In this mailing:
- Soeren Kern: Belgium Erasing Christianity for Islam
- Samuel Westrop: Eye Gouging and Paralyzing: Saudi Arabia's Tribal Justice
Belgium Erasing Christianity for Islam
by Soeren Kern
April 30, 2013 at 5:00 am
April 30, 2013 at 5:00 am
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Under the
guise of letting go of the Christian holidays, this text provides Muslims with
a waiver to add Islamic holidays…. Six Belgian senators introduced a draft
resolution in the Belgian Parliament that would make "Islamophobia" a
crime punishable by fines and imprisonment. A person would be guilty if he
"considers Islam to be violent, threatening or supportive of terrorism…"
or "considers Islam to be a political ideology, used for political and
military purposes to establish it hegemony." If passed, the law would pose
a devastating blow to the exercise of free speech in Belgium.
Wallonia, the French-speaking southern region of Belgium, has officially
renamed the four major Christian holidays on the Belgian school calendar with
secular names.Critics of the move say it reflects an ongoing effort by politicians in Belgium to remove Christianity from public life to accommodate a burgeoning Muslim population.
The French Community of Belgium -- which has its own institutions, parliament and government, and has jurisdiction over the five provinces of Wallonia and over the Francophone population of Brussels in the areas of education and culture -- adopted a framework decree that formally establishes the new secularized names in the interests of "administrative simplification."
As reported by the center-right newspaper La Libre on March 26, school calendars within Belgium's French speaking community will permanently use the following terminology: the Christian holiday previously known as All Saints Day (Congés de Toussaint) will now be referred to as Autumn Leave (Congé d'automne); Christmas Vacation (Vacances de Noël) is now Winter Vacation (Vacances d'hiver); Lenten Vacation (Congés de Carnaval) is now Rest and Relaxation Leave (Congé de détente); and Easter (Vacances de Pâques) is now Spring Vacation (Vacances de Printemps).
Although these secularized appellations have been used intermittently over the past several years, the new decree formalizes their use on a permanent basis.
The move to "de-Christianize" the Christian holidays has been roundly criticized by those opposed to the relentless spread of multiculturalism in Belgium.
Some of the most vocal opposition has come from the Reformist Movement (Mouvement Réformateur, MR), an alliance of four center-right parties that together comprise the largest classical liberal political formation in French-speaking Belgium.
MR leader Françoise Bertieaux accused the Wallonian Minister of Education, Marie-Dominique Simonet, of pandering to Muslims at the expense of Christians. "Minister Simonet wants to push religion [Christianity] out the door, but the new decree actually opens the way for reintroducing religion [Islam] through the window. Under the guise of letting go of [Christian] religion and tradition, this text opens the way to new vacation days for other religions [Islam]. MR firmly regrets this new formula," Bertieaux said.
According to Bertieaux, Article 9, Paragraph 3 of the new decree provides Muslims with a waiver that would allow them to add Islamic religious holidays to the official school calendar.
The dust-up in Wallonia comes just months after city officials in Brussels removed the traditional Christmas tree in city's Gothic central square and replaced it with a politically correct structure of abstract minimalist art.
Critics accused the Socialist mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, of declaring war on Christmas by installing the "multicultural" structure of lights to avoid offending the city's growing Muslim population.
Historically, a 20 meter (65 foot) fir tree taken from the forests of the Ardennes has adorned the city's main square, the Grand-Place. In 2012, however, it was replaced with a 25 meter (82 foot) new-age-like structure of lighted boxes (see picture here). In addition, the traditional Christmas Market in downtown Brussels was renamed as "Winter Pleasures 2012."
The mayor's office, where more than half of the city's eleven councilors are either Muslim or Socialist or both, said the non-tree -- which cost the taxpayers of Brussels a total of €44,000 ($57,000), compared to €5,000 for the traditional tree -- was part of a theme celebrating "light."
City Councilor Philippe Close said the aim was to show off the "avant-garde character" of Brussels by blending the modern and the traditional to produce something new and different.
But Bianca Debaets, a Brussels councilor from the Christian Democratic and Flemish party, told the Flemish newspaper Brussel Nieuws that she believed an argument over Muslim religious sensitivities had prompted the Brussels City Council to put up the light sculpture.
"I suspect that the reference to the Christian religion was the decisive factor in replacing the tree," Debaets said. "For a lot of people who are not Christians, the tree there is offensive to them. What will be next? Will all Easter eggs be banned in Brussels because they refer to Easter?"
In an interview with the BBC News, Erik Maxwell, a resident of Brussels, said: "We think the tree has been put up for cultural reasons. A tree is for Christmas and Christians but now there are a lot of Muslims here in Brussels. So to avoid discussions they have just replaced a tree with a couple of cubes!"
