Europe's growing Problem

Europe and the Islamic World’s relations are becoming increasingly strained as incident after incident exposes the inherent contradictions between an inflexible religious fundamentalism and liberal democracy.

The European view is summarized in an October 11 article from the New York Times and the Islamic view presented in the report in a Pakistani newspaper.
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Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center
New York Times

October 11, 2006

By DAN BILEFSKY and IAN FISHER

BRUSSELS, Oct. 10 — Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.

“You saw what happened with the pope,” said Patrick Gonman, 43, the owner of Raga, a funky wine bar in downtown Antwerp, 25 miles from here. “He said Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere and make his point.

“Rationality is gone.”

Mr. Gonman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby.

His worry is shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.

For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain, a prominent Labor politician, seemed to sum up the moment when he wrote last week that he felt uncomfortable addressing women whose faces were covered with a veil. The veil, he wrote, is a “visible statement of separation and difference.”

When Pope Benedict XVI made the speech last month that included a quotation calling aspects of Islam “evil and inhuman,” it seemed to unleash such feelings. Muslims berated him for stigmatizing their culture, while non-Muslims applauded him for bravely speaking a hard truth.

The line between open criticism of another group or religion and bigotry can be a thin one, and many Muslims worry that it is being crossed more and more.

Whatever the motivations, “the reality is that views on both sides are becoming more extreme,” said Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert to Islam. “It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable.” Mr. Pedersen fears that onetime moderates are baiting Muslims, the very people they say should integrate into Europe.

The worries about extremism are real. The Belgian far-right party, Vlaams Belang, took 20.5 percent of the vote in city elections last Sunday, five percentage points higher than in 2000. In Antwerp, its base, though, its performance improved barely, suggesting to some experts that its power might be peaking.

In Austria this month, right-wing parties also polled well, on a campaign promise that had rarely been made openly: that Austria should start to deport its immigrants. Vlaams Belang, too, has suggested “repatriation” for immigrants who do not made greater efforts to integrate.

The idea is unthinkable to mainstream leaders, but many Muslims still fear that the day — or at least a debate on the topic — may be a terror attack away.

“I think the time will come,” said Amir Shafe, 34, a Pakistani who earns a good living selling clothes at a market in Antwerp. He deplores terrorism and said he himself did not sense hostility in Belgium. But he said, “We are now thinking of going back to our country, before that time comes.”

Many experts note that there is a deep and troubled history between Islam and Europe, with the Crusaders and the Ottoman Empire jostling each other for centuries and bloodily defining the boundaries of Christianity and Islam. A sense of guilt over Europe’s colonial past and then World War II, when intolerance exploded into mass murder, allowed a large migration to occur without any uncomfortable debates over the real differences between migrant and host.

Then the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, jolted Europe into new awareness and worry.

The subsequent bombings in Madrid and London, and the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-born Moroccan stand as examples of the extreme. But many Europeans — even those who generally support immigration — have begun talking more bluntly about cultural differences, specifically about Muslims’ deep religious beliefs and social values, which are far more conservative than those of most Europeans on issues like women’s rights and homosexuality.

“A lot of people, progressive ones — we are not talking about nationalists or the extreme right — are saying, ‘Now we have this religion, it plays a role and it challenges our assumptions about what we learned in the 60’s and 70’s,’ ” said Joost Lagendik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for the Green Left Party, who is active on Muslim issues.

“So there is this fear,” he said, “that we are being transported back in a time machine where we have to explain to our immigrants that there is equality between men and women, and gays should be treated properly. Now there is the idea we have to do it again.”

Now Europeans are discussing the limits of tolerance, the right with increasing stridency and the left with trepidation.

Austrians in their recent election complained about public schools in Vienna being nearly full with Muslim students and blamed the successive governments that allowed it to happen.

Some Dutch Muslims have expressed support for insurgents in Iraq over Dutch peacekeepers there, on the theory that their prime loyalty is to a Muslim country under invasion.

So strong is the fear that Dutch values of tolerance are under siege that the government last winter introduced a primer on those values for prospective newcomers to Dutch life: a DVD briefly showing topless women and two men kissing. The film does not explicitly mention Muslims, but its target audience is as clear as its message: embrace our culture or leave.

Perhaps most wrenching has been the issue of free speech and expression, and the growing fear that any criticism of Islam could provoke violence.

In France last month, a high school teacher went into hiding after receiving death threats for writing an article calling the Prophet Muhammad “a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass murderer of Jews and a polygamist.” In Germany a Mozart opera with a scene of Muhammad’s severed head was canceled because of security fears.

With each incident, mainstream leaders are speaking more plainly. “Self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in criticizing the opera’s cancellation. “It makes no sense to retreat.”

The backlash is revealing itself in other ways. Last month the British home secretary, John Reid, called on Muslim parents to keep a close watch on their children. “There’s no nice way of saying this,” he told a Muslim group in East London. “These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombing, grooming them to kill themselves to murder others.”

Many Muslims say this new mood is suddenly imposing expectations that never existed before that Muslims be exactly like their European hosts.

Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born activist here in Belgium, said that for years Europeans had emphasized “citizenship and human rights,” the notion that Muslim immigrants had the responsibility to obey the law but could otherwise live with their traditions.

“Then someone comes and says it’s different than that,” said Mr. Jahjah, who opposes assimilation. “You have to dump your culture and religion. It’s a different deal now.”

Lianne Duinberke, 34, who works at a market in the racially mixed northern section of Antwerp, said: “Before I was very eager to tell people I was married to a Muslim. Now I hesitate.” She has been with her husband, a Tunisian, for 12 years, and they have three children.

Many Europeans, she said, have not been accepting of Muslims, especially since 9/11. On the other hand, she said, Muslims truly are different culturally: No amount of explanation about free speech could convince her husband that the publication of cartoons lampooning Muhammad in a Danish newspaper was in any way justified.

When asked if she was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Muslim immigration in Europe , she found it hard to answer. She finally gave a defeated smile. “I am trying to be optimistic,” she said. “But if you see the global problems before the people, then you really can’t be.”

Dan Bilefsky reported from Brussels, and Ian Fisher from Rome. Contributing were Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell from London, Mark Landler from Frankfurt, Peter Kiefer from Rome, Renwick McLean from Madrid and Maia de la Baume from Paris.

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Islam, Muslims and Europe

The News (Pakistan)
October 6, 2006

By Dr Muzaffar Iqbal

As we entered the mosque of Córdoba I realised its isolation from its historical environ that once housed almost eighty thousand shops and workshops of artisans; there was nothing left of the marvellous public baths and inns which once surrounded the mosque. The multitudes of citizens, merchants, and mules passing over the bridge over the Great River (Guadalquiver) into the centre of the city were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there were throngs of tourists. In spite of this, the mosque still opens doorways to the numerous connections it once had with Islamic spirituality and sciences and practical arts.

Now, however, one has to use one's imagination to understand these intricate connections, because even the interior of this monumental mosque is not what it used to be; the presence of a "dark church structure that was built between the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and arbitrarily placed at the centre of the light forest of pillars like a giant black spider", as Titus Burchardt once remarked, makes it extremely difficult to clearly distinguish the features of the mosque which once looked like a broad grove of palm trees.

The mosque also stands today without the fabulous royal city, Madinat al-Zahrah, which once provided the backdrop to the city of Cordoba. The famous library of al-Hakam II, with its 400,000 volumes -- many of them containing annotations about their authors in his own hand -- is also gone. The mosque now lacks the traditional courtyard with fountains where the faithful once performed ablution before prayers. But some things still remain, and among them are the prayer niche and the marvellous array of columns and arches with their hypnotic symmetry.

Throngs of tourists take pictures and drift slowly toward the front part of the mosque, through hundreds of pillars, linked by horseshoe-shaped arches. The upper arches are heavier than the lower ones and the abutments of both increases in size with the height of the pillars. The pillars are reminiscent of palm branches, which the Arab rulers of al-Andalus missed in their new land. As we move toward the famed prayer niche the darkness of the interior of the building increases. Once, the area near the prayer niche was the brightest in the mosque.

As we arrive at the seven-sided prayer niche, its many intricate features become obvious. So many aspects of traditional Islamic sciences, arts, and architectural motifs are built into that small area that one can still see a whole civilisation reflected in the prayer niche of the mosque. There is a unique space inside the niche, where the word of God was once recited, a space that evokes awe and reminds one of the mysterious niche of light passage in the celebrated 'Light Verse' of the Holy Quran (24:35).

The fluted shell-like vault, designed to create extraordinary acoustics for the transmission of the recitation of the Holy Quran to the far corners of the mosque, and the horseshoe shaped arch that seems to breathe "as if expanding with a surfeit of inner beatitude, while the rectangular frame enclosing it acts as a counterbalance. The radiating energy and the perfect stillness from an unsurpassable equilibrium."

Today, the mosque of Cordoba stands as a symbol of something far greater than Islamic architecture. This extraordinary mosque, which has remained an enduring source of inspiration and reflection for countless poets and writers (including Iqbal whose poem on the mosque is a masterpiece), today stands as a symbol of Europe's dilemma which it has unwittingly created for itself: what to do with Islam and Muslims. As if to present an immediate example of European intolerance, a Spanish guard rushes toward my fourteen-year-old son as he stands in a corner to offer two rakah prayers.

The Spanish guard incessantly argues that this is not a mosque. I point toward the prayer niche, the beautiful columns, and the entire layout of the marvellous structure where once hundreds of men, women and children prayed, but he sees nothing but the artificially placed dark spider-like building of the Church in the middle of the mosque. "It is a church," he insists.

Our arguments become heated; many other guards rush toward us. I insist on our inalienable right to pray in a building that was constructed for that purpose; they insist that it is not allowed. "Who does not allow it?" I ask. "The authorities." "Can I talk to the authorities?" "No, they are not available".

Finally, they physically stop the prayer and surround us wherever we go inside the mosque. They cannot throw us out of the building, but that is exactly what is on their minds. One more move on our part, and they will have the excuse needed to take that ultimate step.

