Switzerland’s Invisible Minarets - By PETER STAMM - THE NEW YORK TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/opinion/05stamm.html

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Switzerland’s Invisible Minarets

By PETER STAMM

Published: December 4, 2009

Winterthur, Switzerland

THREE years ago I was invited to the Tehran International Book Fair; afterward I traveled around the country. The mosques I visited were so empty as to give the impression that Iran was as secular as Western Europe.
It wasn’t until I took a trip to a place of pilgrimage in the mountains that I saw large numbers of the faithful. The traffic started piling up even before my group reached the town of Imamzadeh Davood. A few of the pilgrims were making the trek on foot, together with the sheep they intended to sacrifice. The narrow streets were bustling just as at Christian places of pilgrimage: booths crammed with junk, groups of teenagers taking pictures of each other, every nook and cranny packed with candles lighted by believers in the hope their wishes would be fulfilled.
I was received by the mayor and invited to dinner — the first Swiss he had ever met. He showed me the mosque and led me to the tomb of the saint. I, the unbeliever, was allowed into places where even pilgrims were not permitted. During my three weeks in Iran, my faith, or rather the lack thereof, was never an issue. However bellicose the political face of Islam often appears, in everyday practice what I experienced was a religion of hospitality and tolerance.
Switzerland, on the other hand, appeared alarmingly intolerant last weekend, when 58 percent of our voters approved a ban on the building of new minarets. When the minaret referendum was proposed by the rightist Swiss People’s Party, no one really took it seriously.
Some consideration was given to having it declared invalid on the grounds that it was unconstitutional as well as a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, but in the end the government agreed to allow the referendum to go forward, probably in the hope that it would be roundly defeated and thereby become a symbol of Swiss open-mindedness. So certain were the politicians of prevailing that hardly any publicity was fielded against the initiative. As a result, the streets were dominated by the proponents’ posters, which showed a veiled woman in front of a forest of minarets that looked like missiles.
Minarets have never been a problem in Switzerland. There are four in the entire country, some of which have been standing for decades. (One of them is in my city but I’ve never seen it.) And only two other minarets were being planned. Most mosques are in faceless industrial districts where no one notices them. But perhaps that is exactly the problem. Islamic immigrants don’t live with us but beside us, just as French, German, Italian and Romansch-speaking Swiss live alongside each other without a great deal of animosity — or interaction.
The average Swiss citizen has no real contact with Islam. Headscarves are seldom seen on the street, and chadors are practically nonexistent. Moreover, when young proponents of the ban talk about problems with Muslims, they almost exclusively mean young men from the Balkans, who come across as male chauvinists but are almost never active members of Muslim communities. Most people encounter Islam only through the news media, which don’t report on the Muslims in our country but focus on terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Iranian plans for an atomic bomb and Muammar el-Qaddafi’s absurd proposal to abolish Switzerland.
It’s hard to find one overarching explanation for why the Swiss voted as they did. Similar referendums have brought surprises: 35 percent of voters wanting to do away with the army, for instance, or 58 percent approving of same-sex partnerships. The prevailing Swiss attitude is both conservative and liberal: on the one hand everything should stay the way it is, on the other everyone should be able to do what he or she wants.
What’s most conspicuous in these referendums is that we are a nation of pragmatists, inclined to our dour obstinacy, and we owe our success not to grand ideas but to problem-solving. So focused are we on getting things done, it almost doesn’t matter if the problem isn’t a problem, or if the solution risks sullying the country’s reputation. We Swiss sacrificed our good standing as a multicultural and open-minded society to ban the construction of minarets that no one intends to build in order to defend ourselves against an Islam that has never existed in Switzerland.
Perhaps Muslims here are more Swiss than the rest of us might think. They too will solve the problem we’ve made for them: they are likely to swallow the results of this referendum, do without their minarets and continue to assemble for prayer, unnoticed and unperturbed.

Peter Stamm is the author of the novel “On a Day Like This.” This essay was translated by Philip Boehm from the German.

