The Economist: Arming Up

This was a very interesting (if extremely short) article in The Economist about military spending per capita:

Israel spends most on defense relative to its population, shelling out over $2,300 a person, over $300 more than America. Small and rich countries, and notably Gulf states, feature prominently by this measure. Saudi Arabia ranks ninth in absolute spending, but sixth by population. China has increased spending by 10% to $85 billion to become the world's second largest spender. But it is still dwarfed by America, whose outlay of $607 billion is higher than that of the next 14 biggest spenders combined.

That Singapore comes in at #4 is a little surprising (I would have expected it to be a little lower down on the list), but I'm not surprised that it and some of the other small countries (Bahrain, Brunei, Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia) are there: all have valuable assets (mostly oil, and a very modern economy in Singapore) that would make nice war prizes for neighboring countries (witness Iraq's attempted grab of Kuwait back in 1990). Israel's there for the obvious reason (let's not forget that much of that military spending goes for the occupation and oppression of the West Bank and Gaza). The bigger surprise for me is the listing of some of the European countries: Denmark, Greece, Norway and the Netherlands. Is it because the cost of participating in NATO is that high or because owning the best military hardware is that expensive?

The Economist: The Graveyard Shift and Covering Up

Two short articles in this week's Economist about Muslims in Europe, one about Muslims in France, the other about Denmark. First, the French article, The Graveyard Shift, which suggests that regional Muslim officials are better able to work with local communities and governments than those officials at the national level:

Members of France's official Muslim body, the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), bicker interminably at national level. But, step by step, a few are getting practical things done in the regions. The contrast between the dysfunctional national body and its active regional offshoots is striking, because the CFCM is squabbling yet again ahead of a leadership election on June 8th.

The CFCM was launched by Nicolas Sarkozy as interior minister in 2003, to give an official voice to France's 6m or so Muslims, rather like that enjoyed by the country's Jewish community. Since then, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Paris Mosque, who has long been seen as the voice of the old Muslim establishment and allied to Algeria, has led the CFCM under a pact loosely dressed up as an election. Now more hardline bodies, notably the Union of Islamic Organisations of France, which is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as groups tied to Morocco and Turkey, want their turn. Amid a frenzy of lobbying — and, say his critics, a fear of losing in an open poll — Mr Boubakeur has threatened to boycott the vote.

Even if a deal is struck to divide up power again, the CFCM will struggle to win credibility. Non-practising Muslims see it as irrelevant, since it is organised entirely through mosques. It has been split by rivalries among foreign sponsors and financiers. And it has failed to pursue such practical matters as the training of imams, many of whom do not speak French. “The CFCM's track record in terms of organising Islam in France is zero,” says Olivier Roy, an Islamic scholar. “The advantage is that this has left the regional heads to get on with what they want.”

In Lyon Muslim burial plots are not the only achievement. The CRCM has negotiated the building of mosques and official sites for the slaughter of sheep at Eid, the festival of sacrifice, as well as improving contacts with other faiths. In Vénissieux, a run-down suburb of Lyon, opposite a Renault factory, the communist mayor has approved the building of a mosque, the Eyup Sultan, after years of failed applications. “Previous projects were abandoned because we didn't know the rules,” says Sifayi Ozcan over Turkish coffee in a portakabin at the site. “This time, we invited the mayor to lay the first foundations.”

During last December's Eid, the CRCM asked regional prefects to provide five extra official sites for ritual slaughter, to improve hygiene and stop sheep-killing at home. More than 1,200 sheep were sacrificed, along with another 10,000 at abattoirs. Now it is in talks with nearby sheep farmers to guarantee future supply — “to enable us to have good French lambs, not foreign ones,” says Mr Gaci.

Much remains to be done. There are worries about lack of progress on training imams. Vénissieux was home to an extremist preacher, Abdelkader Bouziane, who was expelled to Algeria in 2004 after advocating violence against women and who, said the intelligence services, had links to foreign terrorists. The fear is that without a French interpretation of Islamic texts, younger Muslims may turn to more hardline messages on foreign websites or through satellite television. Another difficult matter is prisons; an estimated 70% of the inmates of one in Lyon are Muslim. In the absence of moderate Muslim chaplains, radical movements are recruiting prison inmates with worrying ease.

One wonders exactly what they mean by a "French interpretation of Islamic texts."

