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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 CIPAn Appeal to International Organisations Against Attacks and Atrocities At Sacred Sites Center for Islamic Pluralism • May 15, 2013 • CIP The following statement was released today, May 15, in connection with the Hudson Institute seminar, "Islamist Repression of Sufis and Other Religious Minorities," held in Washington, DC. Information on the seminar is available here. Further signatures are welcomed and should be e-mailed to CIP. The document will be retransmitted periodically as signatures are received. # # # As scholars of religion, we appeal to the United Nations (UN), its Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and member states, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to undertake urgent action to end the current global wave of violence against the holy sites, shrines, and houses of worship of all religions.
Veli Sirin • May 13, 2013 • Gatestone Institute Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, born on February 26, 1954, comes from a shabby Istanbul waterfront neighborhood where children grew up between rusting ships and old tires. He sold snacks on the street as a youth, to help his family. He called himself "the black Turk." He emerged, a parvenu in Istanbul's elegant, secular social strata, as a much-feared religious advocate for the masses. He is now married to Emine, with whom he has four children: two sons, and two daughters. His daughters, like his wife, wear headscarves (hijab).
Britain's Feckless, Two-Faced Approach to Radical Islam Irfan Al-Alawi • May 8, 2013 • Gatestone Institute If the U.S. authorities are beset by questions about their capacity for the prevention – or lack thereof – of Islamist terrorism, similar questions need to be asked about the response to terror conspiracies in Britain. In the U.S., the debate is fed by the continuing, controversial aftermath of the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, including Ambassador John Christopher Stevens and three of his compatriots, last year, as well as by the recent bombings in Boston.
CIP Executive Director Endorses Denial of Islamic Funeral for Terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev Stephen Schwartz • May 7, 2013 • CIP Imam Talal Eid of the Islamic Institute of Boston, a former member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, has refused to provide Muslim burial services for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year old individual from a Caucasian Muslim family who was killed in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings. Imam Eid has declared, "I would not be willing to do a funeral for him. This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim. He already left the fold of Islam by doing that. In the Qur'an it says those who… kill innocent people… will dwell in the hellfire." I endorse the rejection of an Islamic funeral for Tsarnaev, as I similarly argued in the case of the late Osama Bin Laden in 2011.
review of Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, from 1453 to the Present Stephen Schwartz • May 6, 2013 • The Weekly Standard Early in this book, author Brendan Simms, professor of history at Cambridge, quotes John Locke: "How fond soever I am of peace I think truth ought to accompany it, which cannot be preserved without Liberty. Nor that without the Balance of Europe kept up." As Simms indicates, for Locke, "truth" was defined as Protestantism and parliamentary government, while "the Balance of Europe" referred to the security of the German territories in its heartland.
Iran Continues Crackdown on Sufis Stephen Schwartz • May 1, 2013 • The Huffington Post Iran continues to arrest Sufi mystics. The victims of state suppression represent the Gonabadi-Nimatullahi order, the main body of traditional metaphysical Muslims in the country. On April 20, Abdolghafour Ghalandari Nejad, a webmaster for the Gonabadi-Nimatullahi site Majzooban Noor (The Alluring Light), was detained in the south Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas. Situated on the strategic Strait of Hormuz, Bandar Abbas is a source of anxiety for thTehran clerical dictatorship. Dozens of Sufis joined Ghalandari's family in front of the local office of Iran's Ministry of Internal Security. They demanded to know the details of Ghalandari's case. They warned against his possible transfer to a prison run by the Iranian Cyber and Information Exchange Police, known by its Farsi-language initials as FETA. The FETA detention center is a place feared greatly by Iranian dissidents.
"Radical Islamist ideology dominates Sunni Islam in the U.S." Stephen Schwartz • April 29, 2013 • El Diario Exterior [Madrid] [Stephen Suleyman Schwartz is the Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington. We Interviewed him for El Diario Exterior to obtain his opinion on the origin, nature, and possible consequences of the attacks in Boston.] Passivity by the world powers toward the dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad will produce a new and wider wave of terrorism. The U.S. government has shown that it does not want to address the issue of radical Islam as an ideology. Western media and governments treat Islam as monolithic and homogeneously radical. Immigration is not the issue; ideology is the issue. What do you make of the bombing suspects?
