Interfaith and Multicultural Engagement

Dutch people worry about growing gap Muslims and non-Muslims

A large majority of the Dutch people is worried about the perceived growing differences between Muslims and non-Muslims. Almost 70 percent mentions being worried about the gap between these two groups, and 43 percent even mentions having great worries. This has come to the fore in an Ipso-research that has been carried out for the Dutch broadcasting service NOS.

Almost three quarters of the Dutch people think the differences between Muslims and non-Muslims have grown over the past years. The participants of the research were also asked if they have become more fearful of a terrorist attack over the past year. 70 percent says not to have become more fearful but also not less fearful. Almost none of the participants have become less fearful.

A link to the digital version of the research mentioned in this article can be found here:

http://content1c.omroep.nl/urishieldv2/l27m502dd5513cd09a870057fdfbf8000000.d0495116437dce7ce1943403e070d866/nos/docs/200916_ipsos.pdf

Marseille synagogue to be converted into mosque

April 26, 2016

A synagogue in Marseille is to be converted into a mosque, reflecting demographic shifts in the southern French city, a Jewish leader has told AFP.

A Muslim cultural association, Al Badr, is to purchase the Or Thora synagogue, which is used less and less by the Jewish community, the city’s top Jewish leader Zvi Ammar said Tuesday.

“For the past 20 years or so we have seen the shift of the Jewish community to other neighbourhoods,” Ammar said, adding that he viewed the sale ‘positively.’

“We all have the same God, the main thing is for this to proceed in harmony,” he said.

The site near the city’s main rail station was built as Jews flocked to Marseille from Algeria after the north African country gained independence from France in 1962 following an eight-year war, he noted.

Al Badr currently runs a mosque nearby that is too small for its congregation.

Marseille’s Jewish community is thriving, Ammar said, with the number of synagogues nearly doubling to 58 from 32 over the past three decades.

The city’s 70,000 Jews make up one of France’s — and Europe’s — largest Jewish communities. Marseille’s population of nearly two million also counts around 220,000 Muslims, of whom 70,000 are practicing.

Marseille’s Muslims are still awaiting the construction of a Grand Mosque, but the project promised by the city’s mayor in 2001 is mired in financial woes as well as legal challenges by the far-right National Front.

At an estimated cost of some 23 million euros ($26 million), the mosque would be France’s largest if the project is finally achieved.

Earlier this week the mayor of Nice, just along the French Riviera from Marseille, secured a green light to sue the French state in a bid to block the opening of a Saudi-funded mosque in the city.

Mayor Christian Estrosi has accused the building’s owner, Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Affairs Minister Sheikh Saleh bin Abdulaziz, of “advocating sharia” and wanting to “destroy all of the churches on the Arabian peninsula.”

Finns Party punished its member for comments about Muslim children

Terhi Kiemunki, the vice-spokesman for the Pirkanmaa district office of the Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset), lost her position over racist comments she posted on her facebook profile about Muslim children. During the Easter festivities in Finland it is a common practice for children in costumes to go from door to door, recite a traditional Easter poem and give the house owner a decorated willow branch. In return they received sweets or few coins.

Kiemunki had observed hijab wearing Muslim girls participating in this tradition in her neighborhood. She wrote about it on her facebook profile and asked ironically, “whether it was a sign of integration now that Muslim kids were also participating or whether Allah as well had some kind of an anniversary”. She also regretted that she had no condoms to give to those children. Moreover, she wondered what kind of a poem the children would recite if they come to her door or would a mere “Allahu Akbar” be sufficient. When confronted about her comments, Kiemunki defended herself by saying that Easter is a Christian tradition but apologized later for her comments. The party leaders distanced themselves from Kiemunki’s comments and noted that she needs to take responsibility for her actions. The decision for firing Kiemunki from her position as a vice-spokesman in the district office was voted for by the members of her district office.

The grand imam of Al-Azhar’s visit to Germany highlights political tensions

21 March 2016

A visit of the sheikh of Al-Azhar, Muhamad al-Tayeb, has elicited polarised responses in the German media and among German Muslims. Al-Tayeb visited the German parliament (Bundestag), speaking in front of parliamentarians about the necessity for religious dialogue and stressing the nature of the Islamic message as a message of peace and tolerance: Al-Tayeb asserted that “whoever does not understand the teachings of the Prophet in the context of compassion and world peace internalises not only a wrong knowledge of Islam but beyond that also knowingly tarnishes its teachings.” Al-Tayeb subsequently visited the Faculty for Islamic Theology at the University of Münster.

