Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi continued to cause a stir during a Rome visit Monday by wheeling out another four busloads of young women to receive another lecture on the Koran.

Islam is “the last religion and if you want to believe in a single faith then it must be that of Mohammed,” the colonel reportedly told 200 women hired by a Rome hostess agency, some of them wearing headscarves and one sporting a picture of Gaddafi around her neck.

“He didn’t try to convert us,” said Elena Racoviciano, 21, from Naples, after emerging from a photography exhibit at the new Libyan Cultural Institute.

Gaddafi held a similar meeting with 500 women provided by the same agency on Sunday, three of whom reportedly converted to Islam.

“Women are more respected in Libya than in the West and the United States,” was another of Gaddafi’s remarks conveyed by Racoviciano.

In his first encounter with the hostesses, after an impromptu stroll around central Rome, the dictator urged them to marry Libyan men.

Gaddafi’s lectures to the women and his statement that Islam should be “Europe’s religion” have sparked opposition from Catholic and feminist groups as well as prompting accusations that Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi is pandering to him.

Read more here.

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In the final weeks before the tournament kicked off on Jun. 11, demand for satellite dishes was high. But the Islamist groups that control much of Somalia have declared the World Cup un-Islamic, threatening dire consequences for anyone found watching.

“We are warning all the youth of Somalia not to dare watch these World Cup matches. It is a waste of money and time and they will not benefit anything or get any experience by watching mad men jumping up and down,” Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Aros, a spokesperson for Hizbul-Islam, told the BBC.

Fans lucky enough to live in territory controlled by the Transitional Federal Government are able to watch in relative security – the Dhamuke Cinema is a popular public viewing place.

But two people watching the game in a private home in another part of the capital Mogadishu were reported to have been killed by militants Jun. 12. Other reports from north-east of Mogadishu say Hizbul-Islam arrested 10 people who were watching Nigeria play Argentina.

But Somalia is a football-mad nation. Despite almost twenty years of civil strife in Somalia, football continues to be not only watched, but played and enjoyed in the east African country.

Daily clashes between the warring sides are the norm for Mogadishu, but it is not unusual to find young footballers playing in deserted neighborhoods while fighting is goes on in other parts of the city.

Games organised by the Somali Football Federation (SSF) between local football clubs are watched by fanatic supporters in spite of the prevailing insecurity in the capital.

“Nothing will stop us from playing football which is loved by many people in this country,” Shafii Mohyadeen, SFF spokesman told IPS.

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Judging by some appearances (also from some data), Asia’s third largest nation and Islam’s most populated country has settled down to an almost calm, improving reality. Just twenty years ago such a prospect looked impossible. Indonesia was wrestling with overpopulation, poverty, corruption, political turbulence, a too far-flung national geography (from Malacca to Australia) and an excessive ethnic diversity.

This was a land of pertinacious hunger- very big, almost 2 million sq.km., but too rich on mountains, active volcanoes, its agricultural area used to be 9%  of the total surface area. On the island of Jawa (7% of the republic) lives two thirds of the population. Its capital, Jakarta, the seat of central government, numbered around 5 million in 1980; the figure has more or less doubled. Indonesia’s scant plains, with a thousand people per sq.km. (1,200 in Jawa), are among the world’s most populated. When the country became independent its residents did not probably reach 70 million. They are 235 million today.

Present signs of hope are the relative scarcity of terrorism and political violence, a more balanced allottment of power between the central government and the provinces (the latter aggregate some 13,000 islands), plus economic indicators such as the growth of GNP, of foreign direct investments and of per capita income. The worst consequences of terrorism and of the 2004 tsunami have been forgotten. Some observers believe that Indonesia has become ‘a normal country’, while a few years ago she was facing furious separatist insurgence, Christian-Muslim violence, Islamic extremism.

Probably it’s safe waiting a couple of years before taking the above signs at their face value. The least modernized among the three hundred ethnic groups live just a few steps out of the Stone Age. In Iran Jaya, the primitive easternmost frontier, head hunting, cannibalism and tribal wars are recent memories among natives. They still do not need matches to ignite dry grass, also depend on skulls to repel evil spirits from villages. So the astonishing proliferation of skyscrapers in a few metropolises and the 9,5 million cars and motorcycles of Greater Jakarta must not be taken as absolute proof of progress of the whole nation.

Before 1949, Indonesia was a united country just in the Majapahit empire (14th century). From the early 1600s Dutch colonialists dominated an aggregation of kingdoms and principalities. In WW2, the Dutch East Indies were conquered by Japan. After 1945, the Dutch returned in arms, but the nationalists of Sukarno triumphed. A short try was  made at reconciling independence with membership in a sort of Dutch commonwealth; but the exploiting domination of Holland (long based on the so called ‘van der Bosch system’: forced labor) had generated too much resentment. In 1956 the Indonesian republic cut all residual links with the former colonial masters.