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

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259831455845&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Dec 3, 2009 20:23 | Updated Dec 4, 2009 2:07

Jews back Muslims on minaret ban

By MATTHEW WAGNER AND HERB KEINON 

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 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

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

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574569751126911522.html?mod=WSJ_topics_obama

• 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.

View Full Image

Associated Press

U.S. Army and National Guard troops on patrol in Logar Province, Afghanistan.

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.

How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years? - By Stephen M. Walt - FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE

Why they hate us (II): How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?

By Stephen M. Walt
Mon, 11/30/2009
Foreign Policy Magazine

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/30/why_they_hate_us_ii_how_many_muslims_has_the_us_killed_in_the_past_30_years

Tom Friedman had an especially fatuous column in Sunday's New York Times, which is saying something given his well-established capacity for smug self-assurance. According to Friedman, the big challenge we face in the Arab and Islamic world is "the Narrative" -- his patronizing term for Muslim views about America's supposedly negative role in the region. If Muslims weren't so irrational, he thinks, they would recognize that "U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny." He concedes that we made a few mistakes here and there (such as at Abu Ghraib), but the real problem is all those anti-American fairy tales that Muslims tell each other to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions.


I heard a different take on this subject at a recent conference on U.S. relations with the Islamic world. In addition to hearing a diverse set of views from different Islamic countries, one of the other participants (a prominent English journalist) put it quite simply. "If the United States wants to improve its image in the Islamic world," he said, "it should stop killing Muslims."


Now I don't think the issue is quite that simple, but the comment got me thinking: How many Muslims has the United States killed in the past thirty years, and how many Americans have been killed by Muslims? Coming up with a precise answer to this question is probably impossible, but it is also not necessary, because the rough numbers are so clearly lopsided.


Here's my back-of-the-envelope analysis, based on estimates deliberately chosen to favor the United States. Specifically, I have taken the low estimates of Muslim fatalities, along with much more reliable figures for U.S. deaths.
 


To repeat: I have deliberately selected "low-end" estimates for Muslim fatalities, so these figures present the "best case" for the United States. Even so, the United States has killed nearly 30 Muslims for every American lost. The real ratio is probably much higher, and a reasonable upper bound for Muslim fatalities (based mostly on higher estimates of "excess deaths" in Iraq due to the sanctions regime and the post-2003 occupation) is well over one million, equivalent to over 100 Muslim fatalities for every American lost.


Figures like these should be used with caution, of course, and several obvious caveats apply. To begin with, the United States is not solely responsible for some of those fatalities, most notably in the case of the "excess deaths" attributable to the U.N. sanctions regime against Iraq. Saddam Hussein clearly deserves much of the blame for these "excess deaths," insofar as he could have complied with Security Council resolutions and gotten the sanctions lifted or used the "oil for food" problem properly. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the United States (and the other SC members) knew that keeping the sanctions in place would cause tens of thousands of innocent people to die and we went ahead anyway.

Similarly, the United States is not solely to blame for the sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq after the 2003 invasion. U.S. forces killed many Iraqis, to be sure, but plenty of Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis, and foreign infiltrators were pulling triggers and planting bombs too. Yet it is still the case that the United States invaded a country that had not attacked us, dismantled its regime, and took hardly any precautions to prevent the (predictable) outbreak of violence. Having uncapped the volcano, we are hardly blameless, and that goes for pundits like Friedman who enthusiastically endorsed the original invasion.


Third, the fact that people died as a result of certain U.S. actions does not by itself mean that those policy decisions were wrong. I'm a realist, and I accept the unfortunate fact that international politics is a rough business and sometimes innocent people die as a result of actions that may in fact be justifiable. For example, I don't think it was wrong to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 or to topple the Taliban in 2001. Nor do I think it was wrong to try to catch Bin Laden -- even though people died in the attempt -- and I would support similar efforts to capture him today even if it placed more people at risk. In other words, a full assessment of U.S. policy would have to weigh these regrettable costs against the alleged benefits to the United States itself or the international community as a whole.

