Book Review: The Future of Islam

LibertyPhile posted a review of The Future of Islam by John L. Esposito. I have not yet read the book, but one point based on this review: Anybody who brings radicals such as Qaradawi and Ramadan as exemplary reformers, should also deal with the fact that they continuously threaten Europe and the Western World with a ‘Muslim takeover’. In fact, by claiming they are moderates, Esposito encourages ‘Islamophobia’ and the idea that there are no real moderate Muslims.

I bring here an excerpt:

(4) Muslims in the West

Esposito’s treatment of Muslims in the West is totally inadequate. We get the standard condemnation of hate preachers but what we mainly get is special pleading and an exiguous failure to understand the depth of the problem and to suggest any solutions.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

(4.1) Integration or What?

Despite the talk of integration and the idea of “European Muslims” or “American Muslims” rather than “Muslims in Europe” or “Muslims in America”, the discussion, the language, the examples, the arguments are always about Muslims as somehow different, a distinct and different class of people. They need understanding, consideration, because they are Muslims, a separate community!

The message seems to be, it is you Europe, you America, that has to change if we are to fit in. We are only going to identify with you if you change to suit us.

Esposito poses a question.

“Whether Muslim communities in America and Europe will be able to supply the financial and human resources necessary to build a strong self-sustaining community in the twenty-first century remains an important and unanswered question.” (p35)

Would Esposito speak about American black people in this way as if they should exist in some “community” of their own. Could that mean separate neighbourhoods, resources, institutions, just for them? Calling the community self-sustaining even requiring financial and human resources seems to say so. I think that’s called segregation. Perhaps segregation is what Muslims want. Surely Esposito should be talking about how individuals integrate into the community of all citizens.

The comments of Esposito’s reformers are instructive.

“For Mustafa Ceric, as for Ramadan and others, the successful encounter of Europe and Islam has two interconnected prerequisites: Muslims must embrace their European identity, and European governments must facilitate Muslims’ integration by accommodating and institutionalising their religious needs. [emphasis added]

…. European governments, he believes, will only gain the trust of the Muslim community when they institutionalize Islam through state sponsorship of Muslim schools, state councils, and mosques. [emphasis added] Ceric also emphasizes the importance of training European imams in Europe rather than in Muslim countries ..” (p114-115)

Winter starts by asking a sensible question:

“Are we Americans, or Canadians, or Britons, simply by virtue of holding a passport and finding employment? Or is this our emotional home?”

But then crassly rubs in Muslim separateness. He warns:

“An insulting guest will not be tolerated indefinitely even by the most courteous of hosts…. A measured, concerned critique of social dissolution, unacceptable beliefs, or destructive foreign policies will always be a required component of Muslim discourse, but wild denunciations of Great Satans or global Crusader Conspiracies are, for Muslims here, not only dangerous, but are also discourteous scarcely a lesser sin.” (p116)

Yes, Muslims are outsiders. It’s just that they need to improve their manners. And those denunciations, apparently acceptable if made by Muslims elsewhere, are dangerous (to the denunciator) and discourteous in the West itself.

Mustafa Ceric is more ambitious and even blunter. He says:

“Muslims must become educated and get organized. The strength and unity of Muslims in one country will strengthen the Muslim community in other countries.

…. If you are strong, united and organized here we will naturally be strong, united and organized in Bosnia, Kashmir, Palestine, and the rest of the world…. It is useless if only parts of that body are functioning and others are not: we all need to get our acts together.” (p115–117)

What does he mean by strength and unity? What are they going to do with this strength and unity? Would the leader of the Catholic Church in England speak like this about Catholics? The leaders of the Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, would they?

Many individual Muslims themselves seem set on marking themselves out as distinct and separate from the rest of their fellow citizens. I am a Muslim and I am different. We do this. We don’t do that. For a start, we dress differently and women don’t show their hair in public.
It is an appalling idea to ban a piece of clothing in a liberal democracy but the headscarf is a political badge and it represents something. It represents I believe I’m different from you and I’m superior. I don’t flaunt myself in front of strangers. You do.