Indonesia is rich both in cultural and natural resources. The local capitalists in partnership with foreign corporations are making good business developing the material wealth. Corruption and ecological devastation are inevitable, poverty is still widespread. If political, social, religious strifes do not erupt again, a few of the optimistic prospects will perhaps come true.

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The rate of suicide in Jordan has nearly doubled in the past three years.

According to official figures, there has been an 87 per cent increase in deaths by suicide.

This figure may be even higher as cultural norms and the fact that suicide is forbidden in Islam, cause many families to hide the real cause of death.

Rising unemployment, an increasing gap between the rich and the poor and the social stigma of psychological disorder are said to be behind the wave of suicides.

But Jordanian authorities refuse to admit that the situation has reached crisis point and this troubles social researchers who believe suicide has long been a neglected area of study.

For those longing for a moderate Islamic voice vociferating against the perils of fundamentalism and the evils of terrorism, Islamic scholar Dr. Tahir ul Qadri has published his fatwa against terrorism in Abu Dhabi’s The National:

“I have been compelled to issue a fatwa – a comprehensive theological refutation of Islamist terrorism – because of what has been happening in Pakistan over the past year. Terrorists are bombing mosques during Friday prayers, they are burning schools, killing women. They are digging bodies out of graves, cutting off their heads and hanging the bodies from trees.

My 600-page fatwa is based on all four schools of jurisprudence: Hanafi, Shafii, Hanbali and Maliki, and the Shia school of Jafari. I have consulted hundreds of classical Islamic texts, the scholars, fiqh and the Hadith. The main theme is this: any act of terrorism such as suicide bombing cannot be justified in any way. There are no conditions, no pretexts or exemptions. It is condemned by the Quran and the Sunna.

Killing Muslims and non-Muslims through terrorist activities and using violent aggression to impose their mistaken and misplaced ideology is a fundamental rejection of faith. Such acts make the people carrying out the attacks unbelievers, or kufr.

Some scholars have said to me that we know suicide bombing is forbidden but to say that this is an act of an unbeliever is going far. I am not saying anyone who kills is an unbeliever. I say one who is committing acts of terrorism on the basis that it is sanctioned and lawful by Islam is an unbeliever.

The Quran says those who kill in mosques, burn people, blow them up, they will suffer the torments of hellfire. This is one aspect.

A second aspect I have examined is the justification that Muslim rulers in Arab countries or non-Muslims are not enforcing Islamic law so there is an obligation to fight against them. This is absolutely wrong. In no context is any organisation allowed to take up arms on their own and say we are defending Muslim land or we are avenging the aggression of non-Muslim powers. This is a matter for a state and its government.

The holy Prophet Mohammed told his companions that bad rulers would come and the people would curse them and the rulers would curse their people. The companions asked should they not fight them with swords if this time comes? And the holy Prophet said that no, they were not allowed as far as they were Muslims.

As for adopting the defence that the attacks are against foreign aggression, this is the privilege and responsibility of the state to stand up and to fight according to international law. If groups and individuals start taking revenge it will create global anarchy and there will be no rule of law, there will be just killing of mankind.

There is a prophecy of the Prophet Mohammed. He mentioned that the Kharijites would emerge continuously in Islamic history. The Kharijites believed that whoever did not agree with their philosophy was an unbeliever and should be killed. They wanted to resolve everything through the sword and through power. They rose up in the time of the rightly guided Caliphs, Usman and Ali, and fought against them.

This hadith, which appears in dozens of books, says the holy Prophet Mohammed said they would emerge again and again in different centuries until the final time of the anti-Christ. They would arrive more than 20 times. They would keep changing names and appear for the last time as part of the anti-Christ’s army. They would slaughter people.

Al Qa’eda is an old evil with a new name. They are the Kharijites with a new name. They are misguided today like the Khawarij youth were misguided at that time. They were brainwashed although they were religious people who prayed and fasted.

Those who have already decided to become suicide bombers are totally brainwashed. I exclude them from this discussion because they are blind. I am trying to reach the majority who have not reached that stage but have extremist tendencies and are proceeding in that direction…”

Read more here.

The phenomenon of Wahhabism must have extraordinary stamina because it succeeded — after circling around the Islamic world since its initial appearance on the Arabian Peninsula in the middle of the 18th century — in reaching the Balkans and the remote and devastated village of Gornja Maoca in Bosnia at the beginning of the 21st century.

