijvoorbeeld potentiele bezoekers van het Kiunga Maritiem Reservaat met mangroves, schildpadden en vogels. Rest nog de vraag hoe problematisch dit allemaal is en voor wie?

UPDATES

The Standard | Online Edition :: Dutchmen grilled over Al-Shabaab

Anti-terrorist police officers arrested four Dutch nationals on suspicion they were crossing to southern Somalia to join the Al-Shabaab militia group.

The Dutchmen, who were arrested at night in Kiwayu, Lamu District over the weekend, were taken to Mombasa and later flown to Nairobi for further interrogation.

[…]

“The four foreigners claimed they were tourists in Kiwayu but we doubted the authenticity of their documents so we took them to Nairobi for further interrogation,” Limo said.

He said the investigations would establish whether the four were tourists or were in the country on a different mission.

According to a police source, police had been looking for the foreigners for the last one week. The source said they had information the four had been recruited as Al-Shabaab members through the Internet.

Terreurverdachten Kenia aangehouden in Brussel – Trouw

Terreurverdachten Kenia aangehouden in Brussel

De vier mannen die in Kenia werden opgepakt op verdenking van terrorisme zijn donderdagochtend op het vliegveld van Brussel aangehouden.

RTL Nieuws.nl – Uitgezette mannen opgepakt in Brussel

Uitgezette mannen opgepakt in Brussel
Op verzoek van het Landelijk Parket in Nederland zijn vanmorgen op de luchthaven van Brussel de vier mannen aangehouden, die door de autoriteiten in Kenia gisteravond het land zijn uitgezet.

Openbaar Ministerie – Uitgezette mannen aangehouden wegens terrorisme

Uitgezette mannen aangehouden wegens terrorisme

30 juli 2009 – Landelijk Parket

Op verzoek van het Landelijk Parket zijn vanmorgen op de luchthaven van Brussel de vier mannen aangehouden, die door de autoriteiten in Kenia gisteravond het land zijn uitgezet. Ze zouden op weg zijn geweest naar een jihadistisch trainingskamp in Somalië.

Het viertal wordt verdacht van deelneming aan een terroristische organisatie. Door de Nationale Recherche zijn vanmorgen in Den Haag twee woonadressen van de mannen doorzocht. Daarbij is beslag gelegd op een grote hoeveelheid documenten.

De vier 21-jarige mannen zijn drie Nederlanders en een Marokkaan met een Nederlandse verblijfsvergunning. Zij zijn in België in verzekerde bewaring gesteld. De Belgische autoriteiten zullen later beslissen over de verzochte uitlevering.

Een van de mannen is in november 2005 aangehouden in Azerbeidzjan, omdat hij met twee anderen zou hebben willen deelnemen aan de jihad. Hij is destijds uitgezet naar Nederland.

Meer info over het eerdere Azebeidjan avontuur: (deels afschermd, behalve voor abonnees) De zonen zullen nu wel in Irak zitten, AD-Jihad? Nee, ‘t was vakantie, NRC – Ramazan Keskin ging ‘winkelen in Baku’, Ramazan, Said en Driss, Ibrahim ontkent ronselen voor jihad.

NOSJOURNAAL – Nederlandse moslimjongeren aangehouden

Huiszoekingen en arrestatie
In het onderzoek naar de jongemannen heeft de Nationale Recherche vanochtend in Den Haag twee huizen doorzocht. Er is een grote hoeveelheid documenten in beslag genomen.

Eén van de vier mannen werd in 2005 in Azerbeidjan opgepakt, omdat hij met twee anderen onderweg was om deel te nemen aan de jihad. Hij is toen uitgezet naar Nederland.

Geweigerd door moskee
Het viertal behoort tot een groepje jonge moslims die vorig jaar door de As-Soennahmoskee in Den Haag de deur zijn gewezen. Dat bevestigen bronnen aan de NOS.

Het moskeebestuur weigerde vorig jaar een groep jongeren de toegang om dat ze er te radicale denkbeelden op na zouden houden. Het zou gaan een groepje van 15 tot 20 jongeren, gedeeltelijk vaste bezoekers van de As-Soenahmoskee en gedeeltelijk afkomstig van elders. De groep verzorgde lezingen in verschillende moskeeen.

Gewaarschuwd
Het bestuur van de moskee waarschuwde de gemeente Den Haag voor de groep radicaliserende jongeren. De inlichtingendienst AIVD houdt de leden van de groep al geruime tijd in de gaten.

De As-Soenahmoskee in Den Haag kwam in het verleden regelmatig negatief in het nieuws. Volgens de AIVD is de moskee een bolwerk van het Salafisme, een fundamentalistische stroming in de islam.

Bij nader inzien betwijfel ik overigens of dit groepje inderdaad deel uitmaakte van de groep jongeren die problemen had met de As Soennah moskee of men überhaupt deze moskee (nog) wel bezocht.

UPDATE VRIJDAG 31 JULI 2009
nrc.nl – Binnenland – In de Schilderswijk kennen ze Driss wel

In de Schilderswijk kennen ze Driss wel
Gepubliceerd: 31 juli 2009 13:01 | Gewijzigd: 31 juli 2009 13:16
Door Brian van der Bol en Merel Thie
Driss D. uit Den Haag werd deze week opgepakt in Kenia. Was hij een moslimterrorist? Volgens zijn broer ging hij weer met meisjes om.

Den Haag, 31 juli. In de fundamentalistische As Soennah moskee in Den Haag kwam de 21-jarige Driss D. al tijden niet meer. Dat zegt bestuurslid Hamid Taheri van die moskee en dat zegt ook de broer van Driss, de 23-jarige Mimoen. Maar het betekent niet dat Driss D. niet meer met het geloof bezig was, juist niet.

In Kenia opgepakte man al eerder ‘op jihad’ – Binnenland – de Volkskrant

In Kenia opgepakte man al eerder ‘op jihad’

ANP
Gepubliceerd op 30 juli 2009 12:00, bijgewerkt op 30 juli 2009 12:59

ROTTERDAM –
Een van de mannen die door Kenia is uitgezet wegens mogelijke betrokkenheid bij terrorisme, is een oude bekende van justitie: in 2005 werd hij aangehouden in Azerbeidzjan, nadat hij met twee andere geronseld was voor de jihad. Het vermoeden bestond dat ze onderweg waren naar Irak om daar te vechten voor hun geloof.

Niemand had nog vat op ‘jihadisten’ – Binnenland – de Volkskrant

Niemand had nog vat op ‘jihadisten’

ACHTERGROND, Van onze verslaggeefsters Janny Groen, Annieke Kranenberg
Gepubliceerd op 30 juli 2009 23:49, bijgewerkt op 31 juli 2009 08:59

AMSTERDAM –
De vier door Kenia uitgewezen ‘jihadgangers’ raakten van hun familie en hun geloofsgenoten vervreemd. Zelfs hun radicale imam verstootte hen.
De Stichting As Soennah in Den Haag (Guus Dubbelman/ de Volkskrant)

Al bijna een jaar maakt de gemeente Den Haag zich zorgen over een groep geradicaliseerde jongeren waarvan de vier veronderstelde ‘jihadgangers’ die in Kenia zijn opgepakt, deel uitmaakten. Zo’n twintig jongeren trokken van wijk naar wijk, en van moskee naar moskee om daar een voet tussen de deur te krijgen. Niemand, ouders noch instanties, had vat op hen. Wel zagen ze hen ‘doorradicaliseren’ en naar het bos gaan om – zo was de vrees – in conditie te raken voor de jihad.

UPDATE 3 – 08 – 2009

Vier terreurverdachten komen naar Nederland

De vier terreurverdachten die vorige week uit Kenia zijn gezet en sinds donderdag in België vastzitten, worden woensdag overgedragen aan de nationale recherche in Nederland. Dat heeft het landelijk parket van het Openbaar Ministerie maandag bekendgemaakt.

Deze entry zal de komende dagen voortdurend bijgewerkt worden. Op de hoogte blijven kan door je te abonneren: HIER.

5 comments.

Antropologie, financiële crisis en islamitisch bankieren

Posted on July 28th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, Multiculti Issues.

In Time Magazine een interessant interview met Karen Ho, een antropologe die gewerkt heeft bij een firma op Wall Street en recent gepromoveerd is op een onderzoek naar de cultuur van Wall Street, gepubliceerd als Liquidated: An Ethnograpy of Wall Street.
What’s Wrong with the Culture of Wall Street? – TIME

[She] was fascinated by how even in the midst of an economic boom, corporate downsizings were rampant — and how each time a company announced a major layoff, its stock rallied. What she found from her perch at Bankers Trust — and later in interviews with people at firms such as Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Salomon Brothers, Kidder Peabody and Lazard — was that it wasn’t just an ideological commitment to boosting shareholder value that drove decisions to merge, break up and restructure companies, but also the work culture of Wall Street itself.

Belangrijk in haar verhaal en in de cultuur van Wall Street is dat alle zekerheden en stabiliteit weg lijkt te zijn.
What’s Wrong with the Culture of Wall Street? – TIME

What I found in my research was that in many ways investment bankers and how they approach work became a model for how work should be conducted. Wall Street shapes not just the stock market but also the very nature of employment and what kinds of workers are valued. These firms sit at the nexus — they are the financial advisers and sources of expertise to major U.S. corporations and institutional investors — and from this highly empowered middle-man role, what they say has a lot of influence. The model that came to be dominant in the 1980s was one of constant change. The idea is that there’s a lot of dead wood out there and people should be constantly moving, in lockstep with the market. If a company isn’t constantly restructuring and changing, then it’s stagnant and inefficient, a big lumbering brick.
[…]
Wall Street bankers understand that they are liquid people. It’s part of their culture. I had bankers telling me, “I might not be at my job next year so I’m going to make sure to get the biggest bonus possible.” I had bankers who advised the AOL–Time Warner merger saying, “Oh, gosh, this might not work out, but I probably won’t be here when it doesn’t work out.” I looked at them like, “What?” Their temporality is truncated.

Zij pleit dan ook veranderingen aangezien de recente crisis volgens haar nauwelijks heeft geleid tot veranderingen in de cultuur.
What’s Wrong with the Culture of Wall Street? – TIME

I would hope that folks in the Obama Administration would somehow link bonuses to long-term corporate productivity or long-term shareholder value — long-term meaning four to five years instead of five months or a year — and reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act [that separated investment and commercial banking]. These are big reforms, but they’d give you a more stable landscape to make even more changes. Part of what I learned is that the very kinds of daily practices that created the boom in the first place — wanting to book as many deals as possible for short-term bonuses, a workplace structured so that they’re knowingly not there for very long — paved the way for the bust. I talked to bankers who said, “When we do deals like this, we’re probably at the top of the market.” They knew. It’s not simply that busts always follow booms.

Opvallend is dat zij in het interview (ik ken het boek niet) vooral lijkt te pleiten voor een structuur verandering bij het bankieren. Dat is iets waar het bij ook om lijkt te draaien. Mede door de financiële crisis lijkt het alsof islamitisch bankieren met een opmars bezig is of dat mogelijk zou kunnen doen.
islamitisch bankierenIslamic Banking: Steady in Shaky Times – washingtonpost.com

The theological underpinning of Islamic banking is scripture that declares that collection of interest is a form of usury, which is banned in Islam. In the modern world, that translates into an attitude toward money that is different from that found in the West: Money cannot just sit and generate more money. To grow, it must be invested in productive enterprises.

“In Islamic finance you cannot make money out of thin air,” said Amr al-Faisal, a board member of Dar al-Mal al-Islami, a holding company that owns several Islamic banks and financial institutions. “Our dealings have to be tied to actual economic activity, like an asset or a service. You cannot make money off of money. You have to have a building that was actually purchased, a service actually rendered, or a good that was actually sold.”

In the Western world, bankers designing investment instruments have to satisfy government regulators. In Islamic banking, there is another group to please — religious regulators called a sharia board. Finance lawyers work closely with Islamic finance scholars, who study and review a product before issuing a fatwa, or ruling, on its compliance with sharia law.

Nadat de crisis in volle omvang bekend werd, kreeg ik vanuit diverse (salafi en non-salafi) hoeken diverse stukken toegestuurd waarin de zegeningen van het islamitisch bankieren (boven dat van het ‘westerse’) werden beschreven.
Can Islam Save The Economy? | Economy | ReligionDispatches

In the midst of a global financial crisis one sector has yet to suffer the fate of the rest. Islamic finance, or Sharia-compliant banking, offers strict moral guidelines for dealing with money. Trading debt and risky speculation are off-limits, as is investment in immoral enterprises like gambling, prostitution, and war profiteering. It might be time to get the muftis on the phone.

Gezien de sterke groei die er al was, lijkt er misschien inderdaad een kans te liggen.
IslamiCity.com – Can Islam Save The Economy?

Islam, the theorists believe, offers a distinct alternative to the other big-picture political economic options, capitalism and communism. By incorporating both markets and redistribution, they see it as the best of both worlds. After the two mega-ideologies spent the Cold War fighting over the allegiances of Muslim countries, the Soviet Union collapsed and now global capitalism is grinding to a halt as well. Islamists suspect that the reason Muslim countries remain impoverished is a fundamental incompatibility between these Western economics systems and the values that Muslim cultures hold dear. Now, perhaps, is the time for a third option to have its chance.

At the very least, suggests Boston University anthropologist Robert Hefner in a recent essay, these theories “provide a fascinating point of entry into the thoughts of Muslim leaders on global capitalism.”

We moeten het specifieke van deze banken echter ook niet overdrijven, hetgeen wellicht wel gebeurt wanneer we puur naar de theoretische en theologische grondslagen kijken. IslamiCity.com – Can Islam Save The Economy?

In the process of becoming competitive, though, Islamic banks may have lost some of the values they claim to be founded on. The theorists’ original hopes for fostering more ethical consumer preferences hasn’t taken hold in the banking culture. Bill Maurer, who has studied Islamic banks in South Asia and the United States, says these institutions aren’t much different from other banks, despite some conspicuous signs of piety like prayer rooms and conservative clothing. Working at one doesn’t mean joining a monastery. “A lot of the time,” adds Maurer, “it’s the same kind of drudgery and tedium that any old bank employee is dealing with.”

