Netherlands: Minister says imams should speak out against homophobia

Via spitsnieuws (Dutch):

Education Minister Van Bijsterveldt says all imams in the Netherlands should jointly speak against homophobic violence and support respecting gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders.

“I would really appreciate it if they do that, just like Christian churches did not so long ago,” she said yesterday during a meeting of SMN (Alliance of Moroccan-Dutch) in Utrecht. The minister said it would be a strong signal that everyone can be part of the Muslim community, regardless of sexual orientation, origin or culture.

Yesterday Van Bijsterveldt received the results of a three-year project of dialog meetings, expert meeting and school meetings that SMN conducted among Moroccans on accepting gays in their community. “It must really come from inside one’s own community, It can’t come from outside. That’s why I have such admiration for the courage of leaders and others who stand up in this community and support accepting gays,” she said.

Some experts say that the curriculum in elementary school should include attention to homosexuality. But Van Bijsterveldt says that’s up to the schools.

It was revealed yesterday that there’s certainly progress in the possibility of discussing homosexuality among Moroccans. More young Moroccan gay are coming out of the closet. Although exclusion and even abuse after ‘coming out’ is still not uncommon. NIP, the Dutch Institute of Psychologists, is concerned about the welfare of these youth.

“There are about 10,000 Muslim gay youth ages 15-25 in our country and they really run a high risk of severe mental, emotional problems,” says Michaël von Bönninghausen, NIP psychologist and head of the Crisis Intervention Network for School Psychologists. “It’s difficult for a Dutch youth to accept his homosexuality. For a Muslim youth it’s 10,000 times harder. Social workers, schools, sports clubs should see these youth and develop the expertise to guide them. These youth suffer more often from psychological problems like depression and drug abuse. They also often go into prostitution.

Netherlands: Burka ban might popularize it, warns Muslim politician

Via JPost:

It’s easy to see why Fatima Elatik dislikes burkas. The Islamist cloak of female chastity is in stark contrast to everything this young and charismatic Dutch-Muslim politician represents. She nonetheless adamantly opposes the new initiative to ban the garment, which the Dutch cabinet announced Friday.

“I’m no fan of the burka, but currently there are about 100 women who wear it in this country. Banning it might make it more popular,” says Elatik, an Amsterdam-born practicing Muslim of Moroccan descent.

Three years ago Elatik, 39, became district mayor of East Amsterdam, and one of the best-known faces of the Dutch Labor Party.

(source)

Morocco: Sex for a European husband

Via nieuwsblad (Dutch):

Poor Moroccan girls are willing to do everything in order to get a European husband.

Said, a 21 year old tourist in Tangier says there’s no talk of love, he says of the flirting in the streets of Tangier between locals and European-born youth. “In Morocco marriage has become big business. Singles no longer look for a beloved, but for somebody who will inject capital into their lives. Poverty is consuming this country, it makes its residents unemotional materialists. There is no future here for the Arab Romeo and Juliet.”

Many dream of a life in another country, preferably overseas. Some adventurers flee at nights by boat to Spain. Whoever fears the water, tries hooking somebody from Europe. Tangier in particular is flooded in the summer by Moroccans from abroad, to the delight of many poor Moroccan girls. Without any diversions they offer money or sex for European residence permits.

Naima from Antwerp: “In the nightclub I met a Moroccan girl from Casablanca. Very quickly she asked me how much my brothers would cost. I answered her that my brothers weren’t for sale, but she kept on pressing. She wanted to get out of Morocco. She was tired of the country and was looking for a boy from Europe. I joked that one of my brothers is asking for 10,000 euro. She couldn’t pay that, she said seriously. After that she asked if we couldn’t get to an agreement some other way.”

Ahmed, a twenty-something from Brussels, is passing through Tangier. He’s constantly confronted with desperate bartering: a night out for papers, sex for the right documents.. these are proposals boys from Europe often get.

“Ad nauseum,” says Ahmed. “And every year it gets worse. They see as as walking residence permits.” He says the girls aren’t ashamed of what they do at nights. “It’s downright disgusting and shocking. For some money or a false promise you get everything by Moroccan chicks. They’re whores!”

The older generation of Moro0ccans thinks the youth living in Europe are no good. “They’re westernized, also in their sexual behavior,” says Fatima (70) from Tangier. “The foreigners imported their uninhibited sexual mores to Morocco and turn our youth onto the wrong path.”

