Development of Islamic centers and mosque communities in the United States

An observer of the development of Islamic centers and mosque communities in the United States writes about the “three stages” he has observed: In the first phase of a Center’s development, all categories of people are welcome to join – regardless of their ethnic origin or their particular religious sect.

Arabs, Pakistanis, Turks and all others join together to establish a place of worship – and to start an Islamic Sunday school. All pervading unity and togetherness characterize this first phase. Simple and moderately disposed people who happen to have access to financial or other resources come out to lead the effort. [Talk Islam] Read more

A Yale University Press author complains. Plus: Who are those donors?

But who are these donors? He doesn’t say. I made a few inquiries: Mum’s the word in New Haven. Perhaps Martin Kramer or Diana West, both of whom have made some startling revelations about Yale’s courting of Arab money, can ferret out the source of those generous benefactions.

For myself, I wonder whether it’s Sheikh So-and-So or Prince What’s-his-name from Saudi Arabia, perhaps. We’ll know in the fullness of time. But it would be interesting, to say the least, if Yale’s financial woes were eased by some oil-rich Middle East potentate just at a moment when the Yale administration forced the Yale University Press to bowdlerize a book because they feared it might be “offensive” to Muslims. [Pajamas Media] Read more

We need to confront Islamist extremists, not conciliate them

Organised hatred, separatism, and extremism were present in Britain's cities and campuses long before July 7, often cloaked in the guise of moderation. But very few people understood the complexities of extremist ideology, while many politicians had Muslim constituents they did not want to upset.

The toughest task has been convincing Muslim leaders of the need to end denial, and stop playing politics with Islamist extremism. At a recent meeting with a Muslim grandee, I was stunned to learn that he thought the British government had carried out the July 7 bombings, to give it an excuse to spy on us. [telegraph.co.uk] Read more

A Sight You Don’t See Every Day

While watching the Last Night of the Proms a moment ago, I’m pretty sure that I saw a woman wrapped in what looked like either the Iraqi or Syrian flag, waving the Union Jack and singing “God Save The Queen”. [Harry’s Place] Read more

Interior minister accused of racism after remark

AFP - France's interior minister sparked a storm of protest and accusations of racism Thursday after a video showed him making an apparently derogatory joke about French citizens of Arab origin. "When there's one, it's OK," Brice Hortefeux, a key minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government, said in the film posted on Le Monde newspaper's site that rapidly became an online hit on a host of video websites.

"It's when there are a lot of them that there are problems," he said in the film Le Monde said shows him getting ready to pose for a photo with a young man from France's large community of Arab origin. [FRANCE 24] Read more

Bahraini feminist launches an all-out attack on sharia courts

Ghada Jamshir, a Bahraini feminist went on an Arab TV station and launched an uncompromising, no-holds-barred broadside against sharia courts and their treatment of women. This video speaks — loud and clear — for itself. [National Secular Society] Read more

The cost of immigration: answering a loaded question

Is it possible or even desirable to make a cost-benefit analysis of immigration? This is the awkward debate being waged in Dutch politics after the far-right Freedom Party demanded to know the impact immigration has on the nation's budget.

The government answered most of the questions but refused to address non-Western immigrants specifically, as the Freedom Party has demanded. Integration Minister Eberhard van der Laan says the government does not compile figures on specific groups in society.

The Freedom Party argues the government is failing to fulfil its duty to provide information to the electorate. RNW's political editor John Tyler explains: [RNW - Radio Netherlands Worldwide] Read more

Release of Pervez Kambaksh brings relief for some, blood-lust from others

The pardoning and release of Pervez Kambaksh, the young Afghan journalism student, who was jailed in Afghanistan for “blasphemy”, has sparked sighs of relief from his family and howls of outrage from Islamist fanatics. Pervez was jailed in 2007 after asking questions in his class about the rights of women under Islam.

For this, he was originally sentenced to death, but this was reduced to 20 years imprisonment after an international outcry. Now it has emerged that he was pardoned several weeks ago by the Afghan President Hamid Karzai and has fled the country. [National Secular Society] Read more

Halal search engines for Muslims – a bad idea on so many levels!