However, while some media outlets lauded Al-Tayeb as a proponent of a ‘liberal’ Islam, the sheikh’s visit was not free from controversy. Asked in the Bundestag about his understanding of the relationship between men and women, Al-Tayeb asserted that women were to serve men not out of a sense of duty but out of love. In return, men had to provide the necessities of life for women: Al-Tayeb argued that “the husband is also under an obligation […] to give the wife enough money for her to be able to buy make-up. This is a duty from the sharia. If he does not do this, he will be punished in the Hereafter.” These comments were widely perceived as misogynistic and sparked extensive criticism. Hamed Abdel-Samad, self-styled reformed Islamist and author of a range of popular or populist books on what he terms ‘Islamic fascism’, went so far as accusing Al-Tayeb and Al-Azhar of propagating the same ideological version of Islam as the so-called ‘Islamic State’.

While Abdel-Samad presented Egyptian President al-Sisi as a proponent of religious reform and moderation against Al-Tayeb’s brand of conservatism, others criticised the sheikh’s proximity to the Egyptian regime: in an op-ed for the online magazine IslamiQ, Fagr Eladly pointed out that Al-Tayeb had been a member of the Central Committee of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), and that it had been Mubarak who named him as sheikh of Al-Azhar in 2010. Al-Tayeb had subsequently taken a pro-regime stance during the 2011 Revolution and has continued to enjoy good relations with the current Egyptian regime under Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Against this backdrop, Eladly asserted that it was “simply wrong and ignorant to characterise him as an ambassador for peace and compassion and to see him as a mature and adequate partner for dialogue.”

Links:

http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/gross-imam-al-tayyeb-im-bundestag-botschafter-eines.2165.de.html?dram:article_id=348493

http://www.islamiq.de/2016/03/21/kein-botschafter-der-barmherzigkeit/

http://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/article153293988/Fragen-an-den-Grossscheich-im-Deutschen-Bundestag.html

Interfaith encounters in a deprived neighbourhood: The Berlin charity ‘Morus 14’

21 March 2016

The Qantara magazine provides an insight into the challenges and possibilities of interfaith dialogue in the Rollberg disctrict of Neukölln, one of Berlin’s rougher neighbourhoods. 80 per cent of the area’s population are mostly Muslim immigrants; and Neukölln has made the headlines nation-wide as a putative example of the failure to integrate these communities into the fabric of German society. Against this narrative, the charity ‘Morus 14’ seeks to promote social integration by offering educational projects as well as a range of extracurricular activities for Muslim teenagers. The offerings are much sought after by parents seeking to ameliorate the life prospects of their children

Since 2012, Hagar Levin, originally a volunteer from Israel, has been working for the organisation. Together with five other Jewish volunteers, she is mentoring children, teaching English, and organising the charity’s overall activities. She is part of the charity’s ‘Shalom Rollberg’ project which allows mostly Muslim children to encounter Jews. Levin described many youths as open to dialogue and curious to learn about Israel and Judaism, which is what led her to stay on after the end of her initial term as a volunteer had ended.

However, Levin also recounts the challenges facing interfaith dialogue in this difficult setting: very few of the children have ever encountered Jews and thus have had only few opportunities to develop a nuanced picture of Jewish individuals and Jewish life. According to Levin’s experience, many children struggle to believe she was Jewish, since she does not follow an Orthodox approach to her religion and does not look particularly ‘Jewish’. Many parents initially refused to speak to Levin when learning of her religious identity. Finally, anti-Semitic sentiment is widespread in youth culture: in local schools, ‘Jew’ is used as a term of abuse; and radical Islamist preachers and propagandists are active in the area, offering youths a wealth of materials extremely hostile to Judaism.

Peterborough peace conference seeks to alter portrayal of Islam

Peterborough’s mosques joined together for a peace conference to confront what it believes is an unfair portrayal of Islam.

The inter-faith conference held last Saturday at the Faizan-e-Madinah Mosque in Gladstone Street was attended by over 160 people, including guest speaker Lord Nazir Ahmed, member of the House of Lords.

Other guests included police area commander for Peterborough Superintendent Melanie Dales, Bishop of Peterborough the Rt Revd Donald Allister, and the chief executive of Peterborough City Council, Gillian Beasley.

Abdul Choudhuri, chairman of the mosque where the event was held, said Islam’s message of peace was being distorted by a tiny majority.

He believes Lord Ahmed “spoke very well about the contribution Muslims have made in this country. In the First World War and Second World War Muslims sacrificed their lives for the freedom of the world.”

Mr Choudhuri said the mosque promotes “peace and harmony” throughout society, stating: “A lot of people are ignorant and do not know what goes on in mosques. There’s a total misconception.”