Of course there are differences in sexual mores between Morocco and Europe. 86% of the women in Morocco feel sexually intimated on the streets. The journalist says she herself got lewd comments multiple times while she was out. Even pregnant women aren’t exempt, and her pregnant niece was accosted by a disturbed man. [Ed: this article is summarized and I did not feel like translating all the comments]

Everything in Morocco is done secretively, and Moroccan society shuts their eyes, for fear of family or sex scandals. “And yet the Moroccans insist that their country is not sexually depraved. I’m irritated to no end by the hypocrisy,” says a Brussels woman. “In the hotel my friend and I can’t sleep in the same room because we aren’t married, but the Saudi sex-tourists can get Moroccan whores sent up to their room. The petro-dollars are suddenly above any modesty law. Sex tourism is flourishing like never before in Morocco. I see it with my own eyes, Morocco is a second Thailand.

Hague: Muslim party wants dog ban

via Spitsnieuws (Dutch):

Hasan Küçük, Hague councilor for the Islam Democrats, says dogs should be banned as pets in the city, reports De Telegraaf. The Muslim party says that the animals belong in nature, not inside the house. Küçük says that keeping dogs is animal abuse and should therefore be criminalized.

He responded sharply during a council debate last Thursday, when the Party for Animals suggested more consideration for dogs.

Paul ter Linden (PVV councillor) responded saying that pets are the norm in the Netherlands, and whoever disagrees should move to another country.

Sweden: Bid to ‘define Swedish citizenship’

Or in other words, define what ‘being Swedish’ means.

Via the Local:

The government plans to launch an inquiry to study Swedish citizenship in hopes of finding ways to boost its value and use it as a tool for integration.

“When someone immigrates to our country, we want the signals to be clear – we want you to be a part of Sweden, find work quickly, and learn Swedish,” integration minister Erik Ullenhag wrote in an opinion piece in the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper in which he outlined plans for the inquiry.

“The goal is to have immigrants feel a sense of belonging and become a part of Swedish society and hopefully also become Swedish citizens.”

According to Ullenhag, Sweden shouldn’t be reduced to a “collection of different ethnic or religious enclaves that live in parallel worlds” and that having the courage to “discuss, reassess, and preserve our values” requires engaging in the debate about what’s wanted when it comes to integration and citizenship.

(source)

Germany: “Discrimination with a smile”

Via Deutsche Welle:

Experts call it “discrimination with a smile” when describing the practice of gently fobbing off those who don’t typically look like they fit in. They might be given a paltry, but friendly excuse such as “the flat is no longer available,” or “the restaurant is closed for to a private function” or “the hostel is fully booked.”

But there is also the daily discrimination that is intended to be friendly. “Your German is pretty good,” is actually an insult for many fully integrated Germans, born and raised in the country but deemed “pretty good” because they don’t fit another person’s definition of what a German looks like.

(source)

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live.

They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, “How was the trip?”

“It was great, Dad.”

“Did you see how poor people live?” the father asked.

“Oh yeah,” said the son.

“So, tell me, what you learned from the trip?” asked the father.

The son answered:

“I saw that we have one dog and they had four.

We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.

We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.

Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.

We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.

We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.

We buy our food, but they grow theirs.

We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.”

The boy’s father was speechless.

Then his son added, “Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are.”

Isn’t perspective a wonderful thing? Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don’t have.

Appreciate every single thing you have Allah has blessed you with, especially your sincere friends!

Pass this on to friends and acquaintances and help them refresh their perspective and appreciation.

“Life is too short and friends are too few.”

Source: thekhalids.org

No related posts.

Sweden: Teachers free to ban Islamic veils

Via the Local:

Teachers in Swedish schools can, in certain situations, prohibit students from wearing Islamic veils that reveal only their eyes, the country’s school’s agency has ruled.

The ban covers clothing that could hinder interaction between students and teachers or which could pose a specific risk, such as in a laboratory.

However, a general ban on headscarves isn’t possible.

(source)

Part I

by Hira Amin

Political

From the political front unrest was found both in the provinces and in the elite Janissaries. The Janissaries, who comprised of young Christian boys being conscripted into the dervishme system, were trained to be officers, governors and soldiers. This method of strict discipline and rigorous training provided the government with skilled workers and was the key tool in early Ottoman success. However, the Janissaries who were once part of the most revered army in the world had become militarily ineffectual by the end of the 18th Century. The Crimean Tartars served as a support for this decay however as mentioned above, in 1774 when Crimea became independent they left the army.

The success in the Janissaries lied in their strict obedience to the Sultan, however; their ability to live on military salaries faded due to the costs of warfare and inflation. The government could no longer pay them a sufficient salary, which led them to violate the Janissary principle of only being a soldier and celibacy. They integrated into the urban class and became butchers, bakers, porters, craftsman; many owned coffee shops.[21]They married and their children were recruited and replaced the peasant boys in the divershime recruitment rounds, the last of these rounds being in 1703.[22] Thus by the early 18th century the Janissary corps were hereditary and urban in origin, so as Hourani says “their exclusive loyalties had broken down”.[23]

Due to their proximity to the Sultan and their elite status this had a catastrophic political impact. They had the power to make and break rulers as seen when they denied Sulayman the Magnificent’s son Selim the throne until he paid them extra money.[24] Their integration within the urban classes gave the urban class a voice and power to object. Moreover, as the Janissaries became a hereditary corps – precisely what the prohibition of marriage rule wanted to prevent – this created an elite-popular urban class who had power to overthrow viziers and officials on behalf of the popular classes or due to intra-elite quarrels. It was for this reason in 1826 that Sultan Mahmud II killed and captured them to silence their voices and stabilize the Empire.

Unrest also lay within the province itself. The balance of power shifted from the Sultan to the viziers. At the end of the 17th Century the centre of decisions shifted from the Dome Chamber in the Palace to the Sublime Porte which was the vizier’s house.[25]  However; Hourani asserts this could not change the situation, as the vizier’s role was weak and could be easily dismissed by the Sultan, thus no radical changes were possible. Throughout the 17th and 18th Century the power shifted further into the local elites, decentralizing the system further.

The local elites always played a crucial role in the government and were loyal to the Sultan in providing taxes and recruits for the army. Quartaret claims this was due to the 1695 tax farming system where the government granted the right to collect taxes for a particular land in exchange for cash payments to the treasury. This ensured the central state maintained some control over the local elites as they could remove this lucrative privilege. However, the rising cost of wars and the inability for the government to pay cash back caused the local elites to keep the taxes for themselves. As we saw, above four fifths of the state revenue failed to reach the central government in 1789.

Quartaret emphasizes the lack of economic contingency for the cause of decentralization, but Lieven and Hourani assert this was largely down to ineffective leaders chosen by a hereditary process.[26] It seems that even though the quality of the leaders had declined, they did not simply sit back and watch the Empire fall apart. The leaders tried to modernize the system to try and salvage what was left. For example after the humiliating defeat and the treaties of Karlowitz (1699) and Passarowitz (1718) the Grand Vizier, Damad Ibrahim Pasha, sent an ambassador in 1719 to Paris with instructions to make a thorough study of the means of civilization and education.[27] In 1731, the Grand Vizier, Topal Osman Pasha hired a French nobleman to reform the Bombardier Corps on European lines. In 1734, a new training centre, the school of geometry was opened. The Janissaries found out and forced its closure, however; it re-opened again in 1773.[28] This and many other attempts of reform, such as the Tanzimat and Ghul Hane decree, show that the leaders were not inactive. However; it was the additional external economic factors and the ideological factors which hindered any of these reforms to have a substantial effect.

Ideological

The Ottomans began with a strong ideology; Islam. Islam was defined against the Christian West; it affirmed its many beliefs, but completed the line of Prophethood hence perfected and cleansed it from its adulteration over time. This view was crystallized with the destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the capture of Constantinople. Therefore the Christian West was inferior from every aspect – militarily, socially and above all religiously. This concept of superiority which at first served well for the empire was by time its ultimate cause of destruction. The sense of pride and fear of adulteration prevented them from taking the Western seeds of discovery and allowing them to flourish in the Muslim lands.

A good example of this was the length of time it took for the printing press to become widespread within the Empire. As Lewis says, “the most important technical innovation from Europe outside the military field was undoubtedly printing”[29] The Turks knew about the printing press since the 14th Century but only adopted it in the 18th Century. The delay was due to religious conservatives skeptical of European inventions and its evil effects in society.

Both the Janissaries in 1826 and the Mamluks in 1805 were massacred by the rulers for this very purpose – to clear the way for reformation. The fact that these brutal massacres had to take place to prevent uprisings against modernization and reform shows the superiority of culture, which was prevalent at that time.

