WHO IS USURPING THE SPIRIT OF THE EAST? : BY DR. BOUTHAINA SHAABAN

Israeli settlers spurred by a mandate from G-d attacked a West Bank Mosque, sprayed graffiti on it and burned Qurans inside.
By Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban

This is not the only Israeli attack on churches and mosques in occupied Palestine. Killing worshipers is a common criminal practice that terrorist Zionist groups have mastered for over 70 years in Palestine. Baruch Goldstein opened fire on unarmed Palestinian Muslims praying inside the Ibrahim Mosque; and Zionists have made a statute for him at the entrance to Al-Khalil (Hebron)
One day before the massacre perpetrated by the forces of terrorism against worshipers in Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in the Al-Karada neighborhood in Baghdad, a similar terrorist attack was carried out by Jewish settlers who burned the Baptist Church on Prophets Street in occupied Jerusalem, after they burned a number of mosques as part of their attempts to Judaize Palestine. Zakaria al-Mashriqi, a leader in the church, said “right-wing Israeli settlers broke a number of windows of the two-story church and hurled Molotov cocktails inside it, completely burning the first floor.” The church was built in Jerusalem in 1897 and housed the Palestinian Bible College until 1948, when parishioners were pushed out by armed Jewish gangs during the violence accompanying the creation of the state of Israel.”
This is not the only Israeli attack on churches and mosques in occupied Palestine. Killing worshipers is a common criminal practice that terrorist Zionist groups have mastered for over 70 years in Palestine. Baruch Goldstein opened fire on unarmed Palestinian Muslims praying inside the Ibrahim Mosque; and Zionists have made a statute for him at the entrance to Al-Khalil (Hebron). Such crimes usually pass by without any condemnation on the part of those who claim responsibility for preserving coexistence among peoples and defending religious freedom.

With the strongest possible condemnation of the horrible crime committed in Our Lady of Salvation Church, one cannot compare the reaction to crimes against churches in Iraq and those muted responses to crimes committed by terrorist Zionists against Christians and their churches in occupied Palestine: In the second case, reactions are almost non-existent. I have not seen any media coverage or political condemnation of the crime committed by Jewish settlers against the Baptist Church in Jerusalem.

As a result of the massacres and displacement perpetrated against millions of Palestinians since the 1940s, the number of Christians dropped to unprecedented levels despite 14 centuries of tolerance and coexistence. Israel’s destabilizing of Lebanon led to the 1975-90 Civil War and the consequent violence which led to mass migration on the part of Christians from Lebanon. This is what has been happening in Iraq since 2003 where Western powers are destabilizing the country for objectives related to dominating the Middle East.

The crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians do not distinguish between Muslims and Christians: the martyrs and the prisoners are always Christians and Muslims. After days of burning the Baptist Church in Jerusalem, the settlers, protected by Israeli occupation troops, attacked the Prophet Yusuf tomb in Nablus. These Zionist crimes against Arab Christians became more ferocious since Bush’s war on Iraq and even more brutal since the publication of the recommendations of the Catholic Synod for the Christians of the East which condemned violence, terrorism and all forms of religious extremism, racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The Catholic Synod called on Christians to “adhere to their homeland,” stressing that “Christians are an essential component of the peoples of the region, and that they should be actively involved in the political, cultural and economic life of their countries in a context of mutual respect and continuous dialogue with people of other religions, particularly with their Muslim partners.”

Muslims, who have lived in tolerance with Christians and Jews for 14 centuries, agree with this approach. Israel is the only nation which prevents Muslims from worshiping in their mosques on Fridays and religious occasions and prevents Christians from going to their churches. Yet, no one in the “free” West, the defendant of human rights, dares condemn this brutal insult.

Zionism is a danger, not only to unarmed Palestinian civilians whom it humiliates, imprisons and assassinates in front of the cameras of the “free” world, but also to coexistence, tolerance and peace in the Middle East. Christ was born in Bethlehem in the “East.” Prophet Mohammad was transported from the Sacred Mosque in Mecca to the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Saint Paul embarked on his mission from Damascus carrying Christ’s message and spreading Christianity all over the world. Who are those who want to empty the East of its Christians in the same way they emptied it of Jews? Who are those who attack mosques and churches to sow conflict between Muslims and Christians, something that never existed before the creation of Israel?

