Friday, October 5, 2012

Gatestone Update :: Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Authority Rigging Courts, and more



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Palestinian Authority Rigging Courts
Canada, UN Complicit

by Khaled Abu Toameh
October 5, 2012 at 5:00 am
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The Canadian Development Agency, with the help of the UN Development Program, has been funding new courthouses in the West Bank "to improve the Palestinians' access to justice." But justice can be achieved even if the judges, lawyers, prosecutors and defendants sit in a tent. Instead of investing in new buildings, it would be more helpful if the Canadians and the UN agency demanded that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his aides stop obstructing the work of the judges.
In an unprecedented move, Palestinian judges in the West Bank this week went on strike in protest against the Palestinian Authority's repeated attempts to meddle in the internal affairs of the judiciary system.
The judges' protest shows that the Palestinian Authority is making a mockery of the courts in the West Bank. Moreover, it shows that the Palestinian Authority leadership wants the judges to issue verdicts that do not embarrass or harm senior Palestinian officials.
The protest raises serious questions about the international community's efforts to help the Palestinian Authority build a proper and credible judicial system in the West Bank.
The Canadian Development Agency, with the help of the UN Development Program, has been funding projects aimed at building new courthouses in the West Bank "to improve the Palestinians' access to justice."
But building new courthouses is not exactly what Palestinians need. Justice can be achieved even if the judges, lawyers, prosecutors and defendants sit in a tent.
Instead of investing in new buildings, it would be more helpful if the Canadians and UN agency demanded that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his aides stop obstructing the work of the judges.
Hasan Khraisheh, deputy speaker of the PLC, told the daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi that the Palestinian Authority was trying to seize control over the judiciary system by appointing its supporters to senior positions.
By seeking to appoint the justice minister as attorney-general, the Palestinian Authority leadership is trying to avoid the possibility of holding any of its senior officials accountable, Khraisheh added. "There should be complete separation between the executive and legislative bodies," he argued.
The attorney-general's job has been vacant since the resignation last month of Ahmed al-Mughni, who had filed corruption charges against two cabinet ministers.
"We want to be fully independent in our work," said Ibrahim Amr, chairman of the Palestinian Judges' Society. "We don't want anyone or any party to interfere with our work."
Amr said that decision to strike came after his colleagues and he felt that there were attempts to "affect judges' rulings."
He also warned the Palestinian Authority leadership against pursuing its attempts to take control of the judiciary system. "This marks the beginning of the collapse of the Palestinian judicial system," he cautioned.
The judges say they are particularly concerned by the Palestinian Authority government's attempt to appoint the justice minister also as attorney-general, saying the move violates the Palestinian constitution and threatens the independence of the judiciary system.
In addition, the Palestinian judges are angry because the Palestinian Authority has been amending and passing new laws without consulting them or seeking the approval of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
Now it remains to be seen whether the Canadians and UN agencies will listen to the voices of the angry judges and demand that the Palestinian Authority halt its attempts to control the judiciary system. Ignoring these voices will allow Abbas and his top aides to turn Palestinian judges into obedient servants of the Palestinian Authority leadership.
Related Topics:  Khaled Abu Toameh

