Germany: Islam Becomes Campaign Issue

by Soeren Kern
April 11, 2013 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3666/germany-islam-elections

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The study -- which corroborates the conclusions of other recent surveys -- concludes that the image of Islam in Germany is "devastating."

Germany's opposition Social Democrats are courting disgruntled Muslim voters in a desperate bid to unseat German Chancellor Angela Merkel in federal elections set for September 22.
Peer Steinbrück, the 66-year-old chancellor candidate for the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), said at a campaign stop in Berlin on April 3 that he supported the idea of physical education classes in German schools being divided by gender as a courtesy to Muslims.
Responding to a question from the audience, Steinbrück said: "If schools are able to do it, then they should." After his comment was greeted with silence, Steinbrück added that the measure should be taken "out of consideration for [Muslim] religious convictions."
The reaction to Steinbrück's comments was immediate and fierce from across Germany's political spectrum, an indication that overt support for multiculturalism may actually be a political liability in this election cycle.
Barbara John, a politician with the ruling center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), said the debate over gender separation is outmoded and that "children and parents have to get used to the fact that genders here grow up together and live with the same rights."
Maria Böhmer, a member of the Bundestag [federal parliament] for the CDU who also serves as Minister of State in the German Chancellery, said: "Peer Steinbrück is wrong! School, especially physical education, is a place of social learning. Here girls and boys learn from an early age to treat each other equally. And that race, religion and skin color do not matter! Shared learning and joint physical education promote integration in our country. Schools should be encouraged to continue along this path!"
Serkan Tören, a Turkish-born member of parliament with the libertarian Free Democrats (FDP), Merkel's junior coalition partner, said "dividing boys and girls is akin to dividing society. Splitting classes by gender is also the wrong signal to send when it comes to integrating Muslims in Germany."
Memet Kilic, a Turkish-born member of parliament for the left-wing Green Party, said that current rules governing physical education classes should not be changed, that gender equality is a universal human right.
Even members of Steinbrück's own SPD -- which has long championed multiculturalism and Muslim immigration -- distanced themselves from his remarks.
Heinz Buschkowsky, the SPD mayor of the Neukölln district of Berlin, said Steinbrück's comments were "very unfortunate." He added: "Young people need modern social orientation -- in addition to or even in opposition to traditional family rites. We had schools for girls and boys schools 150 years ago. In Germany we have no segregation. It cannot be that we turn the social clock back now."
This is a far cry from just recently, when the SPD said it would like to see Islam recognized as an official religion in Germany. In an interview with the newspaper Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung in October 2010, SPD politician Dieter Wiefelspütz declared: "It would be an important signal to the four million Muslims in Germany, if the state recognizes Islam as a religious community. Islam needs a fair chance in Germany."
In November 2011, the SPD-led government of Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, concluded a "state treaty" [Staatsvertrag] with its Muslim communities that grants Muslims broad new rights and privileges but does little to encourage their integration into German society.
The November 13 agreement, signed by Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz and the leaders of four Muslim umbrella groups, was praised by the proponents of multiculturalism for putting the northern port city's estimated 200,000 Muslims on an equal footing with Christian residents.
The most controversial part of the accord involves a commitment by the city government to promote the teaching of Islam in the Hamburg public school system. The agreement grants the leaders of Hamburg's Muslim communities a determinative say in what will be taught by allowing them to develop the teaching curriculum for Islamic studies.
On November 30, the northern German city of Bremen followed Hamburg's lead by concluding its own state treaty with the local Muslim community. Bremen Mayor Jens Böhrnsen (SPD) said the treaty reflects "mutual recognition and respect of mutual values."
Critics, however, say the agreements, the first of their kind in Germany, will boost the growing influence of Islam in the country by encouraging the perpetuation of a Muslim parallel society.
In fact, polls indicate that ordinary Germans are increasingly concerned about the consequences of mass immigration from Muslim countries.
The recent study, "Fear of the East in the West" [Die Furcht vor dem Morgenland im Abendland], shows that more than half of the German population believes that Islam is prone to violence (64%); has a tendency toward revenge and retaliation (60%); is obsessed with proselytizing others (56%); and strives for political influence (56%).
More than 80% of Germans believe that Islam deprives women of their rights, and 70% say Islam is associated with religious fanaticism and radicalism. By contrast, only 13% of Germans associate Islam with love for neighbors, 12% with charity and 7% with openness and tolerance.
The study -- which corroborates the conclusions of other recent surveys -- concludes that the image of Islam in Germany is "devastating."
These attitudes were reinforced by a recent survey of Turkish-German mores and attitudes that found that nearly half of all Turks living in Germany say they hope there will be more Muslims than Christians in Germany in the future.
Germans appear to be reluctant to provide Muslim immigrants with more rights and special privileges in the absence of a greater commitment on the part of Muslims to integrate into German society.
Case in point: On the same day that Steinbrück made his controversial comments about Muslim-friendly gym classes, Germany's Central Council of Muslims (ZMD) demanded that the German government introduce statutory Muslim holidays throughout Germany.
In an interview with the daily newspaper Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) on April 3, council chairman Aiman Mazyek said that granting one day during the month of Ramadan and another on the fast-breaking day of Eid al-Fitr would be "an important sign of integration" and "would emphasize tolerance in our society."
The proposal has not been well received. Wolfgang Bosbach, a member of parliament for the CDU, told WAZ that he sees "far and wide no need" for the legal recognition of Muslim holidays, adding that Germany has "no Muslim tradition." The current public holidays -- such as Christmas and Easter -- are part of a Christian-Western heritage, Bosbach said.
Guntram Schneider, a minister in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for the SPD, told WAZ that adding more statutory holidays is "not economically affordable."
If Steinbrück insists on borrowing a page from the playbook of neighboring France, where Muslims determined the outcome of the presidential elections in May 2012, and thrust François Hollande and his Socialist Party into office, he may end up alienating more voters than he hopes to gain.
Growing public apprehension in Germany over Muslim immigration suggests that -- at least for the time being -- pandering to Muslim voters may be a rather risky proposition.
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.

