C L O S E R

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Muslim India struggles to escape the past

Posted on April 6th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

Muslim India struggles to escape the past

Prominent individuals belie the poverty of a minority left behind by the 1947 partition
Randeep Ramesh in Mumbai
Wednesday April 5, 2006

Guardian
On the sprung floor of a Mumbai dance studio standing amid a huddle of male and female dancers is a young woman, dressed in tight sequinned clothes, sucking on a cigarette. She is shouting at her troupe.

It is difficult not to notice 19-year-old Mumait Khan. Tattoos ride on her shoulders and her lower back and her sinuous dance routines have made her one of the most sought-after “item girls” to roll out of Bollywood. “Item” is Mumbai film-speak for a raunchy musical number slipped into mainstream Hindi films.

In the lottery of life Mumait Khan has hit a jackpot. An Indian Muslim, she embodies an apparent contradiction that is rapidly becoming part of a national debate. (more…)

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Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Muslim India struggles to escape the past

Posted on April 6th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

Muslim India struggles to escape the past

Prominent individuals belie the poverty of a minority left behind by the 1947 partition
Randeep Ramesh in Mumbai
Wednesday April 5, 2006

Guardian
On the sprung floor of a Mumbai dance studio standing amid a huddle of male and female dancers is a young woman, dressed in tight sequinned clothes, sucking on a cigarette. She is shouting at her troupe.

It is difficult not to notice 19-year-old Mumait Khan. Tattoos ride on her shoulders and her lower back and her sinuous dance routines have made her one of the most sought-after “item girls” to roll out of Bollywood. “Item” is Mumbai film-speak for a raunchy musical number slipped into mainstream Hindi films.

In the lottery of life Mumait Khan has hit a jackpot. An Indian Muslim, she embodies an apparent contradiction that is rapidly becoming part of a national debate. (more…)

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WorldWide Religious News-Kosovo's Dervishes dance toward salvation

Posted on April 4th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

WorldWide Religious News-Kosovo’s Dervishes dance toward salvation
“Kosovo’s Dervishes dance toward salvation”

(AFP, April 04, 2006)

Prizren, Serbia-Montenegro – Every spring the Dervishes of Kosovo — among the last in Europe — dance, chant and push knives into their bodies in a quest for heavenly salvation.

They are shunned by many fellow Muslims as starry-eyed mystics, but the Dervishes who gathered recently in Prizen for a centuries-old celebration do not see themselves as outside the Islamic pale.

“We are the avant garde of the Muslim religion,” says Shejh Adrihusejn, a leader of the mystical order, playing down the dramatic extremes to which Dervishes go to attain religious fulfillment.

“We do not accept being presented as a Muslim mystic sect or an extreme branch of our religion,” says the Shejh, a title given to Dervish community leaders.

A fraternity of Sufi Islam famous for both their asceticism and their hypnotic, trance-inducing dances, the Dervish community in Kosovo is a legacy of the Ottoman empire that once held sway over this Serbian province.

While 95 percent of Kosovo’s two million inhabitants are Muslim, only a tiny fraction — some 50,000 — are Dervishes. There are also Sufi communities in neighboring Albania and Macedonia.

At the end of March the 5,000 Dervishes of Prizen in southern Kosovo celebrate the Spring equinox festival of “Sultan Nevruz,” the moment when the sun begins to favor the Northern Hemisphere and day become longer than night.

The ceremony unfolds in the hilly suburbs of this picture-postcard town in special ampitheatre, or “teqe,” that bears little resemblance to a traditional Muslim mosque.

Some 60 dervishes of all ages dressed in black and white waistcoats and flat hats, including a few children, begin chanting before an overflowing crowd. Women, guests and journalists are kept to the side or observe from a small wooden balcony.

What is about to unfold is so dramatic as to shock the uninitiated, and even shake one’s understanding of medical science.

“La-illaha-illallah” (“There is no god but God”) the Dervishes intone in a subdued prayer, forming a semi-circle around Shejh Adrihusejn.

Bobbing their heads, they slowly up the tempo and volume of the prayer from a deep murmur into full-throated howl, praying for their past sins to be pardoned.

The crescendo mounts for two hours until the Dervishes are swaying in a state of mystical ecstasy. “Allah Hu” (he is God), they chant in perfect unison.

That is when the skewers and knives appear.

The Shejh leads the way, coating 15-centimetre (six inch) long needles with his saliva and then piercing his two young sons. He does the same to three other children.

Miraculously, there is no blood, and the children show no sign of fear or pain, swaying silently as they hold the needles pierced through one side of their mouths.

Next come the blades: Shejh slowly eases 40-centimetre ( 1.3-foot) knives with rounded, pearl-coated stems through both cheeks of the Dervishes, one-by-one.

Driven by the rhythm of kettledrums and tambourines, the entranced worshipers sway in a semi-conscious state, repeating their calls to “Allah” over and over.

Next they begin piercing their necks with knives, proudly displaying the wounds.

“The knives symbolize the healing of all wounds. This is the blessing of God and the power of the order,” says an elderly, high-ranking Dervish after the ceremony.

Finally, the intensity subsides into a prayer for the souls of all prophets and believers, as the Dervishes remove the knives and return them to the Shejh, kissing his hands.

Later, the 44-year-old Shejh talks about his flock’s esoteric tradition, insisting that it has a place in modern society.

“We propagandize love among people. Belief is, in essence, love towards God, towards others and towards life,” he says.

“I am against any extremism. I am a Muslim and a European of the 21st Century — Internet is an important part of my life,” he says.

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WorldWide Religious News-Kosovo’s Dervishes dance toward salvation

Posted on April 4th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

WorldWide Religious News-Kosovo’s Dervishes dance toward salvation
“Kosovo’s Dervishes dance toward salvation”

(AFP, April 04, 2006)

Prizren, Serbia-Montenegro – Every spring the Dervishes of Kosovo — among the last in Europe — dance, chant and push knives into their bodies in a quest for heavenly salvation.

They are shunned by many fellow Muslims as starry-eyed mystics, but the Dervishes who gathered recently in Prizen for a centuries-old celebration do not see themselves as outside the Islamic pale.

“We are the avant garde of the Muslim religion,” says Shejh Adrihusejn, a leader of the mystical order, playing down the dramatic extremes to which Dervishes go to attain religious fulfillment.

“We do not accept being presented as a Muslim mystic sect or an extreme branch of our religion,” says the Shejh, a title given to Dervish community leaders.