On many western Muslim women a headscarf is also close to rank hypocrisy. The idea that it retains their modesty by concealing what men find attractive is a laugh. It was fascinating to see the headscarfed young Muslim women attending the recent British Council and Intelligence Squared debate [Ref 6] when Tariq Ramadan proposed the motion “Europe is failing its Muslims” (he lost, 51% to 37%, 12% undecided). So many of those headscarves were fashion items, some even flamboyant, designed to draw attention to the wearer. And some wearing jeans!

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Source: LibertyPhile

Germany: A closer look at the demographics

A couple of days ago I published a news article about a recent comprehensive report on the immigrants in Germany.

According to this report, immigrants (and their descendants) make up about a third of the population in the 0-5 age group. Does this mean that in 20 years Muslims will make up a third of the population?

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

The data comes from a 2008 ‘micro-census’, published by the German Federal Statistical Office. The data does not give the religion of the immigrants, but rather their national background.

I put the information together in a chart. As can be seen from the chart below, Turks make up about 3% of the total population in Germany. This is about 16% of the total number of immigrants.

(click the chart to enlarge)

There are more immigrants from the EU-27 countries (5%) and those who did not answer the question (~6%).

This last group is a very interesting one, and it is definitely growing, making up almost 18% of the total population in the 0-5 age group, and more than half of the total number of immigrants in that age group.

Are they Muslim? Not according to every other statistical measure. Muslims are estimated to be 4-5% of the total population, and most Muslims in Germany are Turks. Adding the ‘unknowns’ to the data as Muslims would mean that Muslims make up 9% of the total population in Germany today, and that Turks make up just a third of that.

Back to the Turks. While they make up 6% of the total population in the 10-15 age group, they make up less than 3% in the 0-5 age group. This drop shows up in absolute numbers as well: down from 234,000 children aged 10-15 to 81,000 aged 0-5.

Immigrants make up 34% of the children aged 0-5. A third of those are from Europe (17% from the EU-27 countries, and 17% from elsewhere in Europe). 8% are from Asia, Australia and Oceania, 3% from America, 4% from Africa. 51% are ‘unknown’.

I would love to get to some conclusions on this issue, but I find it impossible to do with that big group of ‘unknowns’.

What I do see from the given data is that the groups coming from Muslim majority areas (Turkey, Bosnia, Middle East, Southeast Asia) are either decreasing in population in the young children age groups, or are pretty much static.

Kosovo: Man seized, linked to North Carolina terror plot

A Kosovar man was arrested overseas and faces charges of participation in a terror plot involving several suspects from North Carolina, federal authorities said Thursday.

Bajram Asllani, 29, a resident of Mitrovica, Kosovo, is charged with providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to murder, kidnap, maim and injure people abroad, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

He was arrested early Thursday in Kosovo on a provisional U.S. arrest warrant from the Eastern District of North Carolina. The United States will seek his extradition, authorities said. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 40 years in prison.

“People who are plotting to harm America and Americans are no longer a world away from us. This case began in Raleigh, N.C., and now stretches across the globe, a circumstance no one would have thought possible less than ten years ago,” said Owen D. Harris, special agent in charge of the FBI in North Carolina, in the statement.

Eight people were indicted last year in North Carolina on terror-related charges. According to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday, Asllani was a member of the same conspiracy.

The April 19 criminal complaint, unsealed Thursday, alleges Asllani “solicited money from the conspirators to establish a base of operations in Kosovo for the purpose of waging violent jihad” and “accepted funds from the conspirators to help him travel.”

Kosovo, which declared independence more than two years ago, was once a restive province of Serbia with a majority ethnic Albanian population. Islam is Kosovo’s dominant religion in the Balkan nation.

The complaint alleges that Hysen Sherifi, one of the eight indicted last year, left Raleigh for Pristina, Kosovo, in 2008 “to pursue violent jihad” and formed a relationship with Asllani while in Kosovo.

Asllani allegedly provided Sherifi with videos to recruit militants and directed Sherifi to collect money to buy land, where weapons can be stored and a base of operation could be established.