EARLIER this month The Telegraph reported that a new search engine – I’m Halal – had been launched to protect Muslims from “offensive” and “inappropriate” websites. I’m Halal’s founder, Reza Sardeha, said he got the idea after friends complained that the more popular search engines, including Google and Yahoo!, were flagging up naughty stuff. [The Freethinker] Read more See Also: [Islam in Europe] Read

Ramadan Arrests in Egypt Called Unconstitutional

An Egyptian clampdown on religiously prohibited eating and drinking during Ramadan is producing human rights abuses, advocates say. They claim moves by the country's Interior Ministry to arrest those who eat and drink in public during daytime fasting hours of the Islamic holy month are unconstitutional. [Assyrian International News Agency] Read more

Devout Muslim dies after savage beating by 'race-hate' gang

A devout Muslim pensioner attacked by a race-hate gang of schoolboys died yesterday. Ekram Haque, 67, lost his fight for life a week after he was battered to the ground in front of his three-year-old granddaughter, Marian.

As revealed in yesterday's Daily Mail, he suffered horrific head injuries in the assault outside a mosque in Tooting, South-West London, where he had just prayed. [MailOnline] Read more

Jack pips Mohammed to be most popular boys' name

.... If taken together the various different spellings of Mohammed make the name the second most common name in England and Wales - and by far the most popular in both London and the West Midlands. Jack was the most chosen name for boys for the 13th year running but is being pushed hard by Mohammed and its various alternative spellings which are expected to reach the top spot soon. [telegraph.co.uk] Read more

Muslims Widely Seen As Facing Discrimination

Eight years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Americans see Muslims as facing more discrimination inside the U.S. than other major religious groups. Nearly six-in-ten adults (58%) say that Muslims are subject to a lot of discrimination, far more than say the same about Jews, evangelical Christians, atheists or Mormons.

In fact, of all the groups asked about, only gays and lesbians are seen as facing more discrimination than Muslims, with nearly two-thirds (64%) of the public saying there is a lot of discrimination against homosexuals. [Pew Research Center] Read more See Also: [Time] Read See Also: [altmuslim] Read

Further Revelations of PVE Funding Mismanagement

Yesterday, I blogged about how public funds intended to prevent extremism (PVE) have been handed over to the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, David Rich, of the Community Security Trust, has picked out further examples of the mismanagement of the PVE fund. Rich informs us that the recently published Tax Payer's Alliance report on the disbursement of PVE money also shows a £20,000 endowment to the North London Central Mosque (NLCM) in 2007. [Standpoint] Read more

Insult to Injury

In the Netherlands one may badmouth or lampoon a group's god or prophets, just not the group itself. Many European Muslims, however, would prefer to have it the other way around, and see this as a prime example of how secular Europeans place man before God. Europeans, conversely, see the Muslim reaction as an example of how Muslims have failed to adapt to Western ways of thinking. This distinction is at the crux of a case presently before a Dutch court.

The case involves a cartoon published on a pro-Arab European website depicting two Jewish men poking around in a pile of bones next to a sign that reads Auschwitz. One man says, "I don't think they're Jewish. The other responds, "We have to get to six million somehow." [The American Spectator] Read more [via Political Correctness Watch (2)]

Netherlands: Salafism stagnating

The growth of Salafism, an ultra-orthodox movement in Islam, is stagnating in the Netherlands, the intelligence service AIVD concludes. Followers of Salafism want to go back to the 'pure' Islam of the beginning (around 600 AD) and live strictly by the law of this time.

Two years ago the AIVD warned of the increasing influence of Salafist imams on Dutch Muslims. Not because they call to violence, but because by prevent the integration of Muslims by rejecting Western society. The AIVD feared that that Salafism would grow into a movement. [Islam in Europe] Read more

£48,000 Goes to the Muslim Brotherhood

The Tax Payer's Alliance (TPA) has released figures today on every local authority that has received Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) funding and what organisations have benefited from it. The PVE fund has so far given out £12 million in tax payer money to projects aimed at preventing radicalisation.

