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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 CIPFrom D.C. Suburbia to Al-Shabab Stephen Schwartz • July 27, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog Last Thursday, July 22, 20-year-old Zachary A. Chesser of Fairfax County, Va., was arrested for providing material support to, and attempting to join, the Somali Islamist militia affiliated with al Qaeda, al-Shabab. Chesser has been ordered to remain in jail until his trial.
A Mosque Grows Near Brooklyn Stephen Schwartz • July 26, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Since a proposal to construct a 15-story mosque and community center two blocks from Ground Zero was announced last year, the project has been a focus of widening protests. To be named Cordoba House, the project would require demolition of two buildings at 45-47 Park Place and Broadway that were damaged on 9/11. They would be replaced by a glass and steel 100,000-square-foot structure with a new address, 45-51 Park Place. According to its sponsors, the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society of Muslim Advancement (ASMA), the structure would cost $100 million and would include "a 500-seat auditorium, swimming pool, art exhibition spaces, bookstores, restaurants," and an area for Islamic prayer. The Cordoba Initiative and ASMA were created by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a Kuwait-born cleric of Egyptian background.
Failed states to blame for own misery Salim Mansur • July 24, 2010 • Toronto Sun The July/August issue of Foreign Policy features the "Failed States Index" for 2010 — an index it has been publishing every year since 2005 in collaboration with the U.S.-based Fund for Peace. The Top 10 failed states in the index have been rotating in the rankings for the past six years, and they are Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Central African Republic, Guinea and Pakistan. The index is a good measure of what is wrong with these states — whose misery is primarily self-inflicted — and given their histories there is little promise of any improvement in their situation.
Bangladesh Bans Arch-Jihadist's Writings Irfan Al-Alawi • July 22, 2010 • Hudson Institute New York In an important development for Islam in South Asia and around the world, the government of Bangladesh, a country with a population of almost 160 million, of whom 90% are Muslim, has banned the books of Abu'l Ala Maududi (1903-79).
Ground Zero Mosque Property Developer Comes Out Stephen Schwartz • July 20, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog Sharif El-Gamal, owner of Soho Properties. Inc., purchaser of the buildings near Ground Zero that have been slated for transformation into a 15-story mosque has come before the public, via CNN, to argue in favor of the project, known as "Cordoba House." Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNJm4y4BYiE Nearly every statement El-Gamal made in this video can be rebutted. Asked by CNN's Deborah Feyerick why there is no provision for a Buddhist, Jewish, or Christian prayer space within the planned structure, El-Gamal says "this [Islamic cultural center] is a need that exists," then insists "there is a need – it's supply and demand – the community wants this."
Nasr Hamed Abuzayed (1943-2010) Kamal Hasani • July 20, 2010 • Hudson Institute New York The Egyptian Islamic thinker Nasr Hamed Abuzayed died on July 5 at 67 years of age. He was a leading proponent of modern Islamic thought, applying critical tools to the classic and contemporary discourse in Muslim theology, philosophy, law, politics, and humanistic studies. His work aimed at a humanistic hermeneutics, or manner of interpretation, that would help Muslims build a bridge between their traditions and the modern world of free speech, civil equality (minority rights, women's rights, social justice), general human rights, democracy, and globalization.
Grim anniversary marks UN's failings Salim Mansur • July 17, 2010 • Toronto Sun Fifteen years ago this week, the terrible news of a massacre of men and boys, Bosnian Muslims, trickled out of the town of Srebrenica where UN forces under Dutch command had established safe haven for civilians seeking refuge from the horrors of the Balkan war. Some 30,000 Bosnian Muslims had gathered in early July 1995 at the UN military base in Potocari — a suburb of the Srebrenica enclave on the frontier between Bosnia-Herzegovina and former Serb-controlled Yugoslavia — for protection from advancing Serbian forces under the command of Gen. Ratko Mladic. But Mladic and his soldiers entered the protected area and demanded the UN Dutch commander Col. Ton Karremans hand over Bosnian men to his charge. On that fateful day, July 11, some 23,000 women and children were separated from their male relatives under the watchful eyes of the UN commander and his troops, and deported.
