Friday, July 13, 2012

Gatestone Update :: Soeren Kern: European Armies Recruiting Muslim Soldiers, and more


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European Armies Recruiting Muslim Soldiers

by Soeren Kern
July 13, 2012 at 5:00 am
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The chaplain's top priority has been to organize a pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslim soldiers. "For me, the army is not about standing up for a nation; it's about finding a job."
Germany is seeking to recruit more Muslims into its army: it cannot find enough native Germans to fill its ranks after it abolished the draft.
German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière announced his intention to "multiculturalize" the German Bundeswehr (Federal Defense Force) during a June 20 headhunting mission to the Turkish capital Ankara, where he declared: "I want the [German] army to be representative of a cross-section of the German population."
Germany formally discontinued compulsory military service on July 1, 2011 as part of a comprehensive reform aimed at creating a smaller and more agile army of about 185,000 professional soldiers.
But during its first twelve months of existence, Germany's new all-volunteer army has been unable to meet its recruiting goals, and military manpower prospects look dim for the foreseeable future.
In a desperate search for soldiers, German military officials have now identified Germany's Muslim Turkish population (3.5 million and counting) as a new source for potential recruits.
Maizière has been trying to jump-start the recruitment of German Turks by offering them some unique incentives to sign up for military service. Maizière's trip to Ankara, for example, was aimed at persuading the Turkish government to waive the compulsory military service requirement in Turkey for those individuals who possess Turkish-German dual nationality and who serve at least 15 months in the German army.
Maizière believes that Turks would rather serve in Germany than in Turkey, but Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz dismissed the idea out of hand, arguing that Turkish law does not permit Turkish citizens to substitute compulsory military service in Turkey for voluntary service in Germany, or any other country for that matter.
Maizière continues to insist that Turks serving in the German armed forces must have German citizenship, and that he has no intention of recruiting non-German citizens. "The model of a German foreign legion is out of the question," Maizière told reporters in Ankara.
But pressure is building for demographically challenged Germany to lower the military qualification standards and begin recruiting foreigners to staff its armed forces.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces in the German Bundestag, Hellmut Königshaus, recently argued that non-citizens should be allowed to join the German military. As an incentive, he proposed that Germany offer those immigrants who agree to become soldiers a fast-track procedure to become naturalized German citizens.
Königshaus has also dismissed the possibility of loyalty problems with individuals who do not have a German passport. "The requirement naturally must be that foreign candidates profess loyalty to our country and our Constitution, and also speak German," Königshaus said. "But why should the integration of foreigners in the military be any different than the integration of foreigners in the national football team?"
The answer to that question can be found in France, where the military has faced significant problems integrating Muslim soldiers into its ranks.
Muslim immigrants now represent an estimated 15% of all French military personnel (exact figures are unavailable; French law prohibits collecting data on religious affiliation). In real terms, there are around 30,000 active duty Muslims out of a total of 220,000 military personnel in the French Armed Forces.
Much of the debate about the issue of Muslims serving in the French military has revolved around the hypothetical question of how to predict the loyalty of Muslim troops in cases where the French military is involved in armed conflict with Muslim countries.
The issue of troop loyalty was brought to the fore following the Muslim riots in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities in October and 2005. The riots affected 274 French towns and cities and caused more than €200 million in property damage – as rioters burned 8,973 vehicles and hundreds of buildings.
At the time, French authorities were concerned that the riots might expand into a nationwide uprising of Muslims throughout the country; they were trying to forecast the behavior of Muslim soldiers in the case that the French army would be called upon to restore order.
Some surveys of Muslim immigrants in French suburbs show that fewer than 10% of respondents consider themselves French and just 1% say they are willing to die for France.
Consider a French-Algerian soldier named Aïcha who was asked about a hypothetical military conflict between France and Algeria. Dressed in a French army uniform, he said he could not imagine making war against his own people: "In my head, I am Algerian, I don't feel French. For me, the army is not about standing up for a nation, it's about finding a job." (The quote has since been removed from the website of the National Museum for Immigration History, the Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration, where it was first published.)
The French daily newspaper Le Monde has quoted excerpts of a classified report that was prepared for the French Ministry of Defense on the topic of "Young Frenchmen of North African Origin" (JFOM, military parlance for "jeunes Français d'origine maghrébine") in the French military. The report states: "The JFOM are 3.5 times more likely [than native French soldiers] to commit desertion, six times more likely to refuse to obey orders, six times more likely to insult a superior officer, and eight times more likely to commit acts of insubordination."
The Le Monde article also makes mention of a mutiny aboard the French aircraft carrier Foch. News of the mutiny was first reported by the French newspapers La Marseillaise and L'Humanité; additional details were later filled in by other French newspapers.
The incident occurred during the NATO intervention in the former Yugoslavian province of Kosovo in 1999. The mutiny involved some 60 sailors of North African Muslim origin who kidnapped their weapons officer, supposedly to protest living conditions aboard the aircraft carrier. After being holed up in the ship's cafeteria for more than two days, French marine commando teams were sent in to "restore order" on the ship by liberating the kidnapped officer and evicting the mutineers, who were quickly "repatriated" to France.
Although the French Ministry of Defense has consistently refused to comment on the veracity of the reports (defense officials went so far as to ask the French media not to publish articles about the incident), several sources say the real reason behind the mutiny was that the North African sailors were opposed to French airstrikes on Kosovo, which is 90% Muslim.
More recently, the French newspaper Le Figaro reported that some Muslim soldiers in the French army had refused to fight in Afghanistan, citing their faith. A military spokesman interviewed by the newspaper said the refusal to deploy to Afghanistan represents "a misunderstanding of the meaning of their commitment to bear arms for France and to defend its interests and values ​​at all times and everywhere." The officer added: "A disciplinary procedure is systematically engaged in cases of a refusal to fight, resulting in most cases in a termination of contract."
Separately, during a March 2011 hearing on defense issues at the Assemblée Nationale, the lower house of the French Parliament, former French Minister of Defense Michèle Alliot-Marie revealed that the French Navy was having problems with "self-appointed imams" on board French naval vessels. In particular, commanders on the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle became alarmed at the large groups of Muslims who were gathering on the ship. According to the testimony, the problem was being "resolved" by hiring professional imams to prevent self-appointed preachers from "giving [Muslim soldiers] alternative concepts of what it means to serve in the army."
The first such Muslim chaplain is a 32-year-old French-Tunisian named Mohamed-Ali Bouharb. According to Le Figaro, Bouharb's top priority as chaplain has been to organize a pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslim soldiers. The Defence Ministry actually promised to provide two government planes, seating 220 persons each, to fly the Muslim troops to Saudi Arabia so that they would not have to travel on private commercial flights.
Although religion and state remain firmly separated in the rest of French society, the military has accommodated its Muslim personnel in other ways as well. Acceding to Bouharb's demands, for example, the military now provides Muslim soldiers with halal meals and prayer rooms. The Muslim chaplaincy also publishes a magazine exclusively for Muslim soldiers, with glossy photos of mosques and recipes for meals to break the Ramadan fast.
In 2010, Bouharb caused a scandal when, in an interview with the American Internet newspaper Huffington Post, he publicly criticized the French president's decision to ban the burqa. Bouharb said: "[The burqa debate] is an excellent means to keep public opinion busy and to evade the real issues of unemployment, housing and economic crisis. And just as a reminder, this issue concerns only a very small minority of French Muslim women."
Following an uproar in France over the soldier's public criticism of the Commander in Chief, Bouharb tried to backtrack, saying his comments were taken out of context. But as the controversy drew attention to Bouharb's background, it emerged that he is in fact a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer.
For example, a cover story about Bouharb in a French Muslim cultural magazine called Salam News revealed that he had studied Islamic theology at the European Institute for Human Science (EIHS), a school run by the Muslim Brotherhood. French newspapers also reported that Bouharb has been attending conferences sponsored by the Union of Islamic Organization of France (UOIF), which represents the Muslim Brotherhood in France.
According to the Observatory of the Islamization of France, a research group, Bouharb "can legitimately be suspected of being an Islamist mole in the heart of the French army."
Other European countries have also had their concerns about Muslims in their militaries. In Austria, for example, three Muslim soldiers stationed at the Maria Theresien Barracks in the Hietzing district of Vienna refused to salute the Austrian flag at a parade (they actually turned their backs on it), explaining it is incompatible with their religion.
The Austrian newspaper Die Presse reported (the original article has been removed from the newspaper's website but a copy of the article can be found here) that three soldiers, all with Austrian citizenship, said they could not submit to the Austrian flag, and that also in the future they would not salute the flag nor even look at it.
The newspaper reported that the Muslim soldiers were not disciplined, but that an imam was eventually summoned to issue a fatwa (religious ruling) stating that Muslims are allowed to salute the Austrian flag.
Austrian Army officers have also complained that Muslim conscripts -- about 3.5% of the Austrian armed forces -- are unable to do most jobs because they have permission to pray five times a day, no matter what job they are performing at the time. Some who attend Friday prayers stay away for the rest of the day.
In the Netherlands, the Dutch army has stepped up its recruitment of Muslim youth to offset allegations of discrimination. But now the military intelligence agency MIVD is worried that an unknown number of Muslim soldiers are suspected sympathizers with radical Islamists. In its most recent annual report, MIVD states that it has conducted a number of investigations into "alleged radicalization of military personnel" as "there are signs that indicate a possible radicalization of Muslim individuals or groups within the armed forces." In past years, the Dutch military has investigated at least ten Muslim servicemen for subversion.
In Spain, military commanders terminated the contracts of more than a dozen Muslim soldiers stationed in the city of Ceuta, a Spanish exclave on the northern coast of Morocco, based on classified information that pointed to "lack of trust or dubious loyalty." Spanish authorities have been concerned about the security of Ceuta and its sister city Melilla, which Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has long threatened to "reconquer" for Islam.
In Switzerland, newspapers (here, here and here) have reported about concerns about the rising number of Muslim soldiers in the Swiss army. In 2010, the Swiss government drafted new rules that give Muslim soldiers special privileges, especially when it comes to food. But the five daily prayers will not be possible; recruits will be able to pray only once the day's army duties are over.
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:  Soeren Kern

Does Freezing Settlements Help Peace?

by Mudar Zahran
July 13, 2012 at 4:30 am
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Israel has given such "goodwill gestures" to the Palestinians before, but the reciprocal gestures were never as good-willed. In exchange for "goodwill gestures," Israel gets concussions.
The current US administration has been advocating the freezing of Israeli settlement activity in Judea and Samaria, and so have several global players involved in the peace process. Evidence on the ground, however, seems to suggest that freezing settlement activity only fuels radicalism and terrorism, encourages delegitimizing Israel, deprives Palestinians of decent livelihoods and works significantly against achieving the long-sought peace.
On June 4, 2009, when President Obama addressed the Muslim world from Cairo, he said: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements" because they "undermine efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop." Since then, the U.S. has relentlessly been pressuring the Israeli government to freeze the construction of settlements, eventually resulting in a ten month freeze of settlement activities by the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. At one point, Netanyahu demanded that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as a Jewish state in exchange for Israel's settlements' freeze, an offer the Palestinian Authority had refused.
Pressure on Israel to freeze its settlement activity is also advocated by UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who earlier this year called on Israel to halt settlement activity as "goodwill gesture" to the Palestinians. Israel has given such "goodwill gestures" to the Palestinians before, but the reciprocal gestures were never as good-willed. In exchange for "goodwill gestures," Israel gets concussions. After Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, driving its own Israeli settlers from their homes by force, Hamas utilized the withdrawal for its propaganda, claiming it was a victory over Israel, and then started firing more Kassam rockets from Gaza into southern Israeli cities. After that, Hamas took over the entire Gaza strip by force from the Palestinian Authority and has been ruling there ever since.
It seems the concussions Israel keeps getting from its "goodwill gesture" in Gaza have extended to neighbouring Egypt. In an article published by the Washington Institute in January 2012, seasoned Israeli journalist Ehud Yaari reports that since Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula has become a major base for terrorists' infrastructure, with the Bedouins becoming more radicalized and aiding Hamas with illegal trade. Arms smuggling into Gaza has risen to a record high, with "ever-larger sectors of the northern Sinai population becoming linked to Gaza and falling under the political and ideological influence of Hamas and the like." All of this leads the inhabitants of the Sinai to think that they are entitled to become another terrorism forefront.
Concussion outcomes from Israel's withdrawal from land are nothing new. When Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah quickly expanded the presence of its militants in southern Lebanon to the point of launching an unprecedented rocket attack on Israel in 2006. Why wouldn't an expansion of an Israeli settlements freeze or a total Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria only lead again to an explosion in terrorist activities as has been the case in other places? Precedents suggest the outcome will not be different.
What is strange is how casual the world has become about asking Israel to stop building settlements on its own land. For example, last May, German President Joachim Gauck called on Israel to make "a goodwill gesture" in its settlement policy. Considering the historical sensitivity between Germany and Israel, one would think the German president would be more cautious about undermining Israel's right to build homes on its own soil. What can be seen is that the demonization of settlers and settlements has become so regular that it is reaching the point where the delegitimization of Israel is becoming legitimized -- probably just what the delegitimizers were hoping for.
The question about the legitimacy or legality of the settlements by itself is puzzling: historically, Judea and Samaria are legitimate parts of Israel -- you just have to look at the evidence. The Balfour Declaration by which the British government confirmed that it favoured "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people ... and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object," was incorporated into the Sèvres peace treaty with Turkey and the British Mandate for Palestine, which was legally commissioned to Great Britain by the League of Nations, the equivalent of today's United Nations, thus making Israel's control of the entire British Mandate for Palestine — including Judea and Samaria — an internationally legitimate right. Since the draft of the Mandate was formally confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922, it would seem to be in accord with international law.
When Israel became independent in 1948, Jordanian armed forces occupied Judea and Samaria, only to annex it later, an act declared illegal then by the Arab League. Only three countries, in fact, recognized Jordanian rule over Judea and Samaria, Britain: Iraq (then under the Hashemite rule), and Pakistan. [George Washington University Law School (2005). The George Washington International Law Review. George Washington University. p. 390. Retrieved 21 December 2010. "Jordan's illegal occupation and Annexation of the West Bank]. It would seem clear, therefore, that the only control over Judea and Samaria that has a foundation in international law is Israel's; thus, Israelis building settlements there would be no different than Americans building housing projects in Massachusetts or Texas.
Further, it is worthwhile to look at what the settlements mean for the Palestinians suffering high unemployment rates in the Palestinian territories: thousands of them work in Israeli settlements. According to the Manufacturers Association of Israel, about 22,000 Palestinians were employed in construction, agriculture, manufacturing and service industries in the settlements. Nevertheless, in 2010, the Palestinian Authority banned its citizens from working in Israeli settlements under the threat of prosecution -- an act that has angered the Palestinian public. They have a good reason to be angry: the Palestinian Authority fails to create enough jobs for them while the Israeli settlers offer them wages amounting to double the money they could make working in their hometowns. The Palestinian news agency, Maan, reports that the average daily wages for settlement workers were 150 shekels ($44) per day, compared to 76.9 ($22) in the Judea and Samaria and 46.2 ($13.50) in Gaza. Maan also quotes Israeli settlement leader Yaakov David Ha'ivri saying that Palestinians working in the settlement were making close to three times the wages they would be making under the Palestinian Authority -- confirming that the ban on Palestinians working in settlements had actually "never materialized."
Freezing settlement activity therefore will only mean fewer jobs for the Palestinians, who will suffer with their families -- and as the proverb has it, "A hungry man can be an angry man."
Supporters of the freezing of Israeli settlements have yet to provide evidence that it helps peace. They also need to recognize that they are undermining the legitimacy of Israel's right to its own soil, all while depriving Palestinians of their livelihoods and paving the way for more terrorist acts.
It is about time the peace process serves up some justice.
Related Topics:  Mudar Zahran

Thoughts on the Muslim Mind

by Tarek Heggy
July 13, 2012 at 4:00 am
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This mental, intellectual and cultural stagnation represents not only a danger for humanity, but for the Muslims themselves, in that, among other limiting features, it places them and their societies in a state of enmity, even war, with the rest of humanity.
Forty years ago, one of the subjects offered for a Masters degree in law was Islamic Jurisprudence -- a massive, purely human endeavour, whose founder, the Grand Imam Abu Hanifa al-No'man, defined it as the science of extracting practical rulings from legal proofs.
The subject extended beyond the four established legal schools – the Hanafite, Malakite, Shafi'i, and Hanbalite – and even beyond the legal schools founded by other Sunni sects that have since fallen into oblivion -- and into the realm of Shiite jurisprudence. The school of Muslim theology I admired most was the Mu'tazalites and their offshoots -- especially the ideas of Ghilan Al-Demeshky, who challenged the doctrine of predestination on the grounds that it denies man's responsibility for his deeds, good and bad, and which led me to ask a number of nagging questions.
The jurists who founded the four main Sunni schools of law --Abu Hanifa, Malik ibn-Anas, Mohamed bin Idriss Al-Shafei and Ahmed ibn-Hanbal -- lived in the period between 70 and 220 Hijrah [690 to 840 AD]. Strangely, the earliest of these jurists was more liberal than his successor, who was in turn more liberal than his successor, while the fourth was the most conservative of all, allowing no scope for independent thinking, and asserting the primacy of tradition [naql] over reason ['aql]. While, for example, Abu Hanifa allowed jurists to refuse to base their rulings on the Hadiths [sayings or acts attributed to the prophet Mohammed] known as akhbar ahad [accounts of individuals], Ahmed ibn-Hanbal, who followed, stamped as authoritative legislative enactments more than ten thousand Hadiths, the great majority of which were, not surprisingly, accounts of individuals.
The conservatives in Islamic history were selective in what they presented to seekers of knowledge. Thanks to them, many Muslims today believe that the greatest Islamic thinkers always believed in predetermination. Many other great Islamic thinkers, however -- for instance, the Kadarites -- rejected the doctrine of predetermination. There are countless further examples of the subjective way the conservative elements in the world of Islam distorted historical facts to suit their purpose; the result of which distortion was to produce among Muslims a pattern of passivity at odds with the realm of knowledge, culture and science. One of the most famous examples is the conservatives' concealment of Abu Hanifa's opinion on the punishment for apostasy – death. Although he did not totally reject the punishment, the great jurist effectively invalidated it by holding that an apostate can repent, and that the period of repentance is "the length of the apostate's life."
Some of the greatest Muslim thinkers such as Ibn Sinna, Al-Faraby, Ibn Rushd and so many others, were branded as heretics by the Hanbalites. Although one of Ibn Hanbal's folllowers, Ibn Taymiyah, was a man of limited intellectual abilities, incapable of dealing with deep philosophical issues, he gave himself the right to accuse of heresy noble and original thinkers who were far superior to him in every way. Thus, because of an obscurantist ruler -- the eighth Abbasid caliph Al-Mu'tasim -- and because of the growing dominion and influence of conservative Muslim jurists -- such as Ahmed Ibn Hanbal and the interpreters of his tenets, Ibn Taymiyah and Qaiym Al Juzeya -- the Muslim mind became afflicted with a singular case of rigidity, passivity and stagnation – even fossilization.
This mental, intellectual and cultural stagnation not only represents a danger for humanity, but for the Muslims themselves, in that, among other limiting features, it places them and their societies in a state of enmity, even war, with the rest of humanity.
At some point, however, despite the backwardness and extreme primitiveness that has afflicted the minds of millions of today's Muslims who have become polarized around a worldview totally divorced from the reality of the age and from contemporary science and culture, the future will shake the Muslim mind and destroy many of the fossilized ideas that have held sway for so long, similarly to Christianity after the earthquake set off by Martin Luther and Jean (John) Calvin.
The Muslims will come to realize the need to keep religion separate from the State and from constitutional and statutory legislation. I can even see the day they will adopt a legal system based on the doctrine that upholds "the specificity of the purpose, not the generality of the text." This would allow for enlightened opinions compatible with the age, and the march of human progress in respect of women and the Other.
But before we reach that point, many years and decades will have elapsed, and many bitter battles will have been fought before reason, science and progress can claim victory over the dark legacy of a journey that began with a ruler who allowed the Hanbalites to slaughter, in the literal sense of the word, the Mu'tazalites in the alleys of Damascus.
From that day until the present, free thinkers in our societies continue being slaughtered, either literally or figuratively, with weapons wielded by forces of darkness without parallel in the annals of history.
Related Topics:  Tarek Heggy
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