A fraternity of Sufi Islam famous for both their asceticism and their hypnotic, trance-inducing dances, the Dervish community in Kosovo is a legacy of the Ottoman empire that once held sway over this Serbian province.

While 95 percent of Kosovo’s two million inhabitants are Muslim, only a tiny fraction — some 50,000 — are Dervishes. There are also Sufi communities in neighboring Albania and Macedonia.

At the end of March the 5,000 Dervishes of Prizen in southern Kosovo celebrate the Spring equinox festival of “Sultan Nevruz,” the moment when the sun begins to favor the Northern Hemisphere and day become longer than night.

The ceremony unfolds in the hilly suburbs of this picture-postcard town in special ampitheatre, or “teqe,” that bears little resemblance to a traditional Muslim mosque.

Some 60 dervishes of all ages dressed in black and white waistcoats and flat hats, including a few children, begin chanting before an overflowing crowd. Women, guests and journalists are kept to the side or observe from a small wooden balcony.

What is about to unfold is so dramatic as to shock the uninitiated, and even shake one’s understanding of medical science.

“La-illaha-illallah” (“There is no god but God”) the Dervishes intone in a subdued prayer, forming a semi-circle around Shejh Adrihusejn.

Bobbing their heads, they slowly up the tempo and volume of the prayer from a deep murmur into full-throated howl, praying for their past sins to be pardoned.

The crescendo mounts for two hours until the Dervishes are swaying in a state of mystical ecstasy. “Allah Hu” (he is God), they chant in perfect unison.

That is when the skewers and knives appear.

The Shejh leads the way, coating 15-centimetre (six inch) long needles with his saliva and then piercing his two young sons. He does the same to three other children.

Miraculously, there is no blood, and the children show no sign of fear or pain, swaying silently as they hold the needles pierced through one side of their mouths.

Next come the blades: Shejh slowly eases 40-centimetre ( 1.3-foot) knives with rounded, pearl-coated stems through both cheeks of the Dervishes, one-by-one.

Driven by the rhythm of kettledrums and tambourines, the entranced worshipers sway in a semi-conscious state, repeating their calls to “Allah” over and over.

Next they begin piercing their necks with knives, proudly displaying the wounds.

“The knives symbolize the healing of all wounds. This is the blessing of God and the power of the order,” says an elderly, high-ranking Dervish after the ceremony.

Finally, the intensity subsides into a prayer for the souls of all prophets and believers, as the Dervishes remove the knives and return them to the Shejh, kissing his hands.

Later, the 44-year-old Shejh talks about his flock’s esoteric tradition, insisting that it has a place in modern society.

“We propagandize love among people. Belief is, in essence, love towards God, towards others and towards life,” he says.

“I am against any extremism. I am a Muslim and a European of the 21st Century — Internet is an important part of my life,” he says.

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Isim – Academic Freedom and Middle East Studies in the United States after September 11

Posted on March 30th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

Isim

Academic Freedom and Middle East Studies in the United States after September 11

Public lecture by
Professor Beshara Doumani

Thursday 30 March 2006, 15.00 to 17.00 hrs
University of Amsterdam
Academic freedom in the United States is facing its most serious threat since the McCarthy era of the 1950s. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, both government agencies and private advocacy groups have been subjecting institutions of higher learning to a sophisticated infrastructure of surveillance, intervention, and control with particular focus on Islamic and Middle East studies. This comes at a time when the academy is in the midst of an institutional transformation driven by the increasing commercialization of knowledge. Buffeted between the conflicting but intimately related forces of anti-liberal coercion and neo-liberal privatization, colleges and universities are more vulnerable than ever to the ways in which outside political and economic forces are reshaping the landscape of intellectual production. How must we rethink the concept of academic freedom and our role as intellectuals in order to protect the free pursuit of knowledge and to keep the mission of higher education focused on service to the public good?

Beshara Doumani is associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, author of Rediscovering Palestine (1995), and editor of two volumes: Family History in the Middle East (2003); and Academic Freedom after September 11 (2006). He received his Ph.D. from Georgetown University (1990) and was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1997-1998) and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2001-2002).

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Protected: Wellness.Plein.nl – Moslims en PKN tegen proces bekeerde moslim

Posted on March 25th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

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Rituelen en Conflicten

Posted on March 25th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

Op 21 maart was in Zwolle een symposium over hedendaagse rituelen:
Symposium Hendendaagse Rituelen | 21 maart 2006 | CABK ArtEZ academie voor beeldende kunst en vormgeving

Over Rituelen bij dieren, tot rituelen bij moslims en rituelen bij Maya’s, maar ook

1.
“ Maya Indiaan Abraham Elias Lopez stemt de Goden gunstig door volgens de traditie van zijn volk in de 4 windrichtingen op zijn schelp te blazen”

2.
“De enige Shinto meester in Europa, Paul de Leeuw, houdt een inleiding op het ritueel dat hij vervolgens zal uitvoeren: de wijding van ons gebouw in zijn nieuwe functie. Hierbij wordt het evenwicht hersteld dat door de brute bouwactiviteiten verstoord is, en worden de kami’s verzoend met het gebruik van de ruimte als kunstacademie”

3.
“Danseres Kampala Raghuraman belicht de achtergrond van de Griha Pravesh: het betreden van de nieuwe woning volgens de hindoetraditie. Over de vorm waarin dit ritueel ( met assistentie van een locale koe) kan worden uitgevoerd wordt nog overlegd: de bedoeling is hier het hele gebouw bij te betrekken.

De eerste waren lezingen, maar bij deze drie gaat het ook om uitvoeren van rituelen. En daar zijn enkele studenten tegen:

Hiermee willen wij zeggen dat wij dus geen problemen hebben met de mensen die een ander geloof hebben dan wij en andere rituelen uitvoeren. Maar waar wij wel bezwaar tegen hebben is het feit dat ze hun rituelen willen gaan uitvoeren in en rondom ons gebouw en ons erbij willen betrekken. Op het moment dat deze onderdelen uitgevoerd worden, wordt er ruimte geschept voor heersers en machthebbers van de duisternis. Dit zijn kwade geesten.

Wij gaan ervan uit dat het kwade geesten zijn want alles wat niet van God komt en dus niet in de naam van God of Jezus wordt gedaan, van de duisternis komt.

