Formerly "Hudson Institute, New York"
In this mailing:
- Soeren Kern: France Goes Halal
- Aidan Clay: Arab Spring Brings the Decline of Secularism in Tunisia
- Taylor Dinerman: China's Middle East Calculations and Miscalculations
- Peter Martino: France Prepares for a Major Political Realignment
- Raymond Ibrahim: Tawriya: "Creative Lying" Advocated in Islam
- AK Group: Republican People's Party Strives for 'New CHP'
- Alan M. Dershowitz: Should Harvard Sponsor a One –Sided Conference Seeking the End of Israel?
- Alan M. Dershowitz: Media Matters Hurts Obama
France Goes Halal
by Soeren Kern
February 28, 2012 at 5:00 am
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2886/france-halal
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The halal issue is about more than just meat.
A French television documentary has revealed that all of the slaughterhouses in the greater Paris metropolitan area are now producing all of their meat in accordance with Islamic Sharia law.
The exposé broadcast by France 2 television also alleged that much of the religiously slaughtered meat known as halal is not labeled as such and is entering the general food chain, where it is being unwittingly consumed by the non-Muslim population.
The revelation has sparked political controversy in France, where Islam and the question of Muslim immigration has become a central issue in the presidential campaign.
Halal, which in Arabic means lawful or legal, is a term designating any object or action that is permissible according to Sharia law. In the context of food, halal meat is derived from animals slaughtered by hand according to methods stipulated in Islamic religious texts.
One such halal method, called dhabihah, consists of making a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife on the neck that cuts the jugular vein, leaving the animal to bleed to death. Much of the controversy involving halal stems from the fact that Sharia law bans the practice of stunning the animals before they are slaughtered. Pre-slaughter stunning renders the animals unconscious and thus is said to lessen pain.
Not surprisingly, far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has turned the halal controversy into a campaign issue. Speaking to supporters at a February 18-19 congress of her National Front party in the northern city of Lille, Le Pen said: "All the abattoirs in the Paris region sell halal meat without exception. They have succumbed to the rules of a minority. We have reason to be disgusted."
Le Pen added: "This situation is a real deception and the government has been fully aware of this situation for months." She then accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of bowing down to "Islamic radicals."
Sarkozy responded by saying that Le Pen had her facts wrong. Although the slaughterhouses in Paris do in fact slaughter all of their animals according to halal methods, local abattoirs provide only a relatively small amount of the meat consumed in the capital. Sarkozy said that most of the meat consumed in Paris originates in slaughterhouses located in other parts of France that do not necessarily follow halal procedures.
While Sarkozy may be right on the details, Le Pen has seized on an issue that resonates with millions of French voters.
According to the France2 documentary, French slaughterhouses produce far more halal meat than is needed to serve the estimated six million Muslims who live in France. The documentary reported that roughly 30% of all the meat produced in France is halal, while the Muslim population in France comprises approximately 7% of the total French population.
To avoid the costs associated with running separate production lines for halal and non-halal customers, French slaughterhouses are selling the remaining 23% of halal meat as non-halal. As a result, a significant amount of the meat being sold in French grocery stores is actually unlabeled halal and, according to France2 television, French consumers are being tricked into buying products they normally would not eat.
Halal is big business in France, which has the largest Muslim population in the European Union. The halal food market in France has more than doubled over the past five years and is now valued at €5.5 billion ($7 billion). The sector is now more than twice as large as that for organic foods and industry experts expect the demand for halal to grow at more than 20% annually.
Around 85% of the halal market in France involves fresh meat sold by halal butchers. But in recent years, the fastest-growing niche in France's halal food sector has been halal-certified cold cuts, sauces, soups, ready-made dishes, baby foods and other processed food products. Halal meat is also proliferating on menus of schools, hospitals and company cafeterias across France.
Not everyone is comfortable with what some say is the stealth Islamization of the French food chain.
After the Franco-Belgian fast-food chain, Quick, removed bacon burgers from its menu and replaced them with a version using halal beef and a slice of smoked turkey, René Vandierendonck, the socialist mayor of the northern French city of Roubaix, said the move amounted to discrimination against non-Muslim customers.
Vandierendonck filed charges with justice authorities against Quick for what he said is prejudicial religious catering. He also lodged a complaint with France's main anti-discrimination authority on the matter. Marine Le Pen said Quick's halal option is "an Islamic tax" on diners.
Xavier Bertrand, secretary general of the ruling conservative Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) said that Quick's menu change is undermining France's secular, integrationist social model.
As Muslim values increasingly influence French public policy, the halal issue is about more than just meat; it is also about ideology. Some analysts say halal is a tool that the Muslim minority is using to impose aspects of Sharia law on the non-Muslim majority in France and other European countries. Others say halal is being used by Islamic leaders as a vehicle to prevent the integration of Muslim immigrants in the West.
According to a major new study on the rise of Islam in French cities, halal is increasingly being used to assert a separate Muslim identity. The 2,200-page report titled "Banlieue de la République" (["Suburbs of the Republic"] is the result of a one-year research effort into the four "I's" that comprise the heart of the debate over French national identity: Islam, immigration, identity and insecurity.
The report was commissioned by the influential French think-tank L'Institut Montaigne, and directed by Gilles Kepel, a well-known specialist on the Muslim world, together with five other French researchers.
The authors of the study were especially taken aback by the explosion of the halal market in France in recent years and they point out that the contemporary meaning of the term halal has been greatly expanded in its definition.
According to the report, the survey question "do you respect halal?" highlights the "complexity of different meanings of the word, which in its most restrictive sense means only the dimension of the forbidden food, but may also include a code of conduct, standards and an expression of dominant values, separating the 'halal' from 'haram,' the lawful or unlawful in many aspects of society."
The report continues: "One of the major transformations in France in a quarter century is the ubiquity of halal, which can no longer be reduced to the already thorny business of school lunches. Halal goes far beyond meat and deeply touches the flesh. Halal involves complex benchmarks to define the legal and illegal. These laws are dynamic and are linked to social control and moral order."
The report concludes: "This explosion of halal is one of the most significant phenomena in the transformation and identity affirmation of Islam in France in the first decade of the 21st century."
Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics: Soeren Kern
Arab Spring Brings the Decline of Secularism in Tunisia
by Aidan Clay
February 28, 2012 at 4:30 am
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2894/tunisia-secularism
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[Gannouchi] is for democracy "as a system of government and a method of change," but only insofar as it is compatible with Islam. "It's like the Middle Ages."
Throughout the Middle East, long-standing dictators just ousted in the Arab Spring are being replaced by more oppressive forms of governance, even in the Arab world's most liberal country, Tunisia.
Widely seen as the most secular country that recently deposed long-standing leaders, many believed that Tunisia had the greatest opportunity to elect a moderate government concerned with democratic principles and human rights. However, the hopes of secularists, Christians, and other minorities were crippled in October when the Islamist Ennahda party won 41 percent of the votes for a national constitutional assembly, a one-year body charged with writing a constitution.
Along with other Islamist movements, Ennahda – at the time called the Movement of the Islamic Tendency – had been outlawed under former President Zine El Abedine Ben Ali. Robin Wright, an American foreign affairs analyst and author of Sacred Rage, described the Islamic Tendency as "the single most threatening opposition force [to Ben Ali's regime] in Tunis."
Ennahda's founder and chairman is Rashid Ghannouchi. He considers himself a pupil of Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini, defended the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and supported Saddam Hussein's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990. In a speech given in Khartoum just before the Gulf War erupted, Ghannouchi said, "We must wage unceasing war against the Americans until they leave the land of Islam, or we will burn and destroy all their interests across the entire Islamic world," The Brussels Journal reported.
Martin Kramer, the renowned Middle East scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, labeled Ghannouchi "the most prominent Islamist in the West" during his 22-year exile in the U.K. At an Islamic Conference on Palestine attended by leaders of Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in 1990, Ghannouchi said, "The greatest danger to civilization, religion and world peace is the United States Administration. It is the Great Satan."
The international community has ignored this extremist rhetoric and extolled Tunisia's revolutionary motives for 'greater freedoms.' However, Ennahda is beginning to show its true colors by attacking freedom of speech and tacitly disregarding violent Islamist movements calling for an Islamic state.