Moral Reform for the Muslim World

by Daniel Greenfield
October 5, 2012 at 4:45 am
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Without moral reform, political reform empowers the people to be at their worst while they take refuge in the magical thinking that justice will come from an Islamic order rather than from accountable government and common ethics. Mitt Romney has proposed economic reform instead of political reform, but it is not likely that reforming Muslim economies will work any better than reforming their governments did.
Flip through the television channels some night and sooner or later you will hit on a detective show or medical drama where qualified professionals pace around, methodically searching for clues to help them understand the nature of the problem. This great search for answers is one of the strengths of Western civilization fueling its ceaseless culture of inquiry, but where there is a problem that cannot be solved regardless of how many clues are dug up and how many microscopes are adjusted, then that strength can become a weakness.
The Muslim world is the patient that we have tried to cure and the case that we have tried to solve. The problem-solving traditions of our culture told us that if we worked hard enough to unravel the mystery of Muslim violence, we would arrive at a solution that would restore harmony to the order of our world. But after sacrificing blood and treasure to try out our cures in Kabul and Baghdad, in Cairo and Benghazi, it appears that not only are we are nowhere near a solution, but that there is no solution to be found.
The Arab Spring arose from the prescription of political reform as the democracy cure for what ails the Muslim world. But political representation has only made the Muslim world that much sicker. There is certainly no balm to be found in Gaza, where democracy created Hamastan, or in Cairo where the Muslim Brotherhood has already made Egypt more tyrannical than it was under Mubarak, or in Iraq, where the Sunni-Shiite civil war is on the verge of breaking out again.
The prescription of political reform arose from a false diagnosis that the problem lay in a political blockage, and that once the tyrannical blockage was excised, the Muslim world would become a fit member of the human family. The surgery was performed repeatedly, both invasively with bombs and tanks, and non-intrusively with domestic protests, and each time the results have only worsened the illness.
Political reform, whether carried out through external regime change or domestic protests, will not fix what ails the Muslim world; though its advocates will likely not admit that until the Muslim world democratically agrees to form a Caliphate and democratically enforces second-class status on infidels, third-class status on women and free-fire status on the rest of the planet.
Obama had advocated political reform for Egypt as early as his first anti-war speech in 2002. Ten years later the ashes of the Arab Spring are fluttering over American embassies and consulates. Mitt Romney has proposed economic reform instead of political reform as his prescription for change, but it is not likely that reforming Muslim economies will work any better than reforming their governments did.
As in the fable of the blind men and the elephant, each of our blind doctors steps up to feel the ten-ton elephant of Muslim violence and offers his proposed philosophical cure. The blindness of the doctors is in their Western preconceptions which prevent them from seeing the huge beast as anything but a conglomerate of familiar parts. One of the blind doctors sees a lack of democracy and another sees a lack of free enterprise, and they prescribe what they think is lacking in the Muslim world.
Their false sense of familiarity with the Muslim world, akin to the linguistic false friends that deceive us into thinking that a familiar foreign word is the counterpart of a word in our own language, leads them to see the East as the West with a few missing spots that need to be filled in. But the Muslim world cannot be fixed by attempting to graft on a few Western institutions; if it were that easy then British and French colonialism would have already fixed the Middle East.
The Muslim world is not in need of political reform; or rather it has no ability to make any meaningful use of such reforms. Trying to cut open the Muslim world to insert some tubes of democracy inside it is as futile and destructive as trying to run 13th Century England by the legal and moral standards of 21st Century England. The results would have been much the same as those of the equivalent modern attempts in the Muslim world.
What the Muslim world needs is moral reform, not political reform. Without moral reform, political reform empowers the people to be at their worst while they take refuge in the magical thinking that justice will come from an Islamic order, rather than from accountable government and common ethics.
Moral reform is not a problem that can be solved on a timetable or seen through a microscope. It cannot be exported by armies or achieved through social media protests. The Muslim world's problems cannot be solved by Western professionals promoting reform or integration. They can only be solved by Muslims taking moral responsibility for their own behavior.
That does not mean that we should abandon hope for the reform of the Muslim world, but like a cousin with a drug problem we should keep it at arm's length until it stops its abusive behavior and gets its own house in order.
Related Topics:  Daniel Greenfield