Moreover, loyalty to the Sultan suffered greatly from two movements – Wahhabism and Nationalism. In the 18th Century a more conservative religious strand began in Arabia known as Wahhabism. They believed that the Islam the Sultan protected was not the “true” Islam and thus he was not the “true” leader of the Muslim Ummah. The movement spread with Ibn Saud taking Wahhab’s ideology of “true Islam” and he conquered central Arabia, the Persian Gulf, Karbala and Hejaz.[30] They wanted the caliphate to be an Arab as “the Arabs were more worthy of it than the Turks.”[31]

The ideas of the French Revolution infected the Empire – in particular Egypt, which was invaded by Napoleon in 1798. The French left quickly but not before sowing the seeds of nationalism through their propaganda. They spread the message of the Turks ruining Egypt by their greed and the idea that the French will free them. Napoleon said, “It has been said to you that I have only come to this country in order to destroy your religion. This is a clear lie; do not believe it. Say to the slanderers I have come to rescue you from the hands of the oppressors.”[32] The Egyptians were not pleased with non-Muslim rule, however; the hatred towards the Turks developed. Mohammad Ali came into power in 1805 and while he still gave allegiance to the Sultan and supported him in battles, such as the Greek revolt and the Wahhabi revolt, they controlled their own internal affairs and as mentioned above kept their revenues within Egypt.

Conclusion

In conclusion, militarily, economically, politically and ideologically the Ottoman Empire declined from the reign of Sulayman the Magnificent. These factors were of course intertwined, which was why when reforms were made in one aspect the other factors stifled progress. Due to the influx of wealth from the New World they advanced both militarily and economically with the industrial revolution. Even if the Janissaries had not revolted and adopted their advance methods, the industrial revolution and the shift in global trade would have starved the empire from the financial means to survive. The strong ideology which at one point was the impetus to rival and take over the Byzantine Empire became the very reason not to adapt and take from the “inferior” Christian West. Hence the Ottomans were locked in an inextricable knot, thus divide and conquer were inevitable.

Bibliography

Freeman, Edward. The Ottoman Power in Europe.

Smith, Dan. The state of the Middle East.

Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age.

Quartaert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire.

J Shaw, Stanford. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey Vol 1.

Mann, Michael. The Sources of Power.

Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey.

Lieven, Dominic. Empire.

Marcus, Abraham. The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth century.

Barkey, Karen. Bandits and Bureaucrats: Ottoman Route to State Centralization.

]]> http://www.allah.eu/history-and-seerah/part-ii-the-decline-of-the-ottoman-empire.html/feed 0 http://www.allah.eu/about-islam/strasbourg-first-muslim-cemetery-in-france.html http://www.allah.eu/about-islam/strasbourg-first-muslim-cemetery-in-france.html#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:24:41 +0000 admin http://www.allah.eu/general/strasbourg-first-muslim-cemetery-in-france.html Strasbourg: First Muslim cemetery in France Via Le Parisien (French): The first Muslim cemetery will be inaugurated in Strasbourg on February 6th. The cemetery will have place for 1000 graves. The cemetery is the first to be established by a French municipality, and was made possible by the special local laws of the region, which do not recognize separation of Church and State.

Strasbourg: First Muslim cemetery in France

Via Le Parisien (French):

The first Muslim cemetery will be inaugurated in Strasbourg on February 6th. The cemetery will have place for 1000 graves.

The cemetery is the first to be established by a French municipality, and was made possible by the special local laws of the region, which do not recognize separation of Church and State. Elsewhere in the country, there are Muslim plots in other cemeteries.

Anne-Pernelle Richardot, deputy mayor of Strasbourg, says that Islam is not a recognized religion, but that they try to bring it up to the same level as the recognized religions, using the local laws. The municipality invested 800,000 euro in the cemetery. There are eight Muslim plots elsewhere in Strasbourg cemeteries, but they’ve gotten to full capacity in recent years. Families were burying their loved ones back in their home country for the burial to be according to Muslim rites.

Saïd Alla, president of the Grand Mosque of Strasbourg, says that the Muslim community had settled permanently in France and want to bury their relatives at home, not a thousand kilometers away. “It’s the ultimate gesture of good integration, it shows that you belong to the country in which you live.”

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