Death of Free Speech
Nabil Karoui, the owner of Tunisian channel Nessma TV, is currently on trial for blasphemy after airing the French-Iranian animated film Persepolis which features a cartoon depiction of God and is considered sacrilege to some Muslims. Nearly 140 lawyers filed lawsuits against Karoui for "violating sacred values" and "disturbing public order," Tunisia Live reported. Following the release of the film in Tunisia, a Salifist-led mob damaged Karoui's house with Molotov cocktails on October 14. If convicted, Karoui could face three to five years in prison. His trial has been adjourned until April 19, 2012.
"I am very sad when I see that the people that burned my house are free while I am here because I broadcast a film which was authorized," Karoui told reporters outside the courtroom. He described the trial as the "death of freedom of expression [in Tunisia]," AP reported.
While Human Rights Watch called the trial "a disturbing turn for the nascent Tunisian democracy," Ghannouchi, the voice of the Ennahda party, backed the trial, saying, "I support the Tunisians' right to denounce this attack on their religion," reported The New York Times.
On February 15, in a second disturbing attack on free speech in Tunisia, a publisher and two editors of Tunisia's Attounissia newspaper were arrested on charges of violating public morals for publishing a revealing photograph of a German-Tunisian football player with his girlfriend. The arrests raised further concerns among secularists that the Islamist-led government will increasingly seek to censor material it deems offensive to Islam.
Mongi Khadraoui, a senior member of the Tunisian journalists' union, told The Independent that article 121 of Tunisia's penal code, which was used to detain the three journalists, was introduced to arrest opponents of Ben Ali's 23-year-old regime, and that, while the publication of the photograph was a mistake, it "should be treated as a professional error rather than a crime."
"This issue is political and aims to quell the voice of the media and stop it [from] criticizing the government," Jihen Lagmari, a journalist at Attounissia, told Reuters. Lagmari also said she received telephone calls threatening to burn down the paper's headquarters.
Islamists vs. Secularists
On February 17, hundreds of Salafis – who follow the strict Wahhabi doctrine of Islam – protested in the streets of Tunis with signs calling for Islamic law and shouting "Allah Akbar" after Friday prayers, AP reported.
Thus, Islamists have used their newly gained freedoms to threaten the very freedoms and values of secularists. If Islamists continue to gain power, violations against the rights of non-Muslims and liberals will inevitably continue. However, some believe the elections – that brought the Islamist Ennahda party to power – do not accurately represent the voice of the population's majority.
"In October 2011, when Tunisia's first post-revolutionary national elections took place… the turnout was 80 percent; but not, as was deceptively reported by the Western media, 80 percent of the total Tunisian population, but rather 80 percent of the 50 percent who had bothered to register to vote," British author and journalist John R. Bradley wrote in his book After the Arab Spring. "In other words: Ennahda won despite the fact that more than 80 percent of all voting-age Tunisians did not actually vote for the party."
Tunis witnessed the secularists' response when over 6,000 demonstrators chanted slogans "No to extremism" and "No niqab, no to Salafism" in a march for freedom of expression on January 28, Tunisia Live reported. Protestors also called for the government to stop the rise of an Islamist-based society, which would derail Tunisia's transition to democracy and threaten the gains made by the revolution.
Mustapha Tlili, the founder of the New York-based Center for Dialogues, views the recent actions taken by Islamists as an indicator that Islamists are hijacking the revolution. "Those that staged the revolution see it being stolen and hijacked," Tlili told Middle East Online. "The Islamists' discourse is to withdraw Tunisia from its natural environment and make it adopt Islamist values that are not those of the majority of Tunisians. They reject these values because they are not part of their daily life or vision of Islam."
"We've become the ahl al-dhimma," Abdelhalim Messaoudi, a journalist at Nessma TV, told The New York Times in reference to the second-class status minorities have historically been subjected to in Muslim states. "It's like the Middle Ages."
What's Next? An Islamic State?
On February 20, Aridha Chaabia, or Popular List, the third-largest party in Tunisia's constituent assembly, proposed drafting a constitution based on Islamic law, Reuters reported. If the proposal wins the support of more than 60 percent of parliamentarians, it could pass without a referendum. Rashid Ghannouchi's Ennahda party, which will have the strongest voice in the vote, has already alluded to its endorsement of an Islamic-based constitution.
Hamadi Jebali, the Prime Minister of the Ennahda party, implied in mid-November that he sought a return of the Muslim caliphate. He further stated at a rally near his hometown of Sousse, standing side-by-side with a lawmaker from the Islamic Palestinian movement Hamas, that "the liberation of Tunisia will, God willing, bring about the liberation of Jerusalem," The Jerusalem Post reported.
"[Ghannouchi's] only condition for Muslim democracy to flourish is the sharing of the immutable principles of Islam as a shared set of values," Larbi Sadiki, a senior lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, wrote in an editorial for Al Jazeera.
Samir Dilou, spokesman for the Ennahdha Party, tried to ease secularists' concerns in an interview in May: "We do not want a theocracy. We want a democratic state that is characterized by the idea of freedom. The people must decide for themselves how they live…We are not an Islamist party, we are an Islamic party, which gets its direction from the principles of the Quran."
But, can an Islamic party governed by the principles of the Quran value the freedoms of the country's secularists, including its religious minorities? Katharine Cornell Gorka, the Executive Director of The Westminster Institute, does not think so.
"Of all the people in the world, Americans first and foremost should recognize the absurdity of [Dilou's] statement," Gorka wrote. "All the evidence is there to suggest that Tunisia's new government will prove antagonistic both to American interests and to the values America is built on. That is not to suggest we should have intervened to create a different outcome. Tunisia's fate is its own. But neither should we be at the front of the cheering section, applauding what will likely be a long and brutal lesson for Tunisia on what happens when religion is enchained with politics."
Recent indicators in Tunisia suggest that Islam and democracy are not and cannot be compatible. John R. Bradley, in his book After the Arab Spring, offers an alarming glimpse into Tunisia's future governance: "[Ghannouchi] is for democracy 'as a system of government and a method of change' but – and here comes the conversation stopper – only insofar as it is compatible with Islam. The Quran remains the sole authoritative bases for legislation, whose earthly manifestation are the scholars… who interpret it so that the state's function is essentially executive in nature. To put it in a nutshell: Islam is the answer to everything, the final authority, and the sole source of legitimacy of government."
China's Middle East Calculations and Miscalculations
by Taylor Dinerman
February 28, 2012 at 3:45 am
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2882/china-middle-east
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Perhaps China's position is shakier than it appears.
China's most dramatic 21st century Middle Eastern political move so far was its decision on February 4, 2012, to join Russia in vetoing an exceptionally mild and toothless UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria's Assad regime for its ongoing repression of the Syrian people. It was an action made China look like a weak follower of Putin's Russia. The veto aroused the hostility of a growing alliance of traditional Arab regimes, led by Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and the Islamist regimes that emerged from the so-called "Arab spring" revolutions of 2011, and confirmed the Western image of the Beijing government as a friend and supporter of some of the worst regimes on the planet.
It is inevitable that a rising world power such as China will find itself embroiled in the Middle East: not only does China need access to Persian Gulf oil, but due to its commercial and geopolitical stature, China should pay attention to the world's most volatile region. While the chances of a major war beginning in the Middle East are possibly not as high as they were during the Cold War with the former Soviet Union -- when it often seemed that a single incident between the US Navy and the Soviet Navy in the Straight of Hormuz or the Red Sea might ignite a global nuclear war -- the area cannot exactly be described as peaceful.
The Middle East as the heartland of Islam is China's far west -- Xinjiang province, sometimes known as East Turkistan, is home to the large Muslim Uigur population which includes an extremely disgruntled minority. Political and ethnic violence has been slowly increasing. China's drive for regional influence in Central Asia is mostly motivated by Beijing's perceived need to insure that none these states provides support or tolerates a base for Uigur insurgents.
Last November in "American Foreign Policy Interests" magazine, Stephen Blank wrote, "Therefore many, if not most, analysts observe that suppressing the threat of Islamic unrest, whether it manifests itself as terrorism (as Beijing see it), agitation for reforms in the heavily Muslim border province of Xinjiang, expressions of religious or ethno-national protest (which though different seem to be the same thing to Chinese analysts) is the foundation of China's external policies towards Central Asia." In spite of China's successful efforts in building powerful political and economic networks in Central Asia, this may not be enough to tamp down the ongoing unrest in Xinjiang.