Yet if you really want to know "why they hate us," the numbers presented above cannot be ignored. Even if we view these figures with skepticism and discount the numbers a lot, the fact remains that the United States has killed a very large number of Arab or Muslim individuals over the past three decades. Even though we had just cause and the right intentions in some cases (as in the first Gulf War), our actions were indefensible (maybe even criminal) in others.


It is also striking to observe that virtually all of the Muslim deaths were the direct or indirect consequence of official U.S. government policy. By contrast, most of the Americans killed by Muslims were the victims of non-state terrorist groups such as al Qaeda or the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans should also bear in mind that the figures reported above omit the Arabs and Muslims killed by Israel in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. Given our generous and unconditional support for Israel's policy towards the Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular, Muslims rightly hold us partly responsible for those victims too.


Contrary to what Friedman thinks, our real problem isn't a fictitious Muslim "narrative" about America's role in the region; it is mostly the actual things we have been doing in recent years. To say that in no way justifies anti-American terrorism or absolves other societies of responsibility for their own mistakes or misdeeds. But the self-righteousness on display in Friedman's op-ed isn't just simplistic; it is actively harmful. Why? Because whitewashing our own misconduct makes it harder for Americans to figure out why their country is so unpopular and makes us less likely to consider different (and more effective) approaches.


Some degree of anti-Americanism may reflect ideology, distorted history, or a foreign government's attempt to shift blame onto others (a practice that all governments indulge in), but a lot of it is the inevitable result of policies that the American people have supported in the past. When you kill tens of thousands of people in other countries -- and sometimes for no good reason -- you shouldn't be surprised when people in those countries are enraged by this behavior and interested in revenge. After all, how did we react after September 11? 




Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University. Professor Walt is the author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (W. W. Norton, 2005), and, with coauthor J.J. Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

THE NEW YORK TIMES CONDEMNS SWISS MINARET BAN AS DISGRACEFUL

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/opinion/01Tue3.html?_r=1

EDITORIAL

 

A Vote for Intolerance

Published: November 30, 2009

Disgraceful. That is the only way to describe the success of a right-wing initiative to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland, where 57 percent of voters cast ballots for a bigoted and mean-spirited measure.

Under Switzerland’s system of direct rule, the referendum is binding.Switzerland’s 400,000 or so Muslims, most of whom come from Kosovo andTurkey, are legally barred from building minarets as of now. We can only hope that the ban is quickly challenged, and that the Swiss courts will find a way to get rid of it.

But the vote also carries a strong and urgent message for all Europe, and for all Western nations where Islamic minorities have been growing in numbers and visibility, and where fear and resentment of Muslim immigrants and their religion have become increasingly strident and widespread. The warning signs have been there: the irrational fierceness of official French resistance to the shawls and burkas worn by some Muslim women; the growing opposition in many European quarters to Turkish membership in the European Union.

Terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, notably 9/11 and the attacks on London,Madrid and Mumbai, have played a role in the perception of Muslims as a security threat. But the worst response to extremism and intolerance is extremism and intolerance. Banning minarets does not address any of the problems with Muslim immigrants, but it is certain to alienate and anger them.

In Switzerland, Muslims amount to barely 6 percent of the population and there is no evidence of Islamic extremism. If its residents can succumb so easily to the propaganda of a xenophobic right-wing party, then countries with far greater Muslim populations and far more virulent strains of xenophobia best quickly start thinking about how to counter the trend.

If left unchecked, xenophobia spreads fast. Already right-wingers in theNetherlands and Denmark have called for similar measures, and others are bound to be encouraged by the success of the Swiss People’s Party.

BEWARE OF THE FBI ENTRAPMENT

http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/11/30/monteilh-fbi/

Tuesday Dec. 1st | Home » CA/Local » Man claims he spied on Muslims for FBI

Man claims he spied on Muslims for FBI

Brian Watt/KPCC

Craig Monteilh, foreground, with his attorney Adam Krolikowski outside the West Covina courthouse.