Among those in the West who have been following the progress of Islamic finance, Turkish-born Timur Kuran is the most skeptical. “Endeavoring to implement Islamic economics,” he writes in his book Islam and Mammon, both bankers and governments inevitably “recognize its unrealism.” While the earliest experiments depended on genuine partnerships and risk-sharing, the bulk of today’s Islamic transactions use instruments that differ only in name from what a conventional bank offers. In one of the most popular and long-practiced of these, murabaha, the bank buys an item for the client, who then in turn buys it from the bank, along with a premium that cleaves suspiciously close to the conventional interest rate. Religious scholars agree that the transaction is acceptable, even if the bank owns the item for just a millisecond. Pure in God’s eyes, perhaps, but there is nearly no difference in economic terms. Kuran and others have also pointed out that during the medieval period, when the Sharia guidelines for commerce were developed, nothing resembling a modern bank existed. There was no legal provision for such an institution to outlive individual owners, as nowadays a bank of any scale must.

Islamitisch bankieren is, zoals de al eerder genoemde Hefner in zijn essay al laat zien, vooral een modern antwoord op het (westerse) kapitalisme en niet zozeer een complete verwerping ervan. De ogenschijnlijk toenemende belangstelling voor islamitisch bankieren heeft denk ik echter niet alleen betrekking op een gevoelde noodzaak voor structuurverandering in de bankiersector, maar ook op een hernieuwd etnisch appèl voor de sector. Karen Ho’s onderzoek, zo valt toch wel te lezen tussen de regels in Time Magazine door, is eigenlijk deels ook een pleidooi voor een ethische reflectie op eigen belang, voortdurende verandering en onzekerheid en de dreiging van ontslag, temeer omdat deze niet alleen betrekking heeft op de banksector, maar ook is doorgesijpeld naar andere sectoren in de VS omdat de Wallstreet-cultuur (ook al is wat essentialistisch benaderd) niet alleen de aandelensector vormt, maar ook van invloed is op ideeen over wat voor type arbeiders ‘we’ willen hebben. (Iets dat ook anderen al hebben laten zien.) Of dit nu daadwerkelijk betekent dat islamitisch bankieren een grote vlucht zal nemen is nog maar de vraag overigens. Ook andere alternatieve bankiers die claimen een groter ethisch besef te hebben, doen het redelijk goed, maar dat wil nog niet zeggen dat het systeem daadwerkelijk gaat veranderen.

6 comments.

Closing the week 30

Posted on July 26th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Closer
Most popular on Closer this week

1. The tragic death of Marwa El Sherbini
2. Islamizing Europe – Muslim Demographics
3. De kost gaat voor de baat uit

If you want to stay updated and did not subscribe yet, you can do so HERE

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”.

Israeli TV ad shows Israeli Soldiers Playing Football (Soccer) over the Wall, Palestinians try it out for real and get tear gassed | MR’s Blog

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.

0 comments.

De kost gaat voor de baat uit

Posted on July 23rd, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Multiculti Issues.

Er is een potentie goed nieuws vanuit het PVV-front voor allochtonen. De PVV (gesteund door de VVD) wil namelijk exact weten hoeveel geld allochtonen de staat kosten en hoeveel ze opleveren. Dit betekent dus dat als deze kosten-baten analyse voor het verleden en de toekomst positief uitvalt, de PVV een groot deel van haar bezwaren tegen migratie en allochtonen laat vallen.

Het idee is bepaald niet nieuw. Jaren geleden deed Pieter Lakeman al zo’n soortgelijke analyse in een zeldzaam vertoont stukje pseudo-wetenschappelijke goochelarij. Volgens Lakeman koste migratie ‘ons’ zo’n 70 miljard gulden; zo’n 32 miljard euro. Lees zijn boek Binnen zonder kloppen vooral en let op de onderbouwing van zijn cijfers. Het is niet duidelijk waarom hij bepaalde posten wel meeneemt en anderen weer niet en of de kosten van migratie als gevolg van dekolonisatie ook meetellen is eveneens onduidelijk. Het is onduidelijk waarom hij bij de economische bijdrage van migranten alleen het inkomen laat tellen dus ook de baten blijven vaag.

In het buitenland bestaat inmiddels bijna een traditie aan (wel) wetenschappelijke onderzoeken naar de fiscal impact van migratie. In Nederland heeft het CPB hier eerder onderzoek naar gedaan en gepresenteerd in de studie Immigration and the Dutch Economy. Al eerder publiceerde het CPB Hoe meer zielen, hoe minder vreugd. Wilders’ eerdere claim dat het 100 miljard kost (als je dat al meent te weten, waarom dan nog een onderzoek eigenlijk?) komt ook niet uit de lucht vallen zoals ik al eerder liet zien naar aanleiding van zijn bizarre speech in Denemarken (en willen journalisten die dit punt gebruiken, voortaan gewoon aan bronvermelding doen!?):
C L O S E R » Blog Archive » Geert wilders in Denmark

1. The 100 billion euro costs of migration is based upon a report that can be read HERE. The report estimates the costs of migration (among things) based upon constructed profiles in which the profiles of future migrants is based upon the age profiles of native citizens and socio-economic characteristics of current migrants p. 68-72):

Figure 4.4 also provides the opportunity to assess the effects of the immigration of families. A few examples are worked out here. The first is a family with a husband and wife aged 25 and the characteristics of the non-Western immigrants. The family has two children, aged 0 and 5, whose characteristics correspond to the average of those the Dutch and non-Western residents. It can be calculated from the data in figure 4.4 that the family carries a negative net contribution of 230,000 Euros (minus 43,ooo Euros for each of both parents and minus 68,000 Euros for the 0 year old child and minus 76,000 Euros for the 5 year old child) and thus forms a substantial burden to public finances. Even if the parents have the average of the non-Western and Dutch characteristics, and the children have the ‘Dutch’ characteristics the total lifetime contribution is negative (minus 48,000 Euros). A positive contribution requires that the social and economic characteristics of the family of immigrants almost fully equal those of the average Dutch residents. If all members of the family have the Dutch characteristics the total lifetime contribution amounts to 76,000 Euros, and if the parents are ‘highly performing’, the contribution rises to 226,000 Euros.

This means that in the most negative scenario the future costs of migration will be 230,000 euro for every non-western household. It does not say it pertains to current migrants and if we can come with that conclusion. Even if that would be the case, which it isn’t, Wilders takes the most negative contribution (minus 230,000) euros and extrapolates that to existing non-western households in the Netherlands. But also here he is sloppy: there are 224,500 of these households. Let’s include the households with one non-Western partner (85,000) that the total number becomes 309,000. 230,000 * 309,000 = 71,070,000,000. This is still considerably less than 100 billion. And I probably don’t even have to mention that not all of these people in the non-western category are Muslims.

Meten is weten lijkt het adagium te zijn, maar schijn bedriegt natuurlijk. Want wat ga je precies meten? De kosten van de opleiding van migranten? Inburgeringscursussen? Inkomsten aan belasting en accijnzen? En (hoe) houd je rekening met verschillen in leeftijdsopbouw van verschillende groepen? Allochtonen zijn gemiddeld wat jonger dan autochtonen en dat kan wel eens een verschil in kosten opleveren, maar ook een verschil in potentiële baten. Houd je rekening met feit dat veel eerste generatie migranten hier weliswaar jaren gewerkt hebben, maar geen volledige pensioenrechten hebben opgebouwd en dan dus relatief goedkoper zijn geweest? Hoe verwerk je het gegeven dat migranten die hier binnenkomen soms gelijk aan het werk kunnen; wel arbeidskrachten zonder dat je hebt te hoeven investeren in hun opleiding? Houd je rekening met de kosten wanneer zij er niet meer zouden zijn? En als er een bepaald positief of negatief saldo uitkomt, wat zegt dat dan? Dan moet je eerst bepalen wat de vergelijkingsgroep is. Meten is weten is dus nog helemaal niet zo evident, maar het venijn zit ‘m nog ergens anders dan in bovenstaande punten die anderen ook al aangehaald hebben. Het venijn zit ‘m in de term allochtoon en de geschiedenis ervan. Met de term allochtoon worden over het algemeen niet-westerse migranten en hun nakomelingen bedoeld, meer in het bijzonder Marokkaanse, Turkse, Surinaamse, Antilliaanse, Afrikaanse en Aziatische Nederlanders. Zeg maar iedereen die niet blank is.Allochtoon (persoon) – Wikipedia

Het begrip werd in 1971 geïntroduceerd door de sociologe Hilda Verwey-Jonker in een rapport voor het Nederlandse ministerie van Cultuur, Recreatie en Maatschappelijk Werk (CRM), ter vervanging van het tot dan toe gangbare woord immigrant. Feitelijk was het bedoeld als eufemisme. De termen ‘allochtoon’ en ‘autochtoon’ bestaan overigens al veel langer in het Nederlands, voor 1954 werden ze gespeld als ‘allochthoon’ en ‘autochthoon’. Ook in de biologie en geologie worden ze gebruikt om in- of uitheemse planten, dieren of verschijnselen mee te duiden. Nog in de jaren zeventig kon bijvoorbeeld een persoon uit Den Bosch die enkele kilometers verderop naar Sint-Michielsgestel verhuisde daar als allochtoon gezien worden.

Inmiddels heeft het woord ‘allochtoon’ ook een pejoratieve lading. In 2006 werd er zelfs een voorstel werd gedaan door de fractie van de PvdA in de Amsterdamse gemeenteraad, om het gebruik van de term ‘allochtoon’ in officiële stukken te verbieden. Bij gebrek aan een alternatief bleek dit niet haalbaar. Dit woord is dus een voorbeeld van een eufemismetredmolen. In februari 2008 suggereerde minister van justitie Ernst Hirsch Ballin ook maar weer eens dat de term allochtoon afgeschaft moest worden, maar kreeg direct veel kritiek over zich heen, vanwege het immers reeds lang bekende tredmoleneffect.

Kijken we naar het beleid dan is de term allochtoon gereserveerd voor die groepen die als problematisch worden beschouwd in culturele of sociaal-economische termen. Die problematiek was aanleiding om er beleid voor te bedenken; aanvankelijk etnische minderhedenbeleid en later allochtonenbeleid. Hiermee schept de staat dus een aparte categorie en een apart label voor migranten die als problematisch worden aangemerkt. Men is geen allochtoon van geboorte, maar omdat men zo aangemerkt wordt en men wordt zo aangemerkt omdat men (of de ouders) buiten Nederland afkomstig zijn en als probleem gezien wordt. En dan gaat men nu proberen vast te stellen hoeveel deze categorie ‘ons’ kost? Maar het hele punt was toch al dat deze categorie een probleem was/is? Anders was dat hele beleid niet nodig en ook die hele term niet. Een cirkelredenering in progress zou je kunnen zeggen. Tsja…zo lust ik er nog wel een paar.

2 comments.

Closing the week 29

Posted on July 19th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Closer
Most popular on Closer this week

1. The tragic death of Marwa El Sherbini
2. Islamizing Europe – Muslim Demographics
3. The politics of Dutch tolerance

If you want to stay updated and did not subscribe yet, you can do so HERE

Featured current Dutch debates
A Dutch Gist of Remarks – IslamOnline.net – European Muslims

By Mr. Bertus Hendriks

Christian- Islamic relationship went through many phases.
IslamOnline.net (IOL)’s European Muslims zone had the chance to meet with Mr. Bertus Hendriks, a Middle East Analyst and Commentator for the Dutch Public Radio and Television and a Senior Visiting Fellow in Clingendael, The Netherlands Institute of International Relations. In his meeting with the team, he expressed his views on the status of Muslims in Europe, with a special focus on The Netherlands.

In an attempt to present the different European points of view on the issues of Muslims in Europe, we present Mr. Hendriks’ views in which he commented on many issues pertaining to Dutch Muslims.

Mr. Hendriks tried to track the different phases that the Dutch Muslim community went through when they first arrived to The Netherlands as “guest workers” till the present time. He tackled many developments and factors that shaped their current stance and their integration process into the Dutch community.

Political Games & Muslims in Netherlands (Part Two) – IslamOnline.net – European Muslims

In the first part, Mr. Bertus Hendriks gave a brief summary of the historical background of Muslims’ existence in Europe. He highlighted the major elements affecting Muslims’ integration there, giving real examples from life to second his viewpoint. Mr. Hendriks assured that the current status of immigrants is not born today; rather it is an accumulative one. Some big internal and external differences stand as obstacles to the full acceptance of those “new comers” in the European society. In this part, he continues raising some of the major Muslim-related issues mainly in The Netherlands, pointing out the political games that have great influence on their lives.

Battle brewing over single-sex classes for Muslim women | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Utrecht city councillor Marka Spit says she is going to ignore Dutch Integration Minister Eberhard van der Laan’s plan to abolish segregated integration courses as of January 2009. Various Dutch media report that the two politicians, both members of the Labour Party (PvdA), disagree on whether segregated integration classes benefit or undermine the emancipation of Muslim women in the Netherlands.

Moroccan biscuits for Wilders – a video report | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

“In my opinion, you have nothing to fear,” Geert Wilders tells RNW journalist Mohamed Amezian, a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent. Mr Amezian has found himself interviewing the politician who makes The Hague nervous, who has declared war on Islam and who wants to deport ‘criminal foreigners’.

A simple question: will the Dutch accept Guantánamo prisoners? | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende recently hinted that the Netherlands would accept detainees from Guantánamo Bay, which US president Barack Obama plans to close by January 2010. Despite originally saying “no”, the Netherlands has had its hand forced by other European countries agreeing, such as France, Begium, Spain and Italy.

nrc.nl – International – A war of words over Guantánamo

By Herman Staal
What exactly did prime minister Balkenende promise president Obama in Washington about taking in detainees from Guantánamo Bay? The Dutch parliament would like to know too.