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"Budget Chicken": The Hollowed-Out U.S. Military In an Era of Nuclear Weapons

by Peter Huessy
April 11, 2013 at 3:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3668/military-budget-cuts

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These calculations call into question how seriously Washington takes the warnings of former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the current Joint Chief of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey, that sequestration cuts are going to seriously harm U.S. national security. Right now, the trade-off appears to be between smart spending restraint and tax reform, and a hollowed-out military.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned American security policy upside down, and right at a time when America's security interests are being seriously challenged.
On one side, the brigades of those convinced of American being the 21^st century bully are now convinced that much of the war on terrorism was proof positive that many in American politics want to use only military force to settle conflicts and ensure US security.
On the other side, dissatisfied with what they see as an imperial design to remake the Islamic world, and fearful that "imperial overreach" brings with it a huge expansion of the size and power of the federal government, even conservatives have turned away from supporting a strong defense posture and, echoing the 1972 campaign of Senator George McGovern, are calling for America "to come home" from far flung deployments.
A considerable amount of analysis, especially in the national media, has concluded that strong defense supporters in Congress have largely surrendered in trying to sustain the defense budget at current levels. In addition -- seemingly unaware of the administration's warnings that currently planned defense sequestration -- automatic across the board reductions -- to say nothing of even greater military force cuts, would severely harm the nation's security -- they have also concluded that further deficit reduction might usefully eliminate more weapons systems and defense infrastructure beyond those called for by sequestration.
Ironically, defense supporters in Congress have actually welcomed the possible changes to the budget -- scheduled to have been sent to the Hill April 10, 2013 -- that reportedly will scale back the sequestration from a $50 billion a year cut in defense to $10 billion annually. The proposal, however, may be fraught with some not-too-subtle political speed bumps. To keep defense cuts from going forward, as called for by sequestration, the price may be a trade for higher taxes through elimination of what are often described as "loopholes for the rich," changes in the tax code which are assumed to be possible as part of a trade for tax reform. If used to offset an increase in defense spending, the prospects for tax reform dim.
The three most prominent tax items for elimination are: the accelerated depreciation for leased airplanes, a tax break provision put in the stimulus bill in 2009; the oil and gas provision that allows some exploration costs to be deducted; and a provision currently allowing hedge fund fees to be taxed at the capital gains rate as opposed to regular income tax rates.
These items come to $4-5 billion a year in estimated lost revenue but the argument makes for good sound bites as members of Congress can campaign that they would love to support a stronger defense but they are being stopped by supporters for "loopholes" for the rich.
These calculations call into question how seriously Washington takes the warnings of former Secretary of Defense Panetta and the current Joint Chief of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey that defense sequestration cuts are going to seriously harm US national security. If that is in fact the case, defense supporters should be doing whatever they can to reverse the defense cuts: right now the trade-off appears to be between relatively small tax items and a hollowed out military.
Raising revenue could easily be accomplished without changing tax rates or even eliminating loopholes. As a number of analysts have concluded, simply increasing economic growth rates an additional 1-2% a year -- a number equal to the average of previous recoveries, which would reduce unemployment to the 4-5% level -- would literally raise trillions of dollars in greater revenue over the next decade. In addition, as a number of legislators have laid out, there are tens of billions -- perhaps even hundreds -- in annual Federal expenditures which are unnecessary, wasteful, and duplicative that can be eliminated. Presumably, though, a politically smart government would make fewer people dependent upon it -- a dependency that current policies seem, like drug pushers, to encourage.
The US economy remains with some trillions in lost GDP and revenue, compared to a normal post-World War II recovery. Now, over four years into an economic rebound, the number of Americans on disability, food stamps and extended unemployment compensation continues to rise -- the opposite of what one would expect.
As a number of former directors of the Congressional Budget Office have explained, Washington is making cuts from only 30% of the budget—discretionary spending -- while leaving relatively untouched the 63% of the budget which are entitlements and poverty programs (the remaining amounts are accounted for by interest on the debt). Of the 30%, the cuts fall most heavily on defense and security spending: an 11% cut in defense spending this fiscal year (outside of military salaries and overseas contingencies).
Although there always is some accommodation to security requirements in budgets, we are now disregarding risking seriously harming our security by engaging in an elaborate game of "budget chicken." The defense budget should not be held hostage to major tax increases. There are plenty of smart alternatives to the defense sequestration.
Here then comes the real downside to defense cuts which may not be able to be swept aside or excused through colorful sound bites or fortune cookie analyses. Regardless of our rhetoric, the consequences of a reduced American presence in the world could be severe: adversaries may come to believe, if they do not already, that the word of the U.S. is no longer credible, as we will no longer have the resources to fulfill our commitments
In Iran, we have a converging consensus. Top scientists now understand that Iran is within 2-4 months of producing enough nuclear weapons fuel for an atomic weapon. Former top inspectors for the United Nations have now warned us that the IAEA framework is simply inadequate to know where all of Iran's nuclear work is carried out, and that a stealthy sprint toward nuclear weapons would outrun our ability to recognize what is taking place.