On these grounds, confronting Zionist crimes in Palestine is the duty of all the free people of the world, not only in defense of coexistence in Palestine alone, but in defense of coexistence, tolerance and peace in the Middle East and the world at large, in the same way that killing innocent worshipers in the Lady of Our Salvation Church in Baghdad is a condemned terrorist act, every transgression against any holy place, Muslim or Christian, and worshipers, Muslim or Christian, is a terrorist act which should be condemned by the whole world.

Keeping silent toward Israeli crimes has become a threat to the freedom, security and safety of people everywhere; so it is important to call for a correct reading of the link between the Baptist Church on Prophets Street in Jerusalem, the Prophet Yusuf tomb in Nablus and the Lady of Our Salvation Church in Karada, Baghdad.
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/11/who-is-usurping-the-spirit-of-the-east-by-dr-bouthaina-shaaban/

The annual Muslim debate in Italy

Puglia, south Italy, where Muslims are under the impression that land without people is up for grabs by people without land. (Photo: Belén Fernández)
I cannot recall a visit to my friend’s home in Puglia, southern Italy, in which the Muslim invasion of Europe has not surfaced as a discussion topic. It often initiates when one or more of my friend’s relatives discovers that I have just been to Turkey or Lebanon, for example, and remarks on my good fortune as a female to have avoided being stoned to death.

This year’s discussion started out as an innocent rant by my friend’s cousin against the concomitant invasion of Italy by Romanian criminals, who were said to make Albanian immigrants look well-behaved and who along with the euro constituted proof of the heinous nature of the European Union. A comment on the need to backtrack on a Europe without borders then led to the cousin’s observation that fortified Italian frontiers would additionally prevent Muslims from faking qualifications for asylum in order to continue the quest to absorb Italy into an Islamic caliphate. As for faked qualifications, it was now decided that stoning was not overly oppressive.

Following the Italian escort back to Libya last year of a boat containing some 227 potential asylum seekers, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had confirmed that a multiethnic society was not the overarching objective of his government—something he additionally implied earlier this year via his comment that it was getting harder to distinguish certain parts of Milan from Africa. Neither event prevented him from kissing Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s hand during an official visit this past March, however; other questionable diplomatic behavior on the part of the Italian premier meanwhile includes repeated references to US President Barack Obama as suntanned—which may or may not have influenced Italian opposition politician Antonio di Pietro’s suggestion following the maritime escort to Libya last year that Obama himself might one day experience difficulties entering Italian territory.

Late Italian journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci—source of such ideas as that there are so few Muslims who appreciate liberty, democracy and secularism that they require bodyguards and that the Qur’an is the new Mein Kampf—had blamed the permeability of Italian borders on the Italian left, and warned that permitting Muslims in Italy to wear chadors and burqas with blatant disregard for Italian culture was equivalent to the Munich Pact of 1938. Indignant that Muslims were not content with having schools and hospitals on Italian land and instead had to construct mosques as well, Fallaci perished in 2006 prior to fulfilling her promise to explode a mosque planned for construction in Tuscany.

My friend’s cousin in Puglia has meanwhile advocated a larger explosion in order to eliminate Iran from the world map and thus put an end to undemocratic killings there. He has nonetheless acknowledged that political arrangements in which the national prime minister is the owner of primary national media outlets might not be entirely democratic, either.
http://pulsemedia.org/2010/08/24/the-annual-muslim-debate-in-italy/

The United States and the Muslim World: Has Obama reneged on his Cairo promise?

By Khaled Hroub
Director of the Cambridge Arab Media Project, United Kingdom

Responding to a student's question in his landmark visit to Istanbul in April 2009, Barack Obama said, "States are like big tankers, they're not like speedboats. You can't whip them around and go in another direction ... you turn them slowly, and eventually you end up in a very different place." Obama has begun to turn the American tanker, but this gradual change does not satisfy the expectations that swept the Muslim world upon his election. The image of the United States, badly damaged in recent years, requires a speedier overhaul than the one currently underway. Many Muslims and mainstream Islamists around the world wonder whether the turning of the tanker will be permanent. A policy reversal is more than likely when Obama leaves office, and the burst of fresh air that Obama's election brought to U.S.-Muslim relations could easily run out.