God waarschuwt ons ook om ons daar verre van te houden. Daar hoort bij “Roep geen andere Goden aan, laat hun naam niet over je lippen komen.”(Exodus 23:13, De Bijbel)

God waarschuwt ons niet alleen omdat Hij wil dat we geen andere Goden dienen, Hij zegt het omdat daar risico’s aan zitten die schade kunnen brengen aan ons als mensen.

Wij maken zelf onderdeel uit van deze school en zijn begaan met alle studenten die daar nu en in de toekomst les krijgen. Wij willen niet dat er mensen komen die het gebouw inwijden of daar geesten uitnodigen die gevaarlijk zijn.

We beseffen dat dit op anderen overkomt als iets wat een geloof van ons is, niet van hen. Maar we achten het risico op de gevolgen van het oproepen van bepaalde energieën te groot om hier niet vanuit onze visie voor te waarschuwen. Vanuit ons geloof is er namelijk een wereld van kwade energieën die niet alleen effect heeft wanneer je daarin gelooft, maar ook effect heeft als je er niet in gelooft.

Volg de discussie op Artez.nl

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C L O S E R – De drie tenoren

Posted on March 24th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

C L O S E R

In Trouw woedde enige tijd terug een discussie tussen Michiel Leezenberg en Mat Herben over Andalusië, Islam en Verlichting. Herben beschuldigde Leezenberg ervan een islamapolegeet te zijn. Een verwijt dat Machteld Allan later nog eens dunnetjes over doet.

Ik vind zelf hun verwijt dat Leezenberg een apolegeet is, niet terecht; het doet geen recht aan zijn betoog dat veel genuanceerder is dan dat. Een probleem dat ik met alledrie, maar vooral met Herben en Allan, heb is dat de ze het hebben over De islam als ideeenwereld. Het is toch nog wel iets meer dan alleen dat, als je persé over de islam wil spreken.

Hieronder kort drie centrale citaten van een ieder en dan alle drie de artikelen onder elkaar. Ja het is even wat lees werk maar dan heb je ook wat. Dit blog is niet voor luie lezers.

Iemand, ik weet niet meer wie, waarschijnlijk een vrouw uit de hoek van de zogenaamde gender-studies, had in de jaren ’80 een boekje geschreven waarbij ze aantoonde dat nonnen zich in de Middeleeuwen te buiten gingen aan lesbische vrijages, waarmee ze hun aparte identiteit vorm gaven. Het probleem is echter dat moderne begripsvorming (‘lesbisch’) ruw op historische situaties geplakt wordt, wat een nogal armetierig, maar ook belachelijk geschiedbeeld oplevert, waarin middeleeuwse kloosters optreden als een soort vrouwencafé’s of verenigingen voor homo-emancipatie. Omdat het een puur apologetisch argument is, schiet het tekort als geschiedschrijving, en omdat het tekort schiet als geschiedschrijving, werkt het uiteindelijk ook niet als apologie.

Middeleeuws Andalusië fungeert in sommige academische kringen ook als zo’n a-historische lesbische non, zoals ook Mat Herben in zijn artikel van 11 februari liet zien. Een gewenste situatie in het heden (bijvoorbeeld de multiculturele, seculiere of ‘open’ maatschappij vol geëmancipeerde moslims) wordt in zijn geheel geprojecteerd op de Middeleeuwen, waarbij de onderliggende idee is dat de islam niet in de weg hoeft te staan als we zo’n maatschappij verlangen. Sterker nog: Andalusië onder islamitische heerschappij fungeert als de moeder aller multiculti-maatschappijen. Eén stapje verder in deze redenatie en de islam is zelfs onmisbaar geworden voor zo’n ‘open’ maatschappij.

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Het feit dat zowel Verlichtingsidealen als de reacties erop modern zijn, betekent natuurlijk nog niet dat ze noodzakelijk ook goed en mooi zijn. Ook het feit dat hedendaags Iran op een grondwet gebaseerd is, garandeert overduidelijk niet dat alles in orde komt. Het betekent echter wel dat het hele idee van een islamitische republiek een radicaal nieuw verschijnsel in de islamitische wereld is: de gedachte dat de sjaria tot een grondwet zou kunnen worden omgevormd heeft geen voormoderne precedenten in de islamitische wereld. Even nieuw is Khomeini’s doctrine dat de wereldse macht moet worden uitgeoefend door de oelama of schriftgeleerden. In de traditionele sjiitische islam was de opvatting juist dat schriftgeleerden zich niet met de heerschappij moesten inlaten, en dat er een speciaal hoekje in de hel gereserveerd is voor de oelama die dat wél doen. Dat is geen geschiedvervalsing maar een stel tamelijk elementaire historische inzichten.

Dit geeft je een idee van de immense verschillen tussen de klassieke en de moderne islam: de islam vervult vandaag de dag de rol die in eerdere decennia werden gespeeld door het nationalisme en het communisme, die grote seculiere moderne godsdiensten; en ze wordt ook in vergelijkbare termen uitgedrukt. De intolerantere formuleringen ervan die je nu aantreft zijn vormen van wat ik elders als ‘islamitisch leninisme’ heb omschreven: ideologische scherpslijperij, de nadruk op de noodzaak van propaganda en partijorganisatie om de samenleving te veranderen, en intolerantie van afwijkende meningen en machtsblokken. Dat zijn allemaal moderne kenmerken, die je in de voormoderne islam niet of nauwelijks tegenkomt.

De bestudering van islamitisch Spanje kan ons dus ook van pas komen voor het heden. Ze helpt ons in te zien dat de hedendaagse autoritaire en gewelddadige uitwassen in de islamitische wereld en onder moslimmigranten geen uiting van een eeuwig intolerante islam zijn, maar veeleer van scheefgelopen modernisering, en van autoritaire, dictatoriale of zelfs totalitaire moderne staatstradities.

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Nog kwalijker is de suggestie dat het moslimterrorisme slechts een eigentijdse vorm zou zijn van criminaliteit en politiek extremisme. Die elementen zijn zeker aanwezig, maar vormen slechts het halve verhaal. De religieuze component is onloochenbaar. We hebben te maken met extremisten die zich met goede papieren – teksten uit de Koran – op de islam beroepen. De plegers van aanslagen en hun sympathisanten beroepen zich op de islam, de slachtoffers en de samenleving merken daarvan de gevolgen.

