Two trials, same disease

So it turns out that Alexander Wiens, the Islamophobe who has recently been found guilty of the murder of Marwa al-Sherbini, is appealing his life sentence at the Federal Court of Justice. Let's hope this court has enough strength of character to reaffirm the sentence.

Meanwhile, the trial of Radovan Karadžić has been postponed until 1 March. Karadžić, of course, has been charged with the murder of 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica and 10,000 people, most of them Muslims, in Sarajevo, among other crimes. So far, he has been able to obstruct his trial by boycotting it and continually asking for more time to study the charges against him. It seems, though, that, once the trial is well and truly under way, Karadžić should receive a life sentence if even one of the more serious charges against him is proven. Anything less would be a travesty of justice.

The difference between Karadžić and Wiens is simply one of degree. Unquestionably, there is a significant minority of Europeans that believes that there is no place for Muslims in Europe. While most such right-wing extremists spread their views non-violently (see picture), there are those, like Karadžić and Wiens, who evidently believe that European Muslims should be physically exterminated. It is thus reassuring that Wiens received his life sentence, and also reassuring that Karadžić is behind bars, despite the lack of progress in his trial.

The European and international justice system have so far been able to demonstrate that the brazen murder of innocents in Europe will not be tolerated. Thank God for that. However, an almost equally serious problem, in my view, is the seemingly growing political clout of openly Islamophobic movements that, while stopping short of calling for violence against Muslims, do their best to depict European Muslims as enemy aliens.

Among such groups I would count the British National Party (BNP). Last May, on a visit to England, I saw a BNP flyer which said, which no apparent shame, that Turkey should be prevented from entering the EU so that "70 million Muslim Turks" would not be able to flock to British shores. I would have thought that such open attacks on a particular group based solely on their religion would be illegal. But apparently not. Take a look at this poster, which makes it clear that opposition to Muslims (not Muslim extremists or whatever, mind, but all Muslims) is a central plank of the BNP's platform. Or look at this poster. Or this one.

Then, of course, there's the Swiss People's Party and its anti-minaret referendum, or Geert Wilders and his call for the Qur'an to be banned in the Netherlands, and for new Muslim immigrants to be kept out of the country. Lighter shades of Islamophobia are evident in Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign to legislate the clothing of Muslim women in France.

While anti-Semitism is, thankfully, on the decline in Europe, it seems that Islamophobia has very quickly taken its place. As Nick Griffin has admitted, this replacement of anti-Semitism with Islamophobia is, often, intentional. It's simply what sells these days.

-----

Now playing: "Concerto for Two Violins and Strings in D Minor: Largo ma non tanto" by Johann Sebastian Bach.

On equality in the mosque

As some of you know, Katie and I have recently returned from a two-month trip to Europe. One thing that I love to do while travelling is to discover mosques where I can perform the Friday prayer. In Muslim countries, there are always well established mosques on hand. In non-Muslim ones, depending on how long a Muslim minority has been established there, there are either mosques that look like mosques, or there are buildings converted into mosques from other uses (such as a former cinema I found in Philadelphia), or temporary prayer facilities at university campuses. What's common between all of these places of worship is the welcome they extend to the Muslim worshipper and the sense of brotherhood that almost always emanates from them.

So imagine my surprise when, in Luton, England, I was told that, to the best of my interlocutor's knowledge, mosques there have no "arrangements" for women worshippers. He said there might be something at the university, but, at that stage, it was too late to check. It's always something of a shock to the system to find yourself amid the ultra-conservative Muslims of Luton. Never did I think, though, that the community, which has been in Britain for two or three generations, would continue the common South-Asian practice of excluding women from the mosque. Especially since Luton itself features Islamic schools with female students and women teachers.

My mosque in Dhaka has a women's section, albeit, from what I hear, a small, crowded one, with no view of the men's prayer halls. So Katie was able to attend the mosque in Bangladesh in 2006, but not in Britain in 2009.

After Britain came Belarus. Minsk, my native city, is home to a long-standing Tatar community, present there for over 500 years. There was a mosque in Minsk for most of this time but, tragically, it was first expropriated and then blown up by the city authorities under Communist rule. Since 1997, however, a new mosque has been under construction (very much a stop-go process; the small Belarusian Muslim community is short on funds). The building site features a make-shift structure that serves as a temporary mosque while construction continues. It's actually quite beautiful inside, and includes a women's section, although, again, a small one. Katie and I prayed at this mosque when we were in Minsk; the other places we went to in Belarus didn't have mosques, as far as we knew.