Hijab issues
Couture abayas on Paris runway

The Saks Fifth Avenue Riyadh and Jeddah fashion show was held at the end of June 2009 and featured 22 custom made Haute Couture abayas. According to the Associated Press the abayas were customized by international designers.

The show was held on June 25th at the George V hotel in Paris.

Here are some of the abyas they showcased:

France exports Islamic veils

FASHION week in Paris, and after a display of pink and purple mini-dresses in an elegant apartment near the presidential palace, an assistant wheels out a rack bearing two very different creations: black abayas.

‘ISLAMOPHOBIA’
‘IF YOU wear the veil, you get insulted and attacked all the time, you get called a terrorist,’ said Ikram Es-Salhi, a 20-year-old student standing outside the Zeina Pret-A-Porter shop that sells mass-produced headscarves, tunics and abayas.

Es-Salhi wears a long brown veil that covers her head and body but leaves her face open. She would like to wear the full niqab, but it is banned at her college.

‘MAKE no mistake, the burqa is a political debate, not a religious one. Extremists are once again testing the Republic,’ said Jean-Francois Cope, a senior member of the ruling UMP party, in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper.

Several UMP members want it banned.

The billowing gowns, usually worn with a veil, have been made for the Saudi market by Paris-based couturier Adam Jones.

French row over burqa ban unveils contradictions | International | Reuters

As France considers banning full facial veils such as the niqab and the burqa, which President Nicolas Sarkozy has said is not welcome here, the fact that it is a major exporter of couture abayas may seem odd.

But that is just one of the many contradictions exposed by the latest clash between secularism and religion in the home of Europe’s largest Muslim community.

“If someone tells me, ‘design an abaya,’ why not, I’m proud of that. It’s just a garment,” haute couture designer Stephane Rolland, who has made many abayas for Middle Eastern clients, told Reuters backstage after his fashion show in Paris.

When asked about the broader debate whether veils are a sign of subservience and should be outlawed, his confidence wavered.

“I don’t want to speak about religion, that’s a different subject. But I don’t want to cover the woman — alas, I don’t want to think about that,” he said before turning away.

Belgian court overturns headscarf sacking of teacher < Belgian news | Expatica Belgium

Belgian court overturns headscarf sacking of teacher
Belgium’s highest administrative court has overturned the sacking of a Muslim woman teacher by two schools because she wore a headscarf, national press reported Friday.

Islamization of Europe?

Why Fears Of A Muslim Takeover Are All Wrong | Print Article | Newsweek.com

But all this obscures a simple fact: the rise of a Eurabia is predicated on limited and dubious evidence. A much-cited 2004 study from the U.S. National Intelligence Council outlines a number of possible scenarios. Its most aggressive is that the number of Muslims in Europe could increase from roughly 20 million today—about 5 percent of the population—to 38 million by 2025. But that projection turns out to be attributed to “diplomatic and media reporting as well as government, academic, and other sources.” In other words, it’s all speculation based on speculation—and even if it’s accurate, it would still mean the number of Muslims will represent just 8 percent of the European population, estimated by the EU to be 470 million in 2025. Indeed, if there is a surge ahead, its scale looks overstated. “There is a quite deliberate exaggeration, as has often been pointed out—but the figures are still being cited,” says Jytte Klausen, an authority on Islam in Europe at Boston’s Brandeis University.

Radical movements and counterradicalization
Hamas: Ideological Rigidity and Political Flexibility | Middle East Studies

Discussion in the United States regarding Hamas is usually framed by two somewhat contradictory assumptions: (1) that Hamas is ideologically incapable of evolving to accept the existence of Israel and (2) that isolation and strong pressure are the only tools that may force it to recognize Israel. This controversial report challenges both assumptions. On the one hand, the authors make a case for recognizing that Hamas has already, in certain respects, changed and has sent signals regarding its possible coexistence with Israel. On the other hand, they conclude that Hamas might never “recognize” Israel in the conventional sense and that, since Hamas apparently cannot be eliminated, attempts to engage it must take into account its commitment to the strictures of shari’a.
In other words, the report attempts to inject some gray areas into an issue that is often framed only in black and white terms. In a unique approach, the authors do not ask us to necessarily change our conclusions about the value of such engagement. Instead, they invite us to reevaluate our assumptions by providing a new prism through which to analyze Hamas. The authors themselves–one Jewish and the other Muslim–have very different lenses on this conflict. They disagree on the definition of the conflict and have differing views of how it can be resolved, but they share the goal of providing a framework for understanding Hamas, its motivations, and its selfconcept, and of presenting alternative criteria for interpreting the signals that it sends. The authors neither endorse Hamas’s actions or positions nor advocate taking Hamas’s claims at face value, and they certainly do not argue that Israel, the United States, and the West should drop demands for changes by Hamas. On the contrary, they offer a framework to help policymakers develop and deliver such demands more effectively, a framework that takes into account how Hamas views itself and how many in the Muslim world understand the movement. With U.S. allies such as Egypt and Jordan pressing for a Palestinian unity government inclusive of Hamas, it is imperative to consider what kinds of conditions and safeguards would contribute to a successful peace process rather than derail it.

Blogosphere
Islam for Parents » First Ever American Muslim Mom Online Magazine Launched!

mericanMuslimMom.com is the first and only online magazine that offers free tips, tools, reviews, contests and resources for Muslim Moms living in America.
AmericanMuslimMom.com is an online magazine aimed for Muslim Moms living in America or American Muslim Moms living aboard. American Muslim Mom began as a family blog in 2005, and has blossomed to a repository of useful articles for Muslim Moms aimed to help them with all aspects of raising Mu’miniyn (true believers) in a non-Muslim country.

Dutch

‘Moslims lopen weg bij PvdA’ – DePers.nl

Over moslims in Nederland wordt volgens het Rotterdamse raadslid Fouad el Haji gesproken ‘alsof ze allemaal streng gelovig zijn’. ‘De meeste Marokkaanse moslims in Nederland zijn seculier’, zegt El Haji. ‘In het politieke landschap is daar geen podium voor. Daarmee doe je hen tekort. Dat zijn de natuurlijke bondgenoten van de PvdA.’ El Haji zegt hiervoor tot dusver bij de partijtop geen gehoor te krijgen. Hij bepleit een lobby voor deze groep in de PvdA.

Je wordt hier geïslamiseerd waar je bij staat – DePers.nl

Mohandis pleit voor meer secularisme binnen de partij. ‘Een samenleving waarin de scheiding tussen kerk en staat strikt wordt toegepast. Religie is een privézaak. Zelf haal ik periodiek mijn inspiraties uit geloof, maar ik zal daar geen buurman of partijgenoot mee lastigvallen. Houd religie voor jezelf. Ik spreek atheïstische Marokkanen en seculiere moslims die zeggen: waarom bemoeit de PvdA zich zo met religie? Die sluiten zich aan bij D66 omdat ze dat een meer vrijzinnige partij vinden.’

AD.nl – Economie – Geen Marokkanen in AH to go-winkels

Diverse filialen van Albert Heijn to go op treinstations willen medewerkers van Marokkaanse afkomst buiten de deur houden.
Dat blijkt uit een recent overzicht van de afdeling personeelszaken waarin wordt opgesomd op welke tijden en dagen extra krachten nodig zijn.

‘Geen Marokkanen!’ staat er vetgedrukt bij de winkels Amsterdam- Westtunnel, Amsterdam Lelylaan en Den Haag Centraal Station.

De lijst werd donderdag 4 juni per e-mail naar 31 Albert Heijn to go winkels (kleine supers voor de snelle boodschap) gestuurd. De filiaalmanagers konden vervolgens aangeven ‘of deze nog klopt’. Vanuit een van de filialen kreeg personeelszaken dezelfde ochtend nogmaals het verzoek: ,,Dringend! Geen Marokkanen!”

[…]

Volgens Albert Heijn-woordvoerster Buining is het een ‘raadsel’ waarom een aantal To go-winkels Marokkanen wil weren.

,,Wij hebben medewerkers uit wel honderd verschillende culturen in dienst. Onderscheid naar etnische afkomst tolereren wij niet.”
[…]
Volgens een anonieme medewerker van AH to go vinden de filiaalmanagers in Amsterdam en Den Haag dat er ‘meer dan genoeg Marokkaanse jongens werken en over de vloer komen’. ,,Dat zou bedreigend overkomen voor andere klanten.”

De rancunisering van Europa | NRC Boeken

Twee veronderstellingen domineren deze boeken: ‘de islam’ is erop uit Europa over te nemen (en is aan de winnende hand) en de moslims hier vormen een bruggehoofd voor die kolonisatie. Dat de islam aan het ‘winnen’ is moet, behalve uit cijfers over immigratie, blijken uit de censuur die Europese samenlevingen zichzelf opleggen: je mag ‘niks’ over de islam zeggen, op straffe van intellectueel ostracisme, juridische knevelarij, of erger. Zie de vervolging van de assimilationistische politicus Geert Wilders en de moord op Theo van Gogh, een gruweldaad die een scharnierpunt is gebleken in de radicalisering van de Nederlandse islamkritiek.

Aan die laatste feiten is natuurlijk niets af te doen. Europese samenlevingen worstelen hevig met de steeds zichtbaardere plaats die grote aantallen moslims erin innemen. En inderdaad, het onbekommerde multiculturalisme van weleer biedt geen soelaas meer voor een breed gedeeld gevoel van vervreemding en ontworteling. Radicaal islamitisch activisme is intussen een vehikel geworden voor adolescente onvrede en zelfs voor terrorisme. De gevaren daarvan zijn zeker reëel.

Maar dat betekent nog niet dat er een levensvatbaar islamitisch plan zou bestaan om Europa te bezetten, waarvan de huidige generaties islamitische immigranten de op afstand bestuurde vijfde colonne zouden zijn.

’Moskee kan oplossing bieden’ – Trouw

Imams preken, ze vertellen hoe het allemaal moet, „maar dat is niet meer van deze tijd, van deze samenleving”, zegt Elforkani, die een beeld schetst van superstrenge koranleraren en autoritaire vaders. „In de opvoeding was alles eenrichtingsverkeer, zonder ruimte voor dialoog. Desondanks ontwikkelen jongeren hun eigen mening. Ze willen zelf bedenken wat ze van dingen in de islam vinden. Dat is goed. Allah heeft niets aan automatische piloten.”

De drempels van moskeeën moeten omlaag, desnoods moeten imams de straat op, denkt Elforkani. Om te luisteren naar wat ze bezig houdt. „Het geloof is hun zwakke plek. Daar ligt het vertrekpunt richting een betere toekomst waarin ze niet alleen in woord, maar ook in daad echte moslims zijn.”

Al-yaqeen

7. Wij zijn zoals u weet een Islamitische website. Welke beelden roepen de Islam bij u op?

Het beeld van een geloof dat een deel van de Nederlanders aanhangt. Voor de werkvloer zou dat niets moeten uitmaken. Ik ben katholiek opgevoed, maarik geloof zelf niet meer. Wel heb ik absoluut respect voor het geloof van anderen. Of dat nu het katholieke of Islamitische geloof is. Ik zie het als een individuele keuze van mensen. Wij hebben hier uiteraard bij de FNV ook Islamitische collega’s.

Al-yaqeen

Ondankbaarheid tonen voor een genieting geschiedt door het zich vergrijpen aan de zonde en het onrechtmatig uitbesteden van bezit aan zaken zoals ontucht, alcohol, sigaretten, kansspelen enz. Onder deze noemer valt ook het vermeerderen van het vermogen door drugshandel, prostitutie en bedrog. Maar ook het onterecht aanspraak maken op sociale financiële steun door het zich schuldig maken aan het verstrekken van valse gegevens aan uitkeringsinstanties.

Tot slot wil ik benadrukken dat onze praktiserende, intellectuele jongeren zich dienen in te spannen om organisaties op te zetten die zich bezighouden met het monitoren van misstanden tegen moslims, het behartigen van hun belangen en het waarborgen van hun rechten. Vooral nu wij te maken hebben met een toename van anti-islamitisch gescandeer uit extreemrechtse hoek dat zich op de eerste plaats toespitst op de moslimvrouw en haar hoofddoek. Nog schrikbarender is het feit dat deze anti-islamitische tendensen tegenwoordig niet slechts stoppen bij gescandeer, maar dat de daad bij het woord wordt gevoegd in de vorm van geweld tegen moslims. Dit terwijl de media en de politiek bewust de andere kant op kijken.

Bij het uitblijven van een krachtige veroordeling van de toegenomen islamofobie zouden deze jongeren de mogelijkheid dienen te benutten om via digitale media, zoals internetsites, de massa op de hoogte te stellen van de diverse misstanden tegenover moslims die strijdig zijn met de meest basale mensenrechten.

AD.nl – Den Haag, Wassenaar, Voorschoten – ‘Met tengels van moskee afblijven’

dat de SP in de Haagse gemeenteraad ‘voortaan met haar tengels van de moskeeën moet afblijven’.

De moskee reageert op vragen van de SP en de VVD aan het gemeentebestuur. Aanleiding is een tv-uitzending van Netwerk van enige weken geleden waarin imam Fawaz om commentaar was gevraagd over de situatie waarbij moslima’s na een Nederlandse scheiding niet kunnen hertrouwen omdat er geen islamitische afhandeling heeft plaatsgevonden. „De imam gaf toen te kennen dat het Nederlands rechtsstelsel advies inwint van islamitische deskundigen,’’ aldus team al-Yaqeen en daar is volgens hen niets mis mee. ‘Dus nogmaals SP: bemoei jullie niet met ons!’

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The Politics of Dutch Tolerance

Posted on July 14th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Headline, Multiculti Issues.