De harde werkelijkheid is dus dat we te maken hebben met islamitisch terrorisme. En het gaat de extremisten niet om het bereiken van een beperkt politiek doel – bijvoorbeeld het verwezenlijken van een Palestijnse staat of het stoppen van de oorlog in Irak – maar om de ondergang van de democratische rechtsstaat en het vestigen van een islamitische staat. Wie de ernst van de situatie beseft, begrijpt dat het hard nodig is dat de gewone moslims hun stem verheffen. Als het werkelijk gaat om een kleine extremistische minderheid, dan is het nodig dat die geen willig gehoor vindt. Het billijken dat Nederlandse moslims de kat uit de boom kijken en afwachten wie er aan het langste eind trekt, is volstrekt onverantwoord. Het moedigt de radicale elementen aan.

Ook in ons land wordt de boodschap verspreid dat een islamitische staat een veel beter systeem is dan de democratische rechtsstaat. Bewegingen als de Hizb-u-Tahrir (Bevrijdingspartij) pleiten voor een moslimstaat, waarin het kalifaat het hoogste wereldlijk gezag zou moeten vormen. Als voorbeeld van zo’n heilstaat wordt steevast Andalusië aangevoerd, waar islamieten, joden en christenen in de twaalfde eeuw vreedzaam en in harmonie zouden hebben samengeleefd. Maar is dat wel zo? Kan het Andalusië van de twaalde eeuw als lichtend voorbeeld voor de eenentwintigste eeuw worden gebruikt?

(more…)

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International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) – Conflict prevention and resolution – To Save Darfur

Posted on March 18th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) – Conflict prevention and resolution

Nairobi/Brussels, 17 March 2006: Without rapidly boosting international forces in the region, the Darfur crisis and the escalating proxy war between Sudan and Chad will cost tens of thousands more lives and destabilise a wide swathe of Africa.

To Save Darfur,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the seriously deteriorating situation in western Sudan region and along the Chad-Sudan border, arguing that a highly capable and mobile UN-led force must be sent immediately to Darfur to stabilise the situation until a broader UN mission can take over in October.

“The small African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) has reached its military and political limits”, says John Prendergast, Crisis Group Senior Africa Adviser. “There’s just no way AMIS can give civilians the protection they need and prevent this war now escalating”.

Inside Darfur, humanitarian access is at its lowest in two years, civilians continue to bear the brunt of the violence, the ceasefire is in tatters and political talks are stalled. Fighting is most intense and civilians at greatest risk along the border with Chad and the Tawila-Graida corridor.

While the rebels are not helping contain the situation, the Sudanese government bears primary responsibility for its deterioration. It still uses offensive air power, supports militias and stokes inter-communal violence. Sudanese security elements are supporting the well-armed Chadian rebels in Western Darfur, while President Idris Deby in Chad scrambles to bolster his position by reaching out in turn to the Darfur rebels.

Earlier this month, the African Union extended the AMIS mission in Darfur to 30 September, and accepted in principle a UN mission thereafter. But it failed to take the necessary timely and decisive action to strengthen the current operation’s civilian protection mandate or agree to more troops on the ground now, from Africa or anywhere else. The situation cries out for a new multinational force with a strong protection mandate, distinct from AMIS but working with it, to bridge the gap over the crucial next six months.

A militarily capable UN member state should offer to the Security Council to lead for this purpose a blue-helmet stabilisation force – consisting if possible of some 5,000 troops – to hold the line until a full UN mission is put together. France seems the most promising candidate, with troops and aircraft already in the area, but other states must help too.

At the same time, the AU, in close coordination with the UN, should continue to play a lead role in the effort to negotiate a real ceasefire and a political settlement in Abuja.

“A lasting solution to the Darfur conflict can only come with a three-part strategy, aimed at achieving physical security, an inclusive political agreement, and an end to impunity”, says Gareth Evans, President of Crisis Group. “But right now, to save Darfur, the most urgent need is to get some 5,000 UN troops on the ground and operational as quickly as possible”.

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Meet the Muslim Madonna | This is London

Posted on March 18th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

Meet the Muslim Madonna | This is London
Meet the Muslim Madonna
By Jane Cornwell, Evening Standard
15 March 2006

People sneered and spat at the young Muslim Souad Massi when she first performed in public. She knew that if she wanted to be a singer, she would have to leave her native Algeria.

Now, after six years in France and three albums later, she has won the French equivalent of a Brit award for her sensual songs with social conscience.

And Britain is catching on too. The next prize she collects will be a BBC World Music Award (Middle East and North Africa category) in next month’s ceremony at Brixton Academy.

At the event, regarded as world music’s gig of the year, she will perform songs from her latest album, Mesk Elil (on the Wrasse label).

Initially billed as an Arabic Joan Baez or Tracy Chapman – even the Madonna of the Maghreb – Massi has come into her own.

“I’m a global citizen now,” she says, sitting back on a couch in her Paris record company offices, her sixmonthold daughter, Inji (“Emerald” in Persian) next door with a child-minder.

Make-up free, effortlessly gorgeous in jeans and heels, Massi is friendlier – and far more amusing – than her often sombre music suggests.

“The first 12 months in Paris were the hardest,” she says in her heavily accented English. “People were suspicious, but I still felt safer and freer. Here I have more room to express myself, to tell the truth.”

Her beautiful carillon-like voice and her wildly eclectic mix of North African, French and Sixties folk-rock influences (as well as country, flamenco, even heavy metal) have been deservedly praised. But there are other new, unwelcome pressures. “People want me to be a spokesperson for

Muslim women,” she says, her doe-eyes flashing. “It’s a heavy burden. I’m non-practising. But wherever I go in the West, it is always the first thing that I’m asked about.”

Massi’s carefree stage persona – strolling on in jeans and T-shirt, with hair loose, guitar over shoulder – can be confusing to those who regard Muslim women as subservient, controlled, covered-up. “I’m a cosmopolitan artist who happens to be a Muslim woman. Do people constantly ask Western singers about their religion?” She shrugs. “My faith is in the background, not the foreground.”

Yet it was precisely this attitude that made Massi’s life in Algeria so precarious. Though the North African country is currently struggling towards reconciliation, back in the Nineties it was racked by an ideological crossfire between the military and Islamic fundamentalists.

Life wasn’t easy for a jeans-wearing, guitar-toting girl with a fine line in socially aware ballads and a growing public profile, especially one with a habit of stopping, mid-concert, to discuss her country’s problems . (“To remain silent would mean the terrorists had won.”) She was banned from the airwaves.