The big shock came in Turkey. Ostensibly, Turkish Islam is all smiles and all kindness. The Turkish Muslims we know are genuinely warm and kind-hearted people, ma sha' Allah. However, something about the way Islamic institutions are managed in Turkey is badly broken. In Istanbul, the mosque where I went for Friday prayer most weeks (because it was located close to the apartment we were staying in) had no women's section.

So one day, Katie and I went off in search of a place where the two of us could perform Friday prayer together. We went to two different mosques in another neighbourhood, and the results were even more surprising. It turned out that both those mosques did have women's sections, BUT those sections were taken over by men during Friday prayers. Thus, of the 35 congregational prayers a week, women could pray at the mosque 34 times. However, they were obliged to stay away for just one prayer, which just happened to be the most important one of the week. Compounding the double standards (if not outright hypocrisy) is the fact that, in one of those mosques, the Friday sermon was about the importance of family, while the prayer featured verses from the Qur'an about the importance of Friday prayer. Hello?

So it was quite comical (sadly so) to see an official from Diyanet, the Turkish governmental agency in charge of Islamic institutions, saying, after a mosque designed by a female architect opened, that Turkey should build more such mosques. That mosque is the first in Turkey designed by a woman, and the first to feature a women's prayer hall equal in size to the men's one. The joke lies in the fact that there is no move underway by Diyanet to admit women into the mosques which currently bar them from taking part in Friday prayer, even though they already have women's sections.

On our way home to Montreal, Katie and I stopped by the Muslim prayer rooms at Atatürk International Airport in Istanbul to perform the fajr prayer. The women's prayer room was spacious and well equipped, but infested with cockroaches. Not surprisingly, I didn't see any cockroaches in the men's one. Katie was glad to leave Turkey, and I don't blame her.

So now we're in Perrysburg, Ohio, visiting my in-laws. Katie and I got married at the mosque here, the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo (see picture), in 2005. This is probably the most equitable of all purpose-built mosques I've seen anywhere in the world when it comes to ensuring women's access to prayer facilities. The prayer hall is simply divided down the middle with a low barrier; men have half the space, while women have the other. The barrier is high enough to ensure modesty, yet not high enough to create a sense of segregation. Men and women have equal access not just to the prayer space, but to the other elements of the mosque, such as the high dome and the stained-glass windows, that give it beauty and help in the contemplation of the Divine.

As Jimmy Carter reminded us last month, "it is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population." It is high time for us Muslims around the world to start paying much more attention to the Prophet's (peace be upon him) injunction: "Do not prevent the maid-servant of God from going to the mosque" (Bukhari).

[This post was written in Perrysburg.]

Football fracas

A football anthem is proving controversial in Germany because of joking references to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The song, chanted during matches by the fans of FC Schalke 04, is called "Blue and White, How I Love You", referring to the club colours. The lyrics of the anthem include the lines "Muhammad was a prophet who understood nothing about football / But of all the lovely colours he chose blue and white".

The song was written in 1924, but has aroused controversy only recently, after reporting on it in the Turkish media. Aiman Mazyek, who heads the (German) Central Council of Muslims, has asked for "an explanation" of the "background" of the song. The club, meanwhile, is seeking expert advice on whether the song can be considered offensive to Muslims. The police of Gelsenkirchen, the city where Schalke 04 is based, is also following the matter in order to protect the rights of Muslims who may have been offended.

I personally think the best solution would be to replace the name of the Prophet with something more innocuous. It's all a bit of silly fun for the non-Muslim fans, but this sort of off-hand remark does sound pretty offensive to a Muslim ear.

[This post was written in Perrysburg.]

Gülen schools promote moderate Islam in Pakistan

The Fethullah Gülen movement, led by a Turkish neo-Sufi, has been gaining international prominence in recent years due to its promotion of interfaith dialogue and moderate, apolitical Islamic practice. Apart from dialogue meetings with representatives of other religions, such as priests and rabbis, one of the movement's main activities is a network of schools that now covers over 80 countries.

The Gülen movement now has seven schools in Pakistan, where they are becoming increasingly popular with parents because of the way they promote Islam without preaching intolerance. Only one official, government-approved course on Islam is taught at the Gülen schools in Pakistan. However, the teachers encourage the practice of Islam in the student dormitories, and themselves act as an example of peaceful, practising Muslims. This is an approach that large numbers of Pakistani parents have been receptive to, given their frustrations with collapsing government-run schools, private Western-style schools that do not adequately teach Islam, and Islamic seminaries that are often tied (at least on the level of perception) with intolerance or even violence (New York Times).