Kamal Hasani • July 13, 2010 • Hudson Institute New York Because so little may be communicated from inside Iran, I will limit these comments to a panorama of the current situation, with more such – and more in quantity, one hopes, to follow later. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was asked at a recent press conference what he thinks about suggestions that Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of one of the Tehran regime's two main institutions, the Expediency Council, intends to retire. Ahmadinejad replied that he would be grateful for Rafsanjani's retirement – merely another expression of the basic rivalry between Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad's clerical patron, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad's comment demonstrated that he is more sure of himself than ever. In attacking Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad wishes to push aside the political figures of the original revolutionary generation and to introduce a new conservative ideology, in which absolute power is primary and religion a mere political weapon.
Victorino Matus • July 12, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog The United Nations' refusal to condemn North Korea for sinking a South Korean vessel is regrettable but not surprising. In 1995, the U.N. allowed a nightmare to transpire when the blue helmets under Dutch command negotiated with Serbian general Ratko Mladic and in the process allowed thousands of men, women, and children to perish from in and around the Bosnian city of Srebrenica. Hasan Nuhanovic was then a U.N. translator during the negotiations who was able to remain under the protection of U.N. forces in Potocari while his mother, father, and brother were forced to leave and were soon murdered. As Nuhanovic recalled in the Bosnian newsweekly Dani and which has thankfully been reprinted (in part) in the Washington Post,
Stephen Schwartz • Spring 2010 • Middle East Quarterly The history of the Catalans and Islam is distinctive from that of the rest of Spain. The Catalan language, which counts some 10 million speakers, is an official idiom along with Castilian, in the Spanish regions of Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands. Barcelona, the great Catalan metropolis, was taken back from Muslim conquerors in the year 801—only ninety years after the Umayyad invasion of 711—and became the capital of the Marca Hispanica, or the Spanish March, controlled by the Christian heirs of Charlemagne. Catalonia was thus never part of Al-Andalus and is one of the few regions of Spain from which a Muslim cultural legacy, in the form of architectural monuments and Arabic loan-words, is absent.
Stephen Schwartz • July 12, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog The provocative anti-Israel posture of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP firebrand, appears to have lost some favor within Turkey itself. But how about among the two and a half million Turkish immigrants and their descendants in Germany? Could Turkish Muslims in Western Europe, under AKP influence, become a major, new focus of radicalism?
Ali Uyanik • July 9, 2010 • Hudson Institute New York Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the new hero of the Islamic world. With his rude manner in criticizing Israel, he has won sympathy among Arabs. His main career in this line began at the World Economic Forum in Davos last year, when he angrily left a panel discussion that included Shimon Peres. The Israeli military action aboard the ship Mavi Marmara ended with Turkish dead, and aggravated Turkish outrage. Israel now generally lacks a positive image in Turkey. Israel's policy towards the Palestinians is perceived as unfair. For Erdogan, his policy toward Israel provides a welcome opportunity to divert attention from domestic problems.
Kosovo Headscarf Conflict Grows Stephen Schwartz • July 6, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog The Kosovo Republic's official stance against girls wearing the Muslim headscarf (hijab) in state-supported primary and secondary schools, has brought the country's main Muslim leader, Naim Ternava, out of a pattern of silence about the penetration of radical Islam in that country. Ternava, who bears the title of "mufti" or president of the local Sunni Muslim apparatus, had said nothing about increasing intra- and inter-religious conflicts among Kosovar Albanians over the past year and a half. These incidents included attacks by Wahhabi infiltrators on moderate Muslim clerics for whose safety Ternava is ostensibly responsible, and threats to Christians, as well as actions by local villagers to curb Wahhabi agitation.
"I fervently hope that moderate Islam will defeat radical Islam": U Mahesh Prabhu • July 5, 2010 • Folksmagazine [India] U Mahesh Prabhu (UMP): Center for Islamic Pluralism, of which you are a director, presents itself as "think tank that challenges the dominance of American Muslim life by militant Islamist groups". What according to [you] is "militant Islam" and "moderate Islam"?
Zakir Naik: "Peace TV" Calls for Terrorism Irfan Al-Alawi • July 2, 2010 • Hudson Institute New York Dr. Zakir Naik is a 44 year-old Muslim preacher born in India. He has gained a significant international following by establishing a satellite television network, Peace TV, which promotes Wahhabi Islam; it is based in Mumbai/Bombay, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai, and has a supporting organization, the Islamic Research Foundation. Naik has mainly broadcast his message in English as well as Urdu. But Peace TV is an ambitious enterprise that now aims at Albanian Muslims, among others. Zakir Naik is distinguished by one characteristic: incitement of provocative disdain for any other Muslims than Wahhabis and Pakistani jihadists, as well as other faiths. Incitement, by calling on Muslims to become terrorists and supporting Al-Qaeda, is not protected speech in the UK, Canada, or India.
CIP's "Truth About Shariah" Program Stephen Schwartz • June 29, 2010 • Hudson Institute New York On June 22-23, the Center for Islamic Pluralism (CIP) coordinated print media and public-speaking efforts in the U.S., Britain, and Canada to publicize our opposition to Islamist demands for introduction of Shariah, i.e. Islamic religious law, into Western public law. CIP's program on this important and controversial topic is based in the Center's study published last year, A Guide to Shariah Law and Islamist Ideology in Western Europe, 2007-2009.
G8 must weigh in on 'unwinnable' war Salim Mansur • June 26, 2010 • Toronto Sun Irrespective of how well in advance preparations for an event are made, the unexpected cannot be ruled out. The July 2005 G8 Summit hosted by Britain in the township of Perth and Kinross in Scotland, we might recall, was overshadowed by the series of co-ordinated suicide bombings of the London public transport system by "homegrown" Muslim terrorists. At the 2010 G8 Summit with Canada playing the host, the news from Washington surrounding the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, could not have come at a more inopportune moment for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
EU Continues to Release Terror Suspects Stephen Schwartz • June 24, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog On June 17, the anti-terrorism unit of the Kosovo police, acting by request from the U.S. Department of Justice, arrested 29-year old Bajram Asllani, a Kosovar Albanian and one of two suspects who fled North Carolina after law enforcement action 10 months ago against a jihadist conspiracy based in Raleigh. On Friday, the next day, the European Union police agency in Kosovo, known as EULEX, ordered Asllani's release, though he remains under house arrest and is required to report to police every two weeks. The decision was based, according to EULEX judge Agnieszka Kolowiecka-Milar, on the lack of an extradition treaty between the U.S. and Kosovo. EULEX spokesperson Kristiina Herodes said, "The prosecutor will have a close look at the written decision by the judge and then will decide to appeal against the decision or not."
Obama's Islamic Envoy: Obama Is America's "Educator-in-Chief on Islam" Stephen Schwartz • June 24, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog Rashad Hussain, America's special envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Saudi-based body formed in 1969 to "protect" Jerusalem from the Israelis, announced a new title this week for President Barack Obama. According to Hussain, Obama is America's "Educator-in-Chief on Islam."
Woodrow Wilson Center To Hold Conference on Europe and Islam June 23, 2010 • Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars [Washington, DC] Beyond Cairo : Visions of a New Decade in European Islamic Relations June 23, 2006, 6th Floor Flom Auditorium – 8:45 am – 3:00 pm Keynote Address: Rashad Hussain, Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Department of State Panels: A. National Politics and Minority Treatment: Assimilation and Integration
B. Implications for Human Rights: Ensuring Social Cohesion and Inclusion |
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