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"Surely, those who believe, and the Jews and the Christians and the Sabians, whoever have faith with true hearts in Allah and in the Last-day and do good deeds, their reward is with their Lord, and there shall be no fear for them nor any grief." — Qur'an 2:62 Latest from CIPTurkish Women Victims of "Permitted" Rape Veli Sirin • January 25, 2012 • Stonegate Institute [New York] At the beginning of the New Year, as reported in the daily newspaper Haber Türk (Turkish News) of January 6, 2012, E.D., a 25-year old man in the northwestern Turkish city of Bolu, took his 11-year old "wife," Z.Ç., to the hospital because she suffered pain. The news story identified the couple only by their initials. The doctor diagnosed the girl as eight months pregnant by her "husband." Whether the girl was in a condition to consent to sexual relations is obviously questionable. One would more probably assume she was raped by the 25-year old. Marriage to an 11-year old girl is illegal in Turkey, but such cases are a constant in the country's life. The doctor called for the girl to be kept in the hospital for in-patient care, but her "spouse" refused, and the couple returned to their village, Alpagut, near Bolu. The hospital released them after the girl signed a document declaring her wish to leave the facility.
A "Second Spring" in the Far East? Stephen Schwartz • January 22, 2012 • Folksmagazine [India] The promise of democratization in the 2010-2011 "Arab Spring" has nearly vanished in the aftermath of Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi electoral victories in North Africa, continued grinding atrocities in Syria, Saudi Arabian and Gulf Cooperation Council occupation (plus Iranian intrigue) in Bahrain, and chaos in Yemen. But news from China and Southeast Asia is more positive. In the first country, authorities have removed Communist officials from command over the "rebel" village of Wukan in Guangdong province and replaced them with a local party member, Lin Zuluan, a leader of protests against seizure of communal property for corrupt private sale and alleged electoral fraud. The Wukan party bureaucrats fled the village last month when the revolt there widened and an advocate for the demonstrators, Xue Jinbo, died in police custody.
Bosnian Cultural Heritage Under Peacetime Threat Stephen Schwartz • January 19, 2012 • The Huffington Post Destruction of libraries and museums was one of many potent symbols of Serbian aggression against the newly-independent Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, during the 1992-95 war that left the country partitioned. Abundant acts of evil were perpetrated in the conflict, and witnessed by the world. They included hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, most notoriously in the infamous massacre at Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys were killed by Serbian soldiers.
Kosovar Albanian Arrested in Tampa Terror Scheme Stephen Schwartz • January 18, 2012 • The Weekly Standard Blog While Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and other Balkan countries have been plagued by radical Islamist incursions, Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha, who is Muslim, told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth at the end of November that he considers Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Iranian government "the new Nazis, and the world must learn from the Holocaust and stop them before it is too late."
Turkey Leaps Toward Islamist Dictatorship Stephen Schwartz • January 15, 2012 • Folksmagazine [India] Turkey's so-called Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish initials as AKP) first won a national election in 2002 – a victory repeated in 2007 and 2011. Since its second triumph at the polls, it and its principal figure, current prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have undertaken a campaign of persecution against leaders of the country's army, political institutions, judiciary, media, and academia. The motive of the AKP offensive is obvious. Erdoğan's party supports an allegedly "soft" form of Islamist ideology, and its targets mainly represent Turkey's secularist political tradition.
Egyptian Islamists Demand "Morals Patrols" Irfan Al-Alawi • January 12, 2012 • Stonegate Institute [New York] The radical Islamist Nour party, or "Party of the Light," has captured more than a quarter of votes in the post-Mubarak Egyptian elections. Nour, which ran second to the Muslim Brotherhood in the polling, is a Wahhabi party, reproducing the ideology of the rulers of Saudi Arabia, under the label of "Salafism." Its rhetoric presents "Salafism" as pure Islam unchanged by 14 centuries of Muslim history in differing lands and cultures worldwide. Nour is hostile to non-Wahhabi Muslims, repressive of women's rights, and discriminatory against non-Muslims.
review of Encounters With Civilizations Stephen Schwartz • January 9, 2012 • Folksmagazine [India] Agnes Ganxhë Bojaxhiu first became known to the world as Mother Teresa. She was born in 1912 of Albanian Catholic parents in Shkupi (Skopje), then a major city, called Üsküb in Turkish, in the Ottoman district of Kosova, and now the capital of independent Macedonia. She died in 1997 and was beatified as Blessed Teresa of Kolkata in 2003, by Pope John Paul II. I am Muslim, but I have had extensive experience with Albanian Catholic intellectuals, and am an admirer of Blessed Teresa of Kolkata. She is unique, having brought succor to those most needing it in the Indian megalopolis. She received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 but continued her work with the religious order she founded in 1950, the Missionaries of Charity.