Nov. 30, 2009 | Brian Watt | KPCC

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A man who says he spied on Muslims in the Southland for the FBI says West Covina Superior Court records will back up his claim. That court will decide later this week whether to unseal those records.

Craig Monteilh, 47, is preparing to sue the FBI for $10 million. He claims his FBI handlers allowed his wrongful arrest and conviction for grand theft two years ago.

Monteilh alleges that the FBI recruited him and trained him to gain the confidence of Muslims - and to infiltrate area mosques. Monteilh said the agents encouraged him to memorize the Koran and educate himself on sensitive political topics.

"I was instructed to converse with Muslims using this knowledge to gain their confidence and obtain as much information as I possibly could about their beliefs and the beliefs of their family and friends," said Monteilh, "all the while recording them with sophisticated electronic equipment the FBI supplied to me and trained me to use."

The FBI won’t comment on his assertions.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller refuted suggestions that FBI agents send informants into mosques to entrap individuals of Muslim faith.

"It would be only fair to the Muslim American community to report that the FBI does not investigate houses of worship or religious groups," she said. "But people who are alleged to be involved in criminal activity, regardless of their affiliations, religious or otherwise."

Monteilh and his attorney say sealed West Covina Superior Court records will support his case. Along with the American Civil Liberties Union, they’ve asked the court to make those records public.

"We believe this is the first step in establishing – clearly and honestly – who Craig Monteilh is," attorney Krolikowski said.

Superior Court Judge Carol Williams Elswick said the court will review the documents and issue a decision on whether to unseal them Thursday.

Tariq Ramadan on Swiss ban on minarets | New York Times: Swiss Ban on Minaret Building Meets Widespread Criticism

My compatriots' vote to ban minarets is fuelled by fear

By Tariq Ramadan

It wasn't meant to go this way. For months we had been told that the efforts to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland were doomed. The last surveys suggested around 34 percent of the Swiss population would vote for this shocking initiative. Last Friday, in a meeting organized in Lausanne, more than 800 students, professors and citizens were in no doubt that the referendum would see the motion rejected, and instead were focused on how to turn this silly initiative into a more positive future.
 

Today that confidence was shattered, as 57 percent of the Swiss population did as the Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC) had urged them to -- a worrying sign that this populist party may be closest to the people's fears and expectations. For the first time since 1893 an initiative that singles out one community, with a clear discriminatory essence, has been approved in Switzerland. One can hope that the ban will be rejected at the European level, but that makes the result no less alarming. What is happening in Switzerland, the land of my birth?

There are only four minarets in Switzerland, so why is it that it is there that this initiative has been launched? My country, like many in Europe, is facing a national reaction to the new visibility of European Muslims. The minarets are but a pretext -- the UDC wanted first to launch a campaign against the traditional Islamic methods of slaughtering animals but were afraid of testing the sensitivity of Swiss Jews, and instead turned their sights on the minaret as a suitable symbol.

Every European country has its specific symbols or topics through which European Muslims are targeted. In France it is the headscarf or burka; in Germany, mosques; in Britain, violence; cartoons in Denmark; homosexuality in the Netherlands -- and so on. It is important to look beyond these symbols and understand what is really happening in Europe in general and in Switzerland in particular: while European countries and citizens are going through a real and deep identity crisis, the new visibility of Muslims is problematic -- and it is scary.

At the very moment Europeans find themselves asking, in a globalizing, migratory world, “What are our roots?”, “Who are we?”, “What will our future look like?”, they see around them new citizens, new skin colors, new symbols to which they are unaccustomed.

Over the last two decades Islam has become connected to so many controversial debates -- violence, extremism, freedom of speech, gender discrimination, forced marriage, to name a few -- it is difficult for ordinary citizens to embrace this new Muslim presence as a positive factor. There is a great deal of fear and a palpable mistrust. Who are they? What do they want? And the questions are charged with further suspicion as the idea of Islam being an expansionist religion is intoned. Do these people want to Islamize our country?