There were anonymous phone calls, death threats. In 1999, after being sacked from her job as a town planner, she was invited to play at the Femmes d’Algérie festival in France. Offered a recording contract, and having met her future husband, Mohammed (the Moroccan-born owner of a French restaurant), she stayed. “How could I not?” she grins.

It is not easy being a professional female musician, she continues. “But I’ve always had a sort of enforced maturity. I’ve had to take on certain responsibilities, also because of what was happening in Algeria. But I’ve always felt like an outsider; I guess that’s made me stronger.”

While Massi’s 2000 debut, Raoui (The Storyteller) and its 2003 follow-up, Deb (Heartbroken) saw her hailed as the saviour of world music, her beautiful vocals – together with her darkly fragile looks – created an erroneous image of a delicate desert flower.

Her Arabic and French lyrics, however, told of passion, loss and harsh realities in words that could be about herself, or her country. While her brief forays into English on Mesk Elil (Honeysuckle) seem calculated by producers intent on swiping a bigger slice of the market, Massi’s repertoire remains that of an Algerian renegade trying to make sense of conflict and exile.

She doesn’t mind commenting on the recent race riots in France (“It’s no wonder, really, when Algerians there are treated as secondclass citizens”) or the law that has forbidden Muslim women to wear headscarves (“They say they are trying to make everyone equal, when they’re not; they’re doing things the French way”). She just doesn’t see why she has to.

And though grateful to her adopted homeland for kick-starting her stellar international career, Massi insists that relocating to France has given her a clearer sense of identity. “I had to leave Algeria to realise that I am an African,” she says. “Coming from the Maghreb, my roots are in Africa, not the Middle East. There’s a whole wave of immigrants in France who feel the same way.”

The second of seven siblings, Massi grew up playing football and watching spaghetti westerns, deliberately a tomboy when “being a woman in Algeria seemed such a handicap”. She listened to James Brown and the country singers Kenny Rogers and Emmylou Harris.

Her father opposed her musical ambitions; their problematic relationship contributed to a severe bout of teenage depression that was alleviated, she says, when she joined a heavy metal band named Akator: “We loved AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, and used to rehearse in a garage near a mosque, which upset a lot of people. Hard rock was seen as the devil’s music, but it helped us young people let our anger out.”

Massi revisited Algeria in 2003. “It used to feel like life was on hold, that everyone was waiting for the danger to pass. But it was much better. People’s attitudes and the situation are improving.”

She’ll play a sold-out concert at the Ibn Khaldoun, Algiers’ equivalent of Olympia, at the end of next month, before continuing a lengthy tour of Europe and America.

“The last time I went through passport control at Los Angeles airport I was taken aside and questioned,” she says wryly. “They said, ‘Do you like our president?’ ‘What do you think of the war in Iraq?’ ‘Do you like Americans?'” She sighs. “You know,” adds Souad Massi with a smile, “There is much work to be done in the West, too.”

• Souad Massi performs at the BBC World Music Awards on 7 April at Brixton Academy (0870 771 2000 or 08700 600 100).

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Meet the Muslim Madonna | This is London

Posted on March 18th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

Meet the Muslim Madonna | This is London
Meet the Muslim Madonna
By Jane Cornwell, Evening Standard
15 March 2006

People sneered and spat at the young Muslim Souad Massi when she first performed in public. She knew that if she wanted to be a singer, she would have to leave her native Algeria.

Now, after six years in France and three albums later, she has won the French equivalent of a Brit award for her sensual songs with social conscience.

And Britain is catching on too. The next prize she collects will be a BBC World Music Award (Middle East and North Africa category) in next month’s ceremony at Brixton Academy.

At the event, regarded as world music’s gig of the year, she will perform songs from her latest album, Mesk Elil (on the Wrasse label).

Initially billed as an Arabic Joan Baez or Tracy Chapman – even the Madonna of the Maghreb – Massi has come into her own.

“I’m a global citizen now,” she says, sitting back on a couch in her Paris record company offices, her sixmonthold daughter, Inji (“Emerald” in Persian) next door with a child-minder.

Make-up free, effortlessly gorgeous in jeans and heels, Massi is friendlier – and far more amusing – than her often sombre music suggests.

“The first 12 months in Paris were the hardest,” she says in her heavily accented English. “People were suspicious, but I still felt safer and freer. Here I have more room to express myself, to tell the truth.”

Her beautiful carillon-like voice and her wildly eclectic mix of North African, French and Sixties folk-rock influences (as well as country, flamenco, even heavy metal) have been deservedly praised. But there are other new, unwelcome pressures. “People want me to be a spokesperson for

Muslim women,” she says, her doe-eyes flashing. “It’s a heavy burden. I’m non-practising. But wherever I go in the West, it is always the first thing that I’m asked about.”

Massi’s carefree stage persona – strolling on in jeans and T-shirt, with hair loose, guitar over shoulder – can be confusing to those who regard Muslim women as subservient, controlled, covered-up. “I’m a cosmopolitan artist who happens to be a Muslim woman. Do people constantly ask Western singers about their religion?” She shrugs. “My faith is in the background, not the foreground.”

Yet it was precisely this attitude that made Massi’s life in Algeria so precarious. Though the North African country is currently struggling towards reconciliation, back in the Nineties it was racked by an ideological crossfire between the military and Islamic fundamentalists.

Life wasn’t easy for a jeans-wearing, guitar-toting girl with a fine line in socially aware ballads and a growing public profile, especially one with a habit of stopping, mid-concert, to discuss her country’s problems . (“To remain silent would mean the terrorists had won.”) She was banned from the airwaves.

There were anonymous phone calls, death threats. In 1999, after being sacked from her job as a town planner, she was invited to play at the Femmes d’Algérie festival in France. Offered a recording contract, and having met her future husband, Mohammed (the Moroccan-born owner of a French restaurant), she stayed. “How could I not?” she grins.

It is not easy being a professional female musician, she continues. “But I’ve always had a sort of enforced maturity. I’ve had to take on certain responsibilities, also because of what was happening in Algeria. But I’ve always felt like an outsider; I guess that’s made me stronger.”

While Massi’s 2000 debut, Raoui (The Storyteller) and its 2003 follow-up, Deb (Heartbroken) saw her hailed as the saviour of world music, her beautiful vocals – together with her darkly fragile looks – created an erroneous image of a delicate desert flower.

Her Arabic and French lyrics, however, told of passion, loss and harsh realities in words that could be about herself, or her country. While her brief forays into English on Mesk Elil (Honeysuckle) seem calculated by producers intent on swiping a bigger slice of the market, Massi’s repertoire remains that of an Algerian renegade trying to make sense of conflict and exile.

She doesn’t mind commenting on the recent race riots in France (“It’s no wonder, really, when Algerians there are treated as secondclass citizens”) or the law that has forbidden Muslim women to wear headscarves (“They say they are trying to make everyone equal, when they’re not; they’re doing things the French way”). She just doesn’t see why she has to.

And though grateful to her adopted homeland for kick-starting her stellar international career, Massi insists that relocating to France has given her a clearer sense of identity. “I had to leave Algeria to realise that I am an African,” she says. “Coming from the Maghreb, my roots are in Africa, not the Middle East. There’s a whole wave of immigrants in France who feel the same way.”

The second of seven siblings, Massi grew up playing football and watching spaghetti westerns, deliberately a tomboy when “being a woman in Algeria seemed such a handicap”. She listened to James Brown and the country singers Kenny Rogers and Emmylou Harris.

Her father opposed her musical ambitions; their problematic relationship contributed to a severe bout of teenage depression that was alleviated, she says, when she joined a heavy metal band named Akator: “We loved AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, and used to rehearse in a garage near a mosque, which upset a lot of people. Hard rock was seen as the devil’s music, but it helped us young people let our anger out.”

Massi revisited Algeria in 2003. “It used to feel like life was on hold, that everyone was waiting for the danger to pass. But it was much better. People’s attitudes and the situation are improving.”

She’ll play a sold-out concert at the Ibn Khaldoun, Algiers’ equivalent of Olympia, at the end of next month, before continuing a lengthy tour of Europe and America.

“The last time I went through passport control at Los Angeles airport I was taken aside and questioned,” she says wryly. “They said, ‘Do you like our president?’ ‘What do you think of the war in Iraq?’ ‘Do you like Americans?'” She sighs. “You know,” adds Souad Massi with a smile, “There is much work to be done in the West, too.”

• Souad Massi performs at the BBC World Music Awards on 7 April at Brixton Academy (0870 771 2000 or 08700 600 100).

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Volkskrant Weblog — Moslima Journalista

Posted on March 11th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

Volkskrant Weblog — Moslima Journalista
Moslims en geen humor?

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Protected: NRC Handelsblad- Klinkende zege verhult zwakte PvdA

Posted on March 11th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

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Democracy, Islam and the politics of belonging

Posted on March 8th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

Democracy, Islam and the politics of belonging
Democracy, Islam and the politics of belonging
Rosemary Bechler
In January, two prominent – and rival – thinkers on Europe and Islam, Tariq Ramadan and Dyab Abou Jahjah, met in Rotterdam for an eagerly attended debate. Rosemary Bechler pursues and examines their views on democracy.

Zakaria Hamidi is surprised at how many “Dutch people” have come along to the first public debate in Rotterdam organised by New Horizon, a newly-launched platform for discussion focusing on Islam in the Netherlands. Over 800 of us are packed in serried rows into a big conference hall in Erasmus University on a Friday night, mid-January, awaiting the arrival of “two men who have dedicated a lot of time, energy and heart to analysing the problems of disharmony between Muslims and non-Muslims, beginning with Belgium and France, but always aiming for European solutions – solutions for the world at large,” in the words of the young chairwoman. It has taken Zakaria a year to bring his speakers together, and 200 people have already had to be turned away.

Both men have a considerable following, and on the surface seem to disagree about almost everything. Lebanese-born Dyab Abou Jahjah, president of the Arab European League ( AEL ) has been called the Belgian Malcolm X, while the young philosopher, Tariq Ramadan , as he will remind us tonight, has often been referred to as “the preacher of the banlieues”. So our chair’s closing remark that, “maybe by the end of the night, we will find out that both men would however like to join forces … in helping Muslims to freedom and peace,” does little to dent the hopes of those who came wanting to hear a good row.

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Protected: Het Parool – Marcouch lijkt populair in Slotervaart

Posted on March 8th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

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Protected: Elsevier.nl – Politiek – Allochtonen stemmen massaal op PvdA

Posted on March 8th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

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Ff wat losse endjes

Posted on March 4th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

Druk, druk, druk zo gaat dat. Toch even terug komen op die demonstratie vorige week in Amsterdam voor de vrijheid van meningsuiting. Een echt succes kunnen we het niet noemen met slechts enkele tientallen deelnemers. Ik was niet onder de indruk van de actie-bereidheid van jonge moslims, maar nog minder hiervan. De enigen die makkelijk te mobiliseren zijn, zijn schijnbaar de jongens en meisjes van de Anti-Fascistische Actie. Daar had fotograaf Thomas Schlijper een aardig commentaar op:

Links ontmoet rechts
Een verwarrende middag op de Dam: een mini-demonstratie tegen lange tenen en voor cartoons trekt neonazi’s aan, zwart geklede anti-fascisten delen klappen uit, een skinhead met lang haar, een anti-fascist met Lonsdale-jasje en een donkere jongen met nederlandse vlag die door louter blanke linkse jongeren voor nazi wordt uitgemaakt. Snapt u het nog?
Wat wel klassiek was: de antifa’s verjagen enkele neonazi’s van de Dam onder de uitroep: ‘Ga maar naar de treinen! Daar houden jullie toch zo van?!’

Nu zaten er zeker ook mensen bij die demo die volgens de AFA van twijfelachtig allooi zijn, maar mensen niet iedereen die daar rondliep met blauwe ogen is een fascist (ervan uitgaande dat die Marokkaanse jongen met blauwe ogen die mij dat vertelde geen fascist is). Dat het een radicaal-rechtse demo was, is toch ook wat bezijden de waarheid. Niet iedereen die met een Nederlandse vlag loopt te zwaaien is radicaal-rechts ook al loopt radicaal-rechts vaak te pas en te onpas met die vlag te zwaaien.

Maar goed voor sommige AFA‘s maakt dat niet uit:

we staan daar niet voor de publieke opinie of voor een postief stukkie in de krant, we staan daar om koste wat het kost te voorkomen dat extreem-rechts zich kan profileren in amsterdam..

Nu ken ik dat type redeneringen wel van een andere radicale groep en ik word er niet blij van. Gelukkig zijn er ook onder die groep die iets verstandiger en constructiever wensen te opereren.