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Source: CNN

Netherlands: Dutch Hamas leader one of Gaza flotilla organizers

The Dutch Amin Abou Rashed (43), who was arrested by Israeli commandos on the ‘freedom flotilla’ by the coast of Gaza, is a top official in the Hamas terror organization, according to intelligence services.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

Yesterday Israel announced that all 600 foreign activists would be freed within two days. These include two Dutch: Rashed and Anne de Jong (29).

The originally Palestinian Rashed has a Dutch passport and operates from Rotterdam.

In his struggle against Israel the Dutch activist lost an arm in the past. The Dutch man is mentioned as one of the organizers of the ‘freedom flotilla’ on the official website of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that fights for Islamic domination.

“Rashed is the leader of Hamas in the Netherlands,” says an intelligence service source. “He appears by an alias, mainly Amin Abou Ibrahim, in several intelligence reports. He worked for the notorious Dutch foundation al-Aksa, which was suspected of collecting funds for the Hamas terror organization. He is also very active in the Palestinian Platform and Human Rights and Solidarity Foundation (PPMS),” says the intelligence agent.

Hamas is financed by worldwide Muslim ‘charity institutions’. The Dutch ‘Amin Abou Rashed’ was mentioned in connection to the Holy Land Foundation, a notorious charity organization which was charged in America for financing Hamas.

Source: Telegraaf (Dutch)

See also: Global MB Report

France: Muslim intellectuals criticize Obama’s hijab statement

In his June 4, 2009 Cairo speech, U.S. President Barack Obama emphasized that Muslim women in the U.S. are free to don the hijab. He said: “…Freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one’s religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.”[1]

Obama’s statements triggered strong criticism among Arab intellectuals in France, where for the past few years there has been an ongoing debate about the permissibility of wearing the veil in public.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

Following are excerpts from some of their reactions:

Reformist writer Dr. Abdelwahab Meddeb, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Paris X in Nanterre and author of the books The Malady of Islam (New York: Basic Books, 2003) and Counter-Preaching (Contre-Prêches, Seuil, Paris, 2006)[2] wrote: “Obama’s pertinent speech in Cairo was wrong in at least one respect. Let us say [for the sake of the argument] – though I find it difficult to do so – that women should be free to wear the veil. [Still, Obama] should have added that they must [also] be free to remove it.”[3]

Leila Barbès, a professor of religion and sociology at the Catholic University of Lille, also referred to the hijab issue, though not in direct response to Obama’s speech. She explained that, in the context of the veil, “free choice” was an illusion: “The moment [wearing] the veil is presented as a divine duty, the issue of free choice is no longer valid, [and] all Muslim women are exposed to [this religious] propaganda. How can we pretend they have a choice when they are told that [their] religion obligates [them to wear a veil]? The women [who wear] a full veil [i.e. a niqab, which covers everything but the eyes,] do so in order to comply with what is requested and expected of them by their husbands or their sect.”[4]

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Source: MEMRI (English)

See also: France: Obama, Sarkozy on hijab in Europe

The Muslims are coming!

Is it Islamophobic to say that Europe would be overrun by Muslims?

This article was written by Aijaz Zaka Syed, a journalist from Dubai. Less than 20% of the people living in Dubai have citizenship, and the foreign workers, who make up the overwhelming majority, can forget about settling down. So why doesn’t Aijaz Zaka Syed think that Europe should treat its foreign workers the same way? What’s wrong with Dubai becoming Asian?

—————

No matter what Europeans think of Muslims and other recent arrivals, the continent badly needs new blood and ideas

Step out of Brussels South and you step back in time — into a different world that looks exotic in this part of the world but not out of place. This is the main train station that connects Belgium’s capital with Paris, London — thanks to Eurorail — and the rest of Europe.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog – islamineurope.blogspot.com

During a visit to the European Union headquarters a couple of years back, one was pleasantly surprised to see all those restaurants offering “halal” food and elderly Arab and Turkish gentlemen enjoying their cuppa of heady Turkish coffee and even an occasional shisha by the roadside cafe.

This is the heart of Europe, the seat of European Parliament and perhaps the capital of coming United States of Europe. With Arabs and Muslims living and working in this quintessentially European city, Brussels increasingly looks like Beirut, Istanbul or any other great city of the Middle East.

