Tariq Ramadan visits Malaysia (and Japan) sometimes. But I find him very strange, because what he says means nothing. Why Muslims are ‘scared of people who are not Muslim’? And what do those foreign and Japanese Muslims in Japan do as occupation? (Lily)
1.Malay Mail Online (http://m.themalaymailonline.com)
Look in the mirror, Muslim don tells Malaysians critical of Western discrimination, 1 February 2015
by Zurairi AR
discrimination by the West should first acknowledge the injustices against minorities in their own country, a renowned Muslim academic said critically today.
Speaking in defence pluralism, Swiss academic Dr Tariq Ramadan recounted anecdotes from non-Muslims here that they are being treated as “second class citizens”, which he said contradicted principles of Islam.
“I’m sorry but some of your fellow citizens in this country who are not Muslims are facing this discrimination, they are facing injustices,” Ramadan said in a question-and-answers session after a talk on “jihad”, or holy struggle.
“If you want to be good Muslims, instead of preventing people from believing, you become better believers. Don’t be scared of people who are not Muslim. Be scared, be afraid, be worried about our own lack of consistency.”
Ramadan said that just as the West, the Muslim world is equally guilty of having double standards, discrepancies and inconsistencies when it comes to criticism and practice of values.
Earlier in his talk, the ethnic Egyptian academic also urged Malaysian Muslims to speak out against parts of Malaysian culture that are un-Islamic, which included stigmatisation of the minorities and censorship of ideas.
“Malaysian Muslims should struggle against anything in Malaysian culture which does not protect dignity and equality of human being,” said Ramadan.
Last year, Selangor has declared a fatwa, or religious decree, against “liberalism and religious pluralism”, calling those involved with the ideologies as “deviants”.
2.Asia News Net.it(http://www.asianews.it)
(1)A forest of crosses and names of martyrs in the desert of Saudi Arabia, 28 January 2015
A Franco-Saudi archaeological team is responsible for the discovery. Prof Frédéric Imbert dated the graffiti to 470-475, a time when anti-Christian persecution began, culminating under the usurper Yusuf. Even the Qur'an refers to it indirectly. The findings show how far Christianity had spread at the time, until the arrival of Islam.
Beirut (AsiaNews/Agencies) - A forest of crosses engraved in the rocks of the desert of Saudi Arabia is a sign of the presence of a vibrant Christian community around the fifth century AD.
Unearthed by a Saudi-French archaeological team, the graffiti include inscriptions with a number of biblical and Christian names, perhaps those of martyrs killed during a wave of persecution in the fifth century.
L'Orient-Le Jour reported that Prof Frédéric Imbert, a professor at the University of Aix-Marseille and a member of the team, presented his findings at a conference at the American University of Beirut on the rock engravings of Jabal Kawkab ("Star Mountain"), in Najran, southern Saudi Arabia.
The area is called Bi'r Hima or Abar Hima, names "that refer to places with wells known since ancient times." According to Imbert, an epigrapher, the area is located on the route "that connected Yemen to Najran" where caravans could be resupplied in water.
Inscriptions were found with crosses, scattered over a one-square kilometre. Some inscriptions appear to be in a local version of Aramaic, a pre-Islamic form of Arabic, Nabataean-Arabic to be more precise.
The inscriptions have been dated to the reign of Shurihbil Yakkuf, who controlled southern Arabia in 470-475. The persecution of Christians appears to have started under his rule.
It is interesting to note that the names Marthad and Rabi were found inscribed on the crosses. Both are on the list of martyrs of Najran, in the so-called Book of Himyarites.
In order to understand crosses and rock inscriptions, it is necessary to know that back in the 3rd century AD, southern Arabia was ruled by the Ḥimyarite dynasty, which lasted for about 150 years.
In order to maintain its neutrality between the two great powers of the time, the Byzantine and Persian empires, its kings chose Judaism as their religion.
However, Christianity began to spread in Arabia in the fourth century. By "the sixth century, it reached the Gulf region, Najran and the Yemen coast".
The missionary activities of Christians from Iran's Sassanid Empire and Monophysite Christians from Syria hostile to the Council of Chalcedon (on Christ's dual nature) favoured the spread of Christianity. Two Syriac bishops, probably from what is now Iraq, were consecrated in 485 and 519.
Later, Yusuf (Dhu Nuwas) seized power in the Kingdom of Ḥimyar, ordering the massacre of Christians in Najran, an event reported in several Christian chronicles, with a reference even in the Qur'an, in Shura Al-Burūj (The Celestial Stations).