Een ander los endje is natuurlijk het manifesto (zie hieronder) en het college van Hirsi Ali op de VU; toch nog altijd mijn universiteit. Op FrontaalNaakt een niet al te kritisch, maar wel interessant interview met haar e een overzicht van vragen uit het publiek:

Zelfs als u daarmee polariseert?

“Is dat zo? Dat lijkt me niet aannemelijk. Kijk naar Duitsland, daar woon ik niet, maar moslims en niet-moslims leven er op dezelfde gespannen voet als hier. Hetzelfde is het geval in Frankrijk en Italië. Ik vind het ook beledigend voor mensen te suggereren dat mensen alleen door mijn uitspraken niet in staat zouden zijn in vrede samen te leven.”

Ze is te bescheiden zou ik zeggen en dat blijkt ook wel als ze laat zien wat ze wil bereiken:

“Het gaat me er in de eerste plaats om bewustwording te scheppen in de Nederlandse samenleving. Het moet iedereen duidelijk zijn dat er moslimvrouwen worden onderdrukt en mishandeld.
Vervolgens moet de staat moet die vrouwen beschermen en de daders vervolgen en berechten, want het moet ze duidelijk worden dat ze niet wegkomen met het slaan van hun vrouw. Nu komen ze er wel mee weg, omdat alles achter gesloten deuren gebeurt, onzichtbaar voor de buitenwereld.
Tenslotte moeten op lange termijn de islamitische dogma’s tegen het licht worden gehouden. Ik wil mensen uitdagen: durft u samen met mij in de koran te kijken om te zien dat er wel degelijk staat dat de man zijn vrouw mag slaan als hij ongehoorzaamheid vreest.
Dus eerst moet de maatschappelijke discussie op gang worden gebracht, dan moet de staat zorgen voor bescherming en opvang van onderdrukte vrouwen, die dan de kans hebben om na te denken over hun geloof. Polariseren is niet altijd fout.”

En schijnbaar zijn er dan ook nog Frontaal Naakt lezers die onderdrukking van vrouwen door mannen geen probleem vinden.

6 comments.

Cartoonesque – Manifesto

Posted on March 2nd, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

In the Indland Jyllands-Posten the following manifesto was released:

Together facing the new totalitarianism
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

It is copied by many blogs and newspapers and will also appear in the french Charlie Hebdo. The editor of this magazine calls upon others to follow their example. Others however disagree and state that this manifesto is too liberal. Among them Paul Beliën from Brussels Journal who refers to an response of Jos Verhulst on a piece by KifKif.be in the Belgian daily De Morgen and in De Tijd: The limits of free speech.

While in America a cultural war is going on between “blue” (liberal) and “red” (conservative), the cultural war in Europe is a three-way war between the European equivalent of the American “blue” (socialist), the European equivalent of the American “red” (conservative, though Europeans often use the term “liberal”) and Muslims. I prefer to refer to the first group as “secularist” (although I realise this is a generalization and many Christians belong to these “secularists,” including – unfortunately – most of our bishops and priests) and to the second group as “Christian” (although many agnostics belong to it). The reason why I make this distinction is because the second group is prepared to acknowledge the importance of the cultural traditions of the West, rooted in the Judeo-Christian values without which classical-liberalism could never have evolved.

I cannot state this any better than Dr. Jos Verhulst, in his contribution to our Dutch-language section yesterday:

And now he stands at the dawn of the 21st century: the maligned individual, unsteady on his own feet after executing the inner breach with every form of imposed authority, uncertain, blinking in the brightness of the only god he is willing to recognise – Truth itself, stretching out before him unfathomably deep – full of doubt but aware that he, called to non-submission, must seek the road to the transcendent, carrying as his only property, his most valuable heirloom from his turbulent past, that one gold piece that means the utmost to him, his precious ideal of complete freedom of thought, of speech and of scientific inquiry. That is the unique advance that he received to help him in his long and difficult quest.

Meanwhile he is being beleaguered and threatened on all sides; from out of the darkness voices call him to submit and retreat; they shout that the gold in his hands is worthless, while the brightness ahead of him still makes it almost impossible for him te see what lies in store. In short: what this contemporary individual needs most of all is courage, great courage. And the will to be free and to see, which is tantamount to the will to live.

This, in our humble opinion, is a far more appropriate “manifesto” than the one published in Charlie Hebdo today. The battle that is being waged today is a battle between those who defend the right of individuals against the right of collectivities.

The Islamists and the secularists (including the priests and bishops among them) have more in common than the Islamists and the Christians (including the agnostics among them), because the latter acknowledge that at the heart of Christianity is the individual with his individual responsibility before God. Without Christianity, individual responsibility would not have become the centre of European civilization. It was the French Revolution that jeopardized this tradition and that became the root of collectivism, with its socialist, fascist, national-socialist and communist excesses. From this perspective even Jihadism is more a child of secularism than of religion.

2 comments.

We should fear Holland’s silence – Newspaper Edition – Times Online

Posted on March 2nd, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

We should fear Holland’s silence – Newspaper Edition – Times Online

In Times Online an article by Douglas Murray, author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It. He was present together with Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye’or and others at the Islam conference of the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF).

Islamists are stifling debate in what was Europe’s freest country, says Douglas Murray
‘Would you write the name you’d like to use here, and your real name there?” asked the girl at reception. I had just been driven to a hotel in the Hague. An hour earlier I’d been greeted at Amsterdam airport by a man holding a sign with a pre-agreed cipher. I hadn’t known where I would be staying, or where I would be speaking. The secrecy was necessary: I had come to Holland to talk about Islam.

Last weekend, four years after his murder, Pim Fortuyn’s political party, Lijst Pim Fortuyn, held a conference in his memory on Islam and Europe. The organisers had assembled nearly all the writers most critical of Islam’s current manifestation in the West. The American scholars Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer were present, as were the Egyptian-Jewish exile and scholar of dhimmitude, Bat Ye’or, and the great Muslim apostate Ibn Warraq.

*
Click here to find out more!
Both Ye’or and Warraq write and speak under pseudonyms. Standing at the hotel desk I confessed to the girl that I didn’t have any other name, couldn’t think of a good one fast. I was given my key and made aware that the other person in the lobby, a tall figure in a dark suit, was my security detail. I was taken up to my room where I changed, unpacked and headed back out — the security guard now positioned outside my bedroom door.

