Category Archives: Islam in Europe

Sanity through Inanity

Ethics, Humor and Satire, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Judaism

Yes, sanity through inanity, and certainly not with a talking (but brainless) head like Hannity. Yesterday comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert brought a few hours of utter sanity almost to the steps of Congress in their Rally to Restore Sanity. Fear and hate, the fuel of electoral robo-calling, were ridiculed. If, as Glenn Beck not long before sermonized, people in America have turned their back on God, perhaps they should back off a bit and act more like the Jesus of the beatitudes than Joshua at the battle of Jericho. All it takes to get back on track is for everyone to tone down the rhetoric and hear the laughter. For one sunny afternoon in our nation’s capital God finally had a reason to laugh, given the mess we humans have been making of things and each other. At least this time the stage featured two jesters who know they are jesters rather than Fox News’ gift to incivility. No one was compared to a Nazi, nor a Communist. As Stewart noted in an eloquent speech at the end of the show:

“This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or to look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and we have nothing to fear.”

It was, contrary to those steeped in Tea Party rhetoric, a clarion call for the values that have become antithetical to our political system: being calm, civil and accepting of differences. Stewart has not only read Rousseau’s “social contract,” but reminds us through humor of the central importance of tolerance for democracy to work. If the world was watching yesterday, they finally had something to smile about: I do not only mean the jokes but an American proud of his country for the right reasons.

One of the right reasons is the beauty of a Jewish comedian defending the right of Muslims to be American too. Continue reading Sanity through Inanity →

The Jewish-Christian Tradition Is an Invention

Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Judaism


Almut Shulamit Bruckstein Coruh; photo by Simon Harik

by Almut Shulamit Bruckstein Coruh, Qantara.de

Every day in Germany, one hears talk of the Jewish-Christian tradition in the West. Usually, it is meant in the context of defending our system of the rule of law and the constitution, the liberal values of our society, and even “gender equality and the freedom of artistic expression, opinion, and religion”. On this battleground, there is one main opponent – Islam. And it doesn’t appear that any hyphen will come to our aid.

Islam is often reflexively equated with religion – one that cannot deny its “militant Arab” origins. It supposedly consists of Sharia and the Koran, explain the experts, TV presenters, educators, politicians, and journalists, all the while invoking the Jewish-Christian tradition.

They all unashamedly tinker around with concepts from a literary tradition that is foreign to them, and which, just as the rabbinical tradition, embraces a whole world of casuistic judgements. In all this, one thing prevails – a threatening, didactic tone of unambiguity: This is what it says in the Koran, Islam says this, that is what the Sharia commands. Continue reading The Jewish-Christian Tradition Is an Invention →

Abayas for backpacks

Anthropology/Sociology, Gender and Sexuality, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia 101, Travel, United Arab Emirates


Left to right) Salwan Al Shaibani, 39, Hala Kazim, 47, Maha Jaber, 32, and Aida Al Busaidy, 27, all of Dubai. Kazim recently took the other women on an 80-kilometer hike in Austria through her program, Journey Through Change; Photo by Amy Leang / The National

Hike across Austria raises profile of Emirati women

by Maey El Shoush, The National, October 15, 2010

DUBAI // Five Emirati women who traded their abayas for backpacks have returned from a successful five-day hiking trip through Austria aimed not only at their own personal development but also at breaking down stereotypes outside the UAE.

Their tour was organised through Journey Through Change, a Dubai life coaching and organising company run by Hala Kazim, 47.

Mrs Kazim said: “I wanted to show the ladies and men in our communities, there are more things to life. This was not just a walking trip: I exposed them to different cultures, showed them how to absorb the beauty around them, and counselled them as we walked.”

The group, composed of women from their mid-20s to 40s, walked 80 kilometres, starting at Vienna through Fuschl towards St Wolfgang, across mountainous terrain and past green fields, farms and villages. Dressed down and wearing no makeup, with minimal internet access at the bed and breakfasts where they spent each night, the trip took the women back to basics. Continue reading Abayas for backpacks →

On Professor Mohammed Arkoun

Algeria, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islam: Introduction, Qur'an, Scholars


Professor Mohammed Arkoun: A Courageous Intellectual Who Advocated A Tolerant, Liberal and Modern Islam

Simerg, September 18, 2010

Algerian born scholar Mohammed Arkoun (February 1, 1928 – September 14, 2010) was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ismaili Studies and also a member of its Board of Governors, which is chaired by His Highness the Aga Khan

In a tribute to the Algerian Islamic scholar Mohammed Arkoun, who died at the age of 82 in Paris, France, on Tuesday, September 14, 2010, Algeria’s Minister of Culture, Khalida Toumi, said that Professor Arkoun “believed in dialogue between cultures and civilizations of which he was an ardent activist” and “his sincerity and dedication to bringing people and religions together have made him a true messenger of peace and harmony between different societies.” In her condolence message she also stated that he was “the author of books in the field of critical thinking who taught in the most prestigious universities of the East and the West.”