And he said there is a lot done in mosques to tackle extremism and sexual abuse through weekly seminars and by encouraging people to ask questions.

He added: “We should not be lenient with these people. Anyone who commits these kinds of crimes should be locked up and the key thrown away. Britain is one of the most tolerant countries and we should respect that.”

[VIDEO Link] Ahmad Mansour on ‘Generation Allah’ and the Radicalisation of young Muslims in Germany

[Direct Link to Video]

A Christian nation: The importance of radical Christianity for German right-wing movements

February 10, 2016

If one were to judge from the bulk of current news reporting on the rise of xenophobia and Islamophobia in Germany, one might be tempted to think that the far-right opposition to the ‘Islamisation of the Occident’ is above all a secularist affair. To be sure, the marchers at Pegida rallies ritually conjure up the image of a ‘Christian Occident’ (christliches Abendland), opposed to a ‘Muslim Orient’. Yet most observers seem to have implicitly downgraded the potential importance of religious motivations for Pegida’s supporters; a move that appeared justified by the group’s predominantly East German provenance: having been ruled more than four decades by the Socialist Unity Party (SED), religious observance in the former GDR is, statistically, well below West German levels. A 2008 report by a University of Chicago-based group of academics revealed, for instance, that 52.1 per cent of East German assented to the statement ‘I don’t believe in God’, while only 10.3 of West Germans did.

However, there is more than meets the eye. It is not just that the peaceful revolution of 1989 relied to a significant extent on the Protestant milieu for its moral convictions and on Protestant churches as spaces for assembly that were somewhat more shielded from the prying eyes of the omnipresent domestic intelligence agency, the Stasi. In fact, especially the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) region south of Dresden has been dubbed the ‘German Bible belt’, comparing this area to the American South with its high number of observant, hardline Christians. Concomitantly, the Saxon Christian Democratic Party (CDU), which often wins 60% majorities in these regions and has governed the Free State of Saxony since the first free elections in 1990, has generally pursued a more conservative, self-consciously ‘Christian’ and nationalist line than the CDU elsewhere. Given this fact, Pegida’s religious rhetoric should not be dismissed out of hand.

An even more important pointer to the significance of certain notions of Christianity among the resurgent German far-right, however, is the prominence of conservative Catholics and Evangelicals in the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the de facto party-political arm of the Pegida movement. As Liane Bednarz elucidates in a perceptive commentary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the AfD offers a new political home to Christians alienated by the liberalising tendencies of a secularist society. For them, the ‘Islamisation of the Christian occident’ is only the last item on a long list of grievances that includes perhaps above all society’s growing acceptance of sexual diversity. Indeed, recent years have witnessed the congealment of an increasingly vocal Christian right around these concerns. Nor is this phenomenon confined to the former East: one of the bitterest debates occurred in the – traditionally conservative – south-western state of Baden-Württemberg, where Christian groups protested against the alleged ‘early sexualisation’ (Frühsexualisierung) of children when the governing coalition of Greens and Social Democrats sought include representations of homosexuality in revised schoolbooks.

These groups widely perceive political elites and mass media not just as complicit in these developments but as dominated by left-fascist (linksfaschistisch) forces seeking to deaden public discourse and to undermine the Christian identity of the German people. A retired professor of Catholic theology from the University of Freiburg recently asserted in an article that the refugee crisis represents the “self-destruction of Germany under a humanitarian cover-up.” Here the new Christian right’s preoccupations fully merge with the concerns of Pegida and the AfD electorate. As Bednarz chronicles in her article, calls for ‘resistance’ against the governing political status quo and its ‘establishment’ have proliferated in the burgeoning right-wing Christian blogging and online publication scene. The weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit, which has come to function as the unofficial party organ of the AfD, also publishes articles and opinion pieces by right-wing Christians. According to Bednarz, these websites and their comments sections offer an insight into a ‘parallel society’ (Parallelgesellschaft – a term which in German public discussion is usually reserved for the self-contained societal spaces that predominantly Muslim immigrants are seen as likely to inhabit). In these fora, conspiracy theories intermingle with an “authoritarian longing” for Putin- or Orbán-style governance, xenophobia, and Islamophobia.

Against this backdrop, “the AfD […] has the effect of a magnet on radical Christians.” Indeed, one of the party’s main figures, Beatrix von Storch (MEP) and her husband are extremely invested in the fundamentalist Christian scene. As Bednarz observes, von Storch functions as the “figurehead” of all “those within the AfD who wish to pursue a staunchly nationalistic course” with an “ostentatiously Christian demeanour”.

