Thursday, December 3, 2009

Jews back Muslims on minaret ban - THE JERUSALEM POST | Economist : Islam and Switzerland

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Jews back Muslims on minaret ban




Citing religious discrimination, a diverse coalition of Jewish organizations is objecting to Switzerland's ban of minarets on local mosques.


A model of a minaret, burning...
A model of a minaret, burning candles and a banner that reads "This is not my Switzerland" are seen on the Bundesplatz square in front of the governments building in Bern, Switzerland, to protest the acceptance of a minaret ban initiative on Sunday.
Photo: AP


Swiss voters this week approved by a strong majority a referendum outlawing the construction of minarets. The measure, pushed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), was supported by 57 percent of the population.


However, Jewish organizations, realizing that a crackdown on Islam could have repercussions for Jews as well, have come to the defense of Muslim worshipers, arguing that the Swiss's move was unjustifiable.


Rabbi Pinchas Dunner, executive director of the Conference of European Rabbis, an Orthodox organization, said "a war on religious freedom cannot defeat Islamic extremists. The best weapon against radical Islam is support for moderate elements in the Muslim community and promoting interfaith dialogue."


In contrast, the Anti-Defamation League tied the move to religious discriminationagainst Jews.


"This is not the first time a Swiss popular vote has been used to promote religious intolerance," said the ADL in a press release. "A century ago, a Swiss referendum banned Jewish ritual slaughter, in an attempt to drive out its Jewish population."


The American Jewish Committee's David Harris echoed these statements. "The referendum result amounts to an attack on the fundamental values of mutual respect," he said.Noting that the "Swiss government opposed the initiative during the campaign and underscored its commitment to religious freedom in a statement after the vote," the ADL urged Swiss leaders to "be vigilant" in their "defense of religious freedom, even though the SVP is the largest party in the Swiss Parliament and has two of the seven government ministries."


"While there are certainly understandable concerns in Europe over Islamist extremism, these cannot be legitimately addressed through a blanket assault on Muslim communities and their religious symbols," he added.
Meanwhile, it appeared that Italy might hold an anti-minaret referendum of its own.


Roberto Caldeoli, leader of Italy's right-wing Northern League party, said, "Respect for other religions is important, but we must put the brakes on Muslim propaganda, or else we will end up with an Islamic political party.".


French Ambassador Christophe Bigot told The Jerusalem Post that "Muslims, like Catholics, like Jews, should be allowed to worship the way they wish. So why limit construction of mosques?


"What is important in Europe is to work for moderate Islam, for an Islam that is based on education, openness and freedom. The decision of the Swiss state will be to limit the activities of the worshipers.


"I don't think this is very helpful. This promotes the idea that we have a problem with Muslims. We don't have problem with Muslims. We have problem with Islamists, and Islamists and Muslims are two radical differences. And this kind of decision blurs the lines."


Asked if France's ban on the burka was not the same, Bigot answered, "A minaret is part of the mosque, and the Muslims go to the mosque if they are religious. A very small percentage of women wear the burka. And here we are talking about a very, very isolated minority among Muslims."


Asked if the burka ban was an infringement of religious freedom, Bigot replied that "religious freedom has to be combined with the duties of every citizen, and among the duties of every citizen - this is the French perception - there is kind of a minimum agreement of shared values, and among them is that every woman has the same rights as every man.


"And, as we know, the burka most times is imposed on women by men. So just from this perspective we don't think burka is appropriate. This is not a free act, it is an imposed situation placed on them."


Asked if the minaret ban could spread to other European countries, Bigot said that "the issue is different in France. The discussion we have is how do you finance the construction of mosques, and how do you create a national Islam.
"How much are we able to curb the influence of foreign countries on Islam in France. This we think is a valid debate, because we want a French Islam; we don't want an Islam that is importing values form parts of the world completely disconnected from European values."


Hegumen Filaret (Bulekov), a Moscow Patriarchate representative at the Council of Europe, voiced support for Switzerland's ban.