The other article, Covering Up, which was also brought up by Islamophobia Watch, focuses on how a political party in Denmark, the Danish People's Party, has been trying to stir up Islamophobic sentiment by suggesting that Danish Muslims will ultimately take over the court system there and implement Shari'ah.

Pia Kjaersgaard'S Danish People's Party has a genius for attracting attention. Over the past month its campaign to ban public employees from wearing Islamic headscarves has dominated the headlines and also triggered squabbles within most of the country's other political parties.

The campaign began with a poster of a burka-clad woman wielding a judge's gavel. The implicit message was that Danes risk having their courts invaded by Muslim hordes and sharia law. Birthe Ronn Hornbech, the immigration minister, denounced the DPP as “fanatically anti-Muslim” and said the judiciary was capable of policing its own impartiality and dress code. Stig Glent-Madsen, a high-court judge, confirmed that the judiciary had always managed this itself.

Yet the government, which relies on the DPP's support to stay in power, has decided that a new law is needed to ban the wearing of all religious symbols by judges — from Christian crosses to Jewish skullcaps and even Sikh turbans. The hapless Ms Ronn Hornbech will have to frame the law. And the DPP is now calling for even broader bans. Muslim headscarves, says Ms Kjaersgaard, are a “symbol of political Islam and the discrimination against women.” She wants them “out of schools, off the streets and outside the doors of parliament.”

Many Danes share Ms Kjaersgaard's sentiments. A poll by Megafon for TV2 found 48% in favour of a ban on public employees wearing “religious garb,” and only 39% against. The international fallout could be large. Denmark is still struggling with the aftermath of the 2006 Muhammad cartoons affair, which led to protests, deaths and burnt-out embassies across the Muslim world.

One response has come from Danish-born Muslims. A poll by Politiken, a daily, of 315 young Muslim students, found that two-thirds of them were considering emigrating after graduation. Most gave as their reason “the tone of the Danish debate about Muslims.” Jakob Lange, head of studies at Copenhagen University, says that children of immigrants deliberately choose portable qualifications. “They want an education they can use abroad, where the tone of the debate is different. Which is why they often choose medicine, engineering or business-related disciplines.”

Night Owls of the World, Unite!

Last post of the day, insha'allah!

Well, the Danes have done one thing right! They started up the "B-Society." Personality theory says there's an "A" personality and a "B" personality. On the assumption that the "B" personality is a night owl, who likes to get up later in the morning but is also willing to work later in the evening, the B-Society is pushing to improve working conditions for those of us who are not morning people.

I will admit, as a Muslim, fajr is one of the more difficult prayers for me to do. At present, my job hours are such that I'm able to do the prayer. But there have been times when getting up early for prayer (or even fasting during Ramadan) was very difficult for me. Islam, with its fairly rigid prayer schedule, was something of a minor test for me, the night owl, but (of course) it's one that I am more than willing to tackle.

Still, I appreciate the goals of the B-Society and, yes, I did join up as a member. ;) Click on the title above for more information.

"Conviction" as the Weakest Form of Faith

I'm sorry for the long delay in posting anything. I started a new job last week that's sucked up more time than I expected, and I've been rather tired and occasionally ill from fasting this Ramadan. However, as some of you may have seen, I've continued to visit other blogs and made the occasional comment here and there. Yesterday, I made a comment at Safia Speaks, a blog I was unfamiliar with as it doesn't appear on many, if any(?), of the blogrolls of people whom I visit. Anyway, Safia wrote about a recent "conference" in Denmark in "honor" of the one-year anniversary of the Danish cartoons that defamed the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Irshad Manji and Wafa Sultan were attendees, and some of Safia's post and the comments were with regard to these two women (in addition to Danish MP Naser Khader, who was born in Syria and seems to be a bird of the feather).

In the comments, a certain "Ignoramus" (seriously, that's his/her nick) wrote, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't being Muslim a matter of conviction ?" His/her thought was, "I'm a member of the People's Church of Denmark (like most everyone else) if I declare myself a Christian, who in the world has the right to say I'm not, no matter what I do or don't ? ... I can call myself a Christian and not celebrate Xmas, never go to church etc. It's an inner thing y'know. Belief in Allah and His Prophet are convictions. Salad , zakat and hajj are actions: you can do these w/out conviction. ... If he says he's a Muslim I'll take his word for it, when you say _you're_ a Muslim, I'll take _your_ word for it."