The Chicago report: http://www.norc.org/PDFs/Beliefs_about_God_Report.pdf (in English)

The German Bible Belt in Saxony: http://www.nzz.ch/international/deutschland-und-oesterreich/land-der-gottesfuerchtigen-1.18644793 (in German)

The connections between the AfD and the Christian right: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/putin-orban-und-afd-rechte-christen-finden-politische-heimat-14043650.html (in German)

Ahmad Mansour on ‘Generation Allah’: Radicalisation of young Muslims in Germany

February 5. 2016

In a recent episode of the ‘Forum on Friday’, a broadcast by the German public TV channel ZDF aimed to offer a forum for discussion for issues of importance to the country’s Muslim community, the psychologist and activist Ahmad Mansour discussed his new book Generation Allah: Why We Need to Rethink the Fight against Religious Extremism. Building on his experience as a social worker with Muslim youth in the Neukölln borough of Berlin, Mansour observes a strong growth of religious observance among young Muslims in Germany. In certain milieus, Salafi ideas with a violent undercurrent have made much headway, leading to the formation of what Mansour terms the ‘Generation Allah’. Instead of relying on punitive and exclusionary measures, however, Mansour urged a constructive dialogue with these ‘lost children’: rather than treating them solely as a threat to be dealt with by police and security services, these youths need to be taken seriously. Educational opportunities offering a more sophisticated take on Islam must be strengthened, or so Mansour argued, in order to develop positive alternatives to Salafi groups.

At the same time, the interview also demonstrated the complexity of this topic in general and the difficulties it poses for German Muslims in particular. Most notably perhaps, the interviewing journalist criticised the book’s title as well as its cover design: they seemed to him to be pandering to media stereotypes and current fears about religious terrorism in order to increase the book’s sales.

French magazine scraps offensive cartoon caricaturing revered sheikh

January 28, 2016

An influential French news magazine Friday removed a cartoon of a revered Senegalese Muslim leader that sparked outrage in the west African nation in a row involving Islam, handbags and homosexuality.

The debate erupted after Jeune Afrique published a story and an illustration on its website Thursday including a caricature of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride Brotherhood, triggering a wave of protests which forced the magazine to take the offending article down.

“We do not accept that a person as illustrious as Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba should be brought into this type of debate,” Senegalese government spokesman Seydou Gueye told RFM, a private radio station.

“We cannot accept the dissemination of such a degrading article,” he said. “The government has expressed its indignation in the strongest possible way and firmly condemns this article.”

Mouride spokesman Serigne Bassirou Mbacke Abdoul Khadre, who is based in Senegal’s second largest city Touba — the Brotherhood’s spiritual home — had denounced the article as an attack on Bamba and his followers, several newspapers reported Friday.

“The disciple who sees his master attacked could have an unpredictable reaction,” he warned.

The illustration was published with an article about a controversy in Senegal over men carrying handbags following a new fashion trend sparked by a young singer called Wally Seck.

But the fad has been widely criticized, with some critics even suggesting it was promoting homosexuality, which is illegal in this country of 14 million people, most of whom are Muslim.

In the article, which ran under a cleverly-worded French headline that plays on the word handbag and loosely translates as “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt”, the magazine used a caricature of a westerner smoking a cigar and looking at a photo of Bamba in a traditional long robe, remarking: “Hey, why’s he wearing a dress?”

There was an immediate backlash on social media sites in Senegal, with Jeune Afrique quickly changing the cartoon to show a man in a long African robe.

By Friday, clicking on the article linked to a message from editor-in-chief, Elise Colette, offering the magazine’s “sincere apology” and saying that in light of the backlash, she had “decided to take down the cartoon and the accompanying text.”

“With this drawing, our intention was not to insult anyone, and certainly not to harm the image of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba who is venerated by many followers, but to expose the stupidity of those who cannot differentiate between a caftan and a dress,” she wrote.

Ninety percent of Senegal’s population is Muslim, most following Sufi Islam represented by different brotherhoods which emerged at the end of the 19th century out of resistance to French colonialism.

The Mouride brotherhood, founded by Bamba in 1883, is one of the most powerful and its influence pervades all areas of Senegalese life, including politics and the economy.

Both President Macky Sall and his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade are members of the Mouride Brotherhood, and many of its members live in the United States and in Europe.

The government said it “noted the apology by Jeune Afrique”, and stressed that Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba “is a national symbol”. Dakar “will take all necessary measures to protect our historical figures, respect for our religious values and beliefs,” the spokesman said.

In January 2015, Senegal banned the distribution of an edition of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and French daily newspaper Liberation which had published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.