Once, Amsterdam was the embodiment of the tolerance of the Netherlands: the proud capital of a country that saw itself as a symbol of openness. Until recently Amsterdam was seen as the favourable exception: here it was still different from the rest of the country, here the distrusting mass did not call for a revolt. And now there is a body with a butcher’s knife under a white sheet on the streets and everybody knows that we have been fooling ourselves.
Paul Scheffer (2004)

On 2 November 2004 Dutch film director and columnist Theo van Gogh is killed by Mohammed Bouyeri. This, according to some opinion leaders and newspapers, was the end of Dutch tolerance. Van Gogh well known in the Netherlands for some very good films and his vile columns on Islam and Muslims in which he frequently tried to insult Muslims by calling them goatfuckers (most of the time aimed at so-called radical Muslims but he remained vague about that) but at the same time seeing himself as someone standing up to defend the typically Dutch tolerance. It was said the attack was possible because we were too tolerant for people who want to destroy our democracy. Some said the aftermath of the murder when several Islamic schools, mosques and churches were set on fire, was the end of Dutch tolerance. Again, one could say. This was the second murder in a short period of time that shook the whole country. The first one was on 6 May 2002 when Dutch right wing populist Pim Fortuyn was murdered by a native Dutch environmental activist. That murder however did not raise serious questions about Dutch tolerance (although this was a very important issue in Fortuyn’s program and the election campaign): a Moroccan Muslim born in the Netherlands was needed for that. In foreign newspapers although the murder on Fortuyn has raised questions about Dutch tolerance, such as in an article in The Guardian about the confusion after the murder (Death of the Dutch Dream). In this article however tolerance is not related to the murder but the issues Fortuyn referred to in his campaign:

Dutch society, similarly, has become simply too complex to fit comfortably into the myth of liberal tolerance it had cast for itself.

The reactions on the murder of Van Gogh and before that the election campaign with Fortuyn, make clear that tolerance is an important issue for the Dutch. Tolerance is often seen as something good, neutral and beneficial. But that is highly questionable as PhD researcher on citizenship, subjectivity, and aesthetics in local communities Mepschen points out in an article on Monthly Review

Paul Mepschen, “Against Tolerance: Islam, Sexuality, and the Politics of Belonging in the Netherlands”

The Slovenian philosopher and sociologist Slavoj Zizek argues that tolerance constitutes a mystifying discourse veiling what is really at the heart of political and social struggle. There is good reason, Zizek argues, that someone like Martin Luther King didn’t make use of the concept. The struggle against racism is not a struggle for tolerance, but for social, economic, political, and cultural rights, and for changing unjust and undemocratic power relations. Zizek makes a parallel with feminism, asking if feminists struggle to be ‘tolerated’ by men. Of course not — from this perspective the concept of tolerance even becomes rather ridiculous.

Tolerance, in other words, does not work as an imperative for political struggle.

Mepschen explain his point by referring to the debates about Islam and homophobia (seen as related) and Dutch identity and integration (in which gays have become ‘normal’). Notwithstanding the discursive construction (rather than daily practice) the tolerance towards gays does not remove structural aspects of Dutch society that are detrimental to gays:

[…]

What causes the disgust mentioned above is heteronormativity, which is still a structural, essential aspect of Dutch society and moral order. In other words, heterosexuality remains the self-evident norm, a normativity which is reproduced through the family, in the educational system, popular culture, and media. The tolerated homosexual fits this heteronormativity very well: in almost every way he behaves according to heteronormative norms. As Steven Seidman says, the emphasis on tolerance has normalized homosexuality. The modern homosexual changed from a deviant, excluded other into the mirror-image of the ideal heterosexual. In a 2001 article on normalization, Seidman argues: “Normalization is made possible because it simultaneously reproduces a dominant order of gender, intimate, economic, and national practices”. He warns: “[L]egitimation through normalization leaves in place the polluted status of there marginal sexualities and all the norms that regulate our sexual intimate conduct apart from the norm of heterosexuality”. He also points out: “Ultimately, normalization [renders] sexual difference a minor, superficial aspect of a self who in every other way reproduces an ideal of a national citizen”.

As argued, many people in the Netherlands still look the other way, disgusted, shamed, when confronted with homosexuality in public. In such a heteronormative culture it needs not surprise that many homosexual men and women are depressed; that suicide rates among young gays and lesbians remain high; that transgenderism and other forms of gender nonconformity are ridiculed and transgenders are excluded; that violence keeps threatening the lgbt-community. The solution for such problems is not a politics based on tolerance, but on the struggle against heteronormativity.

[…] I do not argue for intolerance, but for re-imagining political struggles in such a way that the structural causes of exclusion, discrimination, and violence assume center-stage again, for a queer movement that takes up the struggle against heterosexual normativity. Tolerance is ideology. We do not fight to become tolerated but to change the world. Tolerance is an ideological construct that disarms the lgbt-movement and positions us against as opposed to alongside ‘other’ oppressed minorities.

Tolerance is perhaps one of the main mythical characteristics of Dutch society. Mythical in the sense that it is a sacred narrative concerning how the Netherlands and the Dutch people came to have their present form. It can be traced back to the Dutch golden era, the 17th century and is still an important issue in debates and the relationship between different people.

Tolerance in Dutch society is mainly used with regard to different religions. Especially Amsterdam from the 17th century onwards is famous for its ability to attract people with a wide variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds who came for economical reasons or fled for religious reasons (Lucassen en Penninx 1997). In the 20th century religious tolerance is very much connected with the system of pillarization. In this system society was deeply divided into distinct and mutually antagonistic religious and ideological groups. Because of overarching cooperation at the elite level and by allowing each group as much autonomy as possible, a stable democracy was made possible (Lijphart 1968). The 1960s were a turning point in history in Europe and the U.S. In the Netherlands this turning point involved a major shift in the position of religion. A popular narrative is that during the 1960s the Dutch liberated themselves from the burden of religion. Free speech rights were loosened in the 1960s and already after WWII new mass political parties such as the PvdA (Labor Party) and the VVD (secular-right-liberal) emerged as powerful forces (Kennedy 1995: 356). By the end of the 1960s daily newspapers had lost their religious affiliations and the mass media become more adversarial with loosening of ties to religious denominations (Kennedy 1995: 285). After that the debate about tolerance seems to have shifted towards the question of how to deal with (Christian) groups that do not acknowledge and accept the fundamental freedoms of a secular Dutch society. In this sense secularism is not only a description of the decline of religion in society but also a norm in society. This question was raised when several Christian groups refused to vaccinate their children against polio or in case of the SGP (a right wing orthodox Christian political party) who refuses women to become active members of the party. The way these questions were resolved did not question the tolerance of society. On the contrary it was seen as an affirmation of Dutch tolerance. More serious questions were raised during the 1990s when the issue of tolerance was linked to immigration and Muslims. This shows that tolerance is more just a virtue alone. It is an important aspect of identity politics on both sides of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Identity politics, in my view, should be taken to mean the negotiations about the definition and interpretation of ideas, practices and experiences that constitute a certain identity (Eickelman en Piscatori 1996, Eriksen 1993). In this case it involves negotiations about the definition and interpretation of ideas, practices and experiences related to tolerance. One only has to have look at the headlines of Dutch and foreign newspapers after the murder of Van Gogh, or look at touristic brochures and flyers to realize that tolerance is considered to be an in important part of Dutch identity. Or read for example the next statement from a website about studying in the Netherlands. It clearly shows how the history of tolerance, tolerance as a virtue and tolerance as a part of Dutch identity are interwoven:

The Netherlands is extremely tolerant
A recent poll about the Dutch identity has revealed that tolerance is a typical Dutch property. The forefathers of Dutch tolerance descend from far back in history. These were Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1563), Hugo de Groot (1583-1645) and Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677). These men influenced the Dutch tolerance, and with this prepared and defended in word and writing such as in the jurisprudence. democracy and equality are typical values that emanated from the tolerance philosophy. This also has its effect on aspects such as: the gay marriage, the Dutch drug policy and the recognition of prostitution as entrepreneurship. Recently it’s said that the Dutch tolerance is coming to an end. The murder of the well known politician Pim Fortuin and filmmaker Theo van Gogh has shaken Holland’s foundations.

Mepschen is right in taking the El Moumni affair as an important example in his essay. In the televisionprogram NOVA about the attitude of Moroccan boys towards homosexuality, young people were showing their contempt for gays. According to imam El Moumni in that program, homosexuality was a dangerous disease. This unleashed a fierce debate about the position of Islam in the Netherlands that clearly showed the transformation of tolerance that was already set in motion in the 1990s. Gaymagazine Gaykrant opened a website, as Mepschen also explained, with a poll with the thesis: ‘New Dutchmen must accept our tolerance, otherwise they don’t belong here’. An overwhelming majority of 91% agreed (Prins 2002, Trouw 2001). Also historian Kennedy points to the changing ideas about tolerance in an interview with Dutch daily Trouw (Top 2005). Freedom and tolerance become the dominant concepts and ‘narrow-mindedness’ and ‘intolerance’ are attacked. Tolerance becomes a militant term and something that other people should learn, a benchmark of integration and therefore part of identity politics.

Tolerance remains important for Dutch identity but is, in particularly by the ‘islamcritics’, transformed, from something that a dominant group is able to give to a minority group, to something the dominant group demands from the minority group. This is based on a very strong emphasis on personal autonomy and the conviction that the Other does not value personal autonomy and wants to restrict the personal autonomy of Dutch people.

• This entry is partly based upon a paper Dreaming in Dutch that was part of the Ethnobarometerproject in which native Dutch participans frequently discussed issues pertaining to Islam and Moroccan-Dutch people in terms of tolerance.
• Mepschen’s article was first published at International Viewpoint and you can also read it in Dutch (H/T Standplaats Wereld) Tegen tolerantie: Homoseksualiteit, islam en Nederlandse identiteit.

References

Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities, 2nd edition 1991 edition. New York: Verso Press.
Cliteur, P. 2002. Moderne Papoea’s, Dilemma’s van een multiculturele samenleving. Amsterdam/Antwerpen: De Arbeiderspers.
Eickelman, D. en J. Piscatori. 1996. Muslim Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kennedy, J. C. 1995. Building New Babylon: Cultural Change in the Netherlands during the 1960s. Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services.
Lijphart, A. 1968. The politics of accommodation: pluralism and democracy in The Netherlands. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lucassen, J. en R. Penninx. 1997. Newcomers, immigrants and their descendants in the Netherlands 1550-1995. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.
Prins, B. 2000. Voorbij de onschuld. Het debat over de multiculturele samenleving. Amsterdam: Van Gennep.
—. 2002. Het lef om taboes te doorbreken. Nieuw realisme in het Nederlandse discours over multiculturalisme. Migrantenstudies 18:241-254.
Scheffer, P. 2000. “Het multiculturele drama,” in NRC Handelsblad.
—. 2004. “Tolerance kan alleen overleven binnen grenzen: de kans voor een nieuwe ‘wij’,” in NRC Handelsblad, pp. 15.
Slijper, B. 1999. Twee concepties van liberale tolerantie in een multiculturele samenleving. Themanummer over ‘Multicultureel Burgerschap’ geredigeerd door Baukje Prins en Sawitri Saharso. Migrantenstudies 15:83-95.
Top, B. 2005. “Tolerantie is niet meer neutraal,” in Trouw.
Trouw. 2001a. “Boze moslims verzamlen 10.000 handtekeningen.”
—. 2001b. “Onderzoek uitspraken imam.”
Van Gogh, T. 2001. “Niemand vindt het meer de moeite waard om de typisch Nederlandse tolerantie te verdedigen.,” in NRC Handelsblad.

1 comment.

Closing the week 28

Posted on July 12th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blogosphere.

Closer

Most popular this week:

1. The tragic death of Marwa El Sherbini
2. Islamizing Europe – Muslim Demographics
3. Sheikh Google, Sharia & Arbitrage / Stierf Michael Jackson als moslim?

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Featured
Uighur Muslims Crushed in East Turkistan – IslamOnline.net – Politics in Depth

The harsh, brutal, and bloody crackdown by the Chinese authorities on the Uighur Muslim people in East Turkistan, also known as Xinjiang, cannot be tolerated any longer.

Internet, Blogs Solace Oppressed Uighurs – IslamOnline.net – News

With a dawn-to-dusk curfew, internet blackout, blocking graphic images of beaten and bloody bodies, bloggers and social-networking websites are giving voice to China’s several-million Muslim Uighurs in the face of a massive crackdown.

Foreign Policy: Why Twitter Failed The Uighurs : NPR

Given the current oversupply of Twitter experts, it’s strange that nobody told the Uighurs that staging a protest in the week of Michael Jackson’s funeral is not going to propel them into the top charts of Twitter’s most discussed items. What a bummer – Michael Jackson is still topic number one on Twitter, the Uighurs are not even in top 10, and the Internet-savvy whizzes of the State Department are nowhere to be seen.

Managing Dissent in China and Iran – The Lede Blog – NYTimes.com

Just weeks after the disputed presidential election in Iran, outside observers find themselves in a somewhat familiar situation: trying to piece together a sense of what is happening in China’s Xinjiang Province in the aftermath of anti-government protests that turned violent. In China, as in Iran, state-controlled media has called the protesters “rioters” and the violence on the streets “terrorism” rather than characterizing it as a spontaneous reaction by demonstrators confronted by security forces.

As my colleague Michael Wines reported on Monday, getting a clear sense of what is happening on the streets of Urumqi is not made easier by the fact that China’s government, like Iran’s, has made a concerted effort to control information about the unrest by placing restrictions on the foreign press and limiting access to the Internet for government opponents. So once again we find ourselves reading reports from news outlets controlled by or sympathetic to the state, relying on what foreign reporters who have been given strictly limited access to the area can learn and following the Twitter feeds of bloggers who reflect on and translate some of what is being said inside the country.

Unrest in Urumqi, China | World news | guardian.co.uk

Unrest in Urumqi, China (44 pictures)

Uighurs News – The New York Times

Uighurs (Chinese Ethnic Group)

Global Guerrillas: JOURNAL: Leveraging Information Terrain

The Uighur protest/riot/crackdown in China provides some interesting data points on the uses of information terrain to disrupt social networks. Note the amplification.