This episode is a reflection in miniature of the situation of Muslims in Europe today. Some twenty millions of men, women, and children living in this self-proclaimed centre of the civilised world are facing a slow and steady build-up of intolerance, mass hysteria, and state laws which may cut-short their precarious lives built on dreams, hopes, and sheer hard labour over three generations.

Islam and Muslims in Europe have become a dilemma for Europe, which it does not quite know how to deal. After the reconquest of Spain, summary executions, forced conversions, and mass deportations were chosen as the solution to eliminate Muslim presence from this part of Europe. Today, the sheer number of Muslims makes this an impossibility. Yet, state after state, Europe is passing laws that are making it harder for Muslims to practice their religion. The extent of intolerance is such that even a little piece of cloth on the head is considered a threat. Where would this situation lead to?

When the German-born Pope Benedict XVI, known as Joseph Alois Ratzinger prior to his assumption of the highest office of the Catholic Church, insisted that Turkey must not aspire to become a member of the European Union, his reasoning was that Turkey belongs to the Islamic world, whereas Europe belongs to Christianity. This reasoning was based on a historical situation that, in the Pope's mind, is inviolable. Absurd as it may seem, the Pope seems to believe that the earth is divided into religious zones which cannot change. One is reminded of Musailmah the Liar, who once wrote to the Prophet of Islam that "God has divided the world into two; one half belongs to you, the other to me". The Prophet's response was to remind him that the earth belongs to God alone, He gives dominion over it to whomsoever He chooses, and woe unto the liars.

Historical as well as contemporary realities are somewhat different from the pope's version of Europe. Muslim presence in Europe is not new. It is true that the wave of conquest that brought Islam to much of the old world stopped just inside the doorsteps of Europe, but Muslims have remained inside that threshold for centuries. Albania is a European country, with a population of 3.1 million out of which 2.2 million are Muslim. Muslim presence in Spain was violently cut short in the fifteenth century, but it has left permanent reminders of Islam and Muslims in that beautiful land. This may be history the pope does not want to recall, but what can be done about some twenty million Muslims now living in Europe? This situation is increasingly gaining centre-stage in Europe as state after state confronts its Muslim population with repressive laws.

For Muslims, the current situation is unprecedented in their long history; they have always gone to new lands as conquerors and rulers. For the first time in history, some twenty million Muslims are now living in non-Muslim societies as minorities, struggling to have basic rights. They arrived as immigrants from colonized lands, they worked hard to establish themselves, and their second and third generations have known no home other than Europe. They speak local languages, been educated in state institutions and despite everything, most have kept their faith, and that is the real issue.

Most western European countries insist on "integration". This insistence is in direct conflict with their own claims of being civilised and enlightened societies, for what they are actually asking is for some of their citizens to become invisible members of a society in which every other group is visible; even those who belong to the fringes of society have rights to be visible, but not Muslims. Hence the little piece of cloth on a woman's head becomes a great issue.

France and Germany are two frontline states struggling to "integrate" their Muslim citizens into mainstream society. Both countries are insisting on total integration. This could be considered another name for religious cleansing, for "integration" in this context means loss of identity as members of the Muslim community. By insisting on "integration" these states are actually demanding that millions of their citizens give up a large part of their religious beliefs and practices. This is a sophisticated form of inquisition.

Under the disguise of fighting extremism and terrorism, these European states have invented their own form of terrorism. An elaborate system of espionage, infiltration into the community, and visible and invisible control of mosques and mosque-committees has been devised to ensure that Muslim communities remain under state surveillance. In France, where every tenth person is a Muslim, the state has actually succeeded in controlling the appointment of imams and, through them, the Friday khutbas, Sunday school curriculum, and many other aspects of community life.

For European Muslims, the present situation demands that they learn to survive in a hostile environment. Their communities are composed of diverse racial and cultural elements, with a great deal of internal disharmony, and certain voices from within are actually calling for a "European Islam"--just the kind of thing the state wants to see. These sinister elements are attempting to mould Islam to fit Europe

No Muslim country has paid much attention to the plight of European Muslims. Beyond the violent, irrational, and short-term street demonstrations against cartoons or the pope's recent speech, there is little understanding of the real issues involved. One does not expect any government in the Muslim world to take a stand on this issue, but at least non-governmental institutions, so-called Islamic political parties, and the media should take up this issue at national and international levels. It is an issue concerned with human rights; an issue which warrants greater attention than what it has received so far.

It can be argued that the plight of European Muslims is an internal matter of those states and thus cannot be taken up at any international forum. This argument is false for two reasons. Europe (and the United States) has never respected the boundaries set by this international code, as countless interventions--even regime changes--testify. Second, and more importantly, Muslims cannot remain aloof from the situation of their brethren and sisters in faith because to do so itself compromises their religious duties; both the Holy Quran and Sunnah require them to actively participate in each other's lives.

Muslim communities in Europe need support against the tyranny of their own states; their plight is not the internal issue of these states but a human rights issue. They face a situation which has far-reaching consequences for the entire Muslim world.