Gulen's False Choice: Silence or Violence

by Stephen Schwartz
October 5, 2012 at 4:00 am
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The imam and his army should follow their own advice: respond to insults against Muhammad or other non-violent attacks by presenting a better example of Islam, rather than by attempting prior restraint on free expression.
When the enigmatic Turkish Islamist leader, M. Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the U.S., published, in the September 27 London Financial Times, an op-ed column with a clumsy turn from benevolent moderation to hard Islamist ambitions, he revealed his authentic character.
The topic was, probably predictably, the latest outburst of terrorism in Muslim countries, along with the pretext of indignation against a crude video made in the U.S. and which insulted Muhammad. The op-ed, entitled, "Violence is not in the tradition of the Prophet," emphasized, in the first seven (out of nine) paragraphs, that Muslims should not react to insults against Muhammad by destructive protests: "The violent response," he wrote, "was wrong… Muslims …must speak out [against] violence… The question we should ask ourselves as Muslims is whether we have introduced Islam and its Prophet properly to the world. Have we followed his example in such a way as to instill admiration?... [A Muslim] should respect the sacred values of Christians, Jews, Buddhists and others as he expects his own religion and values to be respected." So far, so good.
The true outlook of Fethullah Gulen, however, was revealed in his last two paragraphs: "Hate speech designed to incite violence is an abuse of the freedom of expression... [W]e should appeal to the relevant international institutions, such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation [OIC] or the UN, to intervene, expose and condemn instances of hate speech. We can do whatever it takes within the law to prevent any disrespect to all revered religious figure, not only to the Prophet Muhammad. The attacks on the Prophet we have repeatedly experienced are to be condemned, but the correct response is not violence. Instead, we must pursue a relentless campaign to promote respect for the sacred values of all religions," Gulen proclaimed.
Gulen proposes, in so many words, adoption of international laws against blasphemy as an alternative to homicidal outbursts. And what would a "relentless campaign" involve other than disrespect for free speech? Presenting terrorist mobs and blasphemy codes as the principal alternatives for redress of offended Muslims' grievances is hardly reasonable, and conflicts with the reputation Gulen has sought to construct for himself and his followers as dedicated adherents to interfaith dialogue and tolerance of religious differences.
Gulen leads a massive, worldwide religious, journalistic, and educational network, known as Hizmet (Service). His movement is associated with the Istanbul daily newspaper Zaman (Time), which claims to be Turkey's largest in circulation. Zaman produces an English online edition, Today's Zaman, as well as media aimed at the overseas Turkish communities in Germany and Australia. Zaman also appears in locally-edited versions in countries, from the Balkans to Kyrgyzia, which possess either Turkish minorities, or are viewed as part of a pan-Turkish cultural sphere. Zaman has no problem with restrictive press rules under notorious dictatorships, such as, for example, that of the former Soviet Muslim republic of Turkmenistan, under the eccentric, coercive, and energy-rich regime established by its post-Communist autocrat, Suparmarat Niyazov (1940-2006). Zaman Turkmenistan, following the prevailing rules, has refrained from reporting news unfavorable to Niyazov's regime and its successors.
Gulen is doubtless best known outside Turkey for a system of science-oriented primary, secondary, and higher education institutions across the globe, including many operated as "charter schools," with local public financing, in the U.S. The Gulen school system in America – 120 establishments in 2012, according to The New York Times – has been questioned for its odd characteristics. These include recruiting American students of non-Turkish descent to learn Turkish – hardly a likely first choice for American learners of a second language – and participating in competitions for the mastery of Turkish culture. Turkish-Americans, however, according to the reliable estimates, account for fewer than 150,000 people out of the total population, thereby depriving the Gulen program of an argument for multicultural representation in public school curricula of a significant minority culture.
Further, in the last two years, mainstream media have reported U.S. federal and state investigations of the Gulen charter school system. These have focused on charges of diversion of local government money to Gulen-controlled businesses and abuse of "H1B" work visas for teachers brought from Turkey and Central Asia who have substandard qualifications, while American teachers with superior credentials suffer unemployment. Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that three Gulen schools in the American state of Georgia (he has many more schools in the former Soviet republic of Georgia) had defaulted on bonds, and that an audit had disclosed improper contracting for services with Gulen enterprises.
The Gulen movement's American branches additionally offer speaking platforms and tours of Turkey to influential Americans, with considerable success. Gulen, who began his professional life as an imam, has enjoyed the support of America's premier academic apologist for radical Islam, Professor John Louis Esposito of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, as well as other prominent figures. Through them, he has projected himself as a preacher of moderate, spiritual Islam related to the Sufi tradition and particularly to that of Said Nursi (1878-1960), who advocated a fusion of science and faith. Gulen has been especially identified by his defenders with mutual respect between religions and as an advocate for secular education, an opponent of terrorism, and, in effect, a lover of all humanity.
Inside Turkey, Gulen and his movement have a different image. They inspire considerable fear. Gulen's followers have been accused of an elaborate strategy of infiltration of state institutions, including the army, police, and judiciary. Ahmet Sik, a Turkish journalist who wrote an expose of the movement, The Imam's Army, was charged with participation in a nebulous "conspiracy" called "Ergenekon," organized ostensibly by a "deep state" within the Turkish institutions. Sik was released in March 2012 after more than a year in prison. The Imam's Army is banned in Turkey and has yet to be printed as a book there, although it, and excerpts translated into English, have been posted on the internet.
On his release from Silivri prison near Istanbul, the valiant Sik declared "The police, prosecutors and judges who plotted and executed this conspiracy will enter this prison. Justice will prevail when they enter here. The culprits of this affair are [certain] figures in the bureaucracy and the police connected to the [Gulen] community, and the true culprit is the government of the AKP (Justice and Development Party)." The latter is headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, discreetly allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, and described typically as "neo-fundamentalist." This led to a new indictment of Sik, although a hearing on it, scheduled for September 12, was postponed to December 4.
The ingenious imam may convince readers in Europe, where laws against hate speech are in force in some countries, that such sanctions are the sole alternative to brutal Islamist outbursts. Finally, the proposition has the flavor of ideological blackmail. But the imam and his army should follow their own advice: respond to insults against Muhammad or other non-violent attacks on Islam by presenting a better example of Islam, rather than by attempting prior restraint on free expression. As my colleagues and I in the Center for Islamic Pluralism have repeatedly stated: If we are firm in our religion, no insults or other negative commentaries, if not inciting violence, can harm us. Gulen has managed a two-faced campaign of outward moderation, while concealing his goal of political power, with great success. But the rest of the world is not Turkey; and Gulen, along with the OIC – headed by a Turkish academic, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, and lately committed to reviving such a scheme – cannot impose legal regulation of debate about religion on the entire planet.
Related Topics:  Turkey  |  Stephen Schwartz