After all the efforts to make Belgium more Islam-friendly, however, many Muslims say they still feel alienated from Belgian society.
According to a new survey of Muslim youth in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of Belgium, only 30% of Muslim males between the ages of 15 and 25 feel as though they are accepted by Flemish society. This figure drops to 25% for Muslim females in the same age group.
The survey, which was published by the daily newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen on April 19, shows that 60% of Muslim youth believe that they will never be integrated into Belgian society. One in three of those surveyed say that he or she has been discriminated against at school, and one in five say they have been discriminated against at work. More than 50% say they have been victims of racism. Although 93% of those surveyed have Belgian citizenship, 42% of them say they consider themselves to be foreigners.
The results are virtually unchanged from a similar survey conducted in 2005, and imply that years of government efforts to make Belgium more multicultural have done nothing to change the minds of Muslim youth.
According to the Flemish Minister for Integration, Geert Bourgeois, Muslim youth should work harder and complain less. "That so many young people feel discriminated against and do not feel accepted means that our society still has a lot of work to do. It's actually an 'us-them' story. We as a society can and should still make an extra effort, but conversely, Muslim youth should do more as well. Perhaps an inverted research shows that we just think that young Muslims do not belong because they do not want to belong," Bourgeois said.
If Belgian multiculturalists have their way, however, asking Muslims to do more to integrate into Belgian society may soon become a criminal offense.
In February, six Belgian senators (three of whom are Muslim) introduced a draft resolution in the Belgian Federal Parliament that would make "Islamophobia" a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment.
The draft text -- which, among other objectives, seeks to equate "Islamophobia" with anti-Semitism -- is audacious in scope and if passed would pose a devastating blow to the exercise of free speech in Belgium.
According to the authors of the resolution, a person would be guilty of Islamophobia if he or she:
- Considers Islam to be a single monolithic bloc, closed and static, incapable of adapting to new situations;
- Considers Islam to be separate and "different," devoid of having any aims or shared values with other cultures, not influenced by other cultures and not influencing other cultures;
- Considers Islam to be inferior to the West, to be barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist;
- Considers Islam to be violent, threatening and supportive of terrorism, actively engaged in a 'clash of civilizations';
- Considers Islam to be a political ideology, used for political and military purposes to establish its hegemony;
- Rejects out of hand criticisms made by Islam of 'the West';
- Shows hostility towards Islam to justify discrimination and social exclusion of Muslims;
- Accepts hostility toward Muslims as natural and normal.
The draft resolution has outraged free speech activists, who are demanding more public scrutiny of what they say is a "draconian" measure that is contrary to liberal democratic values. But the sponsors of the text remain unapologetic.
In an interview with the daily newspaper Le Soir, Senator Richard Miller from Wallonia accuses critics of the resolution of trying to make the draft text say things it does not say.
Miller, a member of the same Mouvement Réformateur that has accused other Belgian politicians of pandering to Muslims, claims his measure is not meant to prohibit the criticism of Islam, but only to "fight against those who often use a variety of arguments, with the result of creating unease in the Muslim 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
Eye Gouging and Paralyzing: Saudi Arabia's Tribal Justice
by Samuel Westrop
April 30, 2013 at 4:00 am
April 30, 2013 at 4:00 am
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By playing
the clerics and institutions against the people, the House of Saud rises above
the power struggle and justice itself, and continues further to consolidate its
power.
A Saudi court ordered Ali al-Khawahir, a 24-year-old Saudi citizen, to be
surgically paralyzed as punishment for a crime he committed as a 14-year-old,
that had left his victim paralyzed. The Western media has described the court's
ruling as an "eye for an eye punishment."According to reports in the Saudi Gazette, Khawahir stabbed a childhood friend in the spine during an argument ten years ago. The punishment, as decided by the Sharia courts, is similar to other methods used to administer justice, including beheading, flogging, stoning to death and eye gouging.
This arrangement is the product of the religious and tribal structure upon which Saudi Arabia's system of justice and law enforcement is based. Although Saudi Arabia is a theocracy in which the ruler is responsible for applying Islamic law, the actual system of justice revolves around a nexus of power and money, a structure that protects the tribal and religious values that keep Saudi Arabia firmly in the control of the House of Saud.
In 1971, the judicial system was revised -- a move that consolidated the power of those at the top. Power-holders across the country were tasked with appointing a number of quasi-judicial bodies to deal with administrative and economic disputes. With no legislative authority, however, these courts required the clerics to sanction their existence. For this very purpose, the clerics set up the Institute for Religio-Legal Opinions.