When Christian survivors sent an appeal to Khaleb, King of Ethiopia, he organised a military expedition to rescue the persecuted. Yusuf's army was defeated and the usurper himself was killed. A Christian kingdom was established in Arabia, as an Ethiopian protectorate, until it was conquered by Islam.
For Frédéric Imbert, the crosses and the inscriptions are "the oldest book of the Arabs," written "on desert stones," a "page of Arab and Christian history".
(2)Saudi textbooks 'demonise west, Christians and Jews', 17 July 2004
Riyadh (AsiaNews/Guardian) - Saudi schoolchildren are being taught to disparage Christianity and Judaism in a textbook issued by the education ministry, a report said yesterday.
The book forms part of the kingdom's revised curriculum - supposedly cleaned up after complaints that demonising the west had become endemic in Saudi schools.
A lesson for six-year-olds reads: "All religions other than Islam are false." A note for teachers says they should "ensure to explain" this point.
The Saudi Institute, a Washington-based pro-reform group, said yesterday the book, Monotheism and Fiqh, contradicted the Koran.
"The Saudi contention that Judaism and Christianity are false religions is clearly refuted by the Koran," it says in a report, quoting a verse.
The kingdom reviewed its textbooks after revelations that 15 of the September 11 hijackers had been Saudi-educated.
One textbook had urged teenagers not to befriend Christians or Jews: "Emulation of the infidels leads to loving them, glorifying them and raising their status in the eyes of the Muslim, and that is forbidden."
Last year the foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said there was "no room in our schools for hatred, intolerance or for anti-western thinking". Officials announced two pilot programmes to develop new teaching methods.
But the Saudi Institute said yesterday there was no evidence the pilot programmes had taken place. The new curriculum, it said, had "the same authors and the same ideas" as the old one, but in different language.
The main author of the religious curriculum is Sheikh Saleh al-Fawazan, described as a Wahhabi extremist who advocates slavery and believes elections are un-Islamic.
3.Aish(http://www.aish.com)
Quiz: Political Change in the Middle East,31 January 2015
Take the Aish.com quiz and see how many questions you can answer correctly.
by Yvette Alt Miller
2015 has already seen some memorable political turnovers in the Middle East – and beyond. Rate your knowledge of recent developments.
1. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah died on Thursday, January 22. Who succeeded him as Saudi head of state?
Answer: King Abdullah was replaced by his 79-year old half-brother.
Since the death of Saudi Arabian founder King Abdulaziz in 1953, Saudi Arabia’s absolute rulers have all been one of his many sons. (There are no exact figures, but there seem to be about 45, from a number of wives.) While the Umma party did form as an opposition Saudi party in February, 2011, its ten founders were arrested a week later and sentenced to prison. International observers complained about irregularities in their trials; the treatment of party leader Abd Al-‘Azia al-Wahuibi was particularly problematic: tried in secret, he is currently held in a military hospital, where Saudi officials say he’s suffered a mental breakdown.
2. Israelis are going to the polls on March 17, 2015. What new option will Arab Israeli voters will have on that day?
Answer: Four Arab parties have joined together to create a radical new unified list, in order to maximize their share of seats in Israel’s next legislative session.
All Israeli citizens enjoy the right to vote. This year, four Arab parties – Raam, Ta’al and Balad, and the Arab-Jewish party Chadash – have unified to form a single electoral bloc in the March elections in order to boost voter turnout and maximize their numbers in the 120-seat Knesset. About a fifth of Israeli Arabs typically vote for mainstream Israeli political parties, with the remainder voting for a diverse range of Arab political parties.
3. World leaders lined up to praise Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah following his death. In Britain, flags flew at half mast on Westminster Abbey. US Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the late king as “a revered leader”. Yet a recent survey placed Saudi Arabia last in the world, tied only with North Korea, for civil liberties and political freedom. Which of the following events occurred in Saudi Arabia recently?
A. “Witchcraft and sorcery” was the charge given in the beheading of a woman.
B. A blogger was sentenced to 1,000 lashes, ten years in prison, and a hefty fine for questioning the link between state and religion.
C. Two female activists were arrested for bringing food and drinks to a starving woman.
D. Tens of thousands of foreign workers, especially Ethiopian residents, of the kingdom have been arrested, beaten and forced out of the country in recent months; witnesses report that many have been killed, though their deaths haven’t been formally acknowledged by Saudi authorities.
Answers: all of the above.
Amina bint Abdel Halim Nassar was beheaded on Monday, December 8, 2014 for, according to Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry, “committing the practice of witchcraft and sorcery” after authorities found books on witchcraft in her home.