Amongst his peers around the world, Professor Arkoun was regarded as one of the most influential scholars in Islamic studies contributing to contemporary Islamic reform. Continue reading On Professor Mohammed Arkoun →

Mohamed Arkoun passes away

Islam in Europe, Scholars

L’islamologue Mohamed Arkoud est mort

Le Monde, September 15, 2010

Le professeur Mohamed Arkoun, grand islamologue, est mort mardi 14 septembre à Paris à l’âge de 82 ans, a annoncé le “curé des Minguettes” Christian Delorme, qui était un de ses proches. Il était professeur émérite d’histoire de la pensée islamique à la Sorbonne et un des initiateurs du dialogue interreligieux.

Mohammed Arkoun était né en 1928 à Taourit-Mimoun, petit village de Kabylie, dans un milieu très modeste. Après avoir fréquenté l’école primaire de son village, il avait fait ses études secondaires chez les Pères blancs à Oran, puis avait étudié la littérature arabe, le droit, la philosophie et la géographie à l’Université d’Alger. Grâce à l’intervention du professeur Louis Massignon, rappelle Christian Delorme, il a pu préparer l’agrégation en langue et littérature arabes à la Sorbonne. Il a enseigné ensuite dans plusieurs universités puis en 1980, il a été nommé professeur à la Sorbonne-Nouvelle – Paris III, y enseignant l’histoire de la pensée islamique. Là, il a développé une discipline : l’islamologie appliquée. Continue reading Mohamed Arkoun passes away →

Questioning the Veil

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Teaching Resources


[Editor’s note: Marnia Lazreg’s Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) is a refreshing unveiling of the long debated arguments on the use of some sort of “veil” in Muslim societies. These letters, concise and impassioned arguments in essay format, are for all to read. Modesty? Protection against sexual harassment? Newly formatted cultural identity? Conviction and Piety? Lazreg draws on her own upbringing in Algeria and research as a sociologist to frame her conviction of why Muslim women should not wear the veil. No one interested in the ongoing discussion should fail to read her important contribution. I provide here a brief excerpt from her Introduction.]

I do not approach veiling from the perspective of the struggle between “tradition” and “modernity,” which purportedly women resolve by opting for the veil, as a number of studies have claimed. New styles of veiling are less confining to a woman’s ability to move about than old ones, and a number of veiled women throughout the Muslim world have been carrying out their professional activities side by side with men in their workplaces. Nor do I consider wearing a veil at work as ushering in a new form of “modernity.” Furthermore, I do not intend to characterize veiling as representing women’s “alienation,” “enslavement,” or “subjugation” to cultural norms. Such characterizations are unhelpful as they can easily be applied to our postmodern condition, marked as it is by a retreat from a meaningfully shared human experience and the flaunting of privatized forms of consciousness, which result in conceptions of women that are as detrimental to women’s integrity as the veil might be. Continue reading Questioning the Veil →

Imams as schoolboys

Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Turkey

Educating Imams in Germany: the Battle for a European Islam

By Paul Hockenos, The Chronicle Review, July 18, 2010

Berlin

In the snow-swept courtyard of the white-marble Sehitlik Mosque, Berlin’s largest Islamic prayer house, the resident imam greets the faithful with handshakes and embraces. A slightly built, cordial man wearing an open parka, Mustafa Aydin is a Turkish civil servant on a four-year posting abroad, as are many of the Islamic preachers in Germany, where the Muslim community is overwhelmingly of Turkish heritage. Aydin understands basic German, which he’s been learning, but he communicates with me through a Turkish-to-German interpreter. The services’ prayers are in Arabic, he says, but his sermons and chats with congregants—including those born and schooled in Germany—are in the language of their parents’ Turkish homeland, and that, he assures me, is perfectly adequate for his parish’s needs. “We don’t have any problems with Turkish,” he says.

In a Germany struggling to come to grips with its burgeoning, four-million-strong Muslim population (about 5 percent of the populace), the use of imams sent from Turkey and other foreign countries, including Saudi Arabia, has come under sustained fire from integration-minded critics. After all, argue some intellectuals, politicos, and other citizens across Germany’s political spectrum, including the more moderate currents in the Muslim community, how can the foreign clergy advise believers—many of whom grapple with profound disadvantage in Germany—without mastering the lingua franca and knowing the world they live in? The imams have, in part, been held responsible for Muslims’ ghettoization, as well as fundamentalism in some pockets of the country. Continue reading Imams as schoolboys →

Born Free, unless you are female

Gender and Sexuality, Islam in Europe, Islamic Law, Islamophobia

I opened my email this morning and back-to-back there was instant conflict: a posting about a new Indian Deoband fatwa ruling that veiled Muslim women should not ride bicycles and another about a female French lawyer who ripped the face covering off a young Muslim girl in a shopping mall near Nantes, the latter a pre-emptive strike for the pending anti-niqab law in the French parliament. Both rulings strike me as silly, both as overtly political. So now instead of the standard “Death to America” vs. “Muhammad is a child molester” chant wars we have entered the era of dueling over social mores through Fatwa Wars. Although not as erotic as the recent tit-illating fatwa controversy, also involving women’s bodies, the battle lines are still drawn over the same resource: what males do to control women’s bodies and minds.

Let’s start with the Deoband bicycle banning. The commentary by Nigar Ataulla, an Indian Muslim who happens to be female as well as a journalist who enjoys bike riding, called “Cycle Fatwa  Rides into My Re-Cycle Bin” reads:
Continue reading Born Free, unless you are female →