China's problems with the Uigurs are not dissimilar to Russia's problems with the Chechen's and with other Muslim ethnicities in the Caucasus region. The Chechens can draw on a worldwide network of Islamist supporters mostly based near the Persian Gulf, who provide cash and volunteers to keep the Jihad alive. China, like Russia, has a strong interest in pushing nations such as Saudi Arabia to stop their citizens from providing aid to these Muslim insurgencies. As long as China is seen as supporting Iran and Syria, whom the Saudis see as a threat to their Kingdom, however, the Saudis, and the rest of the informal anti-Iranian coalition, have no motivation to pressure their own citizens on China's behalf.
China sees the pressure for regime change in the Middle East (or anywhere else) as a long-term threat to the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The leadership in Beijing also sees the tribal fracturing of places such as Libya, Yemen and Syria as setting a bad example for Uigurs, Tibetans and other ethnic minorities.
Compared to the failed and failing nation states of the Middle East, China has integrated its minorities into its national life in a far better, though still unsatisfactory, fashion. Imperial China had centuries of experience in absorbing and pacifying the powerful tribal coalitions that roamed Central Asia. Sometimes these tribal coalitions, like the Mongols and the Manchus, were able to take control of the empire, but in the end they were always transformed and tamed by China.
Does the Beijing leader's current nervousness about instability in the Middle East indicate a lack of confidence in China's traditional ability to cope with its ethnic and religious minorities? Chinese civilization has long had a power to attract and fascinate foreigners. This aspect of China's "Soft Power" should not be underestimated, but if, by their behavior, Beijing's leaders show that they doubt their nation's ability to exercise this power, then perhaps China's position is shakier than it appears.
It will be difficult for China's diplomats to reconcile their desire for good relations with the Arab Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates and the rest, with the policy of providing support for Syria and Iran. Whatever the political strategy, China will inevitably choose to engage with the Middle East independently of the West. From Washington's point of view this is neither a positive nor a negative development, it is merely a fact of life.
China's diplomatic dance in the Middle East may be delicate, but not impossible. After all, US diplomats have managed to force both the Israelis and the Arabs to accept that America has interests and obligations on both sides of that conflict. China's leaders may be able to force Syria and Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia and its friends, to live with its policy of 'friendship' with all sides. As Americans know all too well, however,reconciling contradictory national interests is not easy, especially in the Middle East.
Related Topics: Taylor Dinerman
France Prepares for a Major Political Realignment
by Peter Martino
February 28, 2012 at 3:30 am
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2889/france-political-realignment
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The French President has not been defeated yet.
In early May, France will elect a new president. The chances of reelection for 57-year old Nicolas Sarkozy look slim. The agreement of the eurozone countries to provide Greece with a new bailout of €130bn has postponed a chaotic default of Greece until well after the presidential elections in France next May. That is good news for Sarkozy. But it may not be enough to secure him a second five-year term. Leading figures in Sarkozy's UMP party are already preparing for the post-Sarkozy era.
France elects its president in two rounds. The first ballot is held on April 22. In this first round, voters can choose from all the candidates who are qualified to run for election. To be allowed to run for president, a candidate must collect the signatures of 500 elected French representatives, such as mayors, regional councilors, national deputies and senators, or French members of the European Parliament.
The second ballot is held on May 6. Only the two candidates who win the most votes in the first ballot are allowed to run in the second round. It is generally expected that these two candidates will be Sarkozy and his Socialist rival, 57-year old François Hollande. The polls predict that Hollande will beat Sarkozy in the second round. Ordinary Frenchmen are dissatisfied with Sarkozy's record. When he became president in 2007, Sarkozy promised to counter the islamization process and restore public order in France. He has not been able to turn the tide. Sarkozy is also held responsible for the way in which France and other countries in the eurozone, the group of countries using the euro as their currency, managed the economic crisis following the inability of southern eurozone countries, such as Greece and Portugal, to repay their debts.
The three politicians who are expected to do best in the first round are Hollande, Sarkozy and 43-year old Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National (FN). Hollande is a fierce critic of the austerity policies which the eurozone has introduced for all its member states. Le Pen is advocating economic protectionism and the reintroduction of the French franc as the nation's currency.
Polls predict that in the first ballot Hollande will win between 31 and 34 percent of the votes, Sarkozy between 24 and 26 percent, and Le Pen between 16 and 20 percent. If Le Pen surpasses Sarkozy, she will come out against Hollande in the second round. In 2002, Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the FN, managed to get through to the second round when he got more votes than the Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin. He lost in the second round to President Chirac.
Trailing behind Hollande, Sarkozy and Le Pen are 60-year old François Bayrou, a center-left Christian-Democrat, and the 60-year old Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of the far-left Front de Gauche (Left Front). Bayrou is expected to win between 10 and 15 percent and Mélenchon might poll around 10 percent. There are a number of other (mostly leftist) candidates, including 68-year old Eva Joly, the Norwegian-born leader of the Green Party, but they are not expected to make much of an impression.
Although the polls still include Marine Le Pen, and though until a few months ago some expected her to do better than the unpopular Sarkozy, it looks ever more likely that the FN-leader will not be able to run at all.
Marine Le Pen represents almost one fifth of the French voters, but she has so far only managed to collect 350 signatures. Although France has 47,000 elected representatives (of whom over 37,000 mayors), who are allowed to give their signatures to presidential candidates, the FN only has a handful. Unlike most other European countries, France does not have proportional representation. Like the U.S. and Britain, it has a majority system in which, apart from the two major parties, it is difficult for third parties to get its candidates elected.
Far-left candidates, such as Mélenchon and Joly, whose parties are even smaller than Le Pen's, were able to collect the signatures of 500 elected representatives because they encountered no problems in collecting the signatures of center-right representatives. The latter were pleased to help leftist candidates; they hope that an abundance of candidates on the left will split the leftist vote and harm Hollande. Le Pen, however, is unable to collect signatures from both the center-right and the left. The law obliges candidates to publish the names of the representatives who support their candidacy. Center-right mayors fear the wrath of Sarkozy if they make it possible for Le Pen to run. Leftist representatives refuse to support her out of principle or because they feel intimidated by far-left activists who threaten violence against anyone who helps the FN.
If Le Pen cannot run – and this looks ever more likely – Sarkozy will benefit. According to the polls, Le Pen's absence from the first round will lift Sarkozy's percentage to 33, almost as high as Hollande's. Whether this will help Sarkozy to win in the second and decisive round, however, is uncertain.
Sarkozy's party, the UMP (Union pour le Mouvement Populaire, the Union for a Popular Movement), is a loose amalgam of different factions. It was founded in 2002 by then president Jacques Chirac as the Union pour la Majorité Présidentielle (Union for a presidential majority) to assure a center-right majority in the parliamentary elections. Between 1997 and 2002, Chirac had been forced to govern with a Socialist-dominated Assemblée Nationale (as the Congress is called in France), a frustrating experience which he hoped to avoid.
The UMP resulted from the merger of various centrist and center-right parties, including Chirac's conservative Gaullist RPR (Rally for the Republic), the Christian-Democrat UDF (Union for French Democracy), the classical-liberal DL (Liberal Democracy) and a part of the social-liberal Radical Party. In 2002 and 2007, the UMP was united enough to push the Socialists into opposition. What united the party was its opposition to the Socialists and the fact that it was the vehicle of a ruling President (Chirac in 2002, Sarkozy in 2007), who allowed every faction to profit from the fact that the party was in power.
However, if Sarkozy loses in May, the UMP is bound to disintegrate since its various factions – conservatives (or Gaullists), center-right liberals (or Sarkozists), centrist Christian-Democrats and center-left Radicals – have little in common and are already quarrelling about the tone of the electoral campaign which Sarkozy has to conduct.
Some want Sarkozy to emphasize the economic issues and focus on centrist voters; others want him to focus on social and cultural issues in order to attract FN votes. One of the latter is French Interior Minister Claude Guéant, who caused a controversy a few weeks ago by stating that all civilizations "are not of equal value." Although Guéant did not use the word "Muslim," everyone understood whom he was referring to. "Those that defend liberty, equality and fraternity, seem to us superior to those that accept tyranny, the subservience of women, and social and ethnic hatred," he said, stressing the need to "protect our civilization."
Guéant's comments led to accusations of xenophobia, also from some within the UMP. Pundits predict that the centrists will leave the UMP if Nicolas Sarkozy conducts a right-wing campaign and fails to get reelected.
If Sarkozy loses in early May from François Hollande, a good result for the UMP in the parliamentary elections next June seems almost impossible. Many UMP members with roots in the Christian-Democrat UDF hope that François Bayrou, especially if he manages to attract up to 15 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections, might be capable of building a broad centrist party following the demise of the UMP.