We further know that Iran and North Korea have signed a new defense agreement that mirrors word-for-word the previous North Korean-Syrian agreement that led to Damascus constructing a nuclear reactor, in violation of all requirements of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In addition, Iran, North Korea and China are working jointly to build better ballistic missiles for the mullahs in Tehran and the Kim family in Pyongyang. Having mastered the technology of multi-stage rockets and the use of solid rocket motors, both rogue states can now launch rockets with little notice and send warheads far beyond the previous limits proscribed by unitary Scud missiles. An analysis of the debris of the North Korean rocket launch uncovered Chinese technology and Russian fuel traces -- in direct contravention of the pledge from both countries that they would work to limit proliferation threats.
When our friends ask for help, the phone almost always rings on the desk of the President of the United States. It is not a coincidence that US military and economic strength since the end of World War II resulted in the greatest expansion of human freedom and economic prosperity in history. A US retreat at this time, especially given the growing threats from North Korea and Iran, may invite serious miscalculations by our adversaries, all the more dangerous given their rapidly advancing missile and nuclear capabilities.
Unfortunately, some proposed "solutions" to these threats border on the "wishful thinking", even utopian. For example, Global Zero calls for dramatic reductions in US nuclear capabilities; Cato Institute scholars push for the withdrawal of all American forces from the Republic of Korea; and some former high ranking government officials propose that we acknowledge Iran as the top regional power in the Middle East and work jointly together.
However beneficial nuclear arms control has been, further reduction proposals beyond the 70% cut we have achieved since 1981 do not appear to be crafted to secure reciprocal benefits. We cut, but will the other guys follow?
Likewise, eliminating our forces from the South Korea to "reduce tensions," as some have proposed, may provoke exactly the opposite reaction. US withdrawal has been the long-sought goal of Pyongyang; if done, it could spark an invasion from the North as it seeks to fulfill its long quest to reunify the peninsula under its rule.
Moreover, joining forces with the premier state sponsor of terror in the world—Iran-- is totally fraught with danger. Any "deal" faces the same problem: is Iran playing diplomatic rope-a-dope, buying time to achieve its objectives of hegemonic control over the Middle East and leadership of the Islamic world? As Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations warns, "As the great powers contemplate a solution to the Iranian nuclear conundrum, they would be prudent to appreciate how Tehran uses diplomacy to complement its quest for nuclear arms."
The details of our nuclear policy remain to be announced; our Korean deployments may be in jeopardy due to budget pressures; and our Iran policy remains muddled as we have not fully employed sanctions and we remain enthralled by the un-thought-through, childlike idea that settlement of Palestinian statehood would resolve much of the terror and conflict in the Middle East. Uncertainty may breed recklessness among our adversaries but it also may push our allies into making choices that undermine the security frameworks that have in many cases worked so well.
Nuclear reductions under START I, the Moscow Treaty and New Start have improved strategic stability but some projected cuts might reverse that.
A sense that the US is less committed to extended deterrence in the Persian Gulf or western Pacific has already engendered discussion of new nuclear deterrent capabilities by our allies that might trigger a cascade of further proliferation.
A partial Iran sanctions policy, filled with Swiss-cheese exceptions, enables Tehran to doubt our resolve, and our allies to follow their own paths.
Worse, a paradigm that sees terrorism rooted in genuine grievances against the United States, the West and Israel will only encourage the terror masters to probe for even more weaknesses -- whether real or fabricated for political expediency -- to extract even greater concessions.
The years after the fall of Vietnam were not pretty for American security or that of the free world. Nearly two dozen nations either fell to communism or other tyrannies. Toward the end of the decade, the mullahs took over in Tehran, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq went to war with Iran. The Soviets claimed the correlation of forces had dramatically shifted in their direction, and with it their friends and they became increasingly emboldened.
The 1976 Committee on the Present Danger said: "We recognize that the responsibility of the United States in today's changing world cannot be easily or cheaply met…Peace is not a cut rate commodity. We must be wary of oversimplified and easy solutions to complex international problems."
Some 28 years later, Senators Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl announced the re-establishment the committee, writing in the Washington Post on July 20, 2004:
The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks awoke all Americans to the capabilities and brutality of our new enemy, but today too many people are insufficiently aware of our enemy's evil worldwide designs. The past struggle against communism was, in some ways, different from the current war against Islamist terrorism. But America's freedom and security, which each has aimed to undermine, are exactly the same. The national and international solidarity needed to prevail over both enemies is also the same. The Committee will advocate strong policies both against international terrorists and their sponsors and in favor of freedom and security. We are committed to advancing this common cause on a bipartisan basis.
Retired USAF Lt. General Mark Shackelford and Rebecca Heinrich summed up the situation well in a April 1, 2013, AOL Defense editorial:
Above all, Washington must recognize that it is not asking the military to do less. As rogue regimes in North Korea to Iran to Syria edge closer to Administration-defined 'redlines', the odds increase that our servicemen and women will be asked to do more. Yet sequestration insists that they do more with less. That is the best recipe for the hollow force.

Related Topics: Peter Huessy

Would You Name Your Kid "Sword"?

by Harold Rhode
April 11, 2013 at 2:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3669/muslim-names

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Names parents choose to give their children are at least something of a guide to what they hold in high regard and what they wish for their children.

Would we name our children Warrior, Conqueror, Sword, or Holy War? These are the meanings of personal names commonly used in the Muslim world, and may give some insight into Muslim values, especially regarding violence. Violence has been endemic to Muslim society from its inception more than 1,400 years ago. A large proportion of the ancestors of today's approximately 1.3 billion Muslims converted to Islam under duress.
Western societies almost never give their children names which denote violence. The Protestants who settled America often gave their children names indicative of their values, such as Felicity, Charity, Prudence, Hope, Faith, Joy or Chastity. Other Christians gave their children names that reflect similar values, or names from the Old or New Testaments: Miriam, Mary, David, Luke. As names can be an indicator of how a civilization views itself and the outside world, names parents choose to give their children are at least something of a guide to what they hold in high regard and what they wish for their children. And as Muslims often choose names related to war and violence, could those possibly be indicative of their values? Of course, many Muslims choose names such as Jamil (Beautiful), Latif (Kind, friendly), Wasim (Handsome), Karim, and Jawad (both meaning generous), which refer to qualities we in the West might also hope for our children. But many Muslims do not.
Jihad – meaning War in the Cause of Allah – for example, is a common given name in the Muslim world, and appears in various forms. Westerners, on meeting men named Jihad, are at first often startled, but then get used to hearing it. The name Jihad is also common in Turkish in two forms: "Cihat," the Turkish variant, pronounced Ji-hat, and also "Savaş," the Turkish word for war. From time to time, one also finds a variant, Jihad al-Din, meaning Holy War of the (Muslim) religion.
There are, of course, people with names that seem to us more pacific, more like our own: many Muslims, for instance, are named Salim, two separate names (SA-lim) or (SaLEEM) -- two variants coming from the same Arabic root (S-L-M) which is sometimes mistakenly translated as "peaceful," "peace," or "free of suffering." Sadly, however, these translations confuse rather than inform. Although one might reasonably assume that the word salaam, means "peace" in the Western sense, salaam actually denotes a rather different view of "peace." Salaam, can best be translated as "the peaceful joy one gets from submitting to Allah's will via Islam." The word Islam itself, from the same root, simply means: "Submission to Allah's will."
Further, although there are Muslims with names such as Rahman and Rahim, loosely translated from the Arabic as the "compassionate" and "merciful," both of these names are shortened versions of the names 'Abd al-Rahman and 'Abd al-Rahim, which refer to characteristics of Allah, not of man.
Many popular names are derived from the word "Fath," Arabic for "Conquest in the Name of Islam." The Arabic name "Fathullah," and its Turkish variant, Fethullah , meaning "The Muslim Conquest in the Name of Allah," are used frequently throughout the Muslim world, along with other variants, such as, Fathi and Fatih. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, later renamed Istanbul, is referred to as Futuh Costantiniya.
Another common name, Sayf, in Arabic means "sword." Its variants follow suit: Sayf al-Islam means "the sword of Islam"; Sayf al-Din means "the sword of the Law/religion" (that is, Islam), and Sayf-Allah means the sword of Allah. The son of Libya's late dictator, Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi, was named Seif al-Islam.
Among Arab Shi'ites in Lebanon (and in one Christian family) there, we find the family name "Harb," which means "war" in Arabic. Another name, Ghazi (Gazi in Turkish), means "Warrior for the Islamic Faith."
The name Qutb, in Arabic meaning "pole" – as in "one who polarizes the community" -- and its variants, Qutb al-Din and Qutbzade (used in Iran), are also popular. Sa'id Qutb, for example, was the intellectual godfather of modern Islamic fundamentalism. Ghotbzadeh, (the Iranian variant of the name Qutb plus the Persian suffix zadeh meaning "son of") was the name of one of Ayatollah Khomeini's trusted assistants whom Khomeini later had killed. Polarization, however, creates discord; it is not a signal of peace and harmony.
But what can we understand from this? From the very beginning, Islam was spread through war and conquest. Could the preponderance of martial Muslim given names be a reflection and sanction of that?