Prayers for 2012 and Reflections on 2011 Stephen Schwartz • January 4, 2012 • Folksmagazine [India] It is customary for columnists to conclude the common year with reflections on that which has just finished and predictions for that which is to come. I make no pretensions to prophecy, aside from occasional analysis based on news reports. I am, however, a Muslim believer, and will therefore reverse the usual order of such discourses, beginning with what I and those with whom I cooperate in the Center for Islamic Pluralism (CIP) hope will come about, and dedicating the rest of this contribution to a look back at 2011. First, let those of us who are Muslims pray and work for an end to violence, whether between Muslims, or inflicted by Muslims on non-Muslims and by non-Muslims on Muslims. Let us pray and work for a positive victory over the dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. Let us pray and work against the so-called "Boko Haram" cult that, claiming to act in the interest of Sunni Islam, has carried out brutal attacks on Christians in Nigeria.
Saudi King's Reform Step vs. Crown Prince's Ambitious Wahhabism Irfan Al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz • January 3, 2012 • The Weekly Standard Blog The Saudi Arabian monarchy is now led by two counterposed figures: the reforming King Abdullah and the fanatical Wahhabi crown prince Nayef. Recent incidents in the kingdom, although at first glance minor, may indicate the approach of a significant confrontation between modernizing and retrogressive tendencies in the royal family. On December 28, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan announced that by order of King Abdullah, women wishing to run as candidates or to vote in municipal elections scheduled for 2015 will not require approval of a male relative, designated a "guardian" or mehram.
World teeters as past mistakes repeated Salim Mansur • December 31, 2011 • Toronto Sun As 2011 ends it might well be remembered as "annus horribilis" or the horrible year. The March tsunami that overwhelmed Japan demonstrated nature's immense power to dwarf or drown all human efforts to build stronger, better and safer methods of a high-tech civilization. The swelling of the ocean tides around Japan's 40-year-old Fukushima nuclear plant was a reminder yet again man remains nature's child, even as he might decode the chemistry of distant stars. But a tsunami or a volcanic eruption or an earthquake, despite the ruins and tears it brings to those in its path, bears as much or little fault in itself as snowflakes in winter. On the contrary, effects of human folly, greed, envy, resentment, bigotry, misogyny, pride and the incapacity or unwillingness to reason and learn from the accumulated record of mischief rest entirely on our shoulders.
Kazakhstan: Global Tumult Enters Critical Central Asia Stephen Schwartz • December 26, 2011 • Folksmagazine [India] December 2011 marked two momentous anniversaries. The suicide by burning of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, occurred on December 17, 2010, one year ago. The dissolution of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics took place on December 26, 1991, two decades past. Bouazizi's act began the series of political upheavals known as the "Arab Spring" – leading to the fall of Tunisian dictator Zine Al Abedine Ben Ali, then Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, and Libya's brutal buffoon, Mu'ammar Al-Qhadhdhafi. These convulsions were greeted by Western democratizers and Muslim moderates as the herald of a thorough transformation of political and social structures in the Islamic countries.
Christmas fades in a world that needs it Salim Mansur • December 24, 2011 • Toronto Sun A few days ago I received a letter from a dear friend visiting Vietnam to attend a physics conference in Qui Nhon. My friend is head of the physics department at a Catholic college in upstate New York. Vietnam, he wrote me, is "a country of our heartache, of our youth in many ways." This is true for our generation that came of age in the years after President John F. Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. We became first aware of politics and then took part in anti-Vietnam War protests during the decade beginning with the U.S. bombings of Hanoi, sometime after Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964, and ending with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. My friend wrote, "In spite of the hammer and sickle flying in public places, business is booming. Tourists abound, markets are flourishing and, oddly, Saigon is preparing for Christmas.
review of The Honored Dead: A Story of Friendship, Murder and the Search for Truth in the Arab World Stephen Schwartz • December 22, 2011 • The Huffington Post Joseph Braude, who also writes for The Huffington Post, is the American scion of a distinguished Iraqi Jewish family. His mother emigrated to Israel, but the family landed in Providence, R.I., where Braude grew up. His mother then divorced, and in her company, Braude began to study Arabic language and Islamic culture. In 2008 he was permitted to spend four months embedded with a unit of Morocco's Judiciary Police in the country's commercial capital, Casablanca. The result of that experience is described in an encyclopedic examination of bloodshed, punishment, radical Islam, Jewish minority life, sorcery, corruption, individual rights and governmental opacity in northwest Africa's largest city. This true-crime chronicle is titled The Honored Dead: A Story of Friendship, Murder and the Search for Truth in the Arab World.