I had been invited to deliver the closing speech to the memorial conference on what would have been Fortuyn’s 58th birthday. I said I would talk on the effects of Europe’s increasingly Islamicised population and advocate a tougher European counterterror strategy. There was no overriding political agenda to the occasion, simply a desire for frank discussion.

The event was scholarly, incisive and wide-ranging. There were no ranters or rabble-rousers, just an invited audience of academics, writers, politicians and sombre party members. As yet another example of Islam’s violent confrontation with the West (this time caused by cartoons) swept across the globe, we tried to discuss Islam as openly as we could. The Dutch security service in the Hague was among those who considered the threat to us for doing this as particularly high. The security status of the event was put at just one level below “national emergency”.

This may seem fantastic to people in Britain. But the story of Holland — which I have been charting for some years — should be noted by her allies. Where Holland has gone, Britain and the rest of Europe are following. The silencing happens bit by bit. A student paper in Britain that ran the Danish cartoons got pulped. A London magazine withdrew the cartoons from its website after the British police informed the editor they could not protect him, his staff, or his offices from attack. This happened only days before the police provided 500 officers to protect a “peaceful” Muslim protest in Trafalgar Square.

It seems the British police — who regularly provide protection for mosques (as they did after the 7/7 bombs) — were unable to send even one policeman to protect an organ of free speech. At the notorious London protests, Islamists were allowed to incite murder and bloodshed on the streets, but a passer-by objecting to these displays was threatened with detention for making trouble.

Holland — with its disproportionately high Muslim population — is the canary in the mine. Its once open society is closing, and Europe is closing slowly behind it. It looks, from Holland, like the twilight of liberalism — not the “liberalism” that is actually libertarianism, but the liberalism that is freedom. Not least freedom of expression.

All across Europe, debate on Islam is being stopped. Italy’s greatest living writer, Oriana Fallaci, soon comes up for trial in her home country, and in Britain the government seems intent on pushing through laws that would make truths about Islam and the conduct of its followers impossible to voice.

Those of us who write and talk on Islam thus get caught between those on our own side who are increasingly keen to prosecute and increasing numbers of militants threatening murder. In this situation, not only is free speech being shut down, but our nation’s security is being compromised.

Since the assassinations of Fortuyn and, in 2004, the film maker Theo van Gogh, numerous public figures in Holland have received death threats and routine intimidation. The heroic Somali-born Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her equally outspoken colleague Geert Wilders live under constant police protection, often forced to sleep on army bases. Even university professors are under protection.

Europe is shuffling into darkness. It is proving incapable of standing up to its enemies, and in an effort to accommodate the peripheral rights of a minority is failing to protect the most basic rights of its own people.

The governments of Europe have been tricked into believing that criticism of a belief is the same thing as criticism of a race. And so it is becoming increasingly difficult and dangerous to criticise a growing and powerful ideology within our midst. It may soon, in addition, be made illegal.

I had planned — the morning after my speech — to see Geert Wilders, but instead spent the time catching up with his staff. Their leader had been called in by the police to discuss more than 40 new death threats he had received over the previous days.

As I left the Netherlands I once again felt terrible sorrow for a country that is slowly being lost. A society which should be carefree and inspiring has become dark and worried. The jihad in Europe is winning. And Holland, and our continent, takes one step further into a dark and menacing future.

1 comment.

Islam, European Societies, and the “Carriers” of National Identities

Posted on February 23rd, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

I won’t be blogging the coming days. No not because of Karnaval but because I’m attending the

Islam, European Societies, and the “Carriers” of National Identities in Frankfurt a/d Oder.

3 comments.

Islam, European Societies, and the "Carriers" of National Identities

Posted on February 23rd, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

I won’t be blogging the coming days. No not because of Karnaval but because I’m attending the

Islam, European Societies, and the “Carriers” of National Identities in Frankfurt a/d Oder.

3 comments.

Cartoonesque – Washington Post / Flemming Rose: Why I Published Those Cartoons

Posted on February 19th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

Why I Published Those Cartoons

It’s time to let the Danish editor of Jylland Posten speak out and speak for himself. So here he is, from the Washington Post:

Why I Published Those Cartoons

By Flemming Rose
Sunday, February 19, 2006; Page B01

Childish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad I decided to publish in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people’s religious feelings, and besides, they add, the media censor themselves every day. So, please do not teach us a lesson about limitless freedom of speech.

I agree that the freedom to publish things doesn’t mean you publish everything. Jyllands-Posten would not publish pornographic images or graphic details of dead bodies; swear words rarely make it into our pages. So we are not fundamentalists in our support for freedom of expression.

But the cartoon story is different. (more…)

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spiked-politics | Article | Muslim protest in London: A tale of two demos

Posted on February 19th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

spiked-politics | Article | Muslim protest in London

A tale of two demos
Saturday’s demonstration of moderate Muslims was presented as a peaceful counter to last week’s aggressive gathering. In fact, similar resentments seemed to simmer beneath both.
by Josie Appleton

The British Muslim demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London, on Saturday 11 February was cast as the peaceful counter to last week’s aggressive gathering. That demo was composed of young men in suicide-bomber garb, threatening Westerners with beheading. By contrast, here was a medley of different ages carrying blue-and-white banners: ‘United against Islamophobia’, ‘Mercy to mankind’, ‘Muhammad, symbol of freedom and honour’. Last week’s demo was orchestrated by the crackpot ‘Saviour Sect’; this one was backed by respectable organisations such as the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), as well as by London mayor Ken Livingstone.
(more…)

1 comment.

spiked-politics | Article | Muslim protest in London: A tale of two demos

Posted on February 19th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

spiked-politics | Article | Muslim protest in London

A tale of two demos
Saturday’s demonstration of moderate Muslims was presented as a peaceful counter to last week’s aggressive gathering. In fact, similar resentments seemed to simmer beneath both.
by Josie Appleton

The British Muslim demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London, on Saturday 11 February was cast as the peaceful counter to last week’s aggressive gathering. That demo was composed of young men in suicide-bomber garb, threatening Westerners with beheading. By contrast, here was a medley of different ages carrying blue-and-white banners: ‘United against Islamophobia’, ‘Mercy to mankind’, ‘Muhammad, symbol of freedom and honour’. Last week’s demo was orchestrated by the crackpot ‘Saviour Sect’; this one was backed by respectable organisations such as the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), as well as by London mayor Ken Livingstone.
(more…)

1 comment.

Protected: Trouw, deVerdieping| overigeartikelen – Op je woorden letten is vorm van beschaving

Posted on February 18th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

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