Another beneficiary from an unraveling of the UMP would be Marine Le Pen. Since Le Pen is less of an extremist than her father, she might be able to attract members of the UMP's right wing. If this happens, her chances of winning seats in the National Assembly increase. A third beneficiary of Sarkozy's defeat would be Jean-François Copé, the leader of the center-right liberal wing of the UMP. With both the left and the right wings of the UMP leaving, Copé would inherit the rump UMP and become the leader of the main parliamentary opposition party, thereby enhancing his chances of winning the presidential elections in 2017.
However, while some are already preparing to divide the spoils after Sarkozy's defeat, the French President has not been defeated yet. Sarkozy is a formidable campaigner and, although it seems unlikely at present, it is not impossible that he makes an electoral comeback in the coming two months. If that happens, it will not be the UMP which implodes, but Hollande's Parti Socialiste. Indeed, if the PS suffers four humiliating defeats in four presidential elections in a row, many Socialists might join Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Left Front, a party which he established in 2009 after leaving the PS.
What is clear in any event is that, after May 6, France's political landscape is in for a major realignment, whether it be on the right or on the left.
Related Topics: Peter Martino
Tawriya: "Creative Lying" Advocated in Islam
by Raymond Ibrahim
February 28, 2012 at 3:15 am
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2898/tawriya-creative-lying-islam
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Now meet tawriya, a doctrine that allows lying in virtually all circumstances.
Perhaps you have heard of taqiyya, the Muslim doctrine that allows lying in certain circumstances -- primarily when Muslim minorities live under infidel authority. Now meet tawriya, a doctrine that allows lying in virtually all circumstances—including to fellow Muslims and by swearing to Allah—provided the liar is creative enough to articulate his deceit in a way that is "technically" true.
Deceit and lying may be far more ingrained in the culture than previously thought.
The authoritative Hans Wehr Arabic-English Dictionary defines tawriya as, "hiding, concealment; dissemblance, dissimulation, hypocrisy; equivocation, ambiguity, double-entendre, allusion." Conjugates of the trilateral root of the word, w-r-y, appear in the Quran in the context of hiding or concealing something (e.g., 5:31, 7:26).
As a doctrine, "double-entendre" best describes tawriya's function. According to past and present Muslim scholars, several documented below, tawriya occurs when a speaker says something that means one thing to the listener, although the speaker means something else, and his words technically support this alternate meaning.
For example, if someone declares "I don't have a penny in my pocket," most listeners will assume the speaker has no money on him—although he might have dollar bills, just literally no pennies.
This ruse is considered legitimate according to Sharia law; it does not constitute "lying," which in Islam is otherwise forbidden, except in three cases: lying in war, lying to one's spouse, and lying in order to reconcile people. For these exceptions, Sharia permits Muslims to lie freely, without the strictures of tawriya, that is, without the need for creativity.
As for all other instances, in the words of Sheikh Muhammad Salih al-Munajid (based on scholarly consensus): "Tawriya is permissible under two conditions: 1) that the words used fit the hidden meaning; 2) that it does not lead to an injustice" ("injustice" as defined by Islamic law, which mandates any number of things -- such as executing apostates, subjugating non-Muslims, pedophilia, amputating limbs for theft, stoning for alleged adultery, death for homosexuality, and so on—that are by Western standards, considered total injustices). Otherwise, it is permissible for a Muslim even to swear when lying through tawriya. Munajid, for example, cites a man who swears to Allah that he can only sleep under a roof (saqf); when the man is caught sleeping atop a roof, he exonerates himself by saying "by roof, I meant the open sky." This is legitimate. "After all," Munajid adds, "Quran 21:32 refers to the sky as a roof [saqf]."
A recent example of tawriya in action is -- because it is a "great sin" for Muslims to acknowledge Christmas -- this sheikh counsels Muslims to tell Christians, "I wish you the best," whereby the Christians might "understand it to mean you're wishing them best in terms of their [Christmas] celebration." But — here the sheikh giggles as he explains—"by saying I wish you the best, you mean in your heart I wish you become a Muslim."
As with most Muslim practices, tawriya is traced to Islam's prophet. After insisting Muslims "need" tawriya because it "saves them from lying," and thus sinning, Sheikh Uthman al-Khamis adds that Muhammad often used it. Indeed, Muhammad is recorded saying "Allah has commanded me to equivocate among the people inasmuch as he has commanded me to establish [religious] obligations"; and "I have been sent with obfuscation"; and "whoever lives his life in dissimulation dies a martyr" (Sami Mukaram, Al Taqiyya Fi Al Islam, London: Mu'assisat al-Turath al-Druzi, 2004, p. 30).
More specifically, in a canonical hadith [the purported acts and sayings of the prophet Mohammed's life], Muhammad said: "If any of you ever pass gas or soil yourselves during prayers [breaking wudu], hold your nose and leave" (Sunan Abu Dawud): Holding one's nose and leaving implies smelling something offensive—which is true—although people will think it was someone else who committed the offense.
Following their prophet's example, many leading Muslim figures have used tawriya, such as Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal, founder of one of Islam's four schools of law, practiced in Saudi Arabia. Once when he was holding class, someone came knocking, asking for one of the students. Imam Ahmed answered, "He's not here, what would he be doing here?"— all the time pointing at his hand, as if to say "he's not in my hand." Obviously the caller, who could not see Ahmed, assumed the student was simply not there.
Also, Sufyan al-Thawri, another important Muslim thinker, was once brought to Caliph Mahdi who refused to let him leave, until Thawri swore to return. As he was going out, Thawri left his sandals by the door. After a while, he returned, took his sandals and left for good. When the caliph asked about him, he was told that, yes, Thawri had sworn to come back—and, indeed, he had come back: only to take his sandals and leave.
Lest it seem tawriya is limited to a few colorful anecdotes more befitting the Arabian Nights than the religious law (Sharia, or "the Path") of over a billion people, there are also modern Muslim authorities who justify it, such as Sheikh Muhammad Hassan, the famous cleric who says Islam forbids Muslims from smiling to infidels, except when advantageous, and Dr. Abdullah Shakir. They both give the example of someone knocking on your door; you do not wish to see them, so you hide in another room, as
a relative answers the door and says, "He's not here" -- by "here" meaning the immediate room.
Similarly, on the popular Islam Web, where Muslims submit questions and Islamic authorities respond with fatwas [religious edicts], a girl poses her moral dilemma: her father has explicitly told her that, whenever the phone rings, she is to answer it by saying, "He's not here." The fatwa solves her problem: she is free to lie, but when she says, "He's not here," she must mean that he is not in the same room, or not directly in front of her.
Of course, while all the sheikhs give examples that are innocuous and amount to "white" lies, tawriya can clearly be used to commit "black" lies, especially where the non-Muslim infidel is concerned. As Sheikh al-Munajid puts it: "Tawriya is permissible if it is necessary or serves a Sharia interest." Consider the countless "Sharia interests" that can run directly counter to Western law and civilization -- from empowering Islam, to subjugating infidels. To realize these Sharia interests, Muslims, through tawriya, are given a blank check to lie, which undoubtedly comes in handy — whether at high-level diplomatic meetings or the signing of peace-treaties.
Note: The purpose of this essay is to document and describe the doctrine of tawriya. Future writings will analyze its full significance — from what it means for a Muslim to believe that the Supreme Being advocates lying, to how tawriya suppresses one's conscience to the point of being able to passing lie detector tests — as well as compare and contrast it to the practices of other religions..
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum
Related Topics: Raymond Ibrahim
Republican People's Party Strives for 'New CHP'
And more from the Turkish Press
by AK Group
February 28, 2012 at 3:00 am
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2897/republican-people-party-strives-for-new-chp
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Main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu passed a crucial test and strengthened his grip over the Republican People's Party, or CHP, Sunday as party delegates gave him a de facto vote of confidence in a stormy extraordinary convention, opening the way for him put into practice what he calls "the new CHP."
Although the convention, marred by occasional scuffles and tension, dealt a serious blow to the intra-party opposition, the dissidents fought hard, showing that they would not go down easily. Dissident leaders Önder Sav, the former secretary-general, and Deniz Baykal, the party's former head, shunned the convention.
Triumphant against the party's old-guard veterans, Kılıçdaroğlu stood by his discourse of a "new CHP" while dismissing criticism of an ideological shift. While the dissidents huddled at a hotel, İsa Gök arrived as their representative in the convention hall to submit a formal objection. His appearance provoked the delegates and led to scuffles and booing.