Ethnic Cleansing in Bangladesh
Latest Steps in Islamization

by Mohshin Habib
October 5, 2012 at 3:00 am
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Because Saudi Arabia is one of the top donors to Bangladesh, the government of Bangladesh has taken no action against the Al-Rabita NGO. Saudi Arabia has also threatened that if it is discontented, it will send back to Bangladesh the tens of thousands of laborers who work in Saudi Arabia.
Despite what officials state, the Islamists of Bangladesh have been violently urging all non-Muslims to get out of the country. Buddhists, for example, mostly settled in the southeast part of Bangladesh and less than 1% of the population of 150 million, have been struggling to survive. More than 1,000 have fled; the situation is no different for Christians and Hindus.
What is clear is that Rabita Al Alam al Islami, known as Al-Rabita, a powerful Saudi Arabia-based non-governmenal organization [NGO] has taken charge of Islamization, especially in the remote areas. Since 1980, Al-Rabita has been working throughout southeast Bangladesh to convert the hill people to Islam. There is serious concern that Al-Rabita has been funding terrorists (See: "Islamic NGOs Funding Terror in Bangladesh").
Throughout the area, construction of mosques and madrassas [Islamic religious schools] continues. There are now 800 mosques and nearly 300 madrassas built by Al-Rabita. Al-Rabita also has an Islamic Missionary Center with the goal of converting poor tribal people. This Saudi NGO has been spending millions of dollar to promote Shariah law and violent Islamism in the country.
And because Saudi Arabia is one of the top foreign aid donors to Bangladesh -- the government of Bangladesh has taken no action against this NGO. Saudi Arabia has also threatened that if it is discontented, it will send back to Bangladesh the tens of thousands of laborers who work in Saudi Arabia.
For three days beginning September 29, more than 25,000 radical Muslims attacked different Buddhist communities in Bangladesh, as reported in news coverage worldwide. The Islamist attackers claimed that a photo of a burned copy of the Koran was posted on Facebook by a Buddhist youth. The youth denied the allegation and proved that someone else posted the photo in his Facebook wall. At the mere rumor, however, thousands of radical Islamists burned dozens of Buddhist temples and around 100 houses, and looted golden statues of Buddha. Some valuable manuscripts written in the ancient Pali language were also burnt to ashes. Officials stated that the radical Islamists used gunpowder and petrol. Afterward, the administration ordered compliance with "CRPC section 144," which restricts gatherings of more than four persons.
In recent years Muslim extremism and violent tendencies, especially in the mountainous areas of Bangladesh, have intensified. According to a Congressional Research Service Report of 2008, the authorities in Bangladesh have expressed concern about the use of madrassas by a network of Islamic activists being investigated in connection with a number of incidents of violence. The report states, "[T]here is concern among observers that the secular underpinnings of moderate Bangladesh are being undermined by a culture of political violence and the rise of Islamic extremists."
In 2010, the mountainous areas were rocked by violence, reigniting decades-old ethnic and religious tensions, as Muslim settlers set fire to hundreds of homes of indigenous Buddhists. The attacks resulted in countless injuries and deaths.
Since 1980, there have been 20 major occurrences of massacres against the indigenous non-Muslim people by Muslim settlers -- in co-operation with the government. More than 100,000 Jummas -- the indigenous Buddhists -- have fled across the border to India. Many villages have been completely burnt down by the Islamists. Thousands of Buddhist families who were displaced have not been resettled, and the number of poverty-stricken Buddhist refugees has substantially increased.
These mountainous areas with dense forests have become a safe haven for Bangladeshi Islamists, who had previously fought in Afghanistan against the U.S.
Related Topics:  Bangladesh  |  Mohshin Habib

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