My response to his initial comment was:

No; you're wrong. Islam, as a word, means "Submission," submission to the Will of Allah (swt) as expressed through the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). To submit to the Will of Allah (swt) means to practice your faith; for example, by following the five pillars of Islam and avoiding those things in life that are haram (forbidden). To merely express the "conviction," to say "I'm a Muslim," is the least form of faith. For the likes of Irshad, Naser, et al, to claim they are Muslim (if they really do), then not to follow the precepts of Islam, merely exposes them as hypocrites (and Allah (swt) has said that they will face their own punishments in the hereafter). We know that people slip into and out of a state of Islam throughout their lives and, insha'allah, people like Irshad, Naser, et al, may realize the errors of their ways before it is too late. But to act in the matter of a hypocrite as many of these people do will not impress the Muslim community one bit. Non-Muslims love the likes of Irshad because of her hypocrisy; this is what they want Muslims to be. Muslims know better.

I think this is a problem for many non-Muslims: their knowledge of Islam and Muslim personalities is so limited that they have little to no understanding of whom many of these people are or what they stand for. You and I, the knowledgeable Muslims, know that the likes of Manji and Sultan have severely warped understandings of Islam, let alone whether they are really Muslims (something not my right to decide). But I feel it is our duty - not merely our right, but a duty - to take away their voice as representatives of Islam. Not literally, of course. I'm not saying these people should be physically assaulted in any way; however, with airtime on radio and TV as limited as it is, we Muslims need to be the ones whom the media approaches for information, not the likes of Manji, Sultan, et al, whom the West adores because they don't know any better.

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On a completely separate note, I also want to add that Danya has written an excellent post: Thoughts on Hijab: Post-Kharabsheh. Check it out.

More Reactions to the Danish Cartoons

More reactions around the blogosphere (and elsewhere) to the Danish cartoons (and a few of my comments):

"My opinion is pretty much the same as anybody’s… 'Cause and effect (said in the Monica Belluci Matrix Voice), my love.' Yeah, call it freedom of speech if you want, I call it freedom of speech to say something racist and then hide behind your gauche caviar/champagne liberal selves. I mean, at least Jean Marie Le Pen comes out and says it. He’s my type of racist. Don’t talk about how ignorant you are about Islam, how you hate Muslims and how politically aware your cartoon is, and then call it freedom of speech."
-- Dictator Princess [Note: I added the links to the above post.]

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"I don’t agree with the actions of some of my Muslim brothers who resorted to burning Danish flags and pillage the Danish embassies throughout the Muslim world. We are much better than that. We shouldn’t stoop to the level of those blasphemous and ignorant pigs and [pardon my French] assholes who drew those abhorable cartoons in their portrayal of the Prophet (P) as a 'terrorist'. Of course what we object is not merely their stigmatisation of Islam as a 'terrorist' religion, but the fact that they even dared to draw a caricature of the Prophet (P) in the first place!

"If they can stake a claim to 'free speech', then we Muslims too can do the same and through peaceful means. By all means, be outraged at this provocation. Hold demonstrations and carry placards denouncing their actions. Boycott their goods and urge others to do the same. These are within our rights and conforms to 'their' standards of freedom of speech and expression. But we must remember never, ever resort to violence such as pillaging or flag-burnings which can be interpreted as a vindication of their claim.

"Do not stoop to their level of hatred."
-- MENJ

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"Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.

"The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.

...

"Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: 'I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them.'"
-- The Guardian: Danish paper rejected Jesus cartoons

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"It's said that the Danish newspaper has apologized, but what I saw was a sort of, 'Sorry if you got yourselves all offended, but we're not sorry that we printed the cartoons'. I saw the 'culture' Editor, Fleming (or Flemming) Rose on BBC's Hardtalk and on a fairly long interview on CNN International. He was not at all apologetic, and when asked if he was happy that other European papers were also publishing the cartoons, he said, 'I'm not dissatisfied'. When asked if he had learned anything, or whether he would make a different decision if he had the chance again, he said he couldn't answer a hypothetical question but his comments then made clear that he would do it again.

"Also, I'd like to know more about the children's book that started all the controversy. It's been portrayed as a nice, educational book by an author who wanted Danish children to learn about Muslims. But then I saw pictures from the book, and they seemed to be sort of a checklist of the negative points used by Islam-bashers and/or Orientalists to demonize the Prophet (peace be upon him). Then I saw some blogs that said the author wrote the book after his children had been intimidated by Muslim children, and it was definitely a negative portrayal, which puts things in a different light."
-- Ann's comment on IJB's post, "Cartoon controversy"

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"On CNN (TV, not the website), they reported that JP is unrepentant regarding the publication of the cartoons, which obviously negates any "apology" that they've made.