This article discusses the impact of Obama's presidency on improving U.S.-Muslim relations, with particular focus on Islamists and political Islamic movements. Obama's policy towards the Muslim world and the Middle East will hinge on two topics: the Palestinian- Israeli issue and support for democratization. While George W. Bush gave priority to democracy promotion in the Middle East and ignored Palestine, Obama seems to have taken the opposite approach, concentrating on Palestine and ignoring democratization. If Obama cannot fulfil the high hopes pinned upon him by many Muslims, their compounded frustration could be more damaging than the anger they experienced during the Bush years, and lead to more radicalization. Underneath this fatalistic resignation would lie the sentiment, "If Obama cannot not mend fences with Muslims, no one can."

‘Obamania' has had a significant effect on U.S.-Muslim relations. According to Gallup polls, in most Arab countries, the approval rate of American leadership doubled, and in some cases, tripled during the first year of Obama's presidency. From 2008 to 2009, approval of U.S. leadership increased from 14% to 37% in Tunisia , 25% to 47% in Algeria, 6% to 25% in Egypt, 12% to 29% in Saudi Arabia, and 4% to 15% in Syria. (Lebanon and Palestine are the outliers; approval of American leadership fell from 25% to 22% in Lebanon, and 13% to 7% in Palestine.Overall, this positive upswing corresponds to the new language and tone that Obama brought to international relations. Confrontational policies have been replaced by cooperation, unilateralism by multilateralism, war-mongering by engagement and dialogue.

Perhaps the most striking dimension of the new administration's foreign policy, as repeatedly stated by Obama himself, is America's new approach to the Muslim world, and the Muslim Middle East in particular. Obama's major developments in this field include reinstating Palestinian issue at the top of the foreign policy agenda, scheduling a deadline for the removal of American troops in Iraq (whose presence is seen by many Muslims as a proof of American imperial hegemony over Muslim land), announcing that the infamous Guantanamo Bay detainment facility will close, and combating the disrespect towards and fear of Muslim-American and Arab-American citizens that emerged after 9/11.

Determined to deliver a clear message to the Muslim world about this new approach, Obama gave his first televised interview just one week after taking office to the Saudi-owned, Dubai-based Al Arabiya satellite station. In the interview, he stressed that Muslims should know that the U.S. is not their enemy. Obama said that his job is "to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the wellbeing of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries."

Obama's reconciliatory approach to the Muslim world continued with his two historic speeches in Istanbul and Cairo in April and June of 2009, respectively. In both speeches, he reiterated the themes of coexistence and common values, dismissing the notion of a clash of civilizations. Obama made clear distinctions between the peaceful Muslim majority and the small, violent radical groups hijacking Islam and claiming to act in its name. The Cairo speech was praised around the world as an oratorical masterpiece, and several books analyzing its significance and impact have already been published.

Islamist Ambivalence
Preceding Obama's visit to Cairo, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement titled "The Brothers' Opinion on the American President's Visit to Egypt" on June 4th, 2009.The strangeness, and perhaps the significance, of the statement is that it did not pronounce any clear position on Obama's visit. The Brothers' reiterted their stance on Israel, attacked Western policies, and confirmed the right of the Egyptian people to defend their country and change their internal authoritarian regime. At the end, the Brothers declared they would assess Obama's visit after it had taken place, and avoided making any prior judgement. Short and vague--but not condemning the visit altogether--it reflected the conflicted mood among Arab Islamists toward Obama's visit. After Obama's speech, the Brothers issued no followup message as they had promised, and posted nothing about the Cairo visit on their homepage. This reflects a continuing ambivalence among the Brotherhood, and among mainstream Islamist groups, about how to respond to Barack Obama, no longer a pet presidential candidate but the leader of the United States.