The Institute has its own enforcers, known as the Mutawayyin -- The Committee for the Exhortation to Good and Interdiction to Evil – who ensure that Islamic values are implemented. The Committee's most notable moment occurred in 2002, when its members prevented young girls from leaving a burning building because they were not wearing headscarves; at least fourteen of the girls were burned to death.
Crucially, Sharia Law, applied in both the criminal and civil courts, is not codified. With no precedence or structure, except for half-a-dozen defined crimes, Saudi judges, all of whom are Wahhabi clerics, are free to implement punishments in accordance with their own beliefs.
In many ways, the system is feudal. As in medieval Europe, a blood-money payment to the victim's family is evidently often permissible in lieu of legal retribution – an alternative to punishment presumably designed to prevent bad blood between different communities or tribes. In the case of Ali al-Khawahir, the price of avoiding paralysis is one million Saudi riyals ($266,000) – a price the family cannot afford.
Money, it seems, is the ultimate guarantor, facilitating both power and compromise. In 1982, Ghazi Algosaibi, the Western-educated Saudi Minister for Industry, proclaimed that the man who takes bribes is "active and intelligent, usually enjoying the respect of others."
As some families are able to afford such financial redress, for those with wealth or influence, therefore, certain crimes are alluring and unconstrained modes of behavior. More often than not, those who can afford to pay blood-money are clerics or members of the 3000-strong royal family. Recently, for example, in Saudi Arabia a "celebrity" cleric raped and murdered his 5-year-old daughter, but was released after he paid the prescribed blood money to the child's mother. The King, however, after a public outcry, ultimately overruled the court and placed the cleric back in prison.
Under such a system, however, not only can rich males can buy their way out of the judicial system, but according to one Saudi human rights group, the law rules that a father cannot be executed for murdering his children, and husbands cannot be executed for killing their wives.
Any discussion of inequality before the law however, is futile. Saudi's justice seems designed solely to protect the power-holders. The legitimacy of the justice system, almost entirely based on Sharia law, is guaranteed by the Wahhabi clerics, who are rewarded with authority by the royal family.
The maintenance of "traditional Islamic values" therefore often seems to have more to do with the preservation of power and as an officially sanctioned outlet for the pathological wishes of fundamentalist clerics.
The Saudi armed forces also help to maintain the ruling family's hold on the reins of power. While the clerics have their own enforcers and institutions, the National Guard chiefly consists of the descendants of those tribesmen who once fought with Abdul ibn Saud, the tribal leader who "founded" the House of Saud and first brought control over the entire country.
During the recent waves of protest throughout the Arab World, in Saudi Arabia there were only a few instances of dissent. The al-Saud regime, from what one can determine, did not even enter into discussion about any real political reform. Saudi Arabia suffers huge youth unemployment and its per capita income is less than that of neighboring Bahrain, where there were huge public protests.
In a recent report for the Council on Foreign Relations, F. Gregory Gause III, an academic at the University of Vermont, identified three key reasons for the suppression of all political discontent. First, at the beginning of the "Arab Spring," the Saudi government provided two large payouts, equivalent to two months' salary, for government employees, military personnel, and retired workers from large private-sector employers. Additional financial support was provided for unemployed youths through an expanded benefits system.
Second, security forces, recruited from tribes and regions which the regime regards as particularly loyal, were deployed to areas where the Shia population was involved in some small disturbances in February 2011. These forces demonstrated "that they were willing to arrest and shoot demonstrators, thus deterring larger protests."
Finally, the regime utilized its patronage networks by calling upon the tribes, clans and religious courts to mobilize and support the regime. On March 6, the Council of Senior Clerics, the most important body within the religious-legal establishment, issued a statement forbidding demonstrations. Gause concludes that, "Al-Saud, aided both by their historical ties to the Wahhabi movement, central Arabian tribes, and important families, and by their vast oil wealth, have been able to build and sustain a broad network of support in the country."
A number of Arab writers have drawn attention to the nature of the Saudi state. In his book Beyond Oil, the Kuwaiti academic Muhammed Ruhaimi concludes that, "Vested interests continue to block any rational or open political development."
Saudi Arabia is paralyzed by the past. Immense oil-wealth has not brought about development; it has cemented the country's tribalism and backwardness.
While it is possible that the king may commute the sentence handed down to Ali al-Khawahir, such an action only reminds the Saudi people of where true authority lies. The royal family is the source of legitimacy for the clerical courts and tribual institutions, which in turn guarantee absolute support of the royal family. By playing the clerics and institutions against the people, the House of Saud rises above justice and above the power struggle as it continues further to consolidate its power.
Related Topics: Saudi Arabia
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