The liberal blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to ten years in prison, a large fine, and 1,000 lashes for his blog, which some said denigrated religious leaders; his first public whipping was carried out after Friday prayers on January 9, 2015 in the Saudi city Jedda. Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Oyouni, women’s rights activists, were arrested after delivering provisions to a Canadian woman whose Saudi husband imprisoned her in their home – without food and water: the activists were found guilty of the Sharia law of “takhbib”, or inciting a woman against her husband.
Witnesses testified they saw Saudi police beating Ethiopian workers – some fatally; in recent years, Saudi newspapers have characterized foreign workers as criminals, building tolerance for violence against them.
4. January 9, 2015 marked the 10th anniversary of what notable event for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas?
Answer: B, C, and D.
B. It was the 10th Anniversary of his 2005 election – to a four year term.
C. The date marked a year and a half from his wife Amima’s surgery for a problem with her leg in a hospital in Tel Aviv – days after Abbas signed a Unity Government with Hamas, whose rockets routinely target hospitals in the Jewish state.
D. It marked ten years from the withdrawal of Israeli civilians and troops from Gaza, turning the area over – Jew-free – to Palestinian control.
9 January, 2005 was marked by scenes of jubilation as Palestinians elected Abbas to a four year term, replacing Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, who had allowed no political opposition to his reign. Although Abbas’ term was meant to be for four years, he has yet to schedule elections for his successor.
5. Although it’s not in the Middle East, Greece’s radical new governing party, Syriza, which was the big winner in elections on January 25, 2015, has a lot to say about the region. Which of the following events did not happen in recent weeks?
Answer: Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has called on the continuation of Greece’s close ties with Israel, citing diplomatic tensions both nations have with their common neighbor, Turkey.
While Theodoros Karypidis was forced to withdraw his candidacy by Syriza, Greece’s recent election was marked by a feeling of hostility towards Jews and Israel. It is expected that relations between Greece and Israel will cool somewhat under Prime Minister Tsipras’ rule.
6. The Palestinian Unity Government of 2014 set a deadline of December 2 for new elections. When that date for voting came and went with no vote, what causes have Palestinian leaders not blamed for the delay?
Answer：Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has blamed Israel, saying “Although individual Israelis are sometimes kind – for instance, Israeli hospitals have treated my close family members when they needed care – the Israeli Government has taken a hostile stance towards me and my party, outlawing Palestinian elections.”
Although Haniyeh’s granddaughter was treated in a Tel Aviv hospital in November 2013 and his daughter was cared for in a Tel Aviv hospital one year later, Haniyeh has repeatedly called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Nonetheless, he has not blamed Israel for halting Palestinian elections; his party, Hamas, has instead blamed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for failing to call for the mandated vote.
7. On January 20, 2015, rebels stormed the Presidential Palace in Yemen’s capital Sanaa; two days later, the US-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi resigned. Which armed group was responsible for this coup?
Answer: The Iranian-backed Houthis, a Shiite ethnic group from Yemen’s north.
Despite the growing presence of terror groups such as Al Qaida and ISIS in Yemen, January’s presidential coup was overseen by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels; a representative of Iran’s Government described the groups as “similar” to the Iranian-backed terror organization Hezbollah.
8. “A strong advocate for women” is how Christine Lagarde, the female head of the International Monetary Fund, eulogized King Abdullah. Which of the following statements about King Abdullah’s commitment to women’s rights is false?
Answer: King Abdullah broke with long-standing Saudi tradition, allowing married women to drive, albeit with special drivers’ licenses.
Although an advisory committee recommended that Saudi women over the age of 30 be allowed to drive with some conditions: their rights would only extend from 7am to 8pm Sunday to Wednesday and noon to 8pm on Thursday and Friday, and it would be illegal to wear makeup while behind the wheel – King Abdullah rejected the recommendation. Women continue to be banned from driving; in 2014, one woman who did so recently received 150 lashes.
4.Tablet(http://tabletmag.com)
Why Is the Islamist Death Cult So Appealing?, 28 January 2015
Explaining Sayyid Qutb, Bin Laden, Djamel Beghal, Chérif Kouachi, Amedy Coulibaly, Hayat Boumeddienne, and those yet to come
by Paul Berman
Why do people who are not clinically crazy throw themselves into campaigns of murder and suicide? The sociological answer to this question assumes a pettiness in human nature, such that even the slightest of humiliations and misfortunes may be regarded as sufficiently devastating, under certain conditions, as to sweep aside the gravest of moral considerations. I prefer to invoke the history of ideas. People throw themselves into campaigns of murder and suicide because they have come under the influence of malign doctrinal systems, which appear to address the most profound and pressing of human problems—and do so by openly rebelling against the gravest of moral considerations. Doctrines of this sort render their adepts mad, not in a clinical sense but in an everyday sense. And the power to drive people mad comes precisely from the profundity, or the seeming profundity—which is what everyone else fails to see.
The Islamist movement—the case at hand—got its start in Egypt circa in 1930 in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a puritanical religious campaign devoted to the encouragement of rectitude; and rectitude is all that some people notice about Islamists today. The movement came out in favor of the decolonization of Egypt, the utopian resurrection of the Islamic caliphate of yore, and, most of all, opposition to Zionism, which transformed the movement into a mass political phenomenon; and anti-colonialism is all that still other people see. But the movement also took on a philosophical dimension.
The Islamist theoreticians stipulated the existence of an authentic human identity, which, in their understanding, means the kind of human existence that you see in the pages of the Quran, where life is conducted somberly and piously according to laws laid down by God. The theoreticians maintained that authentic human identity, in its Quranic perfection, has come under attack, assailed by a sludge tide of modern Western cultural influence, with devastating effects. The theoreticians ascribed the sludge tide to a conspiracy mounted by Christian Crusaders and Zionists for the purpose of annihilating Islam. The theoreticians affirmed that, by means of preaching and jihad, the Islamists will be able to defeat the diabolical conspiracy and will be able to reconstruct a properly Islamic society along the 7th-century lines of ancient Medina. But most of all they affirmed that, by doing so, the Islamists will be able to conjure back into existence the authentic human identity, and they will be able to resolve the modern psychological dilemma.
The Islamists, considered as a political movement, have splintered over the decades into the factions and tendencies that you would expect of any very large international movement, sometimes along denominational lines, Sunni and Shiite, sometimes according to different notions of urgency; and the factions want to kill each other, which leads some people to suppose that a single political movement does not exist. The Brotherhood in Egypt evolved long ago into a go-slow faction. (The Brotherhood’s intellectual leader, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is regarded as a “centrist,” took the view, a couple of years ago when the Brothers were in power in Egypt, that Quranic punitive amputations should be revived only after five years had passed, instead of immediately.) And the Islamic State has arisen in Syria and Iraq to offer a go-fast alternative (which it advertises by conducting its ritual beheadings on video, for the universal edification). But slow and fast are tactical considerations. In the long run, everyone among the Islamists, centrists and hot-heads ecumenically alike, agrees that, in the revolutionary future, the caliphate of yore will be reestablished—though naturally this development can be interpreted modestly or grandiosely, depending on the factional orientation. And everyone agrees on the philosophical criticism of modern alienation.
Do these Islamist ideas and urgings represent a throwback to earlier times? Foucault thought so. He had the opportunity to observe firsthand the Islamist revolution in Iran in its early stages, and he figured that he was witnessing an event resembling the millenarian Christian insurgencies of Thomas Münzer and Savonarola in the early modern era. Which might be true, to a degree. Still, I think it more useful to regard the movement as one more totalitarian upsurge of the 20th century, after the Stalinists and the Fascists and the Nazis, sometimes with direct influences from each of those earlier causes. Notably influential on the Islamists has been Catholic fascism in its French version—namely, the Catholic monarchism of the Vichy scientist Alexis Carrel, who dreamed of restoring the medieval grandeurs. (Meanwhile he advocated gas chambers as a way of getting rid of inferior people—even as he worked at Rockefeller University in New York!) To abolish modern alienation was precisely Carrel’s concern. It is strange that Foucault never noticed the French influence.
The Islamist mania about diabolical Jewish conspiracies, as defined by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, represents merely one more influence from Europe. It is odd to observe that, in the Islamist literature, the Protocols figure just as prominently as they did among the Nazis, not just in the writings of semi-literates. Heidegger took the Protocols seriously as an expression of the diabolical conspiracy, and so did Sayyid Qutb, who was the Heidegger of the Islamists. Sayyid Qutb’s brother Muhammad was the professor of Bin Laden, who himself was the leader in Afghanistan of an Algerian jihadi named Djamel Beghal, who became the guru of Chérif Kouachi, one of the Paris jihadis just now, during Kouachi’s time in a French prison.