Christianity had similar experiences, but the enormous bloodshed helped bring about the Reformation, followed by the 30 Years War, in which Christians unmercifully slaughtered each other. By the mid-1600s, the Christian reformers and politicians apparently came to the conclusion that if they did not to put an end to the violence, they could destroy their civilization.
Islam, however, has never undergone such a reformation. If an Islamic Reformation did take place, Muslims could look to the early years of Islam, when the Muslim prophet Muhammad and his followers faced serious military and political opposition. Many of the Koranic verses Muslims believed, that were revealed to their prophet at that time, talked about co-existence with non-Muslims. One of the most commonly quoted early verses is Sura 109: Verse 6 "Lakum Dinukum wa-li dini" meaning, "to you your religion, and to me my religion." There are, therefore, peaceful traditions in Islam.
Most Sunni scholars, nonetheless, teach that these peaceful verses which called for co-existence were abrogated -- or overridden and invalidated -- by the later, hostile, verses they believe were revealed to their prophet at a later date, when he had become a strong political leader, capable of imposing his will on those non-Muslims around him. As for the Shiites, even Khomeini himself promulgated a doctrine that Koranic verses could be temporarily abrogated if it were in the national interests of Iran to do so. So there are ways for Muslims to promote non-violence if they cared to.
Another possibility was set forth by the founder of the Turkish secular Republic – Kemal Atatürk – an Ottoman Turkish military hero during World War I. The Ottoman Empire, under which he served, had been the largest Muslim nation before War World I. In the Empire's early years, its reason for being had been aggressively to expand Islam, which, to its citizens at the time, formed its primary identity. Atatürk's military reputation gave him enormous leeway in tackling problems facing the new Turkish Republic in Anatolia, especially after his having won the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923), in which he and his followers liberated Anatolia from the non-Muslim foreigners who had occupied it after World War I.
Atatürk did his best to change course and detach Turkey from the Islamic world, abandoning the state's religious identity. Atatürk relegated Islam to the private sphere: religion was to be a personal decision involving man and God, and not be part of government. He also made clear to the citizens of his Republic and to the entire world that he cared only about what happened inside Turkey's borders. Muslims outside Turkey -- whether the Sunni Arabs to the south or fellow Turks in the Caucasus, Central Asia, or north-eastern China -- were apparently of no interest to him.
In the Muslim world, the idea of living within your own territory and not trying to conquer others was revolutionary. Until then, the purpose of the state had been to conquer, enlarging the territory over which Islam ruled. Atatürk , moreover, made peace with his Christian Greek neighbors, and refused to get involved in Muslim quarrels to Turkey's south. He emphasized peace in the Western sense of the word: his motto was Yurt'ta Sulh; Cihan'da Sulh ["Peace at Home, Peace Abroad."] His new policy was reflected in the new and non-warlike names -- previously unknown in Turkish culture -- that people began to adopt in Turkey. New Turkish names such as Aydın [Enlightened); Bariş [Peace, in the Western sense of putting the past behind you] and Can (pronounced "Jan," meaning "soul" or "life"] all became the rage.
Although the Atatürkist, secular model might eventually be one way for Islam to reform, at least for now Atatürkism is, at best, on life-support. We do not know if Atatürkism in Turkey, now ruled by an aggressive Muslim fundamentalist clique, will survive or die, or whether popular Turkish names will once again emphasize militancy and violence. The rest of the Muslim world certainly shows no indication of changing.
Given its history, it should be no wonder to us that Islam as a civilization, which has been violent virtually from its inception, still continues to see itself in a perpetual state of war with the non-Muslim world. Islam has always divided the world into two – the Dar al-Islam [the area of the world ruled by Islam] and the Dar al-Harb [the world of war, the area of the world that remains to be conquered by Islam and submit to Islamic rule].
Even the flag of Saudi Arabia – the guardian of Islam's most holy place, Mecca, makes plain its view of what the role is for its nation and the Islamic world: under the Islamic declaration of faith, "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger," called the shahada, there is a picture of a sword: