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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 CIPRaheel Raza • February 6, 2012 • Stonegate Institute [New York] "You have each been convicted of the planned and deliberate murder of four members of your family. The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honor, a notion of honor that is founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honor that has absolutely no place in any civilized society." Ontario Judge Robert Maranger, delivering the verdict in the Shafia murder case. On Sunday, January 29, 2012, the Ontario Superior Court imposed mandatory sentences of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, on Mohammad Shafia, 58, his younger, second wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed Shafia, 21. The polygamous Shafia family had come to Canada from Afghanistan. The accused had strong defence lawyers; and the jury deliberated for 15 hours before coming to a unanimous verdict.
Harvard's Middle East Outreach Center: Propaganda for Teachers Stephen Schwartz • February 5, 2012 • American Thinker In 2005, Saudi prince Alwaleed Bin Talal donated $20 million dollars each to Harvard and Georgetown Universities. In the years since, Georgetown has earned considerably more press for its use of the prince's largesse, through which it renamed an extant center founded in 1993 as the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). This is due in no small part to the efforts of the center's director, John Louis Esposito, America's foremost apologist for ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam. The result of the Saudi-Esposito lash-up has been the emergence of ACMCU as an academic institution that promotes vigorously the "Palestinian narrative" and hostility to Israel.
Muslims Honor Birthday of Muhammad – Except in His Birthplace Stephen Schwartz • February 3, 2012 • Folksmagazine [India] On January 24, the Islamic hijra month of Rabi Ul-Awwal began. During this month, traditional Muslims around the world will celebrate the birthday of Muhammad (peace be upon him). Milad An-Nabi (Birthday of the Prophet) will be an official holiday in India on February 5, the 13th day of Rabi Ul-Awwal. The occasion is similarly honored in 54 Muslim countries, as well as several others with large Muslim minorities, including Sri Lanka, Fiji, Guyana, Kenya, and Tanzania. Milad An-Nabi festivals, juloos processions, candle-lighting, and gatherings for recitation of verses in praise of Muhammad will be held wherever Muslims congregate. The event is known as "mevlud" among the Bosnians, "mevlyd" in Albanian, "mevlid" for the Turks, and "mawlid" in Britain and other English-speaking lands where Muslims have immigrated. The custom is maintained vigorously in Egypt – of which more will be said toward the end of this column.
Stephen Schwartz • February 2, 2012 • CIP As an American Muslim, I am proud of the frontline role the organization I direct, the Center for Islamic Pluralism, has taken regarding women's issues in our faith community. The Center has produced numerous documents on the crime of female genital mutilation and other atrocious practices inflicted on Muslim women. These include so-called "honor" murders, forced marriage, forced divorce, marriage contracted with minor females, and other abusive habits found in Arab countries, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, and the immigrant Muslim communities in the West.
Bosnia Re-Arrests Top Wahhabi Plotter After U.S. Embassy Attacked Stephen Schwartz • February 1, 2012 • The Weekly Standard Blog On Wednesday, January 25, a team of 150 officers from the State Investigation and Protection Agency of Bosnia-Herzegovina (SIPA) arrested Nusret Imamović, leader of the main Wahhabi Islamist cell in the country, and his brother Eldin Imamović. The pair was seized in an investigation of a gunfire attack at the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo last October, by a Serbian Muslim named Mevlid Jašarević. According to Bosnian media, SIPA announced, "The goal of the operation is to collect evidence that could be tied to the attack on the U.S. Embassy and all the evidence will be handed over to the Bosnia-Herzegovina State Prosecutor after forensic processing."
Middle East Conference Against Female Genital Mutilation Irfan Al-Alawi • January 31, 2012 • Stonegate Institute [New York] On January 19, the first conference on female genital mutilation (FGM) in the Middle East opened in Beirut, Lebanon. The event was called by two non-governmental organizations, the Dutch-based Humanist Institute for Cooperation (HIVOS) and WADI, the Association for Crisis Assistance and Solidarity Development Cooperation. Founded by Germans, WADI has worked extensively in Iraqi Kurdistan, where it is in the forefront of opposition to FGM.
Turkish 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. |
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