Reactions to President Obama by Islamist groups and intellectuals have been varied and conflicting. A range of these reactions, spanning several movements, will be surveyed here. Isam Al-Aryan, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, wrote an article in Beirut's Al-Akhbar daily titled "A Letter to Barak Obama." In the article, Al-Aryan warned Obama against supporting authoritarian regimes in the region, lamenting that these regimes have surrendered their sovereignty and interest to outsiders. Al-Aryan also expressed bitterness that global American military outreach often operates against the essence of American values.

It is a matter of allegiance to your country when you promote principles that are called upon by the American Constitution, the values of freedom, respect of human rights, democracy, and respect for the will of people. By contrast, it is not a matter of allegiance to your country to keep your armies ... occupying all corners of the world. It is not a matter of faithfulness to your principles to keep those detainees in jail without conviction and extract false confessions from them by torture; and to use tyrants and autocrats who remain in power because of your support...

Among the strongest Islamist endorsements for Obama, Mustapha Ikhlaif's article in Al Jazeera called upon Obama to convert to Islam and become the worldwide Caliph of Muslims. The author, a Moroccan academic who writes with Islamist undertones, argues that the race and ethnicity of a Muslim leader is of no importance as long as he embodies the message of Islam. Ikhalif contends that Persians, Turks, Seljuks and other ethnicities have ruled over the Arab region - why could not Barak Hussein Obama be one of them? Obama has been received warmly, even hailed by Muslims, and the only major step he must take before reigning over Muslim countries is simply to convert to Islam.

Al Jazeera also featured work by Muhanna Al-Habeel, a staunch critic of Obama and his Arab and Muslim fans. Al-Habeel, a Saudi writer, wonders how Obama "can explain to us the meaning of justice and tolerance in Islamic values at the same time that his forces strike against tens of innocent people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and those American-occupied areas [are drowned] in rivers of blood." Al-Habeel went on to exclaim, "How nice Mr. President looked while he was sending his greetings to the victims in their graves..."

Between these extremes, another Islamist writer, Nabil Shabib, a Syrian living in Germany, is skeptical. He believes Obama's choice to visit Turkey first among Muslim countries was a loaded move. Shabib contends that Turkey is the type of majority-Muslim state the West wants to see--a secular Muslim country. More importantly, Obama wants to exploit the respected position of Recep Tayyip Erdugan's Turkey in order to implement American policies in the Muslim world. Obama wants Turkey to adopt a more active role in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and in the Arab/Israeli conflict. For Shabib, this amounts to "Turkey becoming a Trojan horse for American policy in two components: soft political discourse; and political substance that is based on the continuation of hegemony in a new transformed ‘soft hegemony' after military failures."
Hamas and Obama
Hamas, after greeting Obama's candidacy with such enthusiasm, has been frustrated by the first year of his Presidency. Hamas followed the American presidential race closely and supported Obama to the point of harming his campaign. In April 2008, Ahmad Yousef, political advisor to the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, praised Obama during a WABC radio interview. The statement was widely used by Obama's opponents, who denounced him as Hamas' favorite candidate.

Khaled Meshaal, Hamas' chief political leader, has expressed that his organization is more willing to enagage with American policymakers since Obama came to office. Hailing Obama's victory, Meshaal said, "It's a big change--politically and psychologically and it is noteworthy and I congratulate President Obama ... yes, we are ready for dialogue with President Obama and with the new American administration, on the basis that the American administration respects our rights and our options."

Since his election, Obama holds a very delicate position regarding Palestine and Hamas, a litmus test for many Muslims concerning Western credibility in promoting human values and justice. In his Cairo speech, Obama introduced a new approach to Hamas. "Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have to recognize they have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist."[

In an interview, Meshaal responded by saying
Undoubtedly Obama speaks a new language. His speech was cleverly designed... The essence of the speech was to improve the U.S. image and to placate the Muslims. We don't mind either objective, but we are looking for more than just mere words. If the United States wishes to open a new page, we definitely would welcome this. We are keen to contribute to this. But we [believe that cannot happen] merely with words. It must be with deeds, by changing the policy on the ground'.

However, despite early signs in January 2009 that the Obama administration was ready to engage with Hamas,[16] putting an end to American isolation of the party and the 1.5 million Palestinians under its jurisdiction in the Gaza Strip, nothing tangible took place.

The greatest challenge for the Obama administration is how to translate rhetoric and well-intentioned statements into concrete change. After a year, Obama's presidency has a mixed balance sheet, and frustration is gathering rapidly. On the Palestinian issue, Obama failed to pressure Israel to put a freeze on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Withdrawing troops from Iraq in January 2010 has been postponed until August 2010. Obama's dialogue and enagement approach has not been particularly successful in confronting Iran about its nuclear program. Both Republican and Democratic Congressmen stalled Obama's plan to close Guantanamo by voting down measures to relocate the detainees. Turning the hefty tanker is a strenuous job indeed.

Democratization Deficit
The second level of challenges Obama faces with regard to the Muslim world, and Islamists in particular, centers around democracy promotion. Islamists in the Arab world were dismayed that Obama did not use Cairo as an opportunity to address democratisation or the need for political reform in Egypt. Furthermore, he praised President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, an autocrat determined to hand over power to his son, Gamal. Downplaying the issue of democracy advancement is a notable shortcoming of "Obama-ism". As new realism becomes a cornerstone in Obama's foreign policy, his speeches about American involvement in the world have almost completely dropped the previous (Bush-style) emphasis on democratization.

There is a debate raging in Muslim countries on whether it's beneficial to invite external powers to promote democracy. There are concerns about a double standard, since the United States has been famously uneven in its application of democracy. The U.S. desires and fights for democracy in Iraq, but completely ignores Saudi Arabia, for example. The U.S. praises elections in Lebanon when they bring victory to Western-supported coalitions but lambasts elections that empower Hamas in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.

Among Islamists (and other opposition forces) in the Arab world there is a great dilemma surrounding what to demand from the West. If Muslims ask the United States to pressure their authoritarian regimes for democratization, they must relinquish sovereignty. Advocates of democracy also understand that explicit American support can be the kiss of death for a popular movement in the Middle East. On the other hand, if the U.S. does not intervene, autocrats will remain in power, citizens will still be denied free speech and political participation, and America will appear complicit.

The onus lies on both sides. If Obama truly believes that a stable Muslim world is in the best interest of the United States, then he must adopt a more consistent approach on democracy promotion, one that is less focused on immediate gain. This is necessary to establish a long-lasting, healthy relationship between the U.S. and Muslim states.

Islamists must develop vision of what they desire from the West, and the U.S. in particular, in terms of democracy promotion. If Islamists pragmatically engage with the U.S. to pursue democratic reforms, they can broaden their own support, and counteract the belief that democratization is a Western conspiracy to infiltrate Muslim countries. It is equally important that the Islamist movement continues its trend toward politicization and secularization, as demonstrated by the successful Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey. Focusing on public service and pushing ideological rhetoric and identity politics to the background will encourage external actors to deal more seriously, and less fearfully, with Islamist parties.

The ‘Obamania' that swept the Muslim world has evaporated and harsh realities have resurfaced. Obama's tanker-speedboat analogy is frustratingly realistic, Many Arab observers have insisted that no matter how much goodwill Obama gained upon election, rhetoric must be proven by deeds. It is unfortunate that Obama has found himself in the middle of several intractable issues: two wars; the global financial crisis; domestic disputes about Healthcare. This limits the time and effort that he has allocated for U.S.-Muslims relations, especially the Palestinian cause and democratization, which ought to be top priorities.
http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic/print.php?a=118091

Being Muslim in US

by Carlos Latuff
http://latuff2.deviantart.com/gallery/

Americans have negative Islam view: Gallup

Americans still largely have a negative perception of Muslims and Islam despite growth in positive Muslim-American political and social activism and interfaith organizations in the past decade, according to a new report from the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

"More than 50 percent of Americans said they had unfavorable opinions of Islam, while 29 percent of those reported a strong degree of prejudice towards Muslims," concluded the report, "Religious Perceptions in America: With an In-Depth Analysis of US Attitudes Toward Muslims and Islam.