One organisation, the Muslim Welfare House (MWH), has received just under £50,000 in PVE funds over the last two years. The MWH is a member of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE), which represents the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Europe. [The Centre For Social Cohesion] Read more

Europe is changing to accomodate Islam, says US author

In Germany the number of immigrants grew from 3 million in 1971 to 7.5 million in 2000, but the number of immigrants with jobs remained more or less equal, at around 2 million.

Caldwell, an American writer and a journalist, has written a polemic book about the issue: Reflections on the revolution in Europe: Can Europe be the same with different people in it? In a nutshell: the economic benefits of immigration were short-lived and marginal while the social consequences have been far-reaching and have led to a watering-down of traditional European values. [NRC Handelsblad] Read more

Indonesia's Aceh to stone adulterers under Islamic law

Indonesia's staunchly Muslim Aceh province is set to enforce a strict form of Islamic criminal law, including stoning to death married adulterers, a lawmaker said on Wednesday. "Unmarried people who commit adultery will be caned one hundred times and married persons will be stoned to death," Raihan Iskandar, a provincial lawmaker from the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party, told AFP

..... Sharia was implemented under a broad autonomy package granted by the central government in 2001 to pacify the hardline Muslim region's demand for independence. [AFP] Read more

Swiss basketball player to challenge headscarf ban

A Swiss basketball player said she was set to fight a ban on her Islamic headscarf which would force her to either remove the covering or quit the sport, local media reported Wednesday.

Sura Al-Shawk who plays for the team STV Luzerne, was informed by the regional basketball association that International Basketball Federation rules banned headscarves. [Monsters and Critics.com] Read more [Via EuropeNews]

Muslim woman presses French panel for burqa ban

Her voice trembling with emotion, the leader of an advocacy group for Muslim women and girls urged a French parliamentary panel on Wednesday to press for laws that would ban the wearing of Islamic body- and face-covering veils.

Sihem Habchi appeared as the first witness before a newly created parliamentary group studying Islamic clothing such as burqas and niqabs — part of France's effort to integrate its growing Muslim population while preserving its heritage and secular roots. [Associated Press] Read more

Patronising Advice Won't Mend Society - Mayor Boris has got it wrong

NO, Mr Mayor, I shall not be fasting from sunrise until sunset for a day in Ramadan in order “better to understand” Muslims any more than I will be urging friends to circumcise their children in order better to understand Jews or to stand at Stonehenge in order better to understand druids.

I think it important that people understand about religion but there is a difference between understanding and active participation in rites just for the sake of it. [Daily Express] Read more

Switzerland debates minarets and Muslims

The debate over the integration of the Muslim community into Swiss society is not new and has long been the subject of considerable political tension.

.... It is worthwhile to note that Switzerland has only four minarets throughout the country even though Islam is the country's second largest religion after Christianity. The UDC is actively mobilising public opinion against what it labels the "Islamisation" of Switzerland, claiming that the percentage of Muslims – 5 percent – has grown too rapidly since the 1980s. But people have been speaking out against this view. [altmuslim] Read more

Beating the extremists

The government's strategy of funding moderate Muslim groups is flawed, but it's the right step towards winning the battle of ideas.

The Taxpayers' Alliance's new report on the government's Prevent programmes sheds much-needed light on the cost and effectiveness of the government's counter-terrorism strategy. At first reading of the report, it seems that many Muslim groups are receiving money merely for not being extreme, rather than for actively doing or saying anything to challenge and roll back extremism.

This is clearly wrong. Most importantly, however, the report also reveals that many groups that have received handsome grants of taxpayers' funds are groups whose leading members include supporters of hardcore Islamist ideologies. Such organisations include the Islamic Society of Britain (with some exceptions), the UK Islamic Mission, the Islamic Foundation, the London Muslim Centre and Da'watul Islam. [Guardian CiF] Read more

It is Sudanese law that is offensive, not women wearing trousers

The case of Lubna Hussein was not just about the right to wear an ordinary garment worn by billions of people on the planet. The courageous Sudanese journalist was fighting against laws that objectify and seek to control women. While the court’s decision to fine and not flog Hussein is not a victory for her, she has successfully exposed Sudan’s misogynistic record to international scrutiny. And she has repeatedly told journalists that "whatever happens I will continue to fight for women's rights." [telegraph.co.uk] Read more