Marwa El-Sherbini
Is Europe really Islamophobic? | Nesrine Malik | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Bloggers and commentators have played the “what if” game, reversing the race and nationality of the victim and attacker in order to highlight the muted response from Germans (and Europeans more generally). The murder of Theo van Gogh has also been invoked as an example of the unequal value attached to the lives of Muslims and non-Muslims. The outcry has sparked calls for severing links with Germany and even declaring a “world hijab day” to honour Marwa’s memory. The fact that the murder was committed by a reported neo-Nazi in Germany does little to temper a perception that Muslims are the targets of racial hatred.

[…]However, it’s a big step from that to the image of comprehensive, conspiratorial, institutional discrimination against Muslims in Europe that is gaining ground in Arab countries and spurring calls for the severance of diplomatic relations and boycotting of products. Muslims (me included) constantly protest that the actions of a few extremists should not be allowed to denigrate Islam and its adherents as a whole – but this is exactly what they are doing themselves in connection with Europeans and the actions of Axel W.

Publications
“Gaining Knowledge”: Salafi Activism in German and Dutch Online Forums | Digital Islam

Carmen Becker
Recent years have witnessed an expansion of Salafi activism into computer-mediated environments like online discussion forums. Forum activities are part of the activists’ endeavor to access the religious sources (Quran and Sunnah) and, through these sources, the lives of the prophet Muhammad and the first generations of Muslims. The prophet and the first generations embody the perfect model of a (Muslim) life which Salafi activists strive to emulate. This article analyses the knowledge practices of Salafi activists in Dutch and German discussion forums revolving around the religious sources. Knowledge practices are understood as meaning-making activities that tell people how to behave and how to “be in the world”. Four aspects are central to Salafi knowledge practices in Dutch and German forums: (1) Fragmentation and re-alignment form the basic ways of dealing with digitized corpus of Islamic knowledge and (2) open the way for Salafi activists to engage in “Islamic argumentation” in the course of which they “excavate” behavioral rules in form of a “script” from Quran and Sunnah. (3) These practices are set within the cognitive collaboration of forum members and part of a broader decentralizing tendency within Islam. (4) And finally, narratives and sensual environments circulating in forums help activists to overcome contradictions and ambiguities while trying to put the script, which tells them what to do in which situation, into practice.

Zero Intelligence Agents » Understanding the Survival Mechanisms of Global Salafi Jihad

Understanding the Survival Mechanisms of Global Salafi Jihad
By Drew Conway, on June 3rd, 2009

Understanding the temporal dynamics of networks is what many researchers in the field consider the “holy grail” of the science. As people in national security realm began to understand the structure of terrorist organizations as networks, the ability to track and predict their growth and decay became the center piece of much their research. Unfortunately, at present we lack the requisite mathematics needed to truly understand the trajectory of these systems. At best, thorough case studies of good data can help inform our understanding of these dynamics, and this is the approach taken in a new study entitled, “The Dynamics of Terrorist Networks: Understanding the Survival Mechanisms of Global Salafi Jihad.”

Qaradawi’s Revisions | Marc Lynch

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, probably the single most influential living Sunni Islamist figure, has just written a major book entitled Fiqh al-Jihad (The Jurisprudence of Jihad) which decisively repudiates al Qaeda’s conception of jihad as a “mad declaration of war upon the world.” At the same time, he strongly rejects what he calls efforts to remove jihad completely from Islam, and strongly reaffirms the duty of jihad in resisting the occupation of Muslim lands, specifically mentioning Israel as the arena of legitimate resistance. Qaradawi’s intervention has thus far received no attention at all in the English-language media. It should, because of his vast influence and his long track record as an accurate barometer of mainstream Arab views.

Thesis: Hijab empowers women

What is it like being veiled and working in Australian companies? Anthropologist Siham Ouazzif sent me her thesis “Veiled Muslim Women in Australian Public Space: How do Veiled Women Express their Presence and Interact in the Workplace?”

Siham Ouazzif conducted 16 in-depth interviews with Australian veiled women. They were well educated and held different professions from professors, psychologists, teachers to marketing managers.

A Companion to the Muslim World –

What is the extraordinary text that is the Quran – and how does it relate to the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad? How did a legacy so richly varied in faith, law and civilization emerge from the message of the Revelation that came to be called ‘Islam’ (or submission to God’s will)? This immaculately researched yet thoroughly accessible book offers a journey into the full range of experience – past and present, secular and sacred – of the diverse peoples and cultures of the Muslim world. Threads of continuity and change are woven through each chapter to make a coherent narrative covering a broad variety of themes and topics. Poets, cities and the architecture of mosques are as much a part of the exploration as multiple aspects of scripture, the status of women in the faith, and the emergence of a ‘digital community’ of believers. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, understanding what Islam is about and what Muslims believe is a vital concern across all frontiers. A Companion to the Muslim World is an attractive venture by distinguished scholars to contribute toward this urgent process of comprehension.

Global Jihad
Last Man Standing — jihadica

the golden age of Saudi Arabia as an exporter of pro-al-Qaida theological treatises is largely over. While I think the argument generally holds, Abd al-Aziz al-Julayyil is now forcing me to qualify this claim.

So who is this person?

?????? ?? ????? Views from the Occident: American Jihadi Abu Mansur al-Ameriki (Amriki), in Somalia, Responds to U.S. President Barack Obama’s Cairo Speech

Late yesterday evening, a new audio message was posted on the main Salafi jihadi online discussion forums from Abu Mansur al-Ameriki (also spelled, Abu Mansur Amriki and Abu Mansoor Amriki), an American member and spokesman of sorts for the Somali radical group Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahidin [Movement of the Mujahidin-Youth] and its paramilitary wing, the Jaysh al-‘Usrah [Army of “Hardship”] which responds to U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent speech in Cairo that was aimed, supposedly, at the “Muslim world.” I posted segments from a panel discussion about the speech HERE. Very little is known about Abu Mansur, other than he speaks fluent English with some type of “American” accent. He also speaks, it seems, fluent Arabic. His response to Obama has been teased for the past week on the forums.

Islamic arbitration in the Netherlands

Would it be such a terrible thing if sharia courts existed in the Netherlands? Yes, says Nahed Selim, we have to stop giving in to the Islamic fundamentalists. No, says Maurits Berger, we already have Jewish and Catholic ‘courts’.

nrc.nl – International – Help Muslims escape the tyranny of sharia law

Sharia law in the Netherlands may not be practised in an actual ‘sharia court’, but that makes little difference. The point is that Islamic rules about marriage, divorce, custody, parental authority, alimony and inheritance are being implemented according to the sharia, and that these contradict Dutch law.
Nahed Selim is an interpreter and a writer. She is Dutch-Egyptian.

nrc.nl – International – Opinion – Let Muslims have their sharia courts

We will then be put before a choice: either the Muslims are allowed to do what other religions have been doing for centuries, or the entire system of parallel religious law must be dismantled.
Maurits Berger is a professor of Islam in the West at Leiden university.

Human Rights
Saudi Arabia: Shura Council Passes Domestic Worker Protections | Human Rights Watch

Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council passed a bill on July 8, 2009, to improve legal protections for the estimated 1.5 million domestic workers in the country, but the measure still falls short of international standards, Human Rights Watch said today. The bill goes from the Shura Council, an appointed consultative body, to the cabinet, which can make further changes before it is enacted into law.

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The tragic death of Marwa El Sherbini

Posted on July 9th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Blind Horses.

Marwa Sherbini, Elwy Okaz and their son Mostapha

***Updated: see below***

Probably most of you by now read about the tragic story of Marwa El Sherbini. If not read this:
WORLD BULLETIN- TURKEY, MUSLIMS, ISLAM, BALKANS, CAUCASUS [ German killing of headscarved woman at court raises fears in Europe ]

Marwa Sherbini, a 32-year-old Egyptian national was suing her attacker after he insulted her for wearing the Islamic headscarf.

Sherbini stood in court to give evidence against court appeal before German man took out a knife and stabbed her 18 times.

Marwa took her 3-year old son Mostapha to play in a Dresden park. A German man, identified only as Axel W, insulted her because of wearing headscarf and called her a “terrorist”. She filed a case against him in German courts after the incident.

When she won the case and the court fined him the €780 for having abused her. But German man appealed against the verdict, German media said.

Also, her husband and her son were present in the court room. When the assailant attacked Marwa her husband ran to rescue her. But the assailant stabbed him 3 times. Meanwhile, a German security officer in court shot the husband in the leg too.

The husband Elwy Okaz lapsed into a coma and was taken to hospital suffering from serious injuries to the stomach and liver.

That should be enough to make you very angry and upset. For many it does and, so it seems, for many it doesn’t.
Who was Marwa Sherbini?
She was a ‘star pupil’at El Nasr Girls’ College, an old and very prestigious school for girls in Alexandria, Egypt. Between 1992 and 1999 she was a member of the Egyptian national handball team. After she got married to Elwy Okaz the couple moved to Germany where he became a genetics post-doc researcher at the Max Planck Institute (which issued a press statement about the case). The couple had one child, a boy, and Marwa was pregnant with their second child at the time she was murdered.
The court case
Alex W., a Russian-German citizen, called Marwa in a Dresden playground “Islamist”, “terrorist” and “bitch” in a dispute over a swing that his niece wanted to use but was taken by Marwa’s son. After the initial case the public prosecuter appealed because of the xenophopic nature of the incident that became even more apparent when Alex W. during the initial trial declared that Marwa “[does not] have the right to live here”. When Alex W. stabbed Marwa he was, as has been reported by some witnesses, shouting “you don’t deserve to live”. A police man was called to the scene but mistakenly shot Marwa’s husband in the leg (apparently the officer thought the husband was the perpetrator) while he was trying to defend and protect his wife and was already critically wounded by the attack. She has been buried in Egypt.
Media Reports
On Dutch webfora, weblogs, and Egyptian blogs there is a lot of discussion about this tragedy and in particular about the alleged lack of media attention.
Egyptian chronicles: What If She Were A Lesbian

This is for sure a hate crime but unlike other hate crimes like homophobic crimes or anti-Semitic crimes ,it did not make the headlines abroad and I do not know why !! This is a racism crime , a woman is shot down like that so simple in the court room for God sake and it is not important to be covered in the media as it should !! She was a mother who was a pregnant for God sake !!

Yes it is very tempting to play the ‘What if game’
I hate everything about You! | Hicham Maged’s blog

Let us play the What IF game, just imagine if the situation was reversed and the victim was a westerner who was stabbed anywhere in the world or -God Heaven- in any Middle Eastern country by Muslim extremists, or even what the media used to call ‘minorities’ in Egypt! You definitely would have heard the world’s buzzing and the internet goes down too!

Now of course the media will deny that there is anything such as Islamophobia on their part. They usually resort to pragmatic legitimizations of their decisions to publish or not to publish. Take for example the Dutch NRC.next’s decision (my translation)

[…the] report about the controversy has not been included in the newspaper simply because their is not much space for foreign news. The foreign office editors has to make choices. Anti-Muslim sentiments do not play a role in that. Furthermore the fact that in Germany there is hardly any debate at a high level was a reason for this decision. There wasn’t even a debate about stricter rules for entering a court house.

What this statement makes clear is that such a decision, whether or not influenced by ‘anti-muslim’ sentiments, is not neutral? A person accused of a crime manages to sneak a knife into the courthouse is not a matter of debate? And this lack of debate is not news? Meaning that this is normal? In the process of making decisions of what to include and not to include several aspects play a role:Agenda Setting Theory

# Agenda setting Agenda setting is giving priorities to alternative policy issues. Whereas early communications studies had shown a mixed picture about the ability of media to influence opinions on a given issue, Cohen (1963) and others showed that the media had much greater capacity to influence which issues were perceived as important. That is, the media agenda (policy rankings by importance in the media) influences both the public agenda (rankings in opinion surveys) and the policy agenda (rankings in legislative bodies).

# Salience transfer refers to the capacity of the media (or other actors) to influence the relative importance individuals attach to policy issues. A notable study proving the existence of salience transfer was that by Iyengar, Peters, & Kinder (1982), where experimental groups gave baseline priorities, then were exposed to different news broadcasts with different policy emphases over four dayst, then rated priorities again. The authors found subjects’ issue rankings realigned to match the media agenda.

# Gatekeeping refers to how media content is controlled. Gatekeeping determines the content of salience transfer.

# Framing. The importance and interpretation people attach to potential items on the public agenda are strongly influenced by how the media present news stories (Chyi & McCombs, 2004). Entman (2004), for instance, attributes differential foreign policy perceptions to how the media cheered American victories in Grenada and Panama but took scant note of success of far more difficult missions in Haiti and Kosovo. Another example cited by Entman is the media labeling an incident in which a U.S.S.R. aircraft shot down a civilian aircraft as an “attack,” while labeling as a “tragedy” a similar incident in which an American aircraft shot down a civilian Iran Air airplane. Earlier work by Entman (2001) focused on framing examples related to racial issues in the U. S.

# Priming. Where framing centers on political loading of the presentation of news, consciously or not, priming has to do with drawing attention to certain issues even in a neutral manner. For instance, priming survey respondents with information about street crime may affect the views expressed on crime policy as compared to the same survey administered without priming.

What matters here is in the first place agenda-setting. There are two basic assumptions underlying most research on agenda-setting:
Agenda-Setting Theory « Jen1nat’s Blog

Two basic assumptions underlie most research on agenda-setting:

1. the press and the media do not always reflect reality; they filter and shape it

2. the concentration of the media on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues.

It is important to remember that although the influence of the media agenda can be substantial, it alone does not determine the public agenda.