With its rich multicultural society and growing Arab and Muslim population — most of them arrived in the 1950’s and 60’s to work in its mines — Brussels is perhaps one of the finest examples of European multiculturalism and tolerance for diversity.

And it is not just Brussels. Scenes like these are increasingly familiar all across Europe — from London to Paris and from Berlin to Copenhagen to Amsterdam. Lately, things are changing though and changing fast. Belgian lawmakers recently voted to ban the Islamic veil even as their counterparts in neighboring France and Italy are working on their own measures to “tackle Islam.”

(….)

Every now and then, some of Europe’s most celebrated photographers and artists take time off to shoot and paint crowds of men and women in their birthday suit all in the name of some social cause or the other. All across the continent you can buy and sell sex like candy — across the counter without raising any sensitive eyebrows.

This is why one finds these growing European restrictions and “dress code” for Muslim women a little hard to digest and reeking of duplicity. But more than cultural imperialism — which is what this is — I believe this phenomenon has more to do with the growing Islamophobia in the West and bigotry of Eurabia mongers, as Pankaj Mishra called them in an incisive essay in the Guardian last year.

Of late, the European media has been buzzing with the talk of “Muslims are coming” and the “demographic time-bomb” that could turn Europe into Arabia or Eurabia.

In the past couple of years, there has been a flood of books howling about the coming “specter of Islam” which they claim will change Europe into an Islamic caliphate. Some of them even suggest the solution: Keep Muslims out of Europe — at any cost!

Check out this chilling suggestion from Canadian author Mark Steyn in his book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It: “In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography — except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out — as other Continentals will in the years ahead; if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ‘em.”

(…)

But no matter what wonks like Mark Steyn, Christopher Caldwell and Bruce Bawer, whose new book Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom has been recommended by the New York Times as the essential “wake-up call” for the West, might like to do with Europe’s 53 million Muslims, or those of the United States, they aren’t going to go away anytime soon.

In fact, in years to come they could only grow in numbers coming as they do in droves from around the world from the impoverished parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Like them or hate them, Europe has to learn to live with its Muslims. Ditto for Muslims who must present the real, humane face of their faith before the world.

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Source: Arab News (English), h/t The LibertyPhile

Dutch newspaper Trouw wonders (NL) where does Wilders get his data from:

Large letters on the screen in Geert Wilders’ election spot: “Half of Dutch Muslims understand the attacks of September 11.”

Half?

This article was recently published on Voice of America:

22 March 2010

European critics deride the Islamic veil as a mark of female oppression. But for a new generation of young Muslim women, it is part of an emerging fashion that seeks to integrate European and Muslim identities.

On a cold evening, the Starbucks coffee shop in the Paris-area business district of La Defense, offers a welcome refuge. Twenty-nine-year-old Saadia Boussana is cradling a warm drink. Tall and striking, with a black and gold embroidered shirt and a glittering brown bonnet, she blends in easily with the trendy, after-work crowd.

Read the rest here.

UK: “England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims”

A Nobel prizewinning author has accused England of being a “cesspit” that nurtures terrorism.

Wole Soyinka, the first African winner of the prize, claimed the Nigerian student who tried to blow himself up over Detroit on Christmas Day, was radicalised during his time at University College London.

His comments come amid an increasing row between Nigeria, Britain and Yemen about where Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab turned to violent extremism.


In London last week Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said that “ideology knows no boundaries” and the blame for Abdulmutallab’s extremisim could not be “pinned on any one place.”

But Mr Soyinka, 76, who was born in Nigeria and studied at Leeds University in the 1950s, said: “England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims.”

He added: “Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it.

“Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there.”

Mr Soyinka said Britain took pride in its “openness” and added: “I doubt you can have the kind of indoctrination schools in America as you do in the UK…The Muslims there are open Muslims, whereas in Europe they tend to go into ghetto schools.”

During a lecture at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India, he told the audience: “We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space.”

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Source: Daily Telegraph

Opinion: Why is the fear of a coming Eurabia so strong in certain quarters?