CIP Supports Concern Over Attacks on Southeast European Journalists CIP • April 26, 2013 • Southeast Europe Media Organization The Center for Islamic Pluralism endorses the following statements by the Southeast Europe Media Organisation, an affiliate of the International Press Institute. CIP Executive Director Stephen Suleyman Schwartz commented, "Several leading members of our organization are journalists, and I am a former secretary of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, affiliated with The Newspaper Guild as Communications Workers of America Local 39521, AFL-CIO, a trade union representing newspaper employees in Northern California, USA. CIP advocates strongly for full media freedom in all countries, without exception. We note in particular that an investigation of the assassination of Serbian journalist Slavko Ćuruvija is very long overdue." CIP does not support the presence of the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) in Kosova. These statements have been corrected and slightly edited to conform to CIP style. Vienna, 25 April 2013
RESCHEDULED CIP Executive Director Schwartz at Washington, DC Event Hudson Institute • April 24, 2013 • Hudson Institute Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom invites you to...The Rise of Islamism: Its Impact on Religious MinoritiesWednesday, May 15 With the rise of Islamism in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, religious minorities have come increasingly under siege. Already this year, nearly two hundred Hazara Shiite Muslims in Baluchistan, Pakistan have been killed in bombings launched by the Sunni extremist group Lashkar-e-Jangvi. In Egypt, the nation's new constitution denies Baha'is the right to houses of worship, while Iran's denies Baha'is any rights at all. In Mali, Islamists have destroyed historic Sufi shrines, and in Iraq, a campaign of terrorist violence has driven almost the entire Mandean community from its ancient homeland.
The Boston Horrors and Wahhabism in Chechnya Stephen Schwartz • April 24, 2013 • The Weekly Standard Blog Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, killed during the Boston rampage last week, and his surviving brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who is charged by federal authorities in the series of abominable crimes, are doubtless the first Chechens many Americans will ever have heard of. And the news coverage of the last week will have been their first introduction to Chechnya and the Muslims of the Caucasus.
Shariah Councils in Britain are 'archaic', 'incompetent' - and increasingly popular Irfan Al-Alawi • April 24, 2013 • Lapido Media [London] A leading Muslim spokesman has denounced Britain's proliferating shariah councils in the wake of a BBC Panorama documentary broadcast 22 April. Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, founding Trustee of the Muslim Institute, who champions women's causes including marriage reform, told Lapido: 'The Shariah law was put together in the ninth and tenth centuries. People want to apply it in twenty-first-century Britain without realizing that they are living in different times.' He said council adjudicators were 'full of enthusiasm but lacking competence. They can do nothing right. They simply do not understand the issues.' This comment indicates a level of oppression faced by Muslim women from a stagnating system with links across the world, particularly in UK which unlike many Muslim countries, does not protect women from shariah's excesses.
The Boston Atrocities, Chechens, Wahhabism, and Sufism Stephen Schwartz • April 19, 2013 • CIP Preliminary news reports state that the YouTube account of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, and subsequent violent rampage, includes a Wahhabi fundamentalist video denouncing Sufism, the spiritual movement that has served as the bedrock of Caucasian Muslim resistance to Russian imperialism. Given the infiltration of Wahhabis into the Caucasian Islamic milieu, especially in the past 10 years, there is little reason to doubt the anti-Sufi, as well as anti-American component of the terrorist assault in Boston. While the main victims of the April 15 crime were ordinary Americans, the anti-Sufi ideology embraced by the Tsarnaev brothers in their vicious misdeeds illustrates that moderate, traditional, conventional, conservative, and spiritual Muslims are no less targeted and brutalized by Wahhabi and other extremists than are non-Muslims.
Resistance to Islamist Infiltration Continues in Kosova and Albania Stephen Schwartz • April 12, 2013 • The Weekly Standard Blog Away from the eyes of the world, ideological Islamists pursue infiltration of the moderate Muslim communities in Kosova and Albania. But in nearly all cases, they continue to be rejected. Secular, avidly pro-American Kosova, remains a major target. The northeast Kosova town of Podujeva, which has seen ongoing conflicts between traditional clerics and radicals, was shocked by gunfire at a mosque in March. Podujeva has been a focus of confrontation between fanatics and conventional Muslims since 2011, when the pro-Wahhabi chief Islamic clerical official in Kosova, Naim Tërnava, dismissed imam Idriz efendija Bilalli, an outspoken critic of fundamentalist Islam, as chairman of the Podujeva council of the Kosova Islamic Community (known as BIK by its Albanian-language initials).
The Islamic Community Organizations of Macedonia and Bosnia-Hercegovina Are Affiliated With the Muslim Brotherhood Cvetin Chilimanov • April 5, 2013 • Dnevnik [Macedonia] Stephen Schwartz, or Suleyman Schwartz, as he is called by Muslims since he accepted Islam in Bosnia during the 1990s, is the executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, an organization that advocates tolerance and coexistence between the multiple interpretations within Islam and toward other religions. A former daily journalist and author of books on Islam and the Spanish Revolution, his interest in the Balkans began with the approach of war in the former Yugoslavia. In Macedonia, Schwartz is best known as an advocate for the rights of the Bektashi community to which he belongs, and he writes often in journals in the United States about them. In our conversation in Washington, where his Center works, he says Balkan Islam deserves to be supported as tolerant and resistant to radical movements, primarily in Albania and Kosova, but he is concerned deeply about the situation in Macedonia.