"Personally, I'm hoping that all these businesses and governments that have suffered on JP's behalf will take the American approach and sue the bastards for all of their losses. Bankruptcy would be the best revenge."
-- My comment on IJB's post, "JP wouldn't lampoon another prophet..."

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Birthe Rønn Hornbech (as translated by Svend White):

"It goes without saying that Muslims in Denmark must also accept that they've come to a country with freedom of expression. It goes without saying that a country with freedom of religion is also a country with freedom to critique religion. But drawing Muhammad with a bomb in his turban obviously has nothing to do with serious religious critiques.

"We didn't get freedom of expression to offend each other merely for the sake of offending others. [...]Far too often, [the invocation of] freedom of religion has has been guided by an uncivil desire to introduce personal grudges into both press articles and reader responses.

"It is as if freedom of expression had been sancitified as some kind of fundamentalist religion whose purpose is to promote the demonization of others. Muslims are demonized in particular by the childish expection that since there are some Muslims who we think behave strangely or immorally, that all Muslims need to understand how [much better] we are.

"[...]Demonizing isn't just primitive and stupid. Demonization increases minorities' difficulties in understanding our society and heightens their feelings of marginalization. And that is lethal.

"It could be of momentous consequence for our country if we don't quickly grasp the risks in a situation where large groups residing in Denmark feel marginalized and seek comfort in the most extreme forms of religious fundamentalism which reject democracy."

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Also, Svend White's translation of Rune Engelbreth Larsen's blog

"Perhaps we should also recall these days how when the artist Jens Jørgen Thorsen obtained permission to paint a Jesus with an erect member in a public mural in Birkerød, Jyllands-Posten's editor in chief at the time, Asger Nørgaard Larsen, demanded it removed. Today, he's the chairman of the newspaper's fund [Am not sure how to translate that.] and has the exact opposite view of the cartoons of Muhammad.

"When the mural of Jesus was painted over at the order of traffic minister Arne Melchiors, Asger Nørgaard Larsen wrote in a leader in Jyllands-Posten that the traffic minister "had shown both good sense and courage in demanding the removal of the painting, even though he can expect new screams about the constitution and censorship" (Source: Politiken, 2005-10-23).

"As the chairman of the Jyllands-Posten fund today, howevever, he writes this of the cartoons of Muhammad: 'Freedom of expression is subject to secular law and is the foundation of our democracy. The overwhelming majority of Danes understand this... Freedom of expression must be used and tested.' (Jyllands-Posten, 2006-01-30).

"So, 'used and tested' is reserved for propaganda purposes against Muslims, but censorship has its place if it concerns a pornographic representation of Jesus..."
-- Hypocrisy of cartoon architects revealed

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"Before I launch into this report, I want to underline that few places in the Muslim world have seen violence over the caricatures, so far mainly Damascus and Beirut (which are unexpected in this regard.) Protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and elsewhere have been nonviolent. This is not to play down the seriousness of what happened in Damascus and Beirut over the weekend--acts which can only inspire horror and condemnation--only to set it in context. There are 1.5 billion Muslims. A lot of Muslim countries saw no protests at all. In some places, as in Pakistan, they were anemic. The caricature protests are resonating with local politics and anti-imperialism in ways distinctive to each Muslim country. The protests therefore are probably not mostly purely about religion.

...

"Reuters reports, 'Syria's grand Mufti Badr Eddine Hassoun, told government newspaper al-Thawra that the attackers did their country harm. "We feel sorrow that these people who were driven by passion reached the stage where they have undermined our dialogue with the Norwegian and Danes," he said.'

"The Grand Mufti is the country's chief religious authority on Islamic law.

...

"Nor is it true that things were quiet after the immediate publication of the cartoons. Nor is it true that the Danish prime minister or the Jyllands-Posten expressed any sympathy for the hurt feelings of Muslims early on. Indeed, they lectured them on being uncivilized for objecting."
-- Dr. Juan Cole on "Caricatures Roil Muslim World"

Dr. Juan Cole on "Muslim Protests Against Anti-Muhammad Caricatures"

The following is one of Dr. Juan Cole's posts regarding the offensive cartoons attacking the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). This is a very good post, and I believe it deserves wider coverage.