While agenda-setting influences what topics are high at the agenda, the overall attention for violence perpetrated by Muslims (or people calling themselves Muslims or are categorized as such) may account for a lack of attention for this topic. Nevertheless it is difficult to determine what is sufficient media attention. There are several reports in the Dutch newspapers NRC, Telegraaf, Trouw. Also German newspapers have covered the issue such as Frankfurter Rundschau, Die Welt, Frankfurter Algemeine, and Der Spiegel and also for example the BBC, The Guardian and Daily Mail. It is impossible to decide if that is enough or not and very difficult to assess even if compared with other similar cases. What is interesting in the reports of this event is the issue of framing.
Framing « Iowa Journalism

Framing is based on the assumption that how an issue is characterized in news reports can have an influence on how it is understood by audiences. (Scheufele, 2007) This gives reporters a lot of power depending on how they want to swing their story, but it also defines the good and bad reporters based on whether the story they are reporting is truthful or not.

Now there are a number of ways in which this event can be framed. We can talk about a terrorist attack at the German constitutional state, we can talk about an act of heroïsm: the husband who tries to save the woman he loves and/or the mother of his children, we can talk about how Russian culture influences Alex’s decision to kill her or how German culture is to blame. We can talk about it as proof of a serious breach in the safety procedures of the court room. But this doesn’t happen. In general we see two frames: headscarf-martyr and the angry Muslim. Let’s have a closer look at both.
The headscarf martyr
This is most clear in the article of the GuardianThe headscarf martyr: murder in German court sparks Egyptian fury at west’s ‘Islamophobia’ | World news | The Guardian

While the horrific incident that took place a week ago tomorrow has attracted little publicity in Europe, and in Germany has focused more on issues of court security than the racist motivation behind the attack, 2,000 miles away in her native Egypt, the 32-year-old pharmacist has been named the “headscarf martyr”.

Now the controversy of course to a certain extent has to do with the headscarf as a public symbol of Marwa Sherbini’s Muslim identity and religiosity. The racist background of the murder aimed against her religion and against her as someone defending the right to wear the headscarf, make this framing understandable and it probably resonates among a wide audience; those focusing on the racism issue and those who have problems with a public display of Islam.
The angry Muslim
KAISER CHIEFS LYRICS – The Angry Mob

We are the angry mob
We read the papers everyday day
We like who like
We hate who we hate
But we’re also easily swayed

This excerpt from a Kaiser Chiefs’ song adequately sums up this frame. Muslims who are angry about almost everything easily influenced by media reports. This frame is apparent in almost all of the reports.

Egyptian Fury at Dresden Murder: Protestors Accuse Germany of Racism – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

Fury and sorrow in Egypt: the murder of a pregnant Egyptian woman in a German courtroom last week has sparked protests in Egypt with mourners chanting “Down With Germany.” The woman was stabbed to death in a racist attack.

A brutal murder in Germany last week has caused shockwaves in far-off Egypt. Thousands of mourners took to the streets of Alexandria on Monday to protest at the funeral of a pregnant Egyptian woman who was stabbed to death inside a German court in a crime that has provoked fury in her home country.

Egyptian newspapers have given strong coverage to the death of Marwa al-Sherbini (32), describing the veiled woman as a “martyr in a headscarf” and suggesting the killer was motivated by a hatred of Islam.

Related to this frame is the aforementioned accusation that there is not enough attention in Western media about this case and not enough moral outcry by Westerners, in particular Germans. The ‘angry Muslim’ is a sort of pet frame in the media and often references are made to earlier case of Muslim rage such as the killing of Theo van Gogh and of course the Prophet Muhammad Cartoons Controversy. Wilders film Fitna has build its notorious reputation almost solely on the expectation of Muslim rage.

Now what do these frames do? This is perhaps most obvious when we look at a very clear combination of both frames:
The Jawa Report: “Headscarf Martyr” Marwa Sherbini Incites Muslim World

“Headscarf Martyr” Marwa Sherbini Incites Muslim World

(Dresden, Germany) This story out of Germany is creating shock waves throughout the Muslim world while the Western mainstream media are slowly catching up.

Marwa-El-Sherbini.jpgIn the summer of 2008, a 32-year-old pharmacist and native Egyptian, Marwa el-Sherbini, was insulted by an unemployed worker from Russia, 28-year-old Alex W. (aka Alex A.) for wearing the hijab. He had screamed that Sherbini was a terrorist and an Islamist whore.

In November 2008, Alex W. was found guilty of insulting and abusing Sherbini and consequently assessed a fine. Alex W. appealed the verdict.

Last week, while the case was being heard on appeal, Sherbini, now pregnant, and her husband, Elvi Ali Okaz, appeared in the Dresden court along with Alex W.

While Sherbini was testifying about the incident of insult and abuse in the summer of 2008, Alex W. walked across the courtroom and plunged a knife into her 18 times. As Mr. Okaz ran to save his wife, he was shot by a police officer who mistook him for the assailant. Sherbini died and Okaz is currently under intensive care at a Dresden hospital.

The death is being blamed on anti-Muslim hatred with outrage echoing across the Muslim world. The situation is being compared to the turmoil created by the publication of the Mohammad cartoons. Expect more on this story.

Besides by creating Muslim rage as a matter of fact (expect more on this story) it also makes the whole story a foreign one. No Egypt is not angry about Sherbini, but angry about the attack. This is by the way not an Egyptian story, but a German one. It produces images of strangeness, foreignness, exoticism, and fanaticism in the imagination of the public that serves to distance readers from sympathy for the victims, or outrage toward the injustice, the lack of safety in the courts, the lack of safety for Muslim women in public, and (to a certain extent) the racism in European societies. The victim has almost no agency and is reduced as a symbol of Islam and as objects coming from outside. For the Egyptian newspaper this frames produces yet again the idea of a racist Europe that is hostile to Islam as has been ‘proven’ earlier by the publishing of the insulting cartoons of the prophet Muhammad and the lack of attention among Europeans. To be clear it is not entirely true that there is no moral outrage among Germans but it is also mentioned that he is Russian, guided by hate and was a loner. He was therefore not a product of a European culture that has became increasingly racist or intolerant towards Muslims, but also an exotic byproduct. While often in the case of Muslims (and the angry Muslim frame is an example of that) an explanation is often sought in the Islamic traditions or patriarchal cultures of their homecountries. Whether it is the Egyptian newspaper or the European newspapers the issue is reduced to an attack on an Islamic symbolic object.

UPDATE

Several readers have send me interesting comments from others. Below you find a few:
Marwa El Sherbini Did Not Die For Her Hijab, So Please Stop Saying That She Did « Muslimah Media Watch

In Germany the Muslim community is ethnically homogeneous, with the vast majority being of Turkish ethnicity. Even without her headscarf, her coloring and ethnicity means that Marwa would have still looked like an ‘Auslander‘ and a Muslim one at that.

Yet, all over the media she is dubbed as the Headscarf Martyr or the Hijab Martyr, meaning that the focus is once again on Muslim women’s clothing and whether they should wear certain items or not. The case is even being conflated with Sarkosy’s proposal to ban the burqa.

Again, Muslim women’s bodies are being discussed only in terms of the clothes they wear and again the world offers its opinion without listening to Muslim women.

The problem with this talk of martyrdom and clothing, both in the Muslim and non-Muslim press, is that it allows focus to slip away from the true actor of the piece: Alex W., the murderer.

[…]

By having the same tired clothing discussions, this opportunity to address Islamophobic and racist violence is being lost in the spin of the “Hijab Martyr”. The truth is buried as deeply as Marwa’s body.

The truth being: Marwa did not die because she was wearing a hijab, she died because a racist murderer killed her.

Europe, Islamophobia and Lone Wolves « Nuseiba

So racism in Europe and America must be understood within a historical context. The ideological justification for racism has been maintained for centuries. The Enlightenment provided the colonial powers with an explicitly racist justification for the colonial project. The period allowed the colonial powers to justify the dehumanization of colonial subjects. And that they did extremely well. Racism today might not be so strictly ‘race-based’ anymore, but like John Solomos and Les Beck point out race today is “coded as culture.” This is the new racism – defined by George Fredrickson as “a way of thinking about difference that reifies and essentializes culture rather than genetic endowment, or in other words, makes culture do the work of race.” The institutionalized structures of racist ideology remain operative, but they now stigmatize cultural or religious groups as dangerous and foreign. And the fact remains: hostility and discrimination against Muslims “represent a reversion to the way that the differences between ethnoracial groups could be made to seem indelible and unbridgeable.”

Muslims as ‘cultural objects’ « Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist

More and more we can find examples in which Muslims are reduced to their material culture and religious culture: Muslim women reduced to their hijabs, niqabs, burkas, chadors; Muslim men represented as repressive, violent, fanatic and irrational and so on. Just read some commentaries about Muslim women, or about Muslim life in general, and you will be able to understand why I say that Muslims are reduced to their ‘material culture’.

The main element of this grievous fallacy, as I have explained in The Anthropology of Islam, is the idea that Muslims are shaped by culture and in particular by their own religion: Islam. If you think that this cultural objectification of Muslims is innocuous, it is time to rethink and read the story of a woman in Germany who was killed because of her hijab.

Contrary to the expectations of many, the killer is not her husband or father trying to defend their honor or Islam, but rather a white German neighbor whom the victim had brought to court for slander. Indeed, for this killer, what he wanted to offend, and then ended in murdering, was not the victim as a human being, but rather her dress, her hijab, the cultural material expression of what he hated: Islam.
[…]

Back to the so-called ‘veil’, burka, hijab and women. It is clear that the reason for wearing one has multiple motives, both internal and external. Each case is different and personal and to try to discuss an ‘epistemology’ of ‘veil’ is not only a useless exercise but also an objectifying one. The danger is particularly high in anthropology and sociology, since these disciplines have a methodological tendency to deny individuality. […]

To reduce the individual to society is a misleading analytical approach, but to reduce the individual to his or her material culture and (stereotyped) religious beliefs is not only intellectually dishonest but also extremely dangerous. An example of the dangers of this approach can be observed in the objectification of Jews that occurred in Nazi Germany, and the Final Solution planned for the Jewish culture, and consequently the entire Jewish population, as the ‘Jew’ was believed to be merely an expression of Judaism.

14 comments.

Restoring Dutch identity – Anti discrimination ads

Posted on July 9th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Multiculti Issues.

Dutch campaign against discrimination - Uploaded by Niriel on Flickr

Muslimah Media Watch (note to my regular readers: if you still have not checked that site, it is about time you did!) noticed the poster displayed above on Flickr.
Hide No More: Dutch Ad Campaign Targets Discrimination Against Hijabis « Muslimah Media Watch

The poster appears at bus stops, and says “Do you have to let yourself at home when going out?” At first, I was confused by what the poster meant. Was it saying that Muslim women who cover were hiding themselves or that Dutch society was making hijabis leave a part of their selves at home by pressuring them not to cover?
After clicking on the link in the Flickr page where I saw the image of the poster, I concluded it was the latter.

[…]Seeing an anti-discrimination ad campaign in the Netherlands featuring a Muslim woman is heartening to say the least, because it shows an attempt to truly embrace the diversity that exists in the Netherlands.

[…]
The second reason why I love this image is because it completely reverses the looker’s expectation of hijab. Instead of the hijab hiding some aspect of the woman, it is society’s pressure for conformity that is making the woman hide an aspect of herself.

According to the website, discriminatie.nl (discrimination) that features the campaign

The Netherlands is a country where no one has to hide their own self. It is a place where no judgement is given about people’s skincolour, handicap, age or sexual preference. Everyone should be able to him/herself and to feel at home. In order to protect that, there are rules we have to abide by. Namely, that everyone in the Netherlands should be treated equally. That discrimination based upon religion, worldview, political conviction, race, gender or on whatever ground, is not allowed. Because in the Netherlands everyone is allowed to show his or hers own self everywhere.

Photo taken by S.

Discriminatie.nl a non-governemental webportal set up by several anti-discrimination offices and funded by the Dutch state. There are more of such campaigns in the Netherlands such as the one as former Canadian blogger S. mentioned to me in an email she send me:

The poster in the middle is from the Discrimination Complaints Office for the Amsterdam Region (Meldpunt Discriminatie Regio Amsterdam -MDRA). The text on left side:
Melden helpt! = Reporting (filing a complaint) helps!
then the phone number and the website

The text on the right side is from 23 year old student Leila:
Door Meldpunt Discriminatie kan ik nu wel sporten – Because of the Discrimination Complaints Office I can play sports now

It refers to incident in Rotterdam (and several other cities) were girls/women were banned from a gym (called Fit for free) because they wanted to wear the headscarf at the gym (which does not mean the girl on the poster was involved although she is not a model dressing up as a Muslim woman – something they do sometimes in commercial ads – but indeed a student from, I think, the Free University Amsterdam). You can read about the issue here. Besides the complaint, this particular incident by the way also resulted in the establishment of a pressure group called Ontsluiert (Unveiled/unveiling also (fig.): reveals) that called for a boycott against the all the local gyms of Fit for free.

Discriminatie.nl is a similar (but national) complaints office. The campaign text of Discriminatie.nl can be seen not only as an attempt to establish or restore the image of a society in which in toleration is part of the national identity, but also as a call to act upon it and resist intolerant actions of people. In that sense the comment at MMW is almost the opposite of the comment at the flickr site where we can find the picture (and to which MMW refers to):
Dutch campaign against discrimination on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

I understood it completely wrong when I saw it first. I thought it meant that you shouldn’t hide yourself under a tent in the middle of summer just because the men of your family have made you believe since before you could read that that was the right thing to do if you happened to be a woman.

Therefore seeing this ad campaign surprised me because I knew that the current Dutch government was a big fan of the “cultural relativism” which leads to accepting the discrimination of women in the muslim culture because not accepting it would be make many muslims very angry. Insulting Islam is now a criminal offense here and we must let it insult us. So I thought, cool, the guys up there are changing their mind !

How naive I was. I went on their website ( discriminatie.nl/ ) and what I read there was in the continuity of this politically correct speech. They’re overdoing it since Geert Wilders’ result at the European elections I guess… (and no, I don’t vote for wilders).