"I want you to be confident that no one can stop our march with the people. A CHP that has embraced democracy and freedom will be always up on its feet," Kılıçdaroğlu said amid the fuss.
Challenge to Dissidents
"No one has the right to break peace at this convention. They demanded statutes [amendments], here are the statutes. If you want [a chairmanship] election, we will hold it, too," Kılıçdaroğlu said.
According to Gök, only 380 of the 1,200 delegates signed the attendance book and the remaining signatures were forged. The convention board retorted with an announcement that 948 delegates had signed in, dismissing his petition.
Leaving the hall amid jeers and plastic bottles flying at him, Gök said: "I was violently forced to leave. They tore my jacket. Those who are not party members have usurped the party."
Soon afterward, a tough-talking Sav held a press conference at the dissidents' hotel, warning the party leadership that "the boomerang of illegal action will one day return to hit them" and that he would not allow the party to be "pillaged" by newcomers. "We are the landlords and they are the guests," he said, as his loyalists chanted "Down with Kemal."
"Those who want to know more about the new CHP should look at the amendments on the party statute," Kılıçdaroğlu said, underlining that it would devote more emphasis to women and youth, as well as the oppressed. No political party has ever expressed an intention to democratize its party statutes other than the CHP, Kılıçdaroğlu said.
"We have begun democratization of Turkey from the CHP. The new CHP will always push for more democracy and freedoms," he said.
Addressing the crowd of roughly 20,000 party members, Kılıçdaroğlu said the CHP would not waste its energy on intra-party struggles after amending the statutes, which, he said, would become the most democratic in Turkey.
Promising more democracy, rule of law and justice for the country if he comes to power, he urged the government to abolish special authority courts and resolve the problem of lengthy pre-trial detentions.
"The lawmakers who were elected by the will of the people must not remain behind bars. Let's abolish all anti-democratic laws that are products of the Sept. 12 [1980] coup. Let's abolish the election threshold and let's create an independent judiciary. This is the CHP's democracy appeal. Turkey will be normalized if we accomplish this," Kılıçdaroğlu said, also calling for resistance to "the post-modern dictatorship" of the ruling party.
Prime Minister Back to Work in Time for February 28 Anniversary
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was expected to attend the meeting of the National Security Council, or MGK, Sunday, to be held on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the council's historic meeting in 1997, which led to the resignation of Turkey's first Islamist-led government and profoundly reshaped the country's political landscape.
The MGK meeting coincides also with the first anniversary of the death of Necmettin Erbakan, the prime minister whose government was unseated in the so-called "post-modern coup," and Erdoğan's political mentor.
Erdoğan has been in Istanbul since Feb. 10, where he underwent a second operation on his digestive system, which officials have described as the final phase of his treatment for an intestinal ailment. On Monday, he was expected to make a speech at the parliamentary group meeting of his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, in which the "February 28 process" is likely to figure prominently.
The turbulent process took its name from the Feb. 28, 1997 meeting of the MGK, at which Turkey's then omnipotent military imposed a series of tough decisions on then prime minister Necmettin Erbakan, aimed mainly at curbing religious schools and Islamic education in the face of what was perceived at the time as a growing threat to Turkey's secular system.
Backed by the bureaucracy and much of the media, the army kept Erbakan under pressure, forcing him to resign in June. Erbakan's Welfare Party, to which Erdoğan and President Abdullah Gül belonged, was outlawed for anti-secular activities several months later.
http://www.aa.com.tr/tr/kategoriler/politika
Government Gives Green Light to Opening of Seminary
The government is not opposed to the opening of a seminary to raise Christian clerics provided it is subsumed under the authority of the Higher Education Board, or YÖK, Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ said Sunday.
"The theology faculties in Turkey are opened as a part of the universities and operate according to the rules of YÖK," Bozdağ told the Anatolia news agency. "There are no laws in Turkey against opening a seminary to raise Christian clerics; the state will also support such a move."
Turkey's Greek Orthodox has long demanded the re-opening of Halki Seminary on Istanbul's Heybeliada island. In a recent meeting with Parliament's Constitutional Conciliation Commission, Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew demanded a "constitutional guarantee for the domestic education of the clergy."
Seminary's Status
The patriarchate seeks vocational school status for the seminary under the supervision of the Education Ministry. Bozdağ said the government proposed to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate that it open the seminary as a faculty of a university.
"The main debate is on the status of the school, it is not about permission," Bozdağ said, giving the example of Germany, where all seminaries are part of universities
.
The Greek Orthodox seminary was a main center of theological education for more than a century before Turkish authorities closed it in 1971 under a law designed to bring universities under state control. The international community, including the European Union and the United States, has long asked Turkey to reopen the seminary to prove its commitment to human rights.
In a patriarchate report presented to the parliamentary commission, the difficulty of educating the clergy within the framework of the present Constitution and laws was highlighted. The holy office also emphasized that because the Treaty of Lausanne was not fully implemented, the church was experiencing problems.
The patriarchate further outlined its problems on the religious education of minority community members and demanded constitutional guarantees on religious education. The patriarchate also emphasized that foundations of citizens and foundations of communities belonging to minority religions were another problematic area. The report also demanded that a new constitutional order be introduced on property issues.
Turkey's Hard Line on Syria Questioned Back Home
Once regarded as a friend and ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has not only called on him to step aside, but charged that his administration "mercilessly murders its own citizens."
Although Erdoğan himself was absent for health reasons from Friday's first meeting of the "Friends of Syria," his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu will join the meeting of Western powers and Syrian opposition groups in Tunis.
Public opinion toward the Assad regime has also hardened in Turkey after a busload of Turkish pilgrims returning from the Hajj in Saudi Arabia came under attack by gunmen in Syria, but influential voices say the government's policy is short-sighted and has sacrificed its leverage over Damascus by siding so openly against it.
Academic Gokhan Bacik raised eyebrows by recently challenging the official line in an article published in a pro-government daily titled: "Did Turkey Misfire in the Syrian Crisis?"
Speaking to the AFP, Bacik said the government had not thought through the consequences of its actions.
"Turkey was too quick to put all its cards on the table. It acted in haste, without thinking," he said. "For now, the Syrian regime is not ready to quit or to be toppled... (But) Turkey no longer has means to influence the Syrian regime."
Republican People's Party, or CHP, leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, said the government would be better off trying to keep dialogue going, not only with Damascus, but also reach out to countries such as Iran and Russia, who are known allies of Syria.
"Turkey could make a serious opening if it convenes a meeting in Istanbul with both the Syrian opposition and representatives of Assad, as well as Russia and Iran," he said in an interview with the English-language Hurriyet Daily News. "An intervention in Syria could stir up not only Syria but Turkey as well, and leads to serious disturbances in the Middle East. People are worried whether the global playmakers are really on the side of human rights."
During the initial phase of the Syrian uprising last March, Turkey pursued a policy of engagement, urging the Damascus regime to end the deadly crackdown and pave the way to political reforms. But Assad failed to pay heed to such calls, prompting the Turkish government to cut off ties in September and open its doors to a growing number of dissidents.
Turkey's hard line against Damascus has irked two of its other neighbors, Iran and Iraq, both of which are allies of Syria. Like Iran, Iraq is ruled by Shiites; Syria is led by the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shia Islam. Turkey is largely a Sunni Muslim country.
In contrast, Turkish policy now overlaps that of the United States, to the obvious satisfaction of Washington.
As a U.S. diplomat, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "Both countries, members of NATO, are on the same line on Syria and call on President Assad to quit."
In his column in the daily newspaper Today's Zaman, columnist Sahin Alpay praised the administration's "sympathy" toward Syrian opposition, but cautioned against Turkey allowing itself to sucked into any kind of military intervention.
Turkey did not take part in the NATO air campaign against Moamer Kadhafi's regime, but did provide logistical support. Turkey should "stay away from any unilateral or multilateral military intervention in Syria, which may lead to not only a civil war but a regional armed conflict," Alpay said.
http://www.afp.com/afpcom/fr/taglibrary/thematic/politic
Turkey Urges Syria Regime to Cooperate With Annan
Turkey called Friday on the Damascus regime to cooperate with former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, the new international mediator on Syria, in a bid to find a way to halt almost a year of bloodshed there.
"All sides, particularly the Syrian administration, should cooperate with him fully for Annan's goodwill mission for a peaceful solution to the crisis in Syria to be carried out effectively," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Turkey is ready to cooperate "to the best of its ability" with Annan, the ministry said, describing him as "a wise man with great experience".