World media have given much attention to an event that took place in this village on the dawn of Feb. 2, 2010. More than 600 Bosnian police conducted a raid on the village, arresting seven people suspected by prosecutors of threatening the country’s “territorial integrity, constitutional order and provoking inter-ethnic and religious hatred.” Prosecutors said the police operation, in which European Union police also took part, was the largest since the end of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

For the Bosnian public, the very name of the village and the outward semblance of the seven detained men — huge beards and shortened trousers — was enough to know that the target of the operation was people belonging to Wahhabism, one of most exclusive and radical branches of Islam. Although widely known as Wahhabis, named after their founder Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab (1703-1792), they call themselves Salafis — or descendants of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions and the first three generations of Muslims (salaf). Before last century’s inflow of extremist Egyptian Salafis to Saudi Arabia, they also called themselves muwahhidun.

It is well known how Abd-al-Wahhab, trying to introduce his rigid theory of purification of Islam from all thoughts but the Quran and Hadith, and destroying most sites, monuments and graves from early Islam, made a political pact with the Saudi clan from Najd. He and his followers challenged Ottoman pluralistic religious rule and tolerance, trying two times to establish their own state. They not only opposed other religions, but also taught that Sunni Islam was corrupted by Shiite Islam and other innovations. When Napoleon was conquering Egypt, they were destroying the holy Shiite city of Karbala. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and fully supported by the British, the Saudi sheiks finally succeeded in forming the modern state of Saudi Arabia, introducing strict Wahhabi Islam as the country’s religion. Using the wealth from newly discovered oil, and their capacity as the custodians of Mecca and Medina, Saudi-sponsored organizations began spreading Wahhabism throughout the Muslim world.

I will leave aside the wider assumptions about how that amalgamation — of the rigid theological sectarianism and tribal mentality with the interests of exploiters and consumers of the enormous oil wealth — has played a historical role in preventing the meeting and interaction between Islamic spiritual, scientific and cultural achievements from previous centuries and the political, scientific and cultural advancements of contemporary Western civilization. I will, however, ask what has become of the Balkans in general and Bosnia in particular as a result of such efforts.

When news about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina started to spread throughout the world in 1992, hundreds of volunteers came from Russia and other Christian Orthodox countries to support the Serb aggressors, and hundreds more from Muslim countries came to fight together with their Muslim brothers, who were exposed to ethnic cleansing and slaughter. Only some of the Muslim volunteers were followers of Wahhabism. Most of those volunteers were young radical Arabs who had gained experience in the war in Afghanistan against the Russians. They formed a special unit called “Mujahideen,” which was mainly affiliated with the Bosnian Muslim army. Driven by religious hatred and fanaticism, some of them committed war crimes against Serb civilians and prisoners of war. Others were supported by Western intelligence agencies. While on a visit with Turkish President Süleyman Demirel to Zenica in the middle of the war — he was not allowed to visit the besieged Bosnian capital city of Sarajevo — I was told by a Bosnian police officer that he saw two mujahideen soldiers with British passports who were easily allowed by Croatian authorities to enter Bosnia. They all, however, whether followers of Wahhabism or not, did more harm to Bosnia than good, as will continue to be the case over the next 15 years.

Due to the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, and especially US pressure on the Bosniak leadership, the majority of around 1,000 mujahideen soldiers left the country after the war. A part of them, Wahhabis in particular, obtained Bosnian citizenship by marrying Bosnian Muslim women, covering them in a three-layered black hijab and excluding them completely from public life.

Read more here

Hajrudin Somun is the former Ambassador to Turkey of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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Dark rumors have been circulating these past few weeks on possible power struggles in the high echelons of the Roman church. Rivalries are said to oppose two Vatican clans headed  by cardinals Bertone and Ruini. The former is the Secretary of State, almost a prime minister, of the Holy See. The latter chaired the Conferenza Episcopale Italiana, the body that groups the Italian bishops.

However, the really serious ills of Catholicism, better of Christendom, go beyond the feuds in Rome on specific issues. They extend to what many believe is the slow agony of the religious sentiment in Western societies. The secularization of our values goes on since the year 1000 BC- the time when believers expected the end of history. Especially in the last half millennium the hold of religion on the Christian world has steadily weakened, contrary to some semblances.

For instance, scholars commonly believe that the overall history of Spain cannot be understood if the faith element is not seen as the central component of that civilization, even of the Spanish imperial conquests. Today, we have areas of said country where Catholic practice involves much less than 5% of the population. The process started there with the XVIII century Enlightment. True, the Islamic religion looks strong and spreading. But as soon as Islamites are drawn into the modern way of life, they accept the spirit of secularism.

Yet the great religions of the world are challenged today by a calling which is the exact opposite of the agony of faith. As the main ideologies of modernity (socialism, democratic capitalism) increasingly appear empty or ineffective, religions often emerge and recover relevance. This may be cogently true for Catholicism, which is organized around a strong center. Given new circumstances, the Pope might go back to being the supreme guide of the Christian peoples, as he was eight centuries ago.

For this to happen, the Roman Catholic Church will need a different kind of pastor. The Pope of the future should be a revolutionary. He should repudiate two millennia of continuity, move his seat from Rome, sell Vatican real estate and the richest archbishopric palaces, and renounce the official status of prelates. With deeds, giving practical help to the poor and searching for new ways of faith, he would prove the Church as a genuine source of truth. Possibly, not necessarily, such an innovating pontiff should be a very young, saintly monk -not a cardinal, particularly not a diplomat. Benign pope John XXIII was a diplomat for years, and that did not help. To reconstruct, a Pope for the future should demolish first. Continuity may one day kill the Church.

Massimo Calderazzi is Junior member of the Société Européenne de Culture, to whom many eminent
scholars and a few Nobel prizewinners belong.

Mustafa AKYOL for the Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review

Dear friends,

I hope all is well in the Holy Land. Things are not too bad here in Turkey. Yet one thing that certainly does not look great is relations between our countries, which hit an ugly low this week.

In fact, since the beginning of your government’s “Operation Cast Lead” in Gaza, which happened a year ago, a continual war of words has been going on between your leaders and ours.

But no war of words has ever helped anybody. So, as a humble commentator on Turkish affairs who would be happy to see better Israeli-Turkish relations, let me offer a few honest thoughts.

The New Turkish Republic

First, we all should see something: The Turkish Republic of today is more democratic and more Muslim-minded than it ever used to be. And these two things are not contradictory at all. In the last decade, the power of the democratically elected government has steadily increased vis-à-vis the secularist bureaucratic elite that had dominated the country since the late ’20s. As a result, the cultural sensibilities of the majority of Turkish society, in which Muslimhood plays a great role, have become more influential in policymaking.

The practical result of this is that Turkey is ruled by people such as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has a greater emotional connection with the Muslim Palestinians, and not by the ultra-secular generals who look at the Islamic world with distaste. (I know that some of you think Turkey was doing much better under those generals, but I strongly suggest consulting with our liberals or Kurds, who tasted torture in military prisons or who saw their friends assassinated by the gendarme.)

This is not to say that everything that comes out of this more democratic Turkey is sensible – no, not at all. Some of the harsh rhetoric against Israel that we see in our media is indeed fueled by anti-Semitism, which exists within various political camps. The recent TV series that depicted the Israeli military as a bunch of sadists were indeed childish and silly. Turks are a highly emotional people and their anger against the carnage in Gaza, which I share, can easily lead to the vilification of Israel, which I criticize.

However, what I or you would prefer to see does not matter much here. What matters is that this New Turkish Republic, as political analyst Graham Fuller wisely calls it, is here to stay.

Read the rest here

A French parliament report called Tuesday for a ban on the full Islamic veil in all schools, hospitals, public transport and government offices, saying the burqa was an affront to French values.

“The wearing of the full veil is a challenge to our republic. This is unacceptable,” the report released by a parliament commission said. “We must condemn this excess.”

After six months of hearings, the panel of 32 lawmakers recommended a ban on the face-covering veil in all state-run institutions and offices, the broadest move yet to restrict Muslim dress in France.

The commission called on parliament to adopt a formal resolution stating that the burqa was “contrary to the values of the republic” and proclaiming that “all of France is saying ‘no’ to the full veil.”

Women who turn up at government offices wearing the full veil should be denied services such as a work visa, residency papers or French citizenship, the report recommended.

The panel however stopped short of proposing broad legislation to outlaw the burqa on the streets or in shopping centres after cautioning that such a move would have to be reviewed by the courts to establish its legality.

Read more here.

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Nairobi, Kenya Image via Wikipedia

Somalia’s insurgent group Al-Shabaab has threatened and also accused neighbouring Kenya of deploying more troops to the bordering towns.

Sheikh Mahammed Arab, an Al-Shabaab administrator in Somali border town of Dhobley, near the Kenyan border said they have received reports that Kenyan military numbering more than 1500 with battle wagons are making military movement along the border.

“We have the information about heavy military movement along the border between Somalia and Kenya. We don’t know the meaning of this but we are warning of repercussions for any aggression,” he said.

Al-Shabaab authority in Jubba regions has early warned Kenya to withdrawal all its forces along the border.

Al-Shabaab militants recently captured the Lower Jubba region in southern Somalia from Hizbul Islam, their former allies.

Kenya has repeatedly in the past refuted of carrying any military operations along the border other than normal border patrols.

The allegations come as a purported Al-Shabaab song released on Wednesday warn Nairobi of retaliation for its crack-down against Muslims.

Read more here.

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