Ramanisblog

Tag: Minarets

  • Algeria “Islamist threat” poster raises heckles across the Mediterranean.

    True.The poster should be for all Islamic nations that promote terror and fundamentalism.
    Story:
    France’s National Front party is plastering this image around the country in the hope of gaining some votes for the upcoming regional elections. A woman wearing the niqab, minarets turned missiles, a clear “No to Islamism”, and France draped in… the Algerian flag. A rather specific choice, and one that hasn’t gone down well in the North African country.

    ( No to Islamism,Youth with Le Perl)
    The poster, marketing the far-right group’s youth faction, seems to have taken its inspiration from a campaign by Switzerland’s far-right Swiss People’s Party (UDC), which aims to outlaw minarets. The UDC is now threatening to sue its fellow extremists in France, for “stealing” the design.

    It’s not only the Swiss who are outraged by the poster – two anti-racism organisations in France (Mrap and SOS-Racisme) have started criminal proceedings against the leader of the National Front (FN), Jean-Marie Le Pen, who will appear in court on May 6 over the poster’s design.

    In Algeria meanwhile, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mourad Medelci has publicly protested the use of the country’s national flag, asking its former colonial ruler to “take firm measures to prevent the symbols of foreign nations from being insulted”.

    “It’s outrageous to limit the ‘Islamist’ threat to only my country”

    Abdelkrim Mekfouldji is a French teacher and retired journalist from Blida, Algeria.

    This doesn’t surprise me coming from Jean-Marie Le Pen, but it’s still hard for us to see it. It’s outrageous to limit the ‘Islamist’ threat to only my country, as though it comes exclusively from here. In fact, the countries where the threat is strongest are Pakistan and Afghanistan, which aren’t even part of the Arab world. On top of that, the FN is forgetting that many of the Muslims here who have Algerian origins are actually of French nationality.

    Next up – the threatening looking woman wearing the niqab looks nothing like an Algerian woman. It’s very rare to see a women dressed like that here.

    Not many Algerians have heard about this yet. It has been mentioned in the papers, but once everyone gets wind of it, then the relations between the two countries are going to get very sour very quickly. It wasn’t long ago that France refused to compensate victims of the Reggane nuclear tests [taken out in the south of the country in the 1960s].

    The real problem is that this controversy is a blessing for our politicians, who are looking for something to avert our attention away from the current social crisis [teachers and doctors are on strike], which they haven’t yet found a solution for.”

    Switzerpland’s Anti Minaret Poster.

    http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20100309-algeria-france-islamist-threat-far-right-le-pen-national-front-poster?ns_campaign=20100310_obsen&ns_mchannel=nlobsen&ns_source=sitef24_en&ns_linkname=fn-affiche-algerie&ns_fee=0

  • My compatriots’ vote to ban minarets is fuelled by fear

    Fact is Muslims never integrate into the society in which they live, excepting in Muslim countries.It is too much of a simplification of the issue that Europe has been waiting for an issue.No.It is due to terrorism unleashed in the Name of Islam and also the transnational loyalty of Muslims..People who follow Islam,,can stop both acts if they take concrete steps by openly ostracizing terror groups,instead of being ambivalent.
    Remember, as you sow, so you reap.
    Story:

    The Swiss have voted not against towers, but Muslims. Across Europe, we must stand up to the flame-fanning populists

    By Tariq Ramadan guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 November 2009

    It wasn’t meant to go this way. For months we had been told that the efforts to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland were doomed. The last surveys suggested around 34% of the Swiss population would vote for this shocking initiative. Last Friday, in a meeting organised in Lausanne, more than 800 students, professors and citizens were in no doubt that the referendum would see the motion rejected, and instead were focused on how to turn this silly initiative into a more positive future.

    Today that confidence was shattered, as 57% of the Swiss population did as the Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC) had urged them to – a worrying sign that this populist party may be closest to the people’s fears and expectations. For the first time since 1893 an initiative that singles out one community, with a clear discriminatory essence, has been approved in Switzerland. One can hope that the ban will be rejected at the European level, but that makes the result no less alarming. What is happening in Switzerland, the land of my birth?

    There are only four minarets in Switzerland, so why is it that it is there that this initiative has been launched? My country, like many in Europe, is facing a national reaction to the new visibility of European Muslims. The minarets are but a pretext – the UDC wanted first to launch a campaign against the traditional Islamic methods of slaughtering animals but were afraid of testing the sensitivity of Swiss Jews, and instead turned their sights on the minaret as a suitable symbol.

