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- Soeren Kern: Islam Conquers European Football
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Islam Conquers European Football
by Soeren Kern
April 5, 2012 at 5:00 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2994/islam-conquers-european-football
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As part of the agreement, however, the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah required Real Madrid to remove the cross from the crown on its logo for all promotional materials. The president of Real Madrid dutifully complied.
The top-ranked football team in Spain, Real Madrid, has removed a Christian cross from its official logo as a way to strengthen its fan base among Muslims in Europe and the Middle East.
According to Spain's top sports newspaper, Marca, the change was made to "avoid any form of confusion or misinterpretation in a region where the majority of the population is Muslim."
Real Madrid says its decision to remove the cross from its logo (see image here) is simply a cost of doing business in a globalized world. But critics say the move represents yet another erosion of European culture and tradition in the face of encroaching Islam.
The cross controversy comes as Real Madrid begins to build a $1 billion sports tourist resort in the United Arab Emirates. The foundation stone for the 50 hectare Real Madrid Resort Island was laid in the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah on March 29; the complex is scheduled to open in January 2015.
Real Madrid says its resort island will be the first theme park on an artificial island to combine tourism and sports, and it will be the first recreational tourism complex built under the Real Madrid trademark. The complex will include a 450-room luxury hotel, luxury villas, a sporting harbor, and the world's first-ever football stadium that is open to the sea.
According to Real Madrid, "This is a decisive and strategic step that will enhance the strength of this institution in the Middle East and Asia, a key region in which the passion for this club has been apparent. Real Madrid and the Government of Ras al-Khaimah want to transmit the passion of Real Madrid and what it means throughout the world."
As part of the agreement, however, the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah, Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr al Qasimi, required Real Madrid to remove the cross from the crown on its logo for all promotional materials related to the resort island. The president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez, dutifully complied.
The cross was first to Real Madrid's logo in 1920, when King Alfonso XIII granted the club his royal patronage. The word Real is Spanish for royal, and the cross still forms an integral part of the coat of arms of the King of Spain.
To be sure, Real Madrid is not the first Spanish football club to remove a "religiously incorrect" cross from its logo in an effort to appease Muslim sensibilities. Some observers, in fact, say Real Madrid's move is part of a concerted effort to prevent a rival football team in Barcelona from winning over the Middle East.
FC Barcelona recently signed a five-year €150 million ($200 million) shirt sponsorship deal with the Doha-based Qatar Foundation, a so-called charitable trust that has been accused by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo of providing funding to the extremist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an advocate of terrorism, wife beating and murderous anti-Semitism. The agreement permits the Qatar Foundation to place its logo on FC Barcelona's official team shirt.
In addition to earning €30 million per season, the agreement has enabled FC Barcelona -- which claims to be "the undisputed brand leader in world football" -- to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.
FC Barcelona's public relations efforts in the Muslim world have not been without controversy. Like Real Madrid, FC Barcelona has a cross in its official logo. But after Saudi Arabia complained that the so-called Cruz de San Jorge -- a red and white cross that forms an integral part of FC Barcelona's logo -- was offensive to Islam because it evokes memories of the medieval Crusades, the horizontal line (and thus the offending cross) was removed from all FC Barcelona shirts sold in the Middle East.
Football clubs in Italy have also had run-ins with Muslim fashion police. In Milan, for example, the football team Inter Milan was sued by a Turkish lawyer named Baris Kaska. He filed a complaint with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) against Inter Milan after the team wore shirts with a "Crusader-style" red cross that Kaska alleged was "offensive to Muslim sensibilities."
The shirt's design -- to mark the 100th anniversary of the club -- included a big red cross on a white background, a symbol of the city of Milan. But Muslims said the emblem reminded them of the Knights Templar, which Kaska said symbolized "Western racist superiority over Islam."
In an interview with the Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia, Kaska said Inter Milan had "manifested in the most explicit manner the superiority of one religion over another." He also said that Inter should be "heavily fined for displaying an offensive symbol."
In neighboring Germany, the Gelsenkirchen-based FC Schalke 04, which plays in Germany's top league, the Bundesliga, asked an Islam expert to consider whether the team's anthem is insulting to Muslims.
The third verse of the anthem, which is titled "Blue and White, How I Love You," contains the words: "Mohammed was a prophet who understood nothing about football. But of all the lovely colors he chose [Schalke's] blue and white."
Although the song was written in 1924, the football team began receiving complaints -- hundreds of them -- after a Turkish newspaper reported that the song is insulting to Mohammed. Muslims are now demanding that the offending line be struck from the song, which is chanted by Schalke's fans before every match.
Elsewhere in Germany, the German Central Council of Muslims issued a fatwa (religious ruling) stating that Muslim football players are not required to fast during the month of Ramadan.
The ruling was issued after the German football club FSV Frankfurt issued an official warning to three of their players for fasting and failing to tell their manager. The club said fasting harms the performance of its players.
In France, the referee of a woman's football match on March 18 in the southern French city of Narbonne refused to officiate the game when players for one of the teams took to the pitch wearing Muslim headscarves. The incident involved players from Petit-Bard Montpellier, who had been due to play Narbonne in a regional promotional tie.
The international governing body of football, known as FIFA, banned players from wearing the Islamic headscarf, also known as the hijab, in 2007, saying it was unsafe. But on March 3, FIFA accepted in principal that female footballers could wear headscarves when playing in official competitions.
The rule change, instigated by the brother of the King of Jordan, Ali bin al-Hussein who is also FIFA vice president, is due to come into effect on July 2.
FIFA secretary general, Jerome Vacke, says al-Hussein successfully convinced FIFA that the hijab is a cultural rather than a religious symbol, and that the rule change will allow women all over the world to play football. But the change has angered many Europeans, including some feminist groups, who say the Muslim headscarf is a sign of "male domination."
In an interview with the French newspaper Le Parisien, Asma Guenifi, the director of a women's rights group called Ni Putes, Ni Soumises, said the rule change is "a total regression." She added: "I think FIFA is influenced by intense lobbying from rich Middle Eastern countries, like Qatar."
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
Courtroom Terror
by Raymond Ibrahim
April 5, 2012 at 4:30 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2993/courtroom-terror
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Muslim lawyers representing the plaintiffs prevented the defense team from entering the court. "They said no Muslim will defend a Christian. The Muslims decided later that even Christians would not defend him."
Apologists sometimes try to explain away Islamic terrorism as a byproduct of something else, calling it the "weapon of the weak." The usual argument is that because Muslims are politically, socially, or militarily weak—the archetypal example often given is Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians—they have no choice but to resort to terror to strike at their stronger adversaries; they resort to terrorism simply to even the odds.
Although this narrative is widely accepted, it is false. Consider the following account that took place a couple of weeks ago in Muslim-majority Egypt:
More than 300 Muslim lawyers inside and outside a courthouse in the southern Egyptian province of Assuit today [3/16] prevented defense lawyer Ahmad Sayed Gabali, who is representing the Christian Makarem Diab, from going into court. Mr. Diab was found guilty of "Insulting the Muslim Prophet" and was scheduled today for a hearing on his appeal. Attorney Dr. Naguib Gabriell, head of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organization, said there was "terror in the Assiut Court today." He added that he was on his way to court when he was advised that Muslim lawyers have issued death threats to any Christian lawyers who attend the court session. "Makram Diab was assaulted by Muslim lawyers during his transfer from the courtroom and security failed to protect him." Peter Sarwat, a Coptic lawyer, said that Muslim lawyers representing the plaintiffs prevented the defense team from entering court. "They said no Muslim will defend a Christian. It was agreed that Christian lawyers would take over and two Coptic lawyers volunteered, but the Muslims decided later that even Christians would not defend him." Sarwat said the Muslim lawyers wanted to assault the chief judge but he managed to leave the court via a rear door [emphasis added].
The report goes on to explain how Muslim lawyers and activists went to court to defend Diab's right to a fair trial only to be assaulted by other Muslim lawyers: "They were assaulting us in a beastly and strange way just because we went there to defend a citizen who happened to be a Christian," said one of the lawyers, adding that exiting the court required security intervention: "We left court in a security vehicle which took us to Security headquarters; otherwise we don't know what the outcome would have been for us."
More details include eyewitnesses reporting that the Muslim lawyers were "armed with clubs." Several, including reporters, were injured in the ensuing melee, and human rights groups were "forced out of the courtroom by the Muslims."
According to Dictionary.com, the primary definition of terrorism is "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes." In other words, terrorism is not just limited to 9/11-like strikes, but entails intimidating, bullying, threatening, and so on—precisely what happened at this courthouse trial.
Some more points to keep in mind:
- Those making the death threats, physically assaulting others with clubs, and otherwise engaging in terrorist behavior were "more than 300 Muslim lawyers"; not jihadis or fugitives hiding out in caves, but lawyers.
- The entire issue revolves around something that, by Western standards of freedom, would be a non-issue to start with: insulting a "holy" figure, Islam's Prophet Muhammad. In a Western court of law, the Christian "blasphemer" would not even be tried, but rather the terrorist "lawyers."
- The attacks on fellow Muslim lawyers, who merely sought to represent the condemned Christian, is in keeping with Islam's doctrines of loyalty and disloyalty, which command Muslims always to side with fellow Muslims, while having enmity for non-Muslim infidels—certainly those perceived to have insulted the Prophet.
The lesson that emerges from this shameful miscarriage of justice is . . . predictability. Anyone familiar with the Islamic world—its history, its doctrines—cannot be surprised at any of the above: rage and violence in response to a non-Muslim insulting the prophet; rage and violence toward Muslim members of a legal system because they sided with this "infidel", who is guilty before he is even charged with a crime, simply because he is not a Muslim—these are quite standard, with ample precedent, regardless of whether the enraged Muslims are suit-and-tie wearing lawyers, or kalashnikov-toting jihadis.
Contrary to popular belief, as this episode clearly shows, "Islamic terrorism" is not a product of "weakness," but rather the typical response to those who transgress the bounds of Sharia. Whether one man "blaspheming" Muhammad in a Muslim-majority nation as in this example, or whether an entire nation existing on land perceived to belong to Islam as in Israel)—for those transgressing the bounds of Sharia, terrorism is never far behind.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Raymond Ibrahim
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