India: Rajasthan Authorities Favor Barelvis, Rejecting Wahhabi Infiltrators Stephen Schwartz • December 20, 2011 • Folksmagazine [India] On December 5, The Hindu, a major national daily, reported an important step forward in Indian Muslim relations with state governments. According to the newspaper, authorities in Rajasthan, on India's western frontier with Pakistan, have appointed representatives of the Barelvi sect, a traditionalist Sunni interpretation imbued with spiritual Sufism, to the leadership of several Muslim institutions. In doing so, The Hindu reports, Rajasthan effectively barred radical Islamist agitators from directing local communal bodies, and has followed the lead of the central government, which is controlled by the Indian National Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.
The Nour Party Irfan Al-Alawi • December 19, 2011 • Hudson Institute New York The extreme Islamist "Nour Party" ["Party of the Light"], with 25% of the ballots, produced the biggest surprise of the first round of Egypt's parliamentary voting at the end of November. Its advance overshadowed, in media attention, the widely-anticipated 40% received by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Nour Party had formed a coalition, the "Democratic Alliance for Egypt," with the Brotherhood but withdrew from it in September. The Brotherhood and the Nour Party are now in bitter competition.
Grave Concern over Disappearances of Uyghurs Extradited to China Dolkun Isa • December 19, 2011 • World Uyghur Congress 19 December marks the second anniversary of the illegal and forcible return of 20 Uyghur asylum-seekers (including one woman and two children) from Cambodia to China and the Chinese authorities still have not disclosed their whereabouts and legal statuses. The Chinese government had promised the international community that it would deal with these Uyghurs transparently upon return. The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is gravely concerned about their well-being and is also worried about other cases of enforced disappearances of Uyghur refugees and asylum seekers after their return to China from different countries in the Asian region.
Women continue to pay the price Salim Mansur • December 17, 2011 • Toronto Sun A year ago on Dec. 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire in despair with poverty and absence of any hope. He saw himself caged, as did so many others, in his native country turned into a prison of daily abuse from where there seemed to be no exit. Bouazizi died of his burns some three weeks later, yet his final act of desperation shook the despondent populace of Tunisia into the making of what has come to be known as the Arab Spring. The idea of Arab Spring — a beginning in the transition of Arab states from authoritarian rule to democracy — was an expression filled with desperate longings that somehow democracy based on freedom and individual rights might take root in the historically arid political landscape of the Arab world.
Ashura – The Continuing Martyrdom Stephen Schwartz • December 12, 2011 • Folksmagazine [India] The 10th day of Muharram, the first month of the year 1433 according to the Islamic lunar (hijri) calendar, correlated with December 5-6 in Western measurement. Then, and on the following weekend in some Western countries, Muslims commemorated Ashura. The date recalls the martyrdom of Imam Husayn in 680 CE at the massacre of Karbala in Iraq. Imam Husayn was the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, as the younger son of Muhammad's cousin, Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib, and Muhammad's daughter Fatima. Imam Ali was the last of the four original successor-caliphs to Muhammad.
Rashid Ghannoushi: John Esposito's Islamist in Tunis Stephen Schwartz • December 11, 2011 • American Thinker Rashid Ghannoushi (or Rachid Ghannouchi in French) is the ideological elder of Tunisia's Ennahda, or the Renaissance Party, the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. He arrived in Washington on Monday, November 28, 2011, in the halo of a skewed electoral victory by his party in the small North African country's recent elections.
Exploring blood-soaked roots of Arab feud Salim Mansur • December 10, 2011 • Toronto Sun The Islamic calendar is based on the cycle of 12 lunar months and the first month, Muharram, in this Islamic year of 1433 began two weeks ago at the end of November. The 10th day of Muharram, known as Ashura, is significant to Muslims and how it is commemorated sets them apart in a feud that goes back to the founding years of Islam. This feud remains literally explosive and every Ashura, somewhere in the Arab-Muslim world — as happened this week in Kabul — fanatics among the majority Sunni Muslims set forth to kill members of the minority Shia Muslims. This feud's origin lies in an immense crime. It is the murder of Husain, the grandson of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and born to his favourite daughter Fatima, married to Ali, his cousin. Those responsible for this crime eliminated any claim on the part of Ali, and his sons — Hasan and Husain — to succeed Muhammad in leading the newly united tribes of Arabia under the flag of Islam. |
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