"Accusing Switzerland that it is somehow discriminating against the Islamic minority would be at least lopsided," Filaret told Interfax new service.


"The issue of minarets is not an issue of religious freedom, but it is an issue of political presence of people of a certain faith and ethnic background in a country. Taking into account a rapid rate of Islamization, visible signs of Muslims' presence would have, in particular, a political tint," he said.


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http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15017128&fsrc=rss


The Economist



Islam and Switzerland


The return of the nativists


Dec 3rd 2009 | GENEVA, ISTANBUL AND ROME
From The Economist print edition

A surprise vote to bar new minarets suggests that suspicion between faiths and cultures, even in calm democracies, runs deeper than liberal types admit


EPA
THE result was not what was expected by decent, right-thinking people, the sort who think religions can rub along together. To the shock of their government, and the dismay of onlookers ranging from the Vatican to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (which groups 57 Muslim countries), the citizens of Switzerland voted by a comfortable margin (57%, with majorities in 22 of the 26 cantons) for a ban on mosques having any new minarets.
In a Europe that is criticised, in various parts of the world, for sliding lazily towards a Muslim-dominated “Eurabia” or else for clinging stubbornly to the remnants of Christian theocracy, the referendum on November 29th was the most dramatic move any nation has made to limit the visibility of Islam.
And it happened in a land where Islam has never been very visible. The most striking feature of Geneva’s 30-year-old mosque is its modesty: its minaret (one of only four in the country) merely matches the height of the building, even though permission existed for a much taller one. And the Muslim call to prayer has not been heard in Switzerland, except (during the referendum campaign) from anti-Islamic activists trying to alarm the public.

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said he was shocked by the Swiss vote and hoped that the decision would be reversed. And he may well be right; the decision could be overturned either by Switzerland’s supreme court, or by the European Court of Human Rights.Muslims in Switzerland are numerous (about 400,000, mostly from the Balkans and Turkey) but not especially zealous. Yet among its many effects, the result will strain relations between the Swiss and the Turks. Atilla Toptas, a Turkish-born Swiss legislator, said the campaign stirred up feelings that were as much anti-Turkish as anti-Muslim. Anti-minaret agitators pointedly referred to a poet once quoted by Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan: “The mosques are our barracks…the minarets our bayonets.” (Mr Erdogan made the allusion long before he took national power, and it landed him in jail.)