I need to show that to Pat Condell. Here are two pretty good videos he made:
Shame on The Netherlands
[flashvideo filename=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJKRF2uB8xU /]
Ban the Burka
[flashvideo filename=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlkxlzTZc48 /]

Now, don’t take me wrong. I don’t care if you’re gay, I don’t care if you’re black, ugly, poor, HIV positive or what have you. But I do care if your beliefs (in things that are proven wrong by the way) lead you to negate my freedom or speech, to indoctrinate children, oppress women and whatnot.

(videos added by me)

It is not the first time such a campaign evokes that type of negative comments. It also happened in a similar campaign in which the Dutch province Overijssel has a picture of a girl (actually living in that province) with a headscarf saying ‘See, the landscape (referring to the ‘typical’ Overijssel landscape) is in you’. Also in commercial campaigns pictures of woman with headscarves sometimes appear. The last one of course an attempt to reach out to a ‘Muslim market’ but as such also an attempt to normalize Muslims and include them in the community of consumers, or in the case of Overijssel include them in the moral community of the people of Overijssel (contrary to treating them as outsiders). Previously I have blogged about those campaigns and the (negative) reactions:
C L O S E R » Blog Archive » The power of images – Muslima ads

In both cases this might lead to a normalization of Muslims in the public landscape and I think a lot of the complaints against the campaigns are complaints against the normalization of Muslims in the public landscape. Some people don’t want Muslims or Islam to be part of the Dutch culture. Muslims do feature in public campaigns for a long time now but usually related to some exotic (halal) product or to some campaign related to integration of migrants or campaigns designed to promote social cohesion and public safety. The fact that they now appear in other type of (commercial) ads might indeed lead to further normalization.

Although these campaigns are not all of the same they do share some of the ambiguity MMW also refers to:
Hide No More: Dutch Ad Campaign Targets Discrimination Against Hijabis « Muslimah Media Watch

The one critique I do have with the ad is that it can be ambiguous, as described in the introductory paragraph of the Flickr post. The ambiguity that can occur looking at the ad for the first time could lead some people to come away with the wrong message such as the idea that hijab is preventing the woman from being herself. This would obviously negate the actual intent of the ad. Still, it is a great ad and positive image of hijabis that is very welcomed.

And both the reaction of MMW and on the Flickr site actually prove that ambiguity and it can also be found on some of the Islam sites in the Netherlands (see Ontdekislam – Dutch). I think it is very difficult to avoid such ambiguity unless you want to be very moralistic which would, I’m afraid, have a very negative effect and provoke even more negative remarks about this multiculti campaign. The ambiguity of course leads to people having different ideas about the interpretation of the campaign, but may also lead to debates as to how interpret it. That could be worth much more than a simple morally clear to do and to don’t list.

Moreover both the campaign text celebrating and stimulating the self image of the Dutch as tolerant and the critique on the campaign by ‘islam-rejectionists’ (for lack of a better word) belong together since they make clear that the Netherlands is in fact not as tolerant as some of wish but that it is also not a place solely occupied by ‘islam-rejectionists’. In a recent PhD study Jacomijn Hofstra (Groningen University) focuses on the perspective of Dutch majority members on immigrants’ acculturation. More precisely, their attitude towards acculturation strategies (integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization) of immigrants is studied. Additionally, the influence of attachment styles on majority members’ attitudes towards these acculturation strategies is examined.
Attaching cultures. The role of attachment styles in explaining majority members’ acculturation attitudes < Home RUG < Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

The data showed that, irrespective of the method of measurement, the phase of life of the respondent, or the cultural background of the immigrant, Dutch majority members prefer immigrants who use the integration strategy (characterized by cultural maintenance and positive relations with the host society), followed by the assimilation, separation and marginalization strategy. Furthermore, people scoring high on secure attachment (characterized by a constructive attitude towards the self and towards others) are more positive about the integrating immigrant. In contrast, the insecure styles (fearful, dismissing, and preoccupied) were either negatively or not related to the attitude towards integration. These styles correlated more strongly with the three other -less beneficial- acculturation strategies.

So, improving people’s level of secure attachment, might lead to a ‘truly’ culturally diverse society which guarantees a safe environment at schools, at work and in neighbourhoods for people with different cultural backgrounds.

At the same time the high scores of ‘islam-rejectionist’ Wilders shows that the ‘islamic issue’ is deeply dividing Dutch society and in a response to that tries to re-invent Dutch identity and with that the notion of tolerance.
The commercial campaigns and the campaign of Overijssel try, as said above, to re-establish the notion of tolerance and to include Muslims in the moral community. This however should not blind us to the fact that tolerance towards Muslims (or others) does not erase oppressive structures in society, the widespread idea that Muslims are still strangers in our midst (after 40 years), or that Muslims are discriminated against or that a secular (or at most a Christian) way of life is the normal way of life and everything else religious is irrational or even dangerous, that our Islam debate is sometimes so vile that some Muslims truly are afraid they will be forced to leave the country sooner or later (sometimes referring to Hirsi Ali as someone who embodied the Dutch ideal of integration, was succesful in her own way but nevertheless stripped of her Dutch identity). In that way the campaign of Discriminatie.nl that is also a complaints office is a step in the right direction. The problem however with these offices is that they do not really seem to work very well. The Amsterdam complaints office for example hears a lot of Moroccan-Dutch youth complaining about discrimination by secondary vocational school (saying that are raising barriers against Moroccan-Dutch youth) but there are no offical complaints (Source Dutch). One of the reasons probably is that these offices are very bureaucratic.

To end this blog, I would like to note (as MMW also makes clear) the campaign is not only about Muslim women who may be discriminated but the whole campaign is aimed against discrimination of gays, women, the handicapped and blacks (migrants). Look at the video belonging to the campaign:
[flashvideo filename=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ3A7DyPYnE /]

5 comments.

Rebelle – Art, feminism and Muslim women

Posted on July 8th, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Arts & culture, Gender, Kinship & Marriage Issues.

From postering activists to virtual cyber art. Forty years of art history are on display in Rebelle. This exhibition – whose name is derived from French artist Gina Pane’s (1939-1990) installation ‘Mots de mur‘ (1984-85) – focuses on works by female artists who are or have been greatly inspired by feminism. According to the press statement, while the topic of art and feminism has both champions and opponents, everyone is in agreement about one thing: feminism permanently changed the artistic landscape.

Recent exhibitions in MOCA, Los Angeles and the Brooklyn Museum in New York, amongst other institutions, reveal a renewed interest in art with a feminist slant. What does this theme mean for young female artists?And how did it inspire the work of earlier generations of female artists? The MMKA (Museum of Modern Art Arnhem) offers a major survey of works by eighty female artists revealing similarities and differences between generations and cultures: from American pioneers like Faith Ringgold and Eastern and Western European pioneers like Ewa Partum, Nil Yalter, Gülsün Karamustafa, Kirsten Justesen and Ulrike Rosenbach, to contemporary female artists from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Netherlands.

According to the museum, the exhibition Rebelle reveals that feminist art is not about any single style or particular subject. Topics such as desire, the body, memory, masculinity, and social critique are explored. In addition, the exhibition focuses on female artists who stretch the concept of art in how they work – by collaborating with others, for example, or by using new media.  Newspaper clippings, documentaries and photos add another layer to Rebelle. The art is placed in the context of important social developments, the changing position of women, and ‘action’ and intervention in the art world in particular.

In 1969, the first meeting of Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) took
place in America. WAR soon organized protests against the exclusion of female and black artists, for instance, on the sidewalk in front of the Whitney Museum in New York. In the Netherlands as Kirsten Justesen tells us, the activist group Dolle Mina was started in 1969. The Stichting Vrouwen in de Beeldende Kunst (Women in the Visual Arts Organization), established in 1977, protested on the sidewalk in front of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum that same year against the under-representation of female artists. The protestors held signs with the punning text “het zit wel snor hier” – a Dutch expression meaning all is well, but using the word “snor” which is Dutch for moustache. In 1978 and 1979 the two-part exhibition Feminist Art International was organized; it would stir emotions for years to come.

According to Justesen, drawing attention to the exclusion of female and non-western artists in public collections, exhibitions, and publications is only one aspect of the theme of art and feminism. Art itself, its societal role and so-called objective criteria of quality, are up for discussion as well. In the 1970s, the hierarchical distinctions between classical disciplines like painting and sculpture and newer forms like performance and video art were sharply defined. The same was true for the precarious distinction between what subjects could and couldn’t be used for art. Many female artists explored topics that had previously not been considered appropriate for great art, such as unequal relationships between men and women, violence and stereotypes, sexuality, identity, and the body. It is no coincidence that the slogan “the personal is political” has become so important. Female artists, in particular, investigated and experimented with a visual language that they saw as “their own” and original, and thus not influenced by “masculine” norms and views.

The exhibition rebelle brings together work from different generations and parts of the world. The South African Berni Searle (1964) who often uses natural pigments and changes the color of her skin with them – recalling the spice trade and colonization – is, for example, influenced by Cuban American Ana Mendieta’s (1948-1985) “earth prints.” The Guatemalan Regina Galindo (1974) belongs to a generation of performance artists that use their bodies to question chaos and violence in their societies. Her work recalls that of Gina Pane.

2009 is a year of looking back: Rebelle offers viewers the opportunity to look again at feminist art, freed from the cliches of pink overalls and easy dismissals (“damn anachronism”) that have clouded its representation over the past decades. Here the way is opened to fresh interpretations of art and its global implications.

In the context of this blog, particularly interesting are contributions from Middle Eastern feminist artists. Take for example Shadi Ghadirian whose contribution at first sight may seem to critique the alledged oppression of Muslim women:

Shadi Ghadirian - Like Everyday (Domestic life) 08, 2002, C-print, 50 x 50 cm

The series ‘Like Everyday (Domestic Life)’, presents women entirely veiled, the face hidden behind assorted items of kitchenware. Ghadirian warns against a too literal reading of these images, and underscores that the theme woman-object unfortunately has a universal dimension. Another contribution is Karamustafa’s video-installation “The City and the Secret Panther Fashion“. It gives you a look inside a secretly blooming Panther Fashion in Istanbul.

“…brings forth the arguments about the outlooks, especially the crucial debates about the ‘women’s body’, whether it should be covered or not or the other ethic problems related to it, on my side of the world. It is a ‘tragicomic fiction’ about lives of women who are pushed to live a secret life from 9 to 5, a limited days time that they can spare for themselves. On the other hand side the viewer is free to interpret the film in every aspect that ‘Panther Fashion’ may associate.”

The story is about the meeting of 3 women who wish to join the “secret panther fashion”-movement, which spreads quickly through the city. As their intentions are a bit illegal, they are anxious that somebody may spy on them while walking to the house where they can taste the joy of wearing freely the “Panther Design” dresses and spend a time of their own away from all dangers.

G. Karamustafa - The City And The Secret Panther Fashion, 2007, video

Only those who know the secret codes are allowed to enter the house which is decorated entirely in “Panther Fashion”, can enjoy the outfits and spend a friendly and fantastic time.

“In the house waits Panterella, the fearless housekeeper and her college who would offer them their endless freedom withwearing what they want. At the end of the day they leave the house in secret, again with the fear of being caught and return to their colourless lives.”

The third contribution is from Iranian Parastou Forouhar. Her ‘wallpaper’ Thousand and One Day, looks purely decorative based upon traditional Persian miniature painting.

Parastou Forouhar - Thousand and one day, 2003

At closer inspection however the wallpaper is composed of scenes of torture. Anonymous, faceless individuals are being tortured by anonymous, faceless men, only the weapons and methods of torture and killing are very clear. Knowing that Parastou’s parents were killed by Iranian secret agents makes the scenery even more hard hitting.

I’m not an art expert so I don’t know how progressive or new these (forms of) arts are. All three, but also other contributions to this exhibition try to engage in some sort of protest against oppression of women by…whoever. Must be said that in fact the contributions from the three women discussed here are the most rebellious of all and have strong and indeed hard hitting protests. What does this mean? Does it mean that ‘Western’ feminists are less engaged in fighting oppression, that the battle for them is done? And that only Middle Eastern feminists still have to fight and therefore they are the ones still being oppressed? This is of course too simple (note that there are contributions in the exhibition from Latin America, Asia and Africa as well), but the question what is feminism, or what are feminisms about these days is a relevant one I guess. Also what can be said about some sort of solidarity or influences from feminists throughout the world. Is it there? Is it in fact necessary? What I do know is that it is time for an exhibition in the Netherlands of feminist art from the Middle East and other non-Western countries or migrant women from the Netherlands.

What also struck me in the themes of the exhibition and more in particular of the Middle Eastern artists is the protest not only against oppression by political and/or religious elites, or men in general, but also the attempt to escape the routines of every day life that hold people (women in particular?) in some kind of straight jacket. It struck me because I just finished a conversation with two young (salafi) women who want nothing more than just that:

‘you may find it boring, you may even find it unattractive, but all I want is just a simple, normal life, having a nice husband, kids, be a mother and to be out of the thread mill of having to perform, having to be faster and faster, having to explain yourself.’

Can we also see that as a form of feminism, in the form of protest against a capitalist society or a society that keeps bothering Muslim women with their beliefs and practices?

Information based upon:

Press statement MMKA

Kirsten Justesen

Fashionoffice.org

Pierre Yves Desaive

Parastou Forouhar

NYT Art Reviews Global Feminism

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Sheikh Google, Sharia & Arbitrage

Posted on July 1st, 2009 by martijn.
Categories: Multiculti Issues.

Flink wat ophef zo her en der over Civitas rapport geschreven door Denis MacEoin waarin aangetoond zou worden dat er niet 5 maar 85 shariarechtbanken zijn en dat de uitspraken van deze rechtbanken haaks staan op de Europese rechtsbeginselen. Hier het volledige persbericht:
Civitas Press Release: Honesty and truth sidelined in government policy-making says think-tank

Sharia courts should not be recognised under Britain’s 1996 Arbitration Act, according to a new report from independent think-tank Civitas.