    Every European country has its specific symbols or topics through which European Muslims are targeted. In France it is the headscarf or burka; in Germany, mosques; in Britain, violence; cartoons in Denmark; homosexuality in the Netherlands – and so on. It is important to look beyond these symbols and understand what is really happening in Europe in general and in Switzerland in particular: while European countries and citizens are going through a real and deep identity crisis, the new visibility of Muslims is problematic – and it is scary.

    At the very moment Europeans find themselves asking, in a globalising, migratory world, “What are our roots?”, “Who are we?”, “What will our future look like?”, they see around them new citizens, new skin colours, new symbols to which they are unaccustomed.

    Over the last two decades Islam has become connected to so many controversial debates – violence, extremism, freedom of speech, gender discrimination, forced marriage, to name a few – it is difficult for ordinary citizens to embrace this new Muslim presence as a positive factor. There is a great deal of fear and a palpable mistrust. Who are they? What do they want? And the questions are charged with further suspicion as the idea of Islam being an expansionist religion is intoned. Do these people want to Islamise our country?

    The campaign against the minarets was fuelled by just these anxieties and allegations. Voters were drawn to the cause by a manipulative appeal to popular fears and emotions. Posters featured a woman wearing a burka with the minarets drawn as weapons on a colonised Swiss flag. The claim was made that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Swiss values. (The UDC has in the past demanded my citizenship be revoked because I was defending Islamic values too openly.) Its media strategy was simple but effective. Provoke controversy wherever it can be inflamed. Spread a sense of victimhood among the Swiss people: we are under siege, the Muslims are silently colonising us and we are losing our very roots and culture. This strategy worked. The Swiss majority are sending a clear message to their Muslim fellow citizens: we do not trust you and the best Muslim for us is the Muslim we cannot see.

    Who is to be blamed? I have been repeating for years to Muslim people that they have to be positively visible, active and proactive within their respective western societies. In Switzerland, over the past few months, Muslims have striven to remain hidden in order to avoid a clash. It would have been more useful to create new alliances with all these Swiss organisations and political parties that were clearly against the initiative. Swiss Muslims have their share of responsibility but one must add that the political parties, in Europe as in Switzerland have become cowed, and shy from any courageous policies towards religious and cultural pluralism. It is as if the populists set the tone and the rest follow. They fail to assert that Islam is by now a Swiss and a European religion and that Muslim citizens are largely “integrated”. That we face common challenges, such as unemployment, poverty and violence – challenges we must face together. We cannot blame the populists alone – it is a wider failure, a lack of courage, a terrible and narrow-minded lack of trust in their new Muslim citizens.

    Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, is professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University. His most recent book is What I Believe.
    http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/my-compatriots-vote-to-ban-minarets-is-fuelled-by-fear/#comment-22282

  • Questions on banning of Minarets by Swiss and Answers.

    Questions by BBC on air(30/11/09)
    ON AIR: SWITZERLAND AND MINARETS
    There are too many issues being discussed here for us to only focus on one. We’ll hear your reaction to the story whatever it may be, but looking online these are areas that are getting particular attention:

    – Have the Swiss done what the rest of Europe would do if there was a referendum?

    – Does Europe have a problem with Islamophobia?

    – Is ‘defending’ one’s culture necessarily discriminatory?

    – Is referencing national pride a way of disguising prejudice and intolerance?

    – Can such decisions be attributed to a post 9-11 fear of Islam?

    – Is this a justified reaction to Muslims’ perceived unwillingness to integrate in Western societies?

    1.Rest of Europe,even rest of the world,excluding Muslim countries, would have done what Swiss have done, though it might look wrong.There is a limit to tolerance and feigned ignorance of the Muslim community of the atrocious acts of brethern.If they really feel strongly about the terrorists, let them issue a fatwa excommunicating terrorists.

    2..Europe does not suffer from any phobia.When people are killed, you react.No fancy terms please.
    3.Defending one’s culture is discriminatory if killing with religious sanction is Holy.
    4.It is not a question of national pride, but an act of defense for survival.
    5.Yes, the reaction is delayed reaction ,nothing more.
    6.It is not perceived unwillingness but a willful act of transnational loyalty.
    No group of people have transnational loyalty, perhaps with the exception of Communists.
    In short the Swiss have done what others should have done long back,come what may.
    You may expect screams documenting Muslims’ loyalty to the Nation and how their Religion does not support Jihad of terrorists and that it is a very tolerant religion.
    So called secularists also subscribe to this view.