Annan has been appointed UN and Arab League envoy for the crisis in Syria, where activists say more than 7,500 people have been killed in 11 months of protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Turkey shares a long border with Syria, but Ankara broke its former alliance with Damascus following what it branded "atrocities" committed by the regime in its crackdown against the opposition protesters.
http://www.afp.com/afpcom/fr/taglibrary/thematic/politic
All Options against Syria on the Table
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, commenting on the international conference on Syria held in Tunis last week, said the international community debated all possible courses of action for ending the ongoing violence in the neighboring country, including the possibility of a military intervention.
Wrapping up talks after the first meeting of the Friends of Syria in Tunisia on Friday, Davutoğlu said Turkey would take part in international initiatives against the Syrian regime, adding: "All possible scenarios, including military intervention, have been discussed by a number of countries as a solution [to ending the bloodshed] in Syria."
"Even though Turkey does not want to see Syria in a situation similar to the Libyan civil war [following the NATO intervention in 2011], the upcoming period in Syria poses many risks for the region," Davutoğlu continued, adding that Turkey should be prepared for any possible decisions made by the international community.
"The international community should not hold back from taking initiatives to alleviate the humanitarian situation in Syria, even though the UN Security Council has been blocked from providing a solution due to Russia and China's vetoes," Davutoğlu said. The Feb. 4 decision by Russia and China to veto a UN resolution calling on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside angered the international community.
Davutoğlu highlighted that Turkey has started to strongly voice its opinions on diplomatic issues over the last decade after taking a back seat on regional and global issues in the past, including the Minsk process, an Azerbaijani-Armenian reconciliation process over Nagorno-Karabakh; the Dayton peace process, reconciling Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and talks on the future of Iraq in the post-Saddam Hussein period.
During an international conference in London over the future of Somalia on Thursday, Turkish aid initiatives in the East African country were lauded. Turkey will host the second conference on the famine and terrorism-stricken country in June. Davutoğlu also said the second Friends of Syria meeting will take place in Turkey, while a third is planned to take place in France. Turkey, along with Tunisia and France, chaired Friday's meeting on Syria's political and humanitarian crisis.
Meanwhile, UN General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser hailed Turkey's stabilizing role, claiming it has acted as a peaceful negotiator with regard to regional conflicts, during a joint press conference with Davutoğlu, which followed a UN-backed conference on the peaceful mediation of international disputes in İstanbul on Saturday.
"The conference in Tunisia is the first step to ending the bloodshed in Syria, as the UN has been rendered ineffective due to the current polarization in the Security Council," Nasser added in remarks that paralleled Davutoğlu's.
The Friends of Syria conference held in Tunisia on Friday gathered together countries supporting the Arab League's position and calling for a democratic transition in Syria. The United States, European Union governments, Arab League countries and Turkey were all represented by delegations at the conference.
According to Reuters, Assad's forces have intensified their crackdown on the 11-month revolt against four decades of Assad family rule. They have been shelling rebel-held areas of Homs for 20 straight days, killing hundreds and gutting buildings.
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-272536-turkey-all-options-against-syria-on-the-table.html
Turkey Could Consider Tobin Tax to Fight Risks
Turkey's Central Bank could consider implementing a Tobin tax to help cut risks deriving from hot money flows into the economy, according to a prominent economics professor from the University of Massachusetts.
"The Turkish Central Bank has some alternative instruments at hand, but still, a Tobin tax could be considered as an alternative method to prevent hot money flows," Professor Gerald Epstein told the Hürriyet Daily News in a recent interview.
A Tobin tax, suggested by Nobel Laureate economist James Tobin, was originally defined as a tax on all spot conversions of one currency into another. The tax is intended to penalize short-term financial round-trip excursions into another currency.
"There is stamp tax in some countries to stop the flow of hot money, and a Tobin tax might work in that sense," Epstein said, noting that France was currently discussing implementing such a tax.
According to the Central Bank's payment balance data from earlier this month, some $12.4 billion worth of dubious monetary entered Turkey last year.
Tighter Financial Controls
Epstein said the global economic crisis was heading in "a dangerous direction" as the austerity plans for Greece, including cuts in wages and pensions, would trigger a downward spiral that could drive the economy into a worse situation. However, Epstein said he believed the only way out was greater financial regulation in global markets.
"Before the crisis, there were already some signs all along the way," Epstein said. "After each crisis, the government would come and bail out the banks and the financial sector instead of regulating them more. Finland had a banking crisis in the early 1990s, and Turkey had its own banking crisis in 2001," he said, adding that both countries had succeeded in sheltering their financial systems against the shocks of the current economic crisis through "tighter financial regulations."
The post-crisis economic environment in Europe will be different than today, according to Epstein. Recalling Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's Feb. 2 remarks that China would consider helping shore up Europe's finances, Epstein said: "It would not be surprising to see Chinese companies acquiring European debt-hit firms. The U.S made enormous foreign direct investment in Europe after World War II, and this helped the developments in the European economy."
The professor also noted that technocrats in charge of the European economy today did not have a democratic base or political legitimacy.
Turkey Not Considering Afghan Withdrawal Unlike UK, NATO
Despite Britain temporarily withdrawing its civilian mentors and advisors from Afghan government institutions in Kabul, and NATO withdrawing its entire staff Saturday after two of its advisors in the interior ministry were shot dead, the Turkish Foreign Ministry told the Daily News that Turkey was not considering withdrawing any of its staff from Afghanistan.
Turkey, which has the second largest standing army in the alliance, currently has 1,600 soldiers serving in International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. Unlike other European members of ISAF, Turkey's mission is limited to patrols and its troops do not take part in combat operations.
Afghanistan's interior ministry said Sunday that one of its employees is suspected of shooting dead two U.S. officers.
"An employee has been identified as a suspect and he has now fled. The interior ministry is trying to arrest the suspected individual," it said in a statement.
Afghan security sources identified Abdul Saboor, a 25-year-old police intelligence officer, as a suspect in the shooting of the Americans at close range deep inside the interior ministry. The Taliban has claimed that the shooter was one of their sympathizers, and that an accomplice had helped him get into the compound to kill the Americans in retaliation for the Quran burnings.
Turkish Cyprus Leader Not Hopeful on Talks
There will be no use continuing negotiations with Greek Cyprus after July 1, the day southern Cyprus assumes the European Union's term presidency, if a solution to the island's division cannot be found before then, Turkish Cyprus' President Derviş Eroğlu said.
"If we cannot reach an agreement before July 1 then there will be no meaning in us continuing negotiations," Eroğlu told a group of journalists visiting him in Nicosia Saturday. "The United Nations and the Security Council should come to a conclusion. They have a set target and they failed to realize it. The main reason for the failure has been the approach of Greek Cyprus."
With Greek Cyprus assuming the term presidency July 1, Turkey has already announced it will not join activities organized by the presidency and will suspend political dialogue for the duration of the term. Equally important is the fact that Greek Cyprus will hold presidential elections in early 2013, and if current President Demetris Christofias is willing to run for a second term, he will have to make electoral alliances with other political parties.
"His possible allies are very strongly advocating the withdrawal of Turkish troops and are against the rotating presidency. He will have to accept their conditions if he wants to be re-elected in the second round of elections. Which means a complete change of parameters in the process we have started with Christofias," Eroğlu said.
Turkish Cypriots Tired of Talks
This is already Christofias' tactic, Eroğlu said, adding that the Greek Cypriot believes suspended talks would be revitalized one or two years later, upon pressure from the international community.
"Turkish Cypriots are fed up with unending peace talks. Decades-old unsuccessful rounds of talks only increased the hopelessness and uncertainty over their future," Eroğlu said.
Because of that, Eroğlu plans to address Turkish Cypriots on July 1 and call on them "to [protect] the state formed in 1983." Reluctant to talk about a "two-state approach" in a more open way or withdraw from negotiations, Eroğlu said discussing other options while there was still room for an agreement would not be right, even though the possibility of a solution is becoming more remote by the day.
Having returned from New York, where he held intensive talks with Christofias under the auspices of United Nations General-Secretary Ban Ki-moon, Eroğlu outlined the upcoming phases of the reunification talks. In the first phase, Ban is expected to report to the UN Security Council on recent developments. Then his representative, Alexander Downer, will write an assessment report in late March to express his findings on the two parties' performances in the discussions on three vital issues of reunification: power-sharing and government, citizenship and property.