It questioned 1002 interview subjects about different aspects of Islam and Muslims over a month-long period last year and married the results with those found in the Gallup World Religion survey, which surveyed Americans’ opinions on Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam and their followers.

Of the faiths, Islam and Muslims elicited the most negative perceptions.
Other findings from the survey reveal that there is a great public prejudice towards Islam as a faith than Muslims as adherents of that faith.

Senior analyst Dalia Mogahed, who is the Executive Director for the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, noted that though more than half of respondents said they knew someone who was Muslim, that didn’t deter from having negative attitudes towards Islam.

"While not knowing a Muslim is significant into falling in that extremely prejudice group," she said, "knowing a Muslims is not enough to keep someone from not being prejudice."

Mogahed said that correlation is indicative of how Americans tend to separate an individual from a group.

"We found that it’s possible to know someone in a group and make them the exception, to say, ‘Sure, so-and-so is a good Muslim. But most Muslims are not like him.’"

Though 70 percent of surveyed Americans said they believe Muslims worldwide want peace, 66 percent said Muslims are not accepting of other religions.

Some 68 percent said there is little in common between Christianity and Islam.

Despite numerous efforts by Muslim American organizations and individuals to inform the public about Islam, a whopping 63 percent said they have either no knowledge (23 percent) or very little knowledge (40 percent) of Islam.

The report is co-produced by the Muslim West Facts Project (part of Gallup) and the Coexist Foundation.

* Media factor

The findings did not surprise Mogahed.

"Though Muslim-Americans are positively involved in the fabric of American life, it’s difficult to see that in light of the media coverage of things like Fort Hood, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the troubles in Pakistan."

But she asserted that all the negativity revealed by the survey was disheartening to see because there has been so much hard work done by Muslim-Americans and Muslims worldwide to inform the non-Muslim public about the beauty of Islam.

"When the public tide can be turned towards having a positive view of Islam, then that will help negate all the prejudices."

The problem stems from media coverage of Islam, according to Media Tenor, a research firm that monitors and analyzes media coverage.

The report stated that not only is Islam the most frequently mentioned religion on the news networks in the US, but "a significant share of this coverage is negative."

An analysis of all statements made by television news between January and August of 2009 revealed that 36 percent of statements on religion is about Islam, and the tone of those statements is twice as likely (40 percent) to be negative than that about Christianity (20 percent).

Gallup’s survey surmised that the media coverage of the "fringe elements" of Islam "may shape Americans’ unfavorable attitudes towards Muslims."

"Muslims are different from one to the next. We live our lives differently, our world experiences are different and that shapes us," Mogahed said.

"But the one and only uniting factor of the group is Islam. And while acts of violence must be covered, perhaps what would help is for the media to pay attention to how it frames those stories."
Source: IslamOnline

Obama adds 675 million Muslims to the ultimate US Terrorism List

By Franklin Lamb | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Change and Obama

However President Obama is judged on various subjects for his first year in office, he has already made history in the way that neither his predecessor nor any other leader has ever managed.

On January 3, 2010, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued new security directives to all United States and international air carriers with inbound flights to the U.S. effective January 4, 2010. The TSA press release sought to assure the traveling public: "The new directive includes long-term sustainable security measures developed in consultation with law enforcement officials and our domestic and international partners."

At midnight Washington DC time, January 3, it went into effect and placed 675,000,000 (675 million) more Muslims and Arabs on yet another 'Terrorism 'list. Also added were Nigerian and Cuban Christians but they were not the target.

675 million is the approximate total number of people on the new list from the ten prone to terrorism Countries as the Washington Post called them this morning, or terrorist leaning countries according to Fox news, (Sudan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen) and the four current State sponsors of Terrorism ( Iran, Syria, Libya and Cuba).


All 675 million of these citizens are subject to being watched, patted down, and full body scanned under arrangements calling for 'intense screening' by the national airlines who would like to transport them to the US. As with the new H. R. 2278 Congressional initiative against satellite TV providers, the airlines flying from or via the 14 countries will have to enforce the new stringent security measures or themselves risk losing their lucrative US bi-lateral landing rights and potentially, end up on yet another US Special Global Terrorism facilitator list.

