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- Khaled Abu Toameh: Who Will Save the Christians in the Gaza Strip?
- Soeren Kern: Mega-Mosques: "Building a French Islam"
Who Will Save the Christians in the Gaza Strip?
by Khaled Abu
Toameh
July 20, 2012 at 5:00 am
July 20, 2012 at 5:00 am
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"We
only hear voices telling us not make too much noise. Today it is happening in
the Gaza Strip, tomorrow it will take place in Bethlehem. In a few months,
there will be no Christians left in Palestine." — Christian man, Gaza
City
Are Palestinian Christians living in the Gaza
Strip being kidnapped by Muslims who force them to convert to Islam?
This is a story that is considered taboo among
many Palestinians, who prefer to lay all the blame only on Israel.
According to the Greek Orthodox Church in the
Gaza Strip, at least five Christians have been kidnapped and forced to convert
to Islam in recent weeks.
If anyone has good reason to fear for his life
it is Archbishop Alexios, head of the Greek Church in the Gaza Strip, who is
spearheading the protests against persecution of Christians and forced
conversions.
In the past few days the archbishop has come
under sharp criticism from many Palestinians and the Hamas government for
daring to speak out about the plight of his community.
Islamic groups and human rights activists in
the Gaza Strip claimed that the Christians converted to Islam of their own free
will.
They even released a videotape of a young
Christian man, Ramez al-Amash, 24, in which he declared that he had voluntarily
abandoned his faith in favor of Islam.
The church blamed an unidentified terror group
of being behind the forced conversions and called on the international
community to intervene to save the Christians.
Church leaders also accused a prominent Hamas
man of being behind the kidnapping and forced conversion of a Christian woman,
Huda Abu Daoud, and her three daughters. Shortly after she disappeared, the
woman sent a message to her husband's mobile phone informing him that she and
her daughters had converted to Islam.
In a rare public protest, leaders and members
of the 2,000-strong Christian community in the Gaza Strip staged a sit-in
strike in the Gaza Strip this week to condemn the abductions and forced
conversions in particular, and persecution at the hands of radical Muslims in
general.
The protest has further aggravated tensions
between Muslims and Christians in the Gaza Strip, which has been under the
control of Hamas since 2007.
Leaders and members of the Christian community
now fear reprisal attacks by Muslim extremists. Some have appealed to the
Vatican and Christian groups and churches in the US, Canada and Europe for
help.
But according to Christian families, the world
does not seem to care about their plight. "We only hear voices telling us
to stay where we are and to stop making too much noise," said a Christian
man living in Gaza City. "If they continue to turn a blind eye to our
tragedy, in a few months there will be no Christians left in Palestine. Today
it's happening in the Gaza Strip, tomorrow it will take place in
Bethlehem."
The public protest by the Christians in the
Gaza Strip is a first step in the right direction. This is a move that could
finally draw the attention of the international community, including Church
leaders across the US, to the real problems and dangers facing Palestinian
Christians.
Radical Islam, and not checkpoints or a
security fence, remains the main threat to defenseless Christians not only in
the Palestinians territories, but in the entire Middle East as well.
Related Topics: Khaled Abu
Toameh
Mega-Mosques: "Building a French Islam"
by Soeren Kern
July 20, 2012 at 4:30 am
July 20, 2012 at 4:30 am
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Its
towering minaret, which has purposely been designed to change to change the
suburb's skyline by being taller than any church steeple in the neighborhood,
is supposed to become the "new symbol of Islam in France."
The Socialist government in France has
inaugurated a new mega-mosque in Paris as a first step towards
"progressively building a French Islam."
The new mosque, located in the northern Paris
suburb of Cergy-Pontoise, is not only vast in its dimensions (photo
here), but is also highly visible and symbolic: its towering minaret, which
has purposely been designed to change the suburb's skyline by being taller than
any church steeple in the neighborhood, is supposed to become the "new
symbol of Islam in France."
The blue-domed mega-mosque also has an
important political dimension. French President François Hollande owes his May
6 electoral victory to the large
turnout by Muslim voters, who cast the deciding votes that propelled
Hollande into the Élysée Palace. It is now political payback time, and the
mosque at Cergy is one of at least 150 new mosque projects that the Socialist
government has pledged to support.
Speaking on behalf of President Hollande at the
inauguration ceremony of the mosque in Cergy, French Interior Minister Manuel
Valls articulated the Socialist government's policy vis-à-vis the construction
of new mosques in France. He declared: "A mosque, when it is erected in
the city, says a simple thing: Islam has its place in France."
The 2,000 square meter (21,500 square foot)
three-story mega-mosque in Cergy can accommodate up to 1,500 worshippers at a
time; it has two main prayer halls (one for men and one for women), ablution
rooms, two kitchens, a tea room, an apartment and office for the imam, a
funeral hall, classrooms and a multipurpose room.
The mayor's office in Cergy, which is
controlled by the Socialist Party, has tried to downplay local concerns about
the size of the mosque, which has a price tag of €3.7 million ($4.5 million).
It has justified the project by arguing that the mosque is being financed
exclusively through local donations (many if not most of the major mosques in
France and other European countries are financed by foreign governments such as
Morocco and Saudi Arabia).
But the Socialist Mayor of Cergy, Dominique
Lefebvre, has actively worked to make the mosque project a reality by
circumventing French laws on secularism. Under his leadership the town council
agreed to provide the mosque with a lease of land at very low rent for a term
of 99 years. The town council also agreed to provide the mosque with a bank
guarantee so it could obtain a €2.5 million loan for construction.
Lefebvre has justified his efforts on behalf of
the mosque by saying he wants to "ensure
the free exercise of religion." But at the ceremony inaugurating the
mosque, he
also joked: "I am often asked if the minaret is higher than the
steeple of the church."
Separately, a French appeals court has granted
permission for the construction of a mega-mosque
in the southern city of Marseille, home to the largest Muslim community in
France.
The ruling, which overturns
an October 2011 decision by a lower court to annul the construction permit
for the mosque, represents a major victory for proponents of the mosque, long
touted as the biggest and most potent symbol of Islam's growing place in
France.
The €22 million ($27 million) project would
have the Grand Mosque --
boasting a minaret soaring 25 meters (82 feet) high, and room for up to 7,000
worshippers in a vast prayer hall -- built on the north side of Marseille's old
port in the city's Saint-Louis district, an ethnically mixed neighborhood that
suffers from poverty and high unemployment.
Several decades in the planning, the project
was granted a construction permit in November 2009. At the time, city officials
said the new mosque would help the Muslim community better integrate into the
mainstream and foster a more moderate form of Islam.
The first cornerstone of the 8,300 square meter
(90,000 square foot) project was laid in May 2010. The elaborate
stone-laying ceremony was attended by Muslim religious leaders and local
politicians, as well as more than a dozen diplomats from Muslim countries.
Full-scale construction of the Grand Mosque --
which will include a Koranic school and a library, as well as a restaurant and
tea room -- was scheduled to begin in February 2012.
But the project has faced stiff opposition from
local residents and businesses. Opponents of the Grand Mosque have argued that
it would be out of harmony with the neighborhood's economic and social fabric.
The appeals court ruling, dated June 19, means that construction of the mosque
can now continue unimpeded.
In October 2011, the French newspaper La
Marseillaise published extracts of a leaked intelligence report about
the rise of Islam in Marseille, which is now home to some 250,000 Muslims.
The confidential seven-page document, drafted
by domestic intelligence in the French region of Bouches-du-Rhône in March
2011, warns against construction of the grand mosque: "This building would
dominate an entire part of the city…it would be visible from most of the
surrounding main roads…the mosque is generally considered aggressive to the
point where a local referendum on the matter would give results at least
equivalent and perhaps more pronounced than the voting organized in the Swiss
confederation last year [the Swiss vote to ban minarets]."
The report also states that although "the
number of individuals [in Marseille] who have been radicalized to the point of
supporting the jihadists is relatively low, Islamic fundamentalism has
progressed to the point where it has won over the majority of the Muslim
population."
The report describes the Muslim population of
Marseille as a "marginalized population, poorly informed, uncultured and
with a limited understanding even of their own religion, finding themselves in
the hands of self-appointed imams who are no more competent than their flocks
but sufficiently charismatic to obtain their obedience."
The document concludes by stating that Muslims
in France appear to want the state to intervene in religious matters: "It
is interesting to note that the majority of Muslims find it natural for the
state to organize religious practice, even by force if necessary, and that many
of them even declare that they do not understand the neutrality of France in
this matter."
The same might be said of the French Socialist
Party, which, thanks to ideology and political expediency, is increasingly
inclined to accommodate Muslim demands. During his election campaign, Hollande
offered an amnesty to all of the estimated 400,000 illegal Muslim immigrants
currently in France. He also pledged to change French electoral laws so that
Muslim residents without French citizenship would be allowed to vote in
municipal elections as of 2014.
These measures, if implemented, would enable
the Socialist Party tighten its grip on political power, both at the regional
and national levels. As the politically active Muslim population in France
continues to swell, and as most Muslims in the country vote for Socialist and
left-wing parties, conservative parties will find it increasingly difficult to
win future elections in France.
One of the predictable outcomes of this
political backscratching will be the construction of more government-sponsored
mosques in France, all in the name of multiculturalism, of course.
Soeren
Kern is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He
is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de
Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics: France
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Kern
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