International Conference Difficult
If the report is positive, Ban will invite the two parties to hold an international conference, where a draft agreement will be finalized. As such, the conference appears to be most significant but the two sides differ in their ideas for the format of such a meeting as well.
Turkish Cyprus believes that aside from the two communities, the three guarantor countries, Turkey, Greece and the United Kingdom, should also join, but southern Cyprus wants to expand the scope and include the European Union and members of the UN Security Council as well.
"They also want to have a representative from the Republic of Cyprus apart from the two communities, which, of course, is not acceptable for us," Eroğlu said.
Tens of Thousands Remember Victims of Khojaly Massacre in Istanbul
Tens of thousands of Turks and Azerbaijanis were out in force in İstanbul to stage what they called "an unprecedented massive rally" to mark the 20th anniversary of one of the most tragic massacres in modern history.
The crowd overflowed from İstanbul's central Taksim Square, chanting: "We will not forget Khojaly."
The mass protest is by far the largest to have been staged outside Azerbaijan to remember the 613 civilians killed in a single February night two decades ago that still haunts Azerbaijanis in their traumatic and troubled history of war, violence and bloodshed with neighboring Armenia.
The demonstration marked what organizers hope will be a watershed moment to call on the international community to avoid turning a blind eye to the massacre. They say it is a consciousness raising effort to call attention to the tragedy that has largely gone unnoticed over the last two decades.
Turks and Azerbaijanis all around the world also staged protests and rallies to remember the victims of Khojaly. Tens of thousands of people also marched through Azerbaijan's capital on Sunday to commemorate the Khojaly massacre.
President Ilham Aliyev led the march in Baku, which ended at a monument to the victims of the Khojaly massacre. Officials said 60,000 people took part. Tens of thousands also turned out for rallies in Turkey, a close ally of Azerbaijan.
Turkish Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin made an impassioned speech at the rally, which organizers said was attended by an estimated 100,000, underlining the deep tensions with neighboring Armenia, even though fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh ended with a 1994 cease-fire. The final political status of the enclave has not been worked out yet.
The protesters, including members of labor unions, nationalist groups and Turkish-Azerbaijani associations, filled Taksim Square to denounce Armenia and express solidarity with Turkey's ally Azerbaijan. Thousands of Turks, waving Azerbaijani flags, also staged similar protests in Ankara and several other cities across Turkey.
Azerbaijani authorities say 613 Azerbaijanis were brutally killed and hundreds are still missing when Armenian troops rushed into the village of Khojaly on Feb. 26, 1992. The attack appalled Azerbaijanis and became a symbol of Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan.
Armenians have not denied the attack, but insist the death toll is exaggerated. Turkey and Azerbaijan have called for world recognition of the killings as a crime against humanity.
International rights groups have been uncertain about the exact death toll, but condemn the killings and consider them the worst massacre of the war that broke out between the two neighbors as the Soviet Union began to fall apart.
"Murderers, cowards spilled the blood of 613 people, including innocent women and children," Şahin said in an address to the protesters in İstanbul. "This bloodshed will not remain unpunished."
Şahin's remarks illustrated a prevailing sense of anger reigning among demonstrators who chanted slogans against Armenia, whose armies currently occupy 20 percent of neighboring Azerbaijan. Fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh has killed at least 30,000 and displaced hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis.
A 2009 agreement between Turkey and Armenia, meant to open the way to diplomatic ties and the reopening of their border, foundered over Turkey's demand that Armenian troops withdraw from the Armenian-occupied enclave in Azerbaijan.
"Only Turkey supports us; 600-700 had been murdered in Khojaly, but the international community is still silent on the massacre," an Azerbaijani woman who attended the rally said.
İstanbul police dispatched heavy security to the French Consulate on İstiklal Street, where demonstrators were marching, fearing possible attacks on the building. The French National Assembly recently endorsed a bill making it a crime to deny the World War I-era killings of Armenians constituted genocide. Turkey and Azerbaijan protested the bill, claiming that it restricts freedom of speech.
Karabakh Azeris 'Need to Go' Home
The Azerbaijani government has made significant progress in caring for the 600,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who were forcibly evicted from the Nagorno-Karabakh region by Armenian forces two decades ago, but the ideal solution to the problem is the return of IDPs to their original homes, the International Crisis Group's latest report stated.
The report, "Tackling Azerbaijan's IDP Burden," praised government policies in dealing with IDP needs, but emphasized that much more needed to be done, with the problem itself putting pressure on the Azerbaijan leadership to prepare for the possibility of a new war.
"The status quo is neither acceptable nor safe. The right to return for people displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh has yet to be upheld, or an alternative formula agreed, for example based on compensation and exchange. This increases pressure on Azerbaijan's leadership to threaten military action to retake lost sovereign territory. IDPs consider return their priority and say they are ready 'to take up weapons to retake our homes' when 'Baku gives the word,'" the report said.
"Azerbaijan now claims to spend more proportionately than any other country on its IDP population, 7 per cent of the total population, which itself is one of the highest percentages of IDP populations in the world [...] Though much more is needed to ensure that IDPs lead dignified lives while they await the chance to return to their homes. They (IDPs) should be more effectively integrated into decision-making about housing, services, and other community needs, as well as contingency planning for emergencies and confidence building measures," it added.
Policy Prescription for All
The report claims there is little likelihood of progress in confidence building measures in 2012 due to elections in Armenia, Azerbaijan and the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries (France, Russia, U.S.) However, it advises that the Azerbaijan government, authorities and international community take necessary steps to facilitate greater IDP engagement in policies related to their lives.
"The government should involve IDPs as much as possible in housing decisions, and streamline processes for reporting incidents of corruption or violations of state law regarding IDP issues. It should also allow IDPs, while their villages and towns remain occupied, to vote for municipal councils in their places of temporary residence," the report said.
The report includes a section on conditions for those approximately 128,000 IDPs and permanent residents living in close proximity to the 180 kilometers-long line of contact (LoC) that marks the 1994 ceasefire between the opposing forces. It envisages an expanded interim OSCE monitoring role to remove snipers from the LoC and to set up an incident investigation mechanism.
"Azerbaijani authorities should agree with the Armenian government and the de facto authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh to an expanded interim OSCE monitoring role to remove snipers from the LoC and to set up an incident investigation mechanism, as well as to immediately cease military exercises near the LoC," it said.
The international community should facilitate the creation of an incident investigation mechanism, including the operation of a hotline between the sides to discuss ceasefire breaches and develop more on-the-ground confidence-building measures to create an atmosphere of trust.
"The very existence of 600,000 Azerbaijani IDPs – still prevented from returning to their homes and land two decades after fleeing the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict – is a clear demonstration of why it is urgent to renew international efforts to facilitate an agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia," it concluded.
Related Topics: AK Group
Should Harvard Sponsor a One –Sided Conference Seeking the End of Israel?
by Alan M. Dershowitz
February 27, 2012 at 4:59 pm
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2896/should-harvard-sponsor-a-one-sided-conference
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In order to assess whether Harvard is acting properly in relation to the upcoming student-sponsored conference entitled: Israel/Palestine and the One-State Solution, I propose the following thought experiment. Ask yourself what Harvard would do if a group of right wing students and faculty decided to convene a conference on the topic, Are the Palestinians Really a People?, and invited as speakers only hard right academics who answered that question in the negative? Would the Provost office at Harvard help fund such a conference? Would the Kennedy School at Harvard grant such conference legitimacy by hosting it? Would Harvard's Carr Center For Human Rights Policy or Weatherhead Center for International Affairs support such a conference? Would distinguished Harvard professors agree to speak at it?
If the answers to those questions are clearly "yes", then Harvard cannot be faulted for its role in the forthcoming anti-Israel hate fest. It would mean that in the name of academic and speech freedom Harvard will host a conference on nearly any kooky idea of the hard right or hard left. If the answer is "no", then the single standard of academic freedom would demand reconsideration of the Harvard Provost's decision to help fund the anti-Israel hate fest and the decision of the Kennedy School to lend its premises to this event. If Harvard were to decide to host the anti-Israel hate fest but not the anti Palestinian one, that would reveal either an anti Israel or pro hard left bias unbecoming a great university.
To be fair, the dean of the Kennedy School did issue a statement that his school "in no way endorses or supports the apparent position" of the conference, and that he hopes the "final shape of the conference will be significantly more balanced." But the question remains, would he have done no more than that if an anti-Palestinian conference were being hosted on his premises and supported by "centers" associated with the Kennedy School?