In addition to the approximate 675 million covered by the new measure, with the average birth rate of these countries being approximately 45 live births per 1000 per year, it means that more than 17,000,000 newborns will join the new US T list even before their first gulp of their mommy's milk. And every subsequent years worth of new 'T babies'.

The new list initiative is enough to warm Dick Cheney's heart, reputed as he is to have never seen an Muslim or Arab (except those he does business with) he didn't want terrorized by a listing or other means, but the international rebellion against this latest US War on Terrorism initiative has begun.

As this report is being prepared, Nigeria has just weighed via media reports reaching Beirut around noon on 1/5/09 and its government has demanded that their 150,000,000 (150 million) citizens be immediately scratched from the new T list of 14 countries singled out for special treatment. Nigeria Information Minister Dora Akunyili announced today that Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, did not accept the new Terrorism list and we do not have a history of terrorism and such a move could not be justified. It is unfair to include 150 million Nigerians on the US list for tighter screening because Nigerians do not have terrorist tendencies.

It's no secret these days that anyone who even looks like they could be Arab or Muslim is already on a 'mental US Terrorism watch list' evidenced by reports of some passengers deciding not to board flights after observing Hijab wearing females or Abaya wearing Muslin or Arab men looking at them. What often happens according to airport security officials is that non Muslims sometimes stare at Muslims trying to detect something unusal or suspicious about them and then the Muslims stare back wondering why they are being stared at and both parties become paranoid.

The Lebanese, bless them all, ever alert to foreign intrigues, and were among the first objecting to being placed on the new US T list.

On Sunday night's (1/3/09) late and wild van ride back to Beirut from Beital in the now frigid and frequently bitterly cold and windblown, Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, this observer got an ear full. Our driver, by appearance, down to the Akek (Amber) ring on his little finger, neatly trimmed short beard, black wool jacket and black baseball cap, was a Hezbollah guy. Fellow passengers were accepting as Abass treated us to his new CD of Resistance music, (again and again!), including the popular songs Haydar, Hayder and Oh Hussein!, and the catchy Ali, Ali! (Ali was the cousin and son in law of the Prophet Mohammad who Shia Muslims believe should have been the first Khalifa (successor) of the Prophet rather than Abu Bakr and his line including Omar (the second Khalifa) and Othman (the third Khalifa). In important respects, from this succession argument grew the Shia-Sunni conflict now deeply splitting Islam. On the van, it was a party atmosphere among the fifteen or so passengers most of whom were returning from week-end visits to their families with Bekaa toting delicacies of one kind or another. Van users, including this one, prefer Hezbollah drivers on the Beirut-Bekaa run because they know every pot hole on the route over the West Lebanon Mountains, don't try to overcharge riders, are unfailingly polite to the elderly and infirm-assisting them on and off the vans, and perhaps most importantly, these guys drive like bats fleeing hell, which cuts travel time by about one-third.

But those probably most grateful for riding with drivers like 'Abass' are those whose documents might not be quite in order or they just might be carrying contraband of some sort. For them our driver was golden because drivers like him are routinely waived thru various check points en route once their affiliation is noticed. One can't help wondering what would happen if a US 'profiling' system was in place and a van was pulled over by a Pennsylvania State trooper named Lawrence and his flashing red light, for ID and luggage inspection or just to sniff inside the vehicles quickly rolled down windows. Would the van still have passengers traveling to Beirut or would he ask to share a smoke?

The friendly young man sitting next to me opened a carry on case and while not wanting to appear snoopy, one could not help noticing that it was packed with filled honey comb and softball sized clumps of Red-bud Hashish (known locally by Western clients as 'H & H', with sometimes the prized honey fetching more than the Red-bud) two ancient Bekaa products. Appreciated from before Roman times each harvest achieved bumper crops this year. The near record yield was recorded despite a couple of DEA funded 'photo op' anti-drug 'raids' last summer that the locals laugh at. The chatty kid told me lots of couriers make at least twice weekly Baalbek trips.

One Baalbek young lady, a member of the large Jaafar clan ( which producers some of Hezbollah's best fighters) , studying Journalism at Beirut's American Lebanese University (LAU), commented to this observer after our driver took a music break to tune in the news, Oh, your country just added 14 more Muslim countries to another airplane Terrorism list. Mabrouk!
This opened an animated discussion of the ways things are going these days between the Obama administration whose sweet words last spring have become the source for scowls and ridicule in Lebanon due to deep disappointment and, once more dashed hope of America becoming an honest broker in the region –and of course, the various US Terrorism lists.

A teen ager from the back of the van sing-songed Wouldn't it be easier just for you Americans to put the whole world on your terrorism list and then let everyone on the planet convince you they should be taken off? And another smart alec grinned: Or you could just stop giving Israel weapons to kill and terrorize us and then there would be no need for any terrorist lists at all? Within two seconds, not more, an old woman who must have been in her 80's, wrapped in an Ashoura black covering, and who appeared to be sound asleep, lifted her head and shouted Enshallah! (God willing!) and returned her head forward to slumber. With that sage intervention the van erupted and shook in laughter.

The strongest reaction came from 'Mustapha' who appeared to be some sort of Salafist recently arrived from the gulf. Claiming to have friends in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, he expressed a strong opinion and with anger in his voice:

Does your government think Muslims with self respect and who value the Koran will allow his family especially his wife and his daughters to be body scanned? He would rather die. This will not happen. One phone call and your Embassy in Lebanon will close faster than the one in Yemen. I think sometimes that you Americans have no idea about these latest aggressions against Muslims? Are you out of your minds? We are a peaceful people with a few extremists doing some crasy things but only in response to crimes against us like in Palestine. Stop provoking us and leave us and our lands!

Will frequent flyers start to Glow?

As Mustapha expressed, Muslims and Arabs find the full-body scanner treatment abhorrent and they will likely oppose in strongly. In this they are not alone with many questions being raised from cost (approximately $ 200,000 each or 10 more expensive that the usual metal detectors) to questions whether such devices would have even detected the type of bomb allegedly used on Christmas Day in Detroit.

While the Israel Defense Industries has announced a crash program to build and distribute quickly a cheaper and improved full body scanner (FBS) version, the stock of American Science & Engineering, a US company that makes the full body scanners skyrocketed after Christmas and hit $82 dollars per share on 1/4/09, up from around $ 42 this summer.UK companies like L-3 Communications and Qinetiq hope to fend off competitors in landing quick orders. Qinetiq announced yesterday that it can perfect a stand-off full body scanner to reduce privacy issues.

Former Bush Homeland Security director, Michael Chertoff admitted to NPR the other day that he is in the hunt for contracts for his new consulting firm, while denying that his advocacy of fbs when he held his post is a conflict of interest. Janes Weekly claims the fbs are here to stay.

There are many critics of FBS including claims that it tends to fry hearing aids, and sends massive doses of ionizing x-rays radiations to the thyroid and breast areas. Others insist dogs are more effective and much cheaper.

Dr. John Gofman, Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, a leading U.S. expert on the biological effects of X-radiation has concluded after exhaustive research that there is NO SAFE DOSE-LEVEL of ionizing radiation. His studies indicate that radiation from medical diagnostics and treatment is a causal co-factor in 50 percent of America's cancers and 60 percent of our ischemic (blood flow blockage) heart disease. He stresses that the frequency with which Americans are medically X-rayed makes for a significant radiological impact.

The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children. Terri Dowty, of Action for Rights of Children, in London claims that the scanners could breach the Protection of Children Act 1978, under which it is illegal to create an indecent image or a "pseudo-image" of a child.

Privacy Issues

The ACLU and similar civil liberty organizations in England and Europe are waging a campaign against fbs on privacy grounds some arguing that the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to "virtual strip-searching" and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved. US and European Child porn laws are applicable in the view of some lawyers and there is growing concern that TSA type at airports around the World do not commit offences under child pornography laws or sell to the likes of the National Enquirer, the UK Sun, NY Post etc. full body scan images of celebrities, movie stars and others. Some governments are expressing concern that images could end up on the Internet.

A 12-