"Of course people are upset when their sacred figures are attacked! But the hurt is magnified many times when the party doing the injuring is first-world, and the injured have a long history of being ruled, oppressed and marginalized. Moreover, most Muslims live in societies with strong traditions of state censorship, so they often assume that if something appears in the press, the government allowed it to do so and is therefore culpable.

"Westerners cannot feel the pain of Muslims in this instance. First, Westerners mostly live in secular societies where religious sentiments have themselves been marginalized. Second, the Muslims honor Moses and Jesus, so there is no symmetry between Christian attacks on Muhammad and Muslim critiques of the West. No Muslim cartoonist would ever lampoon the Jewish and Christian holy figures in sacred history, since Muslims believe in them, too, even if they see them all as human prophets. Third, Westerners have the security of being the first world, with their culture coded as "universal," and widely respected and imitated. Cultures like that of the Muslims in the global South receive far less respect. Finally, societies in the global South are less policed and have less security than in Western Europe or North America, allowing greater space to violent vigilateism, which would just be stopped if it were tried in the industrialized democracies. (Even wearing a t-shirt with the wrong message can get you arrested over here.)

"What Muslims are saying is that depicting Muhammad with a bomb in his turban is insupportable. It is often assumed that in the West we believe in free speech, so there is nothing that is insupportable.

"But that simply is not true. Muslims mind caricatures of Muhammad because they view him as the exemplar of all that is good in human beings. Most Western taboos are instead negative ones, not disallowal of attacks on symbols of goodness but the questioning of symbols of evil.

"Thus, it is insupportable to say that the Nazi ideology was right and to praise Hitler. In Germany if one took that sort of thing too far one would be breaking the law. Even in France, Bernard Lewis was fined for playing down the Armenian holocaust. It is insupportable to say that slavery was right, and if you proclaimed that in the wrong urban neighborhoods, you could count on a violent response.

"So once you admit that there are things that can be said that are insupportable, then the Muslim feelings about the caricatures become one reaction in an entire set of such reactions.

"But you don't have to look far for other issues that would exercise Westerners just as much as attacks on Muhammad do Muslims. In secular societies, a keen concern with race often underlies ideas of social hierarchy. Thus, any act that might bring into question the superiority of so-called white people in their own territory can provoke demonstrations and even violence such as lynchings. Consider the recent Australian race riots, which were in part about keeping the world ordered with whites on top.

"Had the Danish newspaper published antisemitic cartoons that showed, e.g., Moses as an exploitative money lender and brought into question the Holocaust, there would also have been a firestorm of protest. For the secular world, the injuries and unspoken hierarchies of race are what cannot be attacked.

"Muslims are not, as you will be told, the only community that is touchy about attacks on its holy figures or even just ordinary heros. Thousands of Muslims were killed in the early 1990s by enraged Hindus in India over the Ayodhya Mosque, which Hindus insisted was built on the site of a shrine to a Hindu holy figure. No one accuses Hindus in general of being unusually narrowminded and aggressive as a result. Or, the Likudniks in Israel protested the withdrawal from Gaza, and there were dark mutterings about what happened to Rabin recurring in the case of Sharon. The "sacred" principle at stake there is just not one most people in the outsider world would agree with the Likudniks about.

"Human beings are all alike. Where they are distinctive, it comes out of a special set of historical circumstances. The Muslims are protesting this incident vigorously, and consider the caricatures insupportable. We would protest other things, and consider them insupportable."


Dr. Cole also wrote the following comment on his blog:

"I just reiterate in response to some of the critical comments that came in that there are lots of things that if someone said them in public in the United States would cause public outcry, maybe demonstrations and even violence. The mob violence, or threat of it, would be regrettable and wrong, just as it is always wrong everywhere. But it would happen under certain circumstances here, too.

"You should remember that Bill Maher lost his job for comments after September 11, and Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, came out and said we all had to be very careful what we said, and that it was 'never' the time for such comments.

"The American tradition of freedom of speech rooted in the First Amendment really only protects you from the Federal government. You can't even publicly criticize some corporations without risking a lawsuit.

"I agree that it is better that most people in the North Atlantic world no longer are easily mobilized on grounds of religious feeling. But to pretend that Westerners have abolished all their taboos and irrationalities is just hubris. And, some of the protests among Muslims over the caricatures are about wounded nationalism, and not about religion at all."

Boycott Denmark!

My thought regarding the Muslim boycott of Denmark:


Then there won't be any problems.