I wonder how the recently opened Gülen school in Montréal is doing.

Turkey legalises headscarves at universities

The Turkish parliament voted earlier this month to lift the ban on the wearing of headscarves on university campuses. The ban was put in place in 1991 through the constitutional court's decision that heascarves worn at state-owned universities violated the separation of religion and the state. The constitutional provision that allowed the court to reach that conclusion has now been repealed. The issues does not seem settled yet, though, since the new constitutional amendment may face a court challenge (Wall Street Journal).

Nevertheless, this is a very important step for Turkey to have taken, and it proves that the country is actually moving towards being a genuine democracy.

German police pursues ten terror suspects

After arresting three Muslim men accused of plotting terrorist attacks on several targets in Germany, the German authorities are looking for ten more people suspected of helping the three with their planning.

According to Monika Harms, a German federal prosecutor, the three men, who include two Germans and a Turk, had trained in Pakistan, and obtained 700 kg of explosives. They were allegedly planning to attack locations used by Americans, including the Frankfurt Airport (BBC).

As it is, many Germans don't have a very high opinion of Muslims. And now this. What were those three thinking (if indeed the accusations have some merit to them)? It is precisely this sort of thing that gives ammunition to those who would restrict the civil liberties of minorities, so these three people, as well as the other ten, if they are guilty, were endangering innocent people in more ways than one.

Hadrian's statue found in Turkey

Archaeologists working in the ruins of the Roman city of Salagassos, located in modern Turkey, have found pieces of a huge statue of Emperor Hadrian (Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus, 76-138), who ruled the Roman Empire from 117 to 138. Salagassos was declared the "First City" of the Pisidia province by Hadrian, as well as a centre for the official cult of the emperor.

The recently uncovered statue would have stood 4 or 5 m tall. It was one of many statues to Hadrian erected in the city, which also had a temple dedicated to the emperor (BBC).

Gül says he is still running for president

Turkey's foreign Minister, Abdullah Gül, has hinted that he intends to continue seeking the country's presidency, saying, "It is out of the question that I should rule myself out as a candidate."

The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, to which Gül belongs, recently won 46% of the vote in a general election. This does not give the party enough votes to push its candidate through to the presidency without opposition support. The opposition parties, meanwhile, strongly opposed Gül's candidacy the last time around, because of the AK Party's Islamist roots (BBC).

Let's see how this plays out. The last thing the AK Party is likely to want is another election, which might get it yet another ambiguous mandate. I think the time for compromise has arrived.

AK Party wins Turkish election

The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party has won today's general election in Turkey, securing about 50% of the votes. The top-ranked opposition party got only around 20% (BBC).

This theoretically gives PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a fresh mandate to implement direct presidential elections, which proved to be highly controversial during his previous tenure, and drew hundreds of thousands of secularist protesters into the streets.

Once again, the anti-democratic nature of the Turkish general's protests against the AK Party stands revealed.

Gül steps down as presidential candidate

After a second unsuccessful parliamentary vote where he stood for the position of Turkish head of state, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül has withdrawn his candidacy. Because of the Islamist origins of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, Gül's run for president aroused fervent opposition among large segments of Turkish secularists (Белорусские новости).

It remains to be seen how Turkey can come out of this impasse. Earlier, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that he would like to have the president directly elected by Turks in the future. But I think it's quite likely that the secularists would try to block any such move, having already twice disrupted the presidential election in parliament by depriving the sessions of a quorum.

It seems the opposition parties are determined to subject Turkey to some form of minority rule.

Gül says he would be a secular president

The Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gül, has said that he would preserve the founding secular principles of the Republic of Turkey if elected its president. In Turkey, it is the parliament that elects the president; Gül is a member of the Justice and Development (AK) Party, which has a majority in parliament, and has Islamist roots. He is thus expected to be elected president fairly easily.

Earlier, the outgoing president, Ahmed Necdet Sezer, and the army chief of staff, Gen. Mehmet Yaşar Büyükanıt, strongly hinted that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should not attempt to run for the presidency himself (BBC).

It is not a very good advertisement for Turkey's democracy when the president and the army chief of staff band together to try to direct affairs. If the generals, who are still trying to rule Turkey behind the scenes, are serious about democracy, they should have no worries about the election of a representative of the most popular party in the country, which, moreover, forms the democratically elected majority in parliament.

Büyükanıt and the rest seem to feel seriously threatened at the prospect of hijabs in universities, and other anti-secularist heresies. It's high time they realised Turkey has more important things to worry about, such as its accession to the EU.