And the Islamists, like their totalitarian counterparts in Europe, sum up these various impulses and inspirations by embracing a cult of death, which brings them to the thrilling crossroads of nihilism and the eternal. Maybe the Islamists have outdone everyone else on this question, even if, so far, they have lacked the industrial capacities of the Nazis. The Islamists are proud, even so, to proclaim genocide as a principle. This has been true among the mainstream organizations such as Hamas, and it is true of Qaradawi, who is nothing if not mainstream, and is equally true of the Islamic State, with its takfiri zeal to slaughter the Yazidis and the Shia and everyone else. As for the promotion of suicide, the Islamists are, of course, the most extraordinary political movement in the history of the world. Still, suicide as an element of political radicalism is not original to them, as the readers of Dostoevsky will recall.
Why, then, do people who are not clinically insane throw themselves into this kind of insanity? Why do they do so even in the world’s wealthiest and most peaceful of countries? They do so because the apocalyptic dreams and the cult of hatred and murder and the yearning for death are fundamentals of modern culture. They enlist because they are unhappy, and the eschatological rebellion against everyday morality satisfies them. The Islamist idea, in its most extreme version especially, offers every solace that a mopey young person could desire. It proposes an explanation of unhappiness. It ascribes the alienation to a conspiracy. Its stipulation of Jewish evil justifies the joys of loathing and murder. It promises a radiant future.
Meanwhile, it offers the joys of romantic costuming, which have always figured prominently in the totalitarian appeal. Instead of the black shirts of Mussolini’s men, or the brown shirts of the Nazi paramilitaries, here is the Islamic State’s black uniform, which the Brothers Kouachi went to some trouble to don in order to slaughter the Charlie cartoonists. And the jihad offers the glamour of suicide. It is a sexually marvelous suicide, to be awarded posthumously and preposterously with the delights to be had from 72 virgins. But the jihad issues its call to suicide also by offering something not at all preposterous or false. This is posthumous fame and glory among one’s fellow jihadis, during the interim before their own martyrdom. Le Monde has reported that, at a high-security prison in France, when the news of the Paris attacks penetrated into the cellblocks, some of the prisoners spent two days screaming “Allahu Akbar” in triumph—a news report that would have caused the Brothers Kouachi and their comrade Coulibaly, the third gunman (himself a disciple of Beghal, the disciple of Bin Laden), to weep in joy, if only they had lived to hear about it. Of course they knew this was going to happen. That is why they did it.
・Paul Berman writes about politics and literature for various magazines. He is the author of A Tale of Two Utopias, Terror and Liberalism, Power and the Idealists, and The Flight of the Intellectuals.
5.Japan Times(http://www.japantimes.co.jp)
Japan’s Muslims dismiss Islamic State as un-Islamic, 1 February 2015
by Kazuaki Nagata, Staff Writer
Muslim residents of Japan on Sunday expressed their condolences for the murder of journalist Kenji Goto and said they were angry about the Islamic State group’s actions.
“We are very, very sorry about this bad news and I am telling the Japanese people that we are very, very sorry,” said Mohamad H. Loghmani, a 44-year-old Iranian resident of Tokyo.
He said the Islamic State group has non-Islamic aims: a hunger for money, power and blood. He said he does not consider its fighters to be Muslims.
“I am telling the Japanese people that Muslim people in the world . . . like Japanese people because they are kind and friendly people,” he said. Loghmani was speaking at a charity bazaar at the Iranian ambassador’s residence in Tokyo on Sunday to raise funds for victims of natural disasters in Iran.
Another visitor to the bazaar was Iranian Nader Mansouri, 52. He, too, was disgusted by the actions of the Islamic State extremists.
“I don’t recognize them as Muslims; I don’t even recognize them as humans,” Mansouri said.
He said he despises the way the extremists threaten others and suggested that if they are so sure of themselves they should ditch their masks and anonymity.
The Islamic State group released a video on the Internet Sunday of Goto’s apparent execution that appeared to show his headless body.
After spending decades covering the Middle East, Goto was captured in Syria while trying to negotiate the release of his friend and fellow hostage Haruna Yukawa.
Japanese Muslim Shigeru Shimoyama, 65, said by phone that he had been praying for Goto’s release every day with fellow Muslims.
“This is truly unfortunate,” Shimoyama said.
He said Goto’s reporting had focused on critical social issues, such as poverty and civil strife, in the places like the Middle East and Africa. He said people worldwide must think seriously about solving such problems in order to pass on what Goto was trying to convey.
He also said people need to develop a greater appreciation of different cultures so such a tragedy will not be repeated.
“There are prejudices and misunderstandings about the Muslim religion. Those things could lead to the next crisis.”
（End）
