Solsticewitch13's BOS

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2817/shafia-honor-killings

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A Muslim activist group with links to the Muslim Brotherhood has asked the British government to restrict the way the British media reports about Muslims and Islam.

The effort to silence criticism of Islam comes amid an ongoing public inquiry into British press standards following a phone-hacking scandal involving the News of the World and other British newspapers.

The Leveson Inquiry, established by British Prime Minister David Cameron in July 2011, is currently considering how to increase government oversight of the British media.

But in a move that many worry will result in government regulation of the Internet, Lord Justice Leveson, a British judge who serves as Chairman of the inquiry, now says he wants to include Internet bloggers into any system of press regulation that he proposes.

Observers say the Leveson Inquiry's effort to regulate blogging, combined with the Muslim attempt to ban negative reporting about Islam, poses a clear threat to free speech in Britain.

Appearing before the Leveson Inquiry on January 24, Muslim activist Inayat Bunglawala said the amount of negative stories about Muslims in Britain is "demonizing" Islam and fuelling a "false narrative." He called on the government to do all it can to "ensure a fairer portrayal, a more balanced portrayal of the faith of Islam" in the British media.

In a separate written submission, Bunglawala complained about the "enormous impact of coverage that is proven to be inaccurate, inflammatory, prejudicial and detrimental" to the representation of Islam in Britain.

He continued: "British Muslims as a social group collectively suffer from poor media practices, whether this be the excessive attention granted to fringe Muslim groups, like Muslims Against Crusades, by the media or poor fact-checking prior to publication. Improving media practices and media responsibility on portraying and reporting fairly on Islam and British Muslims, without bias or discrimination or intent to incite anti-Muslim prejudice, is an urgent concern."

His solution: The British media needs a "more robust system of self-regulation…one which mandates the right…to challenge misrepresentations, inaccuracies and false reporting."

Lord Justice Leveson expressed sympathy for Bunglawala's plea and said that any government regulation of the British media would have to extend to the Internet and include blogs, so as to ensure a "level playing field" between print and online media.

Lord Hunt, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, a self-regulatory body which deals with complaints about the editorial content of newspapers and magazines, recently said he is looking into the idea of regulating bloggers and online publications. According to him, "at the moment, it [the Internet] is like the Wild West out there. We need to appoint a sheriff."

Lord Hunt would invite bloggers on current affairs to voluntarily agree to regulation. They would receive a seal-of-approval rating that they would lose if complaints against them were repeatedly upheld.

This plan would please Muslim activists such as Bunglawala, who say they are offended by Islamophobia but have no problems purveying anti-Semitic rhetoric about Jews, Zionists, Jewish power and the "Tribe of Judah."

Bunglawala, who says he represents mainstream moderate Muslim opinion, is a director of the Muslim Council of Britain, a self-appointed umbrella group that is closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. He strongly objects to the use of the phrase "Islamic terrorism" and has described Osama bin Laden as a "freedom fighter for hundreds of Muslims in Britain."

Bunglawala said the blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, was "courageous" and living out his "calling on Muslims to fulfill their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere."

In 2010, Bunglawala published an article in the Guardian newspaper entitled, "If We Care about Free Speech, Let these Muslim Speakers In," in which he urged the British government to "demonstrate its commitment to liberal values" by allowing two Muslim "hate preachers" to enter the United Kingdom.

The late Christopher Hitchens described Bunglawala this way: "A preposterous and sinister individual named Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain and a man with a public record of support for Osama bin Laden, was made a convener of Blair's task force on extremism despite his stated belief that the BBC and the rest of the media are 'Zionist controlled.'"

As for the BBC, it already self-regulates when it comes to reporting on Islam. Consider a recent 700-word article on the proliferation of honor-based violence in Britain, in which the BBC failed to mention the words "Muslim," "Islamic" or "Islam" even once.

A poll of Muslims in Britain found little support for freedom of speech. Nearly 80% of Muslims in Britain said that the publishers of the Danish cartoons depicting the Muslim Mohammed should be prosecuted; 68% said that those who insult Islam should be prosecuted; and 62% of Muslims in Britain disagree that freedom of speech should be allowed if it insults and offends religious groups.

Meanwhile, the European Union has offered to host the next meeting of the so-called Istanbul Process, an aggressive effort by Muslim countries to make it an international crime to criticize Islam.

The Istanbul Process -- its explicit aim is to enshrine in international law a global ban on all critical scrutiny of Islam and/or Islamic Sharia law -- is being spearheaded by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a bloc of 57 Muslim countries.

Based in Saudi Arabia, the OIC has long pressed the European Union and the United States to impose limits on free speech and expression about Islam.

But the OIC has now redoubled its efforts and is engaged in a determined diplomatic offensive to persuade Western democracies to implement United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution 16/18, which calls on all countries to combat "intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of … religion and belief." (Analysis of the OIC's war on free speech can be found here and here.)

Resolution 16/18, which was adopted at HRC headquarters in Geneva in March 2011, and was recently backed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the most recent Istanbul Process Conference in Washington in December, is widely viewed as a significant step forward in OIC efforts to advance the international legal concept of defaming Islam.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

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"A Sick Notion of Honor"

by Raheel Raza
February 6, 2012 at 4:30 am

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2820/tunisia-kill-the-jews

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"You have each been convicted of the planned and deliberate murder of four members of your family. The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honor, a notion of honor that is founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honor that has absolutely no place in any civilized society." Ontario Judge Robert Maranger, delivering the verdict in the Shafia murder case.

On Sunday, January 29, 2012, the Ontario Superior Court imposed mandatory sentences of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, on Mohammad Shafia, 58, his younger, second wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed Shafia, 21. The polygamous Shafia family had come to Canada from Afghanistan. The accused had strong defence lawyers; and the jury deliberated for 15 hours before coming to a unanimous verdict.

The trio were all found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. Canada does not impose death sentences and will not extradite people within its borders to jurisdictions that order capital punishment.

The story of this crime began in 2009. Three sisters – Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 – and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, the older and childless first wife of Mohammad Shafia, were found dead in a black Nissan Sentra at the bottom of the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills, Canada. The court determined that they had been drowned, then placed in the vehicle, which was pushed into the canal.

The Shafia case elicited what seemed to me an inappropriate – and un-Islamic – reaction among Canadian Muslims. Debate focused on whether the crime was a so-called "honor" murder, rather than the unspeakable suffering and deaths of the victims.

Some Muslims shied away from the spectre of so-called "honor" murder, seeking to downgrade the slaying of four innocents to problem of "teenage adjustment" or an example of "domestic violence."

Let us be clear. Domestic violence is abominable, and so-called "honor" murders are the most dreadful form of domestic violence. Neither should be permitted in any society or within Islam.

Few Canadian Muslims addressed any means to protect Muslim women from such a fate. The main defendant, the "patriarch" of the family, repeatedly cited "honor" as an obsession – which he shares with many Muslims in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia, and other Islamic countries.

To some, it seemed as if the alleged "honor" of the main killer was more valuable than the denial of honor to the victims. Perhaps "dignity" is a more accurate concept than "honor:" the four dead were unarguably denied the right to, and dignity of, a peaceful life and death. The three girls and the first wife were dishonored by being murdered; not the homicidal, fanatical father. That is how a normal and sane Muslim should view this case.

Mohammad Shafia declared, "This is my word to you: Be I dead or alive, nothing in the world is above your honor... I am telling you now and I was telling you before that whoever play(s) with my honor, my words are the same... There is no value of life without honor."

The Qur'an, the Islamic scripture, follows explicitly the judgment of Jewish law by stating, in verse (aya) 5:32, that God "dictated to the House of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless in retaliation for a killing or corruption of the people – it is as if the murderer had killed all of humanity. And whoever saves one from death – it is as if the person saved all of humanity."

So-called "honor" murders, as in the Afghan and Kurdish Sunni Muslim cultures, appear to predate Islamization. But Muslim clerics have failed in their religious duty to prevent them. This raises serious questions about the value of a Muslim woman's life in such an environment.

Domestic violence, often culminating in so-called "honor" murders, is not limited to the Muslim communities of the world. In Britain and the U.S. the perpetrators of some would deem a variety of "crimes of passion" include every ethnic group in society.

Among Muslims and Hindus living in the West, so-called "honor" murders typically involve "punishment" of young women for refusing to conform to retrograde customs, rules, and oversight. In the Shafia case, the Afghan father considered his daughters "too Westernized."

Other cases involve independence of thought and action by those who are then slain, or disapproved gender mixing, leading to ostracism, hysteria by parents, and bloodshed.

Men from Afghanistan and other Muslim countries are convinced they are guardians of women's virtue, and are obliged to control their wives, daughters, and even their mothers to enforce the "code of honor."

In another cultural stream marked by social pathology, members of youth gangs increasingly kill rivals or uninvolved bystanders because they feel "disrespected." The psychology is identical: both the so-called "honor" murderer and the gang member deserve no respect from the rest of society, especially not from people of religion.

Muslim women caught in this paradigm of stagnant pseudo-morality may first be warned, then attacked, with acid thrown in their faces or other mutilations, before they are finally battered to death. This twisted sense of "honor" may induce family members to conspire, as in the Shafia case, to commit these crimes, because "honor" is defined by group responsibility rather than individual worth.

In some countries, so-called "honor" murders are not stigmatized. The perpetrators are acclaimed as heroes.

According to a United Nations report, 4,000 women were killed in Pakistan in the name of honor between 1998 and 2003. In a study of female deaths in Alexandria, Egypt, 47% of the women were killed by a relative after the woman had been raped. In Jordan and Lebanon, 70 to 75% of the perpetrators of so-called "honor murders" are the women's brothers. Further, part of Article 340 of the Royal Jordanian Penal Code states, "he who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery and kills, wounds, or injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty."

Paradoxically, for too many decades, even centuries, the concept of the "crime of passion," as well as the original doctrine of "temporary insanity" or "diminished responsibility" functioned similarly in Western law to protect the murderers.

Muslims need to find positive ways to deal with this blot on our faith. Communities must educate male leaders about respecting equal rights for women within the religion as well as obeying the guarantees in the constitutions of many countries.

Immigrants must be informed of the legal requirements of a responsible newcomer to a country that seeks to protect women and children. Traditionally, prospective Muslim emigrants to non-Muslim lands were warned, in the words of Muhammad himself, that a Muslim in a non-Muslim country must obey the laws and customs of the country to which the Muslim moves, or return to a Muslim country.

But women – Muslim women – must first take the initiative in defending their right to personal security. In many countries of the world the law provides means to do so. Elsewhere the struggle for legal protection as well as social enlightenment has just begun.

We must hope that the verdict in the Shafia trial will contribute to clearer understanding of the nature of so-called "honor" murders.

Raheel Raza is author of "Their Jihad – Not My Jihad" and a women's rights activist living in Toronto. This piece was commissioned by the Center for Islamic Pluralism.

Tunisia: "Kill the Jews"

by Mohshin Habib
February 6, 2012 at 3:30 am

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2821/arab-heroes

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Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, Silvan Shalom, the descendant of a Tunisian family, recently called on the Tunisian Jewish community to leave the country and emigrate to Israel. A few members of the media, including the BBC, reported on his remark, brought on by the rise of the Islamists there, but noted that the few Jews remaining in Tunisia had rejected the call.

In Tunisia, the Islamist Ennahda party won the most votes, 41.7%, in last election, following the ouster of Tunisian long time president Zine Al-Abedin Ben Ali.

According to the January 31 BBC report, Attoun Khalifa, a senior figure of the Jewish community said, "I am a Tunisian Jew. I know my country well. I am against the proposition to leave because no one here is afraid. I do not tell Shalom where to go."

Gilles Jacob Lellouche, owner of a kosher restaurant said, "I am proud of being a Tunisian Jew. Where would I go -- to Europe? Come on, I am not stupid. To Israel? I am not that stupid either."

Earlier, as the only candidate not elected in the October 23 election, Lellouche said." I want to break the taboo that someone from a minority cannot get involved in politics."

Rabbi Daniel Cohen of the Beit Mordechai Synagogue said, "The problems between Israelis and Palestinians should not be a concern to such an extent that it has caused some people to become extremist and anti-Semitic." He added," I am sure the Tunisian Government does not want this to happen, as even Ennahda can not afford to have this kind of extremism take over a section of Tunisian community."

And an unnamed Jewish jeweler said on Tunisialivenet, "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not our problem. I have grown up my whole life breaking bread with my Muslim neighbors, living freely with my Muslim friends."