The campaign against the minarets was fuelled by just these anxieties and allegations. Voters were drawn to the cause by a manipulative appeal to popular fears and emotions. Posters featured a woman wearing a burka with the minarets drawn as weapons on a colonized Swiss flag. The claim was made that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Swiss values. (The UDC has in the past demanded my citizenship be revoked because I was defending Islamic values too openly.) Its media strategy was simple but effective. Provoke controversy wherever it can be inflamed. Spread a sense of victimhood among the Swiss people: we are under siege, the Muslims are silently colonizing us and we are losing our very roots and culture. This strategy worked. The Swiss majority are sending a clear message to their Muslim fellow citizens: we do not trust you and the best Muslim for us is the Muslim we cannot see.

Who is to be blamed? I have been repeating for years to Muslim people that they have to be positively visible, active and proactive within their respective western societies. In Switzerland, over the past few months, Muslims have striven to remain hidden in order to avoid a clash. It would have been more useful to create new alliances with all these Swiss organizations and political parties that were clearly against the initiative. Swiss Muslims have their share of responsibility but one must add that the political parties, in Europe as in Switzerland have become cowed, and shy from any courageous policies towards religious and cultural pluralism. It is as if the populists set the tone and the rest follow. They fail to assert that Islam is by now a Swiss and a European religion and that Muslim citizens are largely “integrated”. That we face common challenges, such as unemployment, poverty and violence -- challenges we must face together. We cannot blame the populists alone -- it is a wider failure, a lack of courage, a terrible and narrow-minded lack of trust in their new Muslim citizens.





Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, is professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, and hosts Islam & Life at Iran’s Press TV. 

(Source: The Guardian)

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/world/europe/01iht-swiss.html

Swiss Ban on Minaret Building Meets Widespread Criticism

Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A Zurich mosque with a minaret. In a Swiss referendum, 57.5 percent of voters approved a ban on minaret construction.

By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE

Published: November 30, 2009

GENEVA — Switzerland’s political leaders faced a chorus of criticism at home and abroad on Monday over a ban on the construction of minarets that passed overwhelmingly by referendum on Sunday.

Related

The Lede: Europe Reacts to the Swiss Minaret Ban

Times Topics: Switzerland

The ban has propelled the country to the forefront of a European debate on how far countries should go to assimilate Muslim immigrants and Islamic culture.
Government ministers trying to contain the fallout voiced shock and disappointment with the result, which the Swiss establishment newspaper Le Temps called a “brutal sign of hostility” to Muslims that was “inspired by fear, fantasy and ignorance.”
The country’s justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, said that the vote was not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture, but that it reflected fears among the population.
With support for the ban from 57.5 percent of voters, however, ministers were forced to admit they had failed to quell popular anxieties about the impact of what right-wing parties have portrayed as “creeping Islamization.”
Ms. Widmer-Schlumpf acknowledged that the vote was “undeniably a reflection of the fears and uncertainties that exist among the population — concerns that Islamic fundamentalist ideas could lead to the establishment of parallel societies.”
Outside Switzerland, criticism was harsh.
“I am a bit shocked by this decision,” France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said in an interview with RTL radio, calling it “an expression of intolerance.” He added: “I hope the Swiss come back on this decision.”
Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt, whose country holds the rotating presidency of theEuropean Union, described the vote as “an expression of quite a bit of prejudice and maybe even fear.”
Muslim communities in Switzerland reacted cautiously. “We were a bit shocked; we hadn’t expected this result,” Abdel Majri, the president of the League of Swiss Muslims, said in an interview. “This is another step toward Islamophobia in Switzerland and Europe in general.”
The government and most Swiss political parties had opposed the motion, he noted, attributing the size of the majority in favor of the ban to the right-wing parties’ campaign, which played on popular fears and misconceptions. “We are looking at how we can repair the situation,” he added.
Some Muslims in Europe expressed concern that there would be less understanding of the ban among Muslims living in Islamic countries who are less familiar with European politics and culture. “We are a bit afraid of the rise of extremism on both sides,” said Ayman Ali, secretary general of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe.