Gatestone Update :: Khaled Abu Toameh: Ethnic Cleansing of Christians in the Sinai, and more

   

In this mailing:

• Khaled Abu Toameh: Ethnic Cleansing of Christians in the Sinai
• Soeren Kern: Sweden: Mosque to Blast Prayer Calls from Minaret
• Jeffrey Wade Gibbs: Turkey's Treacherous Show Trials

Ethnic Cleansing of Christians in the Sinai

by Khaled Abu Toameh
October 1, 2012 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3374/sinai-christians

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The ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Sinai is being ignored not only by the Egyptian authorities, but also by the mainstream media and human rights groups in the West.

In events being ignored not only by the Egyptian authorities, but also by the mainstream media and human rights organizations in the West, Muslim terrorists have in recent weeks attacked Christian families and forced them out of their homes and businesses in the Sinai town of Rafah. The terrorists have threatened to pursue their jihad against Christians until all of them leave the Sinai.
According to reports from the Sinai, all the Christians who used to live in Rafah have already fled their homes after being targeted by Muslim terrorists.
Christians said that before the Egyptian "revolution," they enjoyed good relations with their Muslim neighbors and felt safer. But under Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi, the Christians in the Sinai were being left alone to confront Muslim gangs by themselves.
Egyptian security forces finally began operating against the terrorists only after 16 border guards were killed several weeks ago, apparently by Muslim jihadis in Sinai. But these forces have not been able to protect the Christian families in Sinai, whose lives been turned into hell ever since the 'Arab Spring' arrived in Egypt.
The Egyptian newspaper Al-Yom Al-Sabe (The Seventh Day) revealed that the Christian families were forced to leave Rafah after Muslim terrorists torched the local church. It wrote that the terrorists sprayed graffiti on the walls of the destroyed church calling on Christians to leave Rafah immediately.
The attack on the church was the latest in a series of assaults against Christian-owned homes and businesses.
Ehab Lewis, one of the Christians who fled Rafah, said that not a single Christian has remained in the town. Lewis, a former school teacher, said: "I was in Rafah with my family and we left out of fear for our lives. They threatened to torch my house. They attacked my neighbor's shop and destroyed everything inside. He too was forced to run away."
Lewis said that all the Christians in Rafah had received death threats before fleeing. "We were afraid to send our children to school," he recounted. He and other Christians accused the Egyptian authorities of turning a blind eye to their plight. Instead of confronting the Muslim terrorists, the Egyptian authorities advised the Christian families to move to the town of Al-Arish in Sinai.
"This is not a solution," said Father Kuzman, a local leader of the Christian community. "Why are we being asked to leave our holy land? The solution is for the authorities to impose law and order and protect their citizens. The government should not leave the border open to armed groups."
Father Michael George said that the ethnic cleansing of Christians Sinai was taking place as the Egyptian authorities did nothing.
Christian families living in Sinai say they miss the good old days before the "Arab Spring," when they were able to lead lives that were relatively normal.

Related Topics:  Egypt  |  Khaled Abu Toameh

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Sweden: Mosque to Blast Prayer Calls from Minaret

by Soeren Kern
October 1, 2012 at 4:45 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3378/sweden-mosque-minaret

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When told that Sweden is historically a Christian country, Okur responded, "So perhaps it was before, in the 1930s and 1940s. Now it is a new era."

A mosque in Stockholm has received initial approval to begin sounding public prayer calls from its minaret, the first time such permission has ever been granted in Sweden.
A majority of the members of the city planning committee in the southern Stockholm suburb of Botkyrka voted on September 25 to repeal a 1994 prohibition on such prayer calls, thereby opening the way for a muezzin to begin calling Muslims to prayer from the top of a 32-meter (104-foot) minaret at a Turkish mosque in the Fittja district of the city.
The issue was put to a vote after Ismail Okur, the chairman of the Botkyrka Islamic Association (Islamiska föreningen i Botkyrka), filed a petition with the city in January demanding permission to allow public prayer calls at the mosque.
In an interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagen, Okur said earlier generations of Muslim immigrants "did not dare" to press the issue, but that he represents the "new guys" who are determined to "exercise their right to religious freedom" in Sweden.
Okur said: "We have lived our whole lives in Sweden. We have paid taxes. We have been exemplary citizens. We have given a lot to Sweden. Now we want to get a little back. Now we want to have religious freedom."
The planning commission's decision to repeal the ban will now be considered by the executive board of the city council on October 25. If the board approves, the mosque will be allowed to start sounding the call to prayer effective immediately. The decision is especially significant because it will set a precedent for all of the 200 other mosques in Sweden.
In an interview with Swedish Public Radio, Okur said his initial objective first and foremost was to obtain permission to make prayer calls every Friday in connection with Friday prayers "to begin with." He said: "It feels great that we have been through this, that we get a call to prayer for our big day on Fridays."
According to Dagen, Okur does not rule out eventually having a muezzin making prayer calls seven days a week. "We have to start somewhere," he said. "It would have been too much to begin with. If the proposal goes through, it is about once a week, maybe 1-2 minutes. It is actually not much."
If the city does not grant permission for the mosque to make public calls to prayer every Friday, Okur says he will seek permission for having a muezzin on the first Friday of each month. If that does not work, he will seek to get permits for two public prayer calls per year.
The Socialist Mayor of Botkyrka, Katarina Berggren, said the main issue is whether the noise level of the muezzin would violate the security provisions of the city's Environmental Code. She added that the city's Environment and Health Committee do not see the noise as a problem, and that therefore the ban would not stand up to a legal challenge. As a result, she said, the municipality cannot prevent the muezzin from calling the faithful to prayer.
The Christian Democrats were the only party to vote against allowing the mosque to make prayer calls. Stefan Dayne, a Christian Democrat member of the Botkyrka city planning committee who voted against lifting the ban, told Dagen that the other parties "were afraid" to uphold the ban for fear of "losing votes from Muslims here in Botkyrka."
Dayne also said: "We have nothing against religious freedom. We are for freedom of expression. And we have nothing against Muslims. But we do not think local government has the competence to rule on the muezzin. It is a message that is being proclaimed which may offend other groups and therefore we see it as a police matter."
According to Dayne, the Botkyrka police regulations include a clause which states that "propaganda targeted at people in public places cannot be done through loudspeakers or the like without the permission of the police." Instead of muezzin, he believes that there are alternative ways to remind Muslims to attend Friday prayers.
When asked about the difference between a muezzin calling Muslims to prayer and Christian church bells that ring, Dayne responded: "It is not just a sound, without a message being proclaimed."
Not surprisingly, Okur disagrees: "It's great! The prayer call is for us like ringing bells are for churches. It's important."
When told that Sweden is historically a Christian country, Okur responded: "So it was perhaps before, during the 1930s and 1940s. Now it is a new era. We are more than 100,000 [sic] Muslims in Sweden. Should we not have our religion as well, especially here in Botkyrka, where we are so many?" (Although there are no official statistics of Muslims in Sweden, the U.S. State Department reported in 2011 that there are in the country between 450,000 and 500,000 Muslims, making up around 5% of the total population.)
Soeren Kern is a 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

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Turkey's Treacherous Show Trials

by Jeffrey Wade Gibbs
October 1, 2012 at 3:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3376/turkey-show-trials

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As well-funded public relations work and a healthy economy have helped steer attention away from the ruling party's increasingly autocratic policies, the AKP continues to choke all critical voices in the press and elsewhere with trials, threats and intimidation.

As Turkey writes its new constitution, a trial will resume on October 1 at Silivri L Type Prison, just outside Istanbul, that could well determine whether Turkey's future will be determined by the rule of law under an impartial judicial system, or whether the courts, under autocratic rule, be used as tools to crush opposition.
In the trial, which has been dubbed "The KCK case," 193 men and women are being judged on charges of "membership in an illegal organization," legalese for "terrorism." The defendants were arrested for either teaching or taking classes at academies set up by the BDP, the Peace and Democracy Party, a liberal coalition political party dominated by the Kurdish minority and dedicated to establishing equality for all of Turkey's minorities. According to the ruling AK Party under Prime Minister Tayip Erdogan, participation in any form at these academies -- even the tea servers were arrested -- meant membership in the KCK, the urban branch of the Kurdish guerrilla movement.
Among these supposed trainers of Kurdish terrorists in the mountains are also non-Kurds, such as Ragip Zarakolu, a publisher and Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Busra Ersanli, a professor of political science. Authorities have charged the aged and infirm as well, including Zekiye Ayik, an elderly woman who never learned to read or write, and Muhsin Yenisöz, a man who has to be frequently hospitalized for heart disease. These four, due to significant outside pressure, were released on bond at the end of the first phase of the trial in July, but are still being tried. Most of the defendants remain in prison, including my 60 year old father-in-law, Kemal Seven, a former elementary school teacher and instructor at the academies.
Every day of the trial this July bore witness to violation after violation of international standards of a fair trial. Never mind that 193 people are being tried at once. Using highly charged language presuming guilt, the court routinely violates the universally recognized right to an impartial judge. Defendants, according to the official indictment, "attempt to hide their true ugly face behind a camouflage of political activity." Moreover, many arrests were made on the uneducated guesses of police informants later proven wrong. "I saw a picture on his wall I think was a terrorist," stated one unidentified man. Even though the picture later turned out to be that of a journalist murdered by a government assassin and not a terrorist at all, the accusation led to many arrests. Nevertheless, over vehement protests, the court admitted the statement as evidence. Furthermore, defendants are forbidden to defend themselves in Kurdish, despite the fact that some of them have only a rudimentary grasp of the Turkish language. Segments of anonymous testimony by blue collar witnesses are suspiciously written in the bureaucratic legalese of the public prosecutor. Hearsay, anonymous witnesses and circumstantial evidence are routinely admitted.
When defense lawyers objected to these violations, the court answered by calling in heavily armed riot police, truncheons drawn and ready, to form a cordon around them.
As the next phase of the trial approaches, 10 of the 99 defendants in the men's section of Silivri Prison have begun a hunger strike to protest the trial. On September 25^th, they submitted to the prison authorities a written declaration of their intentions so that the government could not claim ignorance should anything happen to them later on. Shortly after beginning the strike, according to prisoners, police in full riot gear, as well as about 40 to 50 guards, among whom were the vice warden and the captain of the guards, assembled outside the ward. With the presumed intention of removing the hunger strikers to isolated cells, they entered the wards. The other prisoners, apparently fearing that there would be no one to properly take care of the strikers should they be isolated, attempted to stop them. Police and guards responded with violence. According to witnesses, everyone was beaten. The 10 hunger strikers and two other prisoners were whisked away and have not been seen again. The other prisoners are concerned that they are not being properly cared for: none of the hunger strikers' belongings has been removed from their old cells.
As the hunger strike continues in Silivri, more and more people are arrested every week: journalists, anthropologists, writers, academics and elected officials of the BDP. The US State Department, in a report last year, placed the number of people imprisoned in the KCK case at 3,895. Since then, however, hundreds more have been taken in police round-ups around the country.
The KCK case is merely one in a series of show trials against all sources of opposition to the government. Many military officers, ideologically opposed to the ruling party's radically Islamic tendencies, were convicted this September in the "Balyoz" case, despite the fact that American, German and Turkish forensic scientists declared the main evidence used in the trial fraudulent. The Kemalists, heirs to the secularist and nationalist policies of the Republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, are being tried in the "Ergenekon" case, with similar accusations of falsified evidence and coerced witnesses.
This is the atmosphere in which a new constitution is being forged, one which will guide the country far into the foreseeable future. Is this witch-trial mentality what will be enshrined in the country's highest law?
Turkey is ostensibly not a third-world dictatorship, but a NATO ally whose actions reflect on other members such as the United States. As well-funded public relations work and a healthy economy have helped steer attention away from the ruling party's increasingly autocratic policies, the AKP continues to choke all critical voices in the press and elsewhere with sham trials, threats, and intimidation. From Baghdad to Cairo to Beirut, Turkey is a country the entire Middle East, and even the current US administration, apparently look up to as an example. Travelers in the region report widespread admiration for Erdogan and Turkish democracy.
Is this really the model we want the region to follow?
Jeffrey Wade Gibbs is an American writer and teacher who has been living in Istanbul for five years.

Related Topics:  Turkey
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