I believe Harvard would probably pass the "neutrality test," but I hope the issue is never directly put to Harvard, because it would be obnoxious for there to be a conference here on the subject of whether the Palestinians are a real people. They are, and so are the Israelis. The quest for a Palestinian state is a legitimate one, as is the need to preserve Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
The participant is the Harvard conference will deny that there is any parallel between the subject of their conference and the subject of my hypothetical one. They will claim that the "one state solution" is a serious academic subject, whereas the question "are the Palestinians really a people?" is not. This is a pure rationalization. The question regarding the Palestinians was raised by a candidate for President of the United States and has been the subject of debate and controversy in the media and in academic writings. Both subjects are essentially political in nature and both have similarly phony academic veneers. Both conferences would be unacademically one-sided in their selection of speakers. Moreover, a great university committed to free speech and academic freedom does not get to pick and choose which political issues it deems sufficiently "correct" to warrant its imprimatur.
The only real difference between the two subjects is that if Harvard were to sponsor a one-sided conference against a Palestinian state, there would be massive protests, especially by some of the very academics who are willingly lending their imprimatur to the anti-Israel hate fest. But the charge of hypocrisy has never stopped these professors from applying a double standard against Israel. They should not be stopped from speaking—that would be censorship and a denial of academic freedom. But they should be shamed for participating in an unacademic one-sided hate conference, and for their hypocrisy in doing so in the name of academic freedom, when they would never tolerate a comparable hate conference against a Palestinian state or the Palestinian people.
Let there be no doubt that the call for a single state solution is a euphemism for ending the existence of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. The major proponents of this ruse acknowledge—indeed proclaim—that this is their true goal. Tony Judt, who was the academic godfather of the "one state" ploy, saw it as an alternative to Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, which he believed was a mistake. Many of those speaking at the Harvard conference are on record opposing the existence of Israel. Leon Weiselteir was right when he observed that the one state gambit is not "the alternative for Israel. It is the alternative to Israel."
The "one state" solution failed in the former Yugoslavia. It failed in India. And it would fail in the Mid East. That's why most Palestinians and nearly all Israelis are against it. They favor a two state solution, as does most of the rest of the world.
Many of the speakers at this conference will rail against "a Jewish State." But they will not protest the Palestinian Constitution which establishes Islam as the only "official religion" and requires that "the principles of Islamic Sharia shall be the main source of legislation." Moreover, it establishes Arabic as the sole "official language" of Palestine. Israel, in contrast, treats Judaism, Islam and Christianity equally, does not base its laws (except regarding family matters of Jews) on Jewish law, and has three official languages—Hebrew, Arabic and English (with Russian constituting the 4th unofficial language and Ethiopian a 5th, manifesting its extensive ethnic diversity).
As this conference goes forward, and as the massive casualties mount in Syria, the resounding silence about the victims of the Assad brutality by those speakers ,who use the G word (genocide) every time Israel acts in defense of its citizens, speaks louder than their hypocritical words. The extremists who will be speaking at this hate fest are so obsessed with Israel's imperfections that they ignore—indeed enable—the most serious human rights violations that are occurring throughout the world. That is the real shame of the double standard that is represented by this hateful conference.
Related Topics: Alan M. Dershowitz
Media Matters Hurts Obama
by Alan M. Dershowitz
February 27, 2012 at 9:49 am
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2893/media-matters-hurts-obama
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It's the kind of anti-Jewish hate speech you'd expect to find on a neo Nazi website or in a Patrick Buchanan column: American Jews who support current Israeli policies are accused of dual loyalty and called "Israel Firsters" because they place their loyalty to Israel above their loyalty to the United States.
AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) fares even worse:
"saying AIPAC is guilty of dual loyalty is giving it credit for one more loyalty that it holds."
In other words, this widely respected American organization, and the hundreds of thousands of Jews (and Christians) who support it, including senators, congressmen and other elected officials, have absolutely no loyalty to our nation; their sole loyalty is to the foreign nation of Israel.
This false accusation of disloyalty to their own country finds its roots in the Biblical villains Pharaoh and Haman who accused the Jews of Egypt and Persia of disloyalty. It was a central tenet of Nazism, Stalinism and other anti-Semitic regimes that made the Jews pay lethal consequences for their alleged dual loyalty. Today, it is the mantra of David Duke, Patrick Buchanan, Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Jew haters of every race, religion and national origin.
In fact I first came across some of these hateful quotes about "Israel firsters" and "dual loyalty" on an actual neo Nazi website called Reporters Notebook, which features Holocaust denial claptrap and anything that demonizes Israel and those who support the Jewish state. Surprisingly, however, the quotes were attributed, not to the usual suspects, but to a spokesman for Media Matters, a hard left Democratic media attack and watchdog group, with close connections to the Obama White House, that started out as an antidote to Fox News, but has now turned much of its attention to Israel. The author of these hateful quotes is MJ Rosenberg, who is the Senior Foreign Policy Fellow of Media Matters and its official voice on issues relating to the Middle East and Israel. Speaking at a symposium (with Stephen Walt, the author of The Israel Lobby), Rosenberg explained why Media Matters hired him:
"Until I got there [Media Matters] had nothing on foreign policy. They hired me specifically to be involved with this issue, with the Palestinian issue, with [the issue of] stopping the war with Iran."
And Rosenberg has become involved with a vengeance, using as his primary weapon the poisonous charge of "Israel firsters" and dual loyalty.
Let there be no doubt that Rosenberg's accusation of dual or singular loyalty to a foreign country is an anti-Semitic canard historically reserved for Jews. Rosenberg doesn't accuse Arab Americans who support Hamas and Hezbollah—America's sworn enemies-- of being "Palestinian Firsters". Nor did he accuse Irish Americans who supported the Sinn Fein of being "Irish Firsters. " And the bad old days when observant Catholics were accused of dual loyalty with regard to the Vatican are, thankfully, long past. But Rosenberg defends his charges of disloyalty to America against those who sincerely believe that is in America's interest to support Israel against threats from Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and other enemies of both nations. Indeed, he boasts of having "popularized" the term "Israel Firsters."
In addition to demonizing supporter's of Israeli policies as Israel Firsters, Rosenberg has espoused numerous hateful positions regarding Israel that are in direct conflict with the way President Obama presents himself and his administration to the pro-Israel community. He has called Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose brother was killed by terrorists, a "terrorist," and Israel's peace-loving President Shimon Peres, an "uberhawk on Iran" who has "undermined" President Obama. He has denied that Ahmadinejad has ever threatened to wipe Israel off the map, suggesting it was a mistranslation, despite Iranian Revolutionary Guard posters in English demanding "Israel should be wiped out of the face of the world." He had criticized those who call for punishing sanctions against Iran and has claimed that "if Iran gets the bomb, we are fully capable of containing a nuclear Iran…"
Rosenberg has compared the violence of weapons wielding anti-Israel activists on the Gaza flotilla with "civil rights demonstrators who sat down at segregated lunch counters through the south" and the blockade of Gaza with Jim Crow segregation. (I don't recall any rockets being fired at schools from Birmingham.)
And he has defended Helen Thomas against charges of anti-Semitism for saying the Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and criticized President Obama for "diss[ing] her," calling instead for her to be "salute[d]."
It should come as no surprise therefore that Rosenberg's hateful remarks are featured on neo-Nazi hate sites, along with those of David Duke and Patrick Buchanan.
Media Matters, whose spokesman on foreign policy is MJ Rosenberg, is currently associated with the White House where it has met with officials close to the president and with which it has frequent strategy calls. It is well funded by many Democratic contributors, including several prominent Jewish supporters of Israel, who are apparently unaware of Rosenberg's rants.
Nor do I believe that President Obama is aware that an organization that claims close ties to his administration is saying such bigoted things about AIPAC, which is headed by his close friend Lee "Rosy" Rosenberg (no relation to MJ), and about Jewish supporters of Israeli policies, most of whom voted for him and are probably hoping to vote for him again. Indeed some of the positions that Rosenberg condemns as disloyal to America—punishing sanctions against Iran, the unacceptability of a nuclear armed Iran, support for Israeli security—are President Obama's declared positions.
To allay all doubt on where the Obama Administration stands on these issues, President Obama should quickly dissociate himself and his administration from Rosenberg's hate speech. Unless Media Matters fires Rosenberg, the President should also distance himself from Media Matters. He will be asked about this issue when he speaks to Jewish or pro-Israel audiences and when he is interviewed or participates in debates. He should be prepared with a strong answer, just as he was when he was asked about Reverend Wright.
Related Topics: Alan M. Dershowitz
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