But the ballot was still a troubling landmark in Europe’s dealings with Islam, and in the global relationship between the monotheistic faiths. Among groups with a stake in good ties between Islam and the historically Christian West, there was an instant sense that the challenge they faced might be bigger than people thought. “Support for the most extreme forms of religious violence is falling off, but we may have underestimated the suspicion that persists between followers of our faiths, especially when they are not well informed,” said Alistair MacDonald-Radcliff, an Anglican priest who is director of a forum called C1 World Dialogue, led by eminent figures in Islam and Christianity.
Awkwardly for those who like to accentuate the positive, some of the commonplaces of interfaith discussions are implicitly challenged by the vote. For example, whenever Christians and Muslims talk politely, the point is often made that today’s world no longer divides into geographical areas where one faith or another predominates. For liberal-minded Muslims, the old split between Dar al-Islam (the realm of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (the realm of war) hardly applies to an era in which some of the happiest adherents of their faith live as minorities. And in the West, the old term “Christendom” is generally used with a touch of irony, if at all.
But the right-wing Swiss People’s Party struck a chord by telling voters that there was still a binary choice: either they would be subjected to misogynism and cruel punishments in the name of Islam, or else their existing culture, based on liberal Christianity, would prevail. Minarets were shown as a menacing force: on posters, dark shapes (resembling both minarets and missiles) rose from a Swiss flag.
The resonance of such tactics may embarrass French and German politicians, both on the centre-left and the centre-right, who have predicted that Muslims will soon be integrated as their fellow citizens get used to them, and as their ties with homelands like Turkey and Morocco weaken. In the view of Jonathan Laurence, a professor at Boston College, the vote may be seen as a setback for strategies based on bringing Islam into the European mainstream by encouraging Muslims to “emerge from the basement” and build more visible places of worship.
And the Swiss vote will certainly give heart to politicians in Italy who are resisting mosques in frankly nativist terms. They include Roberto Maroni, Italy’s interior minister, who is a senior figure in the anti-immigrant Northern League. Its leaders hailed the Swiss result and called for a similar ballot in Italy. Anti-Muslim feeling is strong in many Italian cities, such as Genoa where critics of a mosque project held a candle-lit protest on December 1st.
Europeans, who are used to being told off by Americans for being too soft on Islam, have in recent days found themselves being scolded for the opposite reason; their continent is failing to live up to the ideals of pluralism and free speech that were a European gift to the world.
Freedom House, an American lobby group, called the Swiss vote a “dangerous backslide” for religious liberty in a country that prided itself on tolerance. Reza Aslan, a California-based writer on Islam, said the Swiss vote would be seen as “an appalling violation” of basic rights, even by Americans who did not much like Islam. In his view, the ballot laid bare an “institutional racism” in Europe which contrasted with the restrained reaction of Americans to the shoot-out at a Texan army base in which a Muslim officer killed 13 people. Although populist Islam-bashing obviously exists in the United States (on talk radio, for example) it will never—in Mr Aslan’s opinion—gain real political respectability.
Meanwhile, for all the unhappiness that the Swiss vote triggered in the Muslim world, there was no immediate sign of the street violence which broke out after Pope Benedict XVI quoted an anti-Muslim Byzantine ruler or when the Danish press published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. (The anti-Danish protests peaked several months after the drawings came out; this time lag suggested to some that they were the result of a calculated stirring, not a spontaneous outburst.)
If the reaction in Muslim-majority states has been muffled, that could be because certain of them share the Swiss voters’ belief that the world really does divide into Huntingtonian blocks, where one religion or another prevails, and the rest exist on sufferance. There is virtually no Muslim land where religious minorities and dissident Muslims enjoy unimpeded civil rights, like the right to build places of worship without big bureaucratic hurdles.
Western governments, including the Vatican, have refused to play a game of reciprocity, where the freedom of their own Muslim citizens is held hostage to the status of Christians and other minorities in the Islamic world. But as the Swiss vote suggests, European governments may find it hard to resist populist calls for a tit-for-tat approach—unless they take a leaf from America’s book and a draw up a simple, transparent set of legal rules for all faiths. If they do, it will be harder for Swiss zealots to argue that today’s architectural feature implies tomorrow’s stoning.





Former Pakistani President Parvez Musharraf's take on US moves on Afghanistan-Pakistan - Opinion article in The Wall Street Journal


      • OPINION
      • DECEMBER 1, 2009, 11:08 P.M. ET


      The Afghan-Pakistan Solution


      An exit strategy must be predicated on achieving military and political goals, not 


      dictated by time limits.