For his part, Rashid Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahda Party said, "In our party's rules and in the country's constitution, it is important to emphasize that all our faiths and traditions are respected equally."

And last month the new President of Tunisia, Moncef Marzouki, asked the Tunisian Jews to return to the country.

In practice, however, the scenario is a bit different. During the recent welcomed visit of Ismail Haniyeh to Tunisia, the extremely conservative pro-Saudi Salafists chanted at the airport, "Kick the Jews -- it is our religious duty. Expel the Jews -- it is our religious duty. Kill the Jews -- it is our religious duty."

The Ennahda-backed government said in a press release that the slogans do not reflect Islam and its principles. But some reliable sources, such as Roger Bismuth, president of Tunisian Jewish community, observed that not only were the Salafists saying this, but Ennahda party supporters as well, who were also chanting, "Tuez les Juifs – Kill the Jews."

As the visit by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was an official state visit -- he met Prime Minister Hamadi Jebani and other high officials -- many analysts strongly believe that in course of time, after their power is more solidly established, Rashid Ghanouchi and his Ennahda Party will reveal their true Islamist image.

Some observers are asking, "Is it possible for a Jewish community to live under an 'Arab democracy with Muslim coloring'?"

The Jewish people inherited Tunisia more than two thousand years back, after the dispersal of the Jews from what is now Israel in about 67 CE. Even more Jews came to Tunisia during the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. In 1956, at the time of independence from France, the local Jewish population numbered at least 100,000; but the new government imposed a series of anti-Jewish measures. In 1958, the Tunisian government abolished the Jewish Community Council and ordered the demolition of ancient Synagogues and cemeteries.

Since the rise of Islam in Tunisia, the Jews have been obliged to choose either conversion or submission to dhimmitude, the status of second-class citizens who, among many repressive rules, have to pay an extra "tax" [jizya] to buy "protection."

Similarly to what occurred in the World War I and World War II, there was a wide rumor in 1967 that Tunisian Jews had helped the French Army. Consequently there occurred a number of anti-Semitic acts: demonstrators stormed into the Synagogues and burned the holy Torah. Thus people gradually drove the Jews out of the land. Now, under the rule of new "Islamist-Democrats," there are fewer than 1,500 hundred Jews living in Tunisia.

It is a challenge to the only parliamentary republic, the Jewish-majority state of Israel, and the mainstream Jewish community that some of the Jewish Diaspora, especially the young generation do not care about their identity. Some neutral observers are nevertheless deeply concerned that every society can have different moods that turn on changing situations: What will happen to the Jewish Diaspora in Tunisia if, for example, Israel becomes involved in a state of war against any of its Muslim neighboring states? Tunisia is now totally under Islamic control. How much can anyone depend on Ennahda's oral commitment?

Jews were once deceived by the Germans (who are now trying to absorb some Sharia law into their country) who used the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" or "Work Shall Make You Free." But the world knows very well how millions of Jews were freed – from their lives.

Perhaps some of the learned people around the world will start to appreciate Silvan Shalom's beckoning.

Related Topics: Mohshin Habib

Arab Heroes
But Where Is The West?

by Ali Alyami
February 6, 2012 at 3:15 am

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2818/french-army-change-route-after-turkey-ban

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While President Obama and his European counterparts are going out of their way to apologize for defending their citizens' democratic way of life and to assure Muslims, especially the rich Gulf royals, that the West is not "at war with Islam" but rather with terrorists groups such as Al-Qaeda, a cadre of Saudi women is unabashedly challenging Saudi religious extremism and its destructive impact on them, their children, society and the international community.

Prominent among those opposing the ferocious, divisive and hate-promoting religious extremists is a fearless Saudi Princess, Basma Bint Saud. According to a recent interview by the Independent newspaper, UK, "She is the 115th - and last - child of King Saud, the eldest surviving son of Saudi Arabia's founding monarch Abdul Aziz." Basma ("Smile" in Arabic) grew up in luxury, was trained by nuns, is a divorced mother of five and a successful restaurateur who now resides in London to protect her children from possible family reprisals for her outspokenness. She challenges her family's tyrannical rule, rampant corruption and dysfunctional institutions, which she justifiably blames for the government's colossal failure to meet its obligations toward its marginalized populations, especially women and children.

One of her targets is the vicious Saudi government's voluntary religious police, known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, or the "Hay'ah" in Arabic. She has correctly challenged their religious legitimacy and their offensive treatment of the public, particularly women. Like many Saudis and human rights groups, she largely attributes the country's backwardness to the medieval mentality and spiteful behavior of the Hay'ah as exemplified by their high-handed treatment of people as guilty until they prove their innocence. In one of her piercing and expressive narratives she wrote, "I searched and re-searched in history's archives, in the Prophet and in his Companions' books and found no mention of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice; but found a phrase in the Quran that said: All Muslims should promote virtue and prevent vice."

Princess Basma stands out because of her status and royal affiliations, which make her work considerably weighty. However, she is not the only or most productive woman who is challenging the government's fierce "religious" police and their relentless social, political and economic war against Saudi women whom the illiterate "religious" police consider incomplete human beings and "perpetual minors." There are many courageous non-royal Saudi women activist pioneers in the academia, businesses, financial, media and technical fields, as well as ordinary mothers, sisters and wives who are demanding better and humane treatment, including the removal of all denigrating restrictions inflicted on women, such as the dehumanizing male guardian system; the ban on driving; the denial of economic opportunities, and forced and childhood marriages which, under international declarations on human rights, are considered rape and child trafficking.

Women such as Eman Al Nafjan, Fawzia Al-Bakr, Wajeha Al-Hwaider, Reem Asaad, Alia Banaja, Hatoon Al-Fassi, Suhair Al Qurashi, Manal Al-Sharif, Ebtihal Mubarak, Hissa Hilal and even two of King Abdullah's daughters, Sitta and Adella, just to name a few, are in the forefront in the struggle for women's rights, considered by the religious establishment a Western value designed to destroy Islam's holy traditions. This view translates into male domination over every aspect of women's lives and livelihoods. The institutionalized system of social, political and economic discrimination against half of Saudi society, women, could not succeed if it were not for the blessing of the Saudi ruling elites, especially its staunchest supporter, Interior Minister Prince Naif, the next in line to inherit his family's throne.

What is becoming increasingly and inexplicably clear to the Saudi people in general, but specifically to Saudi women and to other people involved inhuman rights, is the West's continued support for the Saudi autocracy at a time when many Western governments, with the exception of Bahrain, support the Arab people's uprising against despotism, oppression and the rampant squandering of public wealth. The Saudi people hear, read and see people in the West fighting Muslim terrorists in many parts of the world, while in the meantime, the same people in the West are supporting a system whose institutions are well known for their propagation and financing of religious extremists and terrorists worldwide.

Further, many Saudis and other Arab thinkers and analysts of the Arab World have become increasingly suspicious of the West's overt support for the unprecedented Arab people's uprising. Many began to theorize that the West is in favor of empowering anti-democracy Islamist and Salafist groups, as in Egypt and Tunisia now. These observers argue, mostly in the social media and in one-to-one discussions, that by reaching out to and embracing religiously-based parties who rose to power as a result of the Arab Uprising, the West has duplicitous objectives. These observers see the West's acquiescing to Islamist efforts to derail and Islamize the Arab Uprising as further evidence of the West's duplicity and hidden objectives.

The most convincing argument about the West's double-standard and assumed objectives is presented by many Saudi women from all walks of life, who ask simple questions that are hard to dismiss as conspiratorial or fabricated stories. They ask: If we are willing to face imprisonment, lose our jobs and families, be stigmatized and humiliated under the autocratic and theocratic Saudi system for trying to rid ourselves and the world of dangerous ideologues, why does not the West, which claims to be fighting the same extremists, support our struggle publicly and unequivocally?

The Saudi women's march for their legitimate and citizenship rights are unstoppable and irreversible, whether the Saudi ruling men and their supporters in the West like it or not. Given this courageous reality, wouldn't it be prudent for Western government and their institutions to support Saudi women, especially as they are in the forefront in the fight against religious extremism which poses such a real threat to democracies worldwide?

Related Topics: Ali Alyami

French Army Change Route After Turkey Ban
And more from the Turkish Press

by AK Group
February 6, 2012 at 3:00 am