According to Denis MacEoin, author of Sharia Law or ‘One Law For All’?, sharia courts operating in Britain may be handing down rulings that are inappropriate to this country because they are linked to elements in Islamic law that are seriously out of step with trends in Western legislation that derive from the values of the Enlightenment and are inherent in modern codes of human rights. Sharia rulings contain great potential for controversy and may involve acts contrary to UK legal norms and human rights legislation (p.11).

Sharia law is a distillation of rulings that purport to represent the divine diktat in all worldly affairs. It provides injunctions for the conduct of criminal, public and even international law. Marriage and divorce, the custody of children, alimony, sexual impropriety and much else come within its remit. Sharia courts claim authority over the private lives of individuals in a way that is contrary to the British tradition where, as David Green points out in his introduction, ‘in our legal system no punishments can be applied to individuals who fail to live up to religious requirements’ (p.4).

The fact that so many sharia rulings in Britain relate to cases concerning divorce and custody of children is of particular concern, as women are not equal in sharia law, and sharia contains no specific commitment to the best interests of the child that is fundamental to family law in the UK. Under sharia, a male child belongs to the father after the age of seven, regardless of circumstances. Thus, in October 2008 the House of Lords ruled that sharia was incompatible with human rights when a Lebanese woman sought asylum in the UK because, if she had been sent back to Lebanon, she would have been ordered to hand over her son to a violently abusive husband (p.47).

Fatwas that cross the legal line

Most reports on sharia courts cite five, working in London, Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham and Nuneaton. However, in his research for this report, Denis MacEoin has uncovered at least 85, operating largely out of mosques. It is extremely difficult to find out what goes on in these courts, so MacEoin reproduces a range of fatwas issued by popular online fatwa sites, run out of or accessed through mosques in the UK, and in some cases, as was revealed in the earlier Civitas report Music, Chess and Other Sins, even from UK Muslim schools. These online fatwas can give a good indication of the rulings of sharia courts in Britain.

‘Among the rulings … we find some that advise illegal actions and others that transgress human rights standards as they are applied by British courts. Here are some examples: a Muslim woman may not under any circumstances marry a non-Muslim man unless he converts to Islam; such a woman’s children will be separated from her until she marries a Muslim man; polygamous marriage (i.e. two to four wives) is considered legal… a husband has conjugal rights over his wife, and she should normally answer his summons to have sex (but she cannot summon him for the same reason); a woman may not stay with her husband if he leaves Islam; non-Muslims may be deprived of their share in an inheritance… a wife has no property rights in the event of divorce… sharia law must override the judgements of British courts; rights of child custody may differ from those in UK law… taking out insurance is prohibited, even if required by law; there is no requirement to register a marriage according to the law of the country… a Muslim lawyer has to act contrary to UK law where it contradicts sharia … women are restricted in leaving their homes and driving cars… sharia law of legitimacy contradicts the Legitimacy Act 1976; a woman may not leave her home without her husband’s consent (which may constitute false imprisonment); legal adoption is forbidden… a woman may not retain custody of her child after seven (for a boy) or nine (for a girl)… fighting the Americans and British is a religious duty; recommendation of severe punishments for homosexuals… a woman cannot marry without the presence (and permission) of a male guardian… an illegitimate child may not inherit from his/her father.’

(pp.70-72)

Mediation or arbitration?

As the barrister, Neil Addison, explains in his foreword to the Civitas report, those who argue that sharia rulings should be incorporated into the British legal system often confuse mediation with arbitration.

• Mediation leads to an agreement rather than a judgement. It does not rely upon the application of legal rules but aims to find common ground between parties. A mediator cannot impose a mediation decision.
• Arbitration is a trial before a judge with the power to enforce a ruling through the civil courts.

The revelation that sharia rulings or fatwas are being enforced through state courts by the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) has alarmed many, especially as the Arbitration Act, under which this takes place, specifically excludes divorce and childcare cases. These are the very areas in which sharia rulings cause most concern, since, as David Green says, ‘there is a good deal of intimidation of women in Muslim communities and the genuine consent of women could not be accepted as a reality’ (p.4). David Green calls for the exclusion of sharia courts from recognition under the Arbitration Act of 1996.

Learning from Ontario – Muslim women were most opposed to sharia

In 2004 the Canadian province of Ontario was planning to impose legally binding arbitration according to Islamic law. A furious debate followed led by Muslim women who argued that they had gone to Canada to get away from sharia law and the coercion it embodied. They won, and in February 2006 religious-based arbitration was ended. (p.6)

An institutionalised atmosphere of intimidation

As David Green says in his introduction, equality under the law, regardless of race, gender or religion, is the bedrock of Western civilisation: take it away and you disrupt the whole edifice.

‘Under most interpretations of Islam a person who leaves the faith is an apostate who can be put to death. While this threat remains, it cannot be accepted that sharia councils are nothing more than independent arbitrators guided by faith. The reality is that for many Muslims, sharia courts are in practice part of an institutionalised atmosphere of intimidation, backed by the ultimate sanction of a death threat. The underlying problem is that sharia law reflects male-dominated Asian and Arabic cultures. It cannot therefore be accepted as a legally valid basis even for settling private disagreements in a country like ours, where our law embodies the equal legal status of everyone, regardless of race, gender or religion. Our system is based on moral and legal equality or it is nothing. Moreover, further encouragement of sharia law, far from helping integration, will undermine the efforts of British Muslims struggling to evolve a version of Islam consistent with a tolerant and pluralistic society.’

(p.5)

One law for all?

As Denis MacEoin says in his conclusion:

‘The introduction of sharia law into this country is a recipe for a dichotomous legal system that holds Muslims and non-Muslims to different standards. This is not a matter of eating halal meat or seeking God’s blessing on one’s marriage. It is a challenge to what we believe to be the rights and freedoms of the individual, to our concept of a legal system based on what parliament enacts, and to the right of all of us to live in a society as free as possible from ethnic-religious division or communal claims to superiority and a special status that puts them in some respects above the law to which we are all bound.’ (p.73)

Eerlijk gezegd heb ik geen idee waar ik moet beginnen om dit bagger persbericht te bespreken. Laten we dus maar bovenaan beginnen.

Civitas Press Release: Honesty and truth sidelined in government policy-making says think-tank

Sharia law is a distillation of rulings that purport to represent the divine diktat in all worldly affairs. It provides injunctions for the conduct of criminal, public and even international law. Marriage and divorce, the custody of children, alimony, sexual impropriety and much else come within its remit. Sharia courts claim authority over the private lives of individuals in a way that is contrary to the British tradition where, as David Green points out in his introduction, ‘in our legal system no punishments can be applied to individuals who fail to live up to religious requirements’ (p.4).

Dat laatste klopt niet. Dat kan in Engeland en ook in Nederland. Naast de gewone rechtbanken hebben we hier ook kerkelijke rechtbanken en joodse (rabbinale) rechtbanken de Beth Din. Juridisch pluralisme bestaat dus al lang in Engeland en ook in Nederland en wordt niet nu ineens geintroduceerd met mogelijke sharia arbitrage.

Civitas Press Release: Honesty and truth sidelined in government policy-making says think-tank

The fact that so many sharia rulings in Britain relate to cases concerning divorce and custody of children is of particular concern, as women are not equal in sharia law, and sharia contains no specific commitment to the best interests of the child that is fundamental to family law in the UK.

Dat klopt, het zijn met name zaken die te maken hebben met familierecht en huwelijken die in sharia arbitrage beslist zouden worden; dat is namelijk een belangrijk deel van de sharia die diep ingrijpt op het leven mensen. Het blijkt dat veel mensen de rechtbanken raadplegen voor alledaagse begeleiding in het afstemmen van hun dagelijkse leven op de islam. Maar goed dit is allemaal klein spul. Nu begint het:

Civitas Press Release: Honesty and truth sidelined in government policy-making says think-tank

However, in his research for this report, Denis MacEoin has uncovered at least 85, operating largely out of mosques. It is extremely difficult to find out what goes on in these courts, so MacEoin reproduces a range of fatwas issued by popular online fatwa sites, run out of or accessed through mosques in the UK, and in some cases, as was revealed in the earlier Civitas report Music, Chess and Other Sins, even from UK Muslim schools. These online fatwas can give a good indication of the rulings of sharia courts in Britain.

Excuse me?! Het is moeilijk om te achterhalen wat er precies plaatsvindt in die arbitrage dus verzamel je een stel online fatwa’s die dan zouden moeten laten zien wat die sharia arbitrage produceert? En als je niet wat er gebeurt hoe weet je dan dat ze een goede indicatie vormen van die arbitrage besluiten? Wat een ongelooflijke onzin.

Civitas Press Release: Honesty and truth sidelined in government policy-making says think-tank

‘Among the rulings … we find some that advise illegal actions and others that transgress human rights standards as they are applied by British courts. Here are some examples: a Muslim woman may not under any circumstances marry a non-Muslim man unless he converts to Islam; such a woman’s children will be separated from her until she marries a Muslim man; polygamous marriage (i.e. two to four wives) is considered legal… a husband has conjugal rights over his wife, and she should normally answer his summons to have sex (but she cannot summon him for the same reason); a woman may not stay with her husband if he leaves Islam; non-Muslims may be deprived of their share in an inheritance… a wife has no property rights in the event of divorce… sharia law must override the judgements of British courts; rights of child custody may differ from those in UK law… taking out insurance is prohibited, even if required by law; there is no requirement to register a marriage according to the law of the country… a Muslim lawyer has to act contrary to UK law where it contradicts sharia … women are restricted in leaving their homes and driving cars… sharia law of legitimacy contradicts the Legitimacy Act 1976; a woman may not leave her home without her husband’s consent (which may constitute false imprisonment); legal adoption is forbidden… a woman may not retain custody of her child after seven (for a boy) or nine (for a girl)… fighting the Americans and British is a religious duty; recommendation of severe punishments for homosexuals… a woman cannot marry without the presence (and permission) of a male guardian… an illegitimate child may not inherit from his/her father.’ (pp.70-72)

Knap. De islamitische traditie kent vier rechtscholen. Uit welke rechtschool komen deze fatwa’s? Los daarvan van welke religieuze stroming komen deze fatwa’s? Welke landen? Daar zit namelijk nog wel wat verschil in. Of dit is een losse verzameling van online fatwa’s en als dat representatief is voor de sharia arbitrage (met vier verschillende rechtscholen dus) dan wordt het toch wel een heel vreemd verhaal.

Civitas Press Release: Honesty and truth sidelined in government policy-making says think-tank

In 2004 the Canadian province of Ontario was planning to impose legally binding arbitration according to Islamic law. A furious debate followed led by Muslim women who argued that they had gone to Canada to get away from sharia law and the coercion it embodied. They won, and in February 2006 religious-based arbitration was ended. (p.6)

Dat is wat al te simpel gezegd. het is helemaal niet duidelijk hoeveel vrouwen ervoor of ertegen waren. Wel is duidelijk dat seculiere moslms een felle campagne tegen de arbitrage hadden. De overwinning van de vrouwen en anderen betekende inderdaad een einde van de religieuze arbitrage; niet alleen voor moslims, maar ook voor de al lang bestaande religieuze arbitrage door joden en christenen.

Wat verstaat het rapport eigenlijk onder sharia courts? Dat kunnen we niet vinden het persbericht, maar wel in een artikel van de Daily Telegraph:

At least 85 sharia ‘courts’ operating in Britain, says Civitas report – Telegraph

Civitas estimates that the real number of Islamic “courts” operating in Britain is at least 85, as a result of scores of unofficial courts sitting in mosques in which imams make judgments on day-to-day disputes.

Dus het gaat ook om officieuze zittingen in moskeeen waarin imams uitspraken doen over alledaagse disputen? Wat betekent dat? Dat als A en B naar hem komen en de imam vragen hoe zit met fenomeen X en de imam zegt op basis van wat de Quran zegt of de islam zegt we moeten dit doen als moslims, dat we dan al een shariarechtbank hebben? Nou dan maak je borst maar nat want dan hebben we ineens een explosie aan rechtbanken en niet alleen bij moslims. Echt helder is het niet.

Voor de goede, het gaat hier niet om formele rechtbanken of om een parallel rechtsysteem. Het gaat om Muslim Arbitration Tribunals (MAT) en om informele tribunalen. Moslims die de MAT erkennen kunnen het gebruiken om burgerlijke geschillen op te lossen (geen strafrechtzaken dus). Er zijn altijd twee personen aanwezig: iemand die thuis is in de sharia en een andere gekwalificeerde jurist. De beslissing is vervolgens gebaseerd op een mengsel van burgerlijk recht en sharia recht. De tribunalen opereren binnen het bestaande juridische systeem zoals ook de religieuze arbitrage in Nederland dat doet en in Canada dat deed. Beslissing van de MAT kunnen worden bekrachtigd door hogere rechtbanken en partijen kunnen in beroep gaan bij de High Court voor een herziening.

Met alle discussies die gaande zijn over islamisering van Nederland, zou de introductie van de MAT in Nederland een aardige zijn wellicht. Immers het gaat dus om sharia arbitrage binnen én ondergeschikt aan het huidige Nederlandse juridische kader. Dat laatste blijft dus dominant en ‘de islam’ schikt zich daar dan in. De introductie van sharia arbitrage is dan geen teken van islamisering, maar van de-islamisering.

Nu zijn er ook best redenen om kritisch te zijn over het bestaan van religieuze tribunalen. De positie van de vrouw en sociale druk om je toch tot zo’n tribunaal te wenden kunnen een grote rol spelen zoals Anna Korteweg heeft laten zien in een uitstekend ISIM Review artikel over de Canadese religieuze arbitrage. Aangezien religieuze arbitrage dus ook in Nederland al lang bestaat, is het verwonderlijk te noemen (en dan druk ik me nu heel vriendelijk uit) dan politieke partijen zich nu pas bezorgd tonen over het bestaan hiervan. En dat dan ook nog eens kritiekloos op basis van rioolonderzoek door een academicus met een zeer twijfelachtige reputatie die niet laat zien wat er gebeurd in die tribunalen, maar hoogstens laat zien wat er zou kunnen gebeuren volgens Sheikh Google.

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