      By PERVEZ MUSHARRAF


      My recent trip to the United States has been an enriching experience, during which I had a very healthy discourse with the American public and an opportunity to understand their concerns about the war in Afghanistan. One question I was asked almost everywhere I went was, "How can we stop losing?"
      The answer is a political surge, in conjunction with the additional troops requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Quitting is not an option.
      A military solution alone cannot guarantee success. Armies can only win sometimes, and at best, create an environment for the political process to work. At the end of the day, it is civilians, not soldiers, who have to take charge of their country.
      Associated Press
      U.S. Army and National Guard troops on patrol in Logar Province, Afghanistan.
      Musharraf
      After decades of civil war and anarchy, the Taliban established control over 95% of Afghanistan in 1996. Unfortunately, the Taliban imposed their strict interpretation of Islam on the country. Nevertheless, I proposed to recognize the Taliban regime, in the hope of transforming them from within. Had my strategy been enacted, we might have persuaded the Taliban to deny a safe haven to al Qaeda and avoided the tragic 9/11 attacks.
      Another golden opportunity to rescue the Afghan people emerged after the United Nations sanctioned international military operation launched after 9/11. Having liberated Afghanistan from the tyranny of al Qaeda and Taliban, the U.S. had the unequivocal support of the majority of Afghans. The establishment of a truly representative national government which gave proportional representation to all ethnic groups—including the majority Pashtuns—would have brought peace to Afghanistan and ousted al Qaeda once and for all. Unfortunately this did not happen.
      The political instability and ethnic imbalance in Afghanistan after 9/11 marginalized the majority Pashtuns and pushed them into the Taliban fold, even though they were not ideological supporters of the Taliban. The blunder of inducting 80,000 troops of Tajiks into the Afghan national army further alienated the Pashtuns.
      Meanwhile, Pakistan forcefully tackled the influx of al Qaeda into our tribal areas, capturing over 600 al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban leaders, some of them of very high value. We established 1,000 border checkposts and even offered to mine or fence off the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but this never came to pass. The Afghan government, led by President Hamid Karzai, had no writ outside of Kabul, and the insufficient ground troops of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) allowed the Taliban to regroup. The 2004 invasion of Iraq shifted the focus and also contributed to the Taliban gaining ground in Afghanistan.
      Al Qaeda terrorists who fled from Afghanistan came to Pakistan and settled initially in South Waziristan. Through successful intelligence and law-enforcement operations, we eliminated al Qaeda from our cities and destroyed their command, communication and propaganda centers. They fled to the adjoining North Waziristan, Bajur and Swat regions.
      From 2004 onwards, we witnessed a gradual shift in the terrorist center of gravity. The Taliban started to re-emerge in Afghanistan and gradually gained a dominant role. They developed ties with the Taliban in Pakistan's tribal areas, especially in North and South Waziristan. With a grand strategy to destabilize the whole region, the Taliban and al Qaeda established links with extremists in Pakistani society on the one hand and with Muslim fundamentalists in India on the other. They pose a grave threat to South Asia and peace in the world.
      We now have to deal with a complex situation. Casualties suffered by our soldiers in the line of duty will not go wasted only if we are able to fully secure our next generations from the menace of terrorism. The exit strategy from Afghanistan must not and cannot be time related. It has to ask, "What effect do we want to create on the ground?" We must eliminate al Qaeda, dominate the Taliban militarily, and establish a representative, legitimate government in Afghanistan.
      The military must ensure that we deal with insurgents from a position of strength. The dwindling number of al Qaeda elements must be totally eliminated, and the Taliban have to be dominated militarily. We must strengthen border-control measures with all possible means to isolate the militants on the Afghanistan and Pakistan sides.
      The Pakistan military must continue to act strongly. Operationally, we must raise substantially more forces from within the tribal groups and equip them with more tanks and guns. On the Afghan side, the U.S. and ISAF troops must be reinforced. All of this must be done in combination with raising additional Afghan National Army troops, with significant Pashtun representation. Exploiting tribal divisions, we should also raise local militias.
      On the political front, we need an invigorated dialogue with all groups in Afghanistan, including the Taliban. Afghanistan for centuries has been governed loosely through a social covenant between all the ethnic groups, under a sovereign king. This structure is needed again to bring peace and harmony. We have to reach out to Pashtun tribes and others who do not ideologically align themselves with the Taliban or al Qaeda. I have always said that "all Talibans are Pashtun, but all Pashtuns are not Taliban." Pakistan and Saudi Arabia can play pivotal roles in facilitating this outreach.
      Pakistan and Afghanistan were shortsightedly abandoned to their fate by the West in 1989, in spite of the fact that they were the ones who won a victory for the Free World against the Soviet Union. This abandonment lead to a sense of betrayal amongst the people of the region. For the sake of regional and world peace, let us not repeat the same mistake.
      Mr. Musharraf is a former president (2001-2008) and chief of army staff (1998-2007) of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.