Khaled Diab, a Brussels based journalist, recently wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian debunking the Eurabian invasion theory. I’ve discussed the issue of demographics on this blog in the past (here, here and here).

But Diab doesn’t only ask whether Europe will become Muslim (his answer being a resounding no). He also asks why Europe fears the possibility.

Though it might seem obvious to some, the question is actually two-pronged:
1. Why do Europeans think that Europe might become Muslim?
2. Why do Europeans fear such a possibility?

Diab’s question seems to refer to the former. Why do Europeans think there’s a chance Muslims would conquer Europe? Why do they think that Muslims could become a majority? Why do Europeans believe the ‘myth’ that Muslims might use birth-rates, immigration, or conversion as a weapon?

I think at least one answer is that prominent Muslims keep on saying so. Those Muslims might belong to very certain schools of Islamic thought. Some, like Gaddafi, might be viewed as complete nuts. But Gaddafi [1], and certainly people like Yusuf al-Qaradawi [2] or Amr Khaled [3], are extremely influential. They run global organizations dedicated to spreading their message, and those organizations are active in Europe as well. When they announce that Islam will conquer Europe, it does not really matter whether it makes sense or not, or whether they’re correct or not. It sets up an equation where Islam is the conqueror and Europe is the vanquished.

“Then, there is the plain old fear stoked by the overexposure given to the most intolerant Islamic fringe groups and individuals. Certainly, there are some European Muslims who want to live according to sharia and there is even a lunatic fringe who would like to see Europe incorporated into some fantastical global caliphate.”

Is it just overexposure?

Though most of the Muslims who say that Islam would conquer Europe do not live in Europe, they are very active in Europe and some claim to represent European Muslims. Al-Qaradawi, a Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, heads the European Fatwa Council and runs the Islam Online website, which has a special section for European Muslims. The Muslim Brotherhood does have branches in Europe. Tariq Ramadan, who is considered a very influential Muslim in his own right, never talks about it outright, but his rhetoric is full of fighting words. Needless to say, Tariq Ramadan [4] doesn’t think the idea of a Muslim-dominated Europe is so ‘mythical’, either.

So my answer to Diab is quite simple: If you think Europe shouldn’t fear an Islamic takeover, tell that to the Muslims who threaten Europe. Don’t just accuse the Europeans who believe them of being phobic, or believing the ‘lunatic fringe’. A decade ago, the idea that a guy could bring down the World Trade Center using box-cutters sounded outlandish to some people too, but a certain lunatic fringe believed it was possible and kept on preaching and acting on it.

After you denounce Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Amr Khaled, Tariq Ramadan, and, yes, Gaddafi too, you could start working on ways to counter their influence.

———

[1] Gaddafi: “There are tens of millions of Muslims in the European continent and the number is on the increase. The number of indigenous Europeans is falling drastically. This is the clear indication that the European continent will be converted to Islam. Europe will one day be a Muslim continent.”

[2] Amr Khaled: “The Muslims keep having children, while the Europeans don’t. This means that within 20 years, the Muslims will be a majority, which may have an exceptional influence on the decision-making.”

[3] Yusuf al-Qaradawi: “his means that Islam will come back to Europe for the third time, after it was expelled from it twice… Conquest through Da’wa [proselytizing], that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wa.” And “This means that Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice – once from the South, from Andalusia, and a second time from the East, when it knocked several times on the door of Athens.”

[4] Tariq Ramadan:

Q: (..) At some point Muslims may be in the majority. I think in one sentence: How safe is multiculturalism with the people who entered Europe under the banner of multiculturalism?

A: (…) The way people are dealing with them being a majority has also to do with the way they are educated, and the way they see the other. So let us, for the time being, when you are in this situation, to go through a very deep educational process, by saying to the people: you have no right to impose your religion, you have to respect the principles of the other, you are not here to spy on people, you are not here to impose anything, you are here to be respected, to respect and to be respected. These teachings are very important. So, I think this is the only way forward. Because if we are scared of numbers, it’s over. Because you know, the numbers are going to grow. [Ed: Interestingly enough, Ramadan did not answer that Islam is already European.]