Saeid Abedpour • March 30, 2013 • Oslobođenje [Sarajevo] We should weep for the caring lovers, because the death of truth should be mourned. In the years when the friendship and fascination of certain officials of the Islamic Community of Bosnia-Hercegovina for petrodollars greatly aided the spread of Wahhabi ideas, criticism by Senad Mičijević, and later by Rešid Hafizović and Mustafa efendija Spahić, was branded as dangerous and treated as a threat to the unity of the local Muslims. The image of your memory does not disappear Searching for you, where will you be, my soul? (Sa'adi Shirazi)
What is Really "Broken" In Syria? Stephen Schwartz • March 29, 2013 • Gatestone Institute Among the many noteworthy aspects of President Barack Obama's recent tour of the Middle East was a comment on Friday, March 22, during a press conference with Jordanian King Abdullah II. Obama said, "Something has been broken in Syria, and it's not going to be put back together perfectly, immediately, anytime soon – even after Assad leaves." Although the characterization of Syria's condition was accurate, Syria has been "broken" for a longer time than most Westerners seem to think. A religious fissure in Syrian society – a tear that has now widened into a civil war and filled up with blood, bodies, and ruins – dates at least to 1970. Then Hafez Al-Assad (1930-2000), father of the current dictator, Bashar Al-Assad, and both members of the Alawite religious minority, seized power within the Syrian wing of the Ba'ath party, which had ruled since a coup in 1963.
Rahmetli Senad Mičijević, 1960-2013 Saeid Abedpour • March 28, 2013 • CIP Senad Mičijević, an outstanding representative of Bosnian Sufism, died aged 52 on 21 March 2013, after a long illness, in Mostar, Hercegovina. He was a Sufi devotee, author and historian. His books mostly concerned the cultural and spiritual heritage of Bosnia-Hercegovina. At age 14, after a dream vision, he met Sheikh Fejzullah efendija Hadžibajrić and asked him for an interpretation of it. Hadžibajrić, Sheikh of the Hadži-Sinan tekija [meeting house] in Sarajevo, sent him to another other Sheikh, Beha efendija Hadžimejlić, at the top of a mountain in the village of Zivčići. Zivčići is the location of the first Naqshbandi tekija in Bosnia, founded in 1799 by Husejin Baba Zukić. The dream led Senad to find his spiritual path, and he became, for 30 years, the disciple and student of Sheikh Beha. Sheikh Beha Efendi, in the last moments of his life, told Senad, "To whom shall I bestow the Tariqat? I gave it to him." Sheikh Beha then died.
CIP Greetings to People of the Book Stephen Schwartz • March 26, 2013 • CIP The Center for Islamic Pluralism, in the tradition of moderate, conventional, and spiritual Islam, extends greetings to the People of the Book – Jews and Christians – on their sacred holidays. The Jewish Passover for the Hebrew year 5773 began at nightfall on Monday, March 25, 2013, according to the common calendar. The Christian Easter commemoration will take place on Sunday, March 31, according to the western tradition, and on Sunday, May 5, in the Orthodox churches. CIP wishes fulfillment and spiritual renewal to Jewish and Christian believers on these occasions and urges all Muslims to offer similar salutations to their Abrahamic neighbors. Stephen Suleyman Schwartz Executive Director Center for Islamic Pluralism
The Global Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation Continues Irfan Al-Alawi • March 22, 2013 • Gatestone Institute A global campaign to eradicate female genital mutilation [FGM], often misnamed "female circumcision," continues. While foreign NGOs have made Iraqi Kurdistan a center of the effort to do away with this practice, many observers have argued that it is not a "Kurdish" problem. FGM is also not just a "Muslim" phenomenon. However widespread it may be among Iraqi Sunni Kurds, its acceptance in Islam is limited. According to the German relief organization WADI [The Association for Crisis Assistance and Development Co-operation], in the four provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan, only the farthest north, Dohuk, which borders on Turkey, shows little evidence of FGM at any age. Among the remaining three "governorates," in the province of Erbil, named for the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), 63% of women have undergone the atrocious custom; in Suleymaniya, 78%; and in Garmyan/New Kirkuk, the southernmost, 81%.
Desert upstart Qatar reaches out to the world Birthe B. Pedersen and Britta Søndergaard • March 19, 2013 • Kristeligt Dagblad [Copenhagen] Thirty years ago, Qatar was a sleepy community of pearl fishermen, but then natural gas was located under its soil. Today the stony desert state supports aid projects throughout the world. Now even in Denmark, Qatar has donated 100 million kroner (ca. USD 17 million) for the first major mosque in Copenhagen. On Vingelodden in northwest Copenhagen workmen are hurrying to convert a former office building into a large Sunni Muslim mosque and a cultural center, which will be completed in the spring. By this project a relatively unknown organization, the Danish Islamic Council, seeks attainment of the dream of a great, impressive mosque, moving religious life away from basements and backyards. For years, Danish Muslims discussed different mosque projects, but time after time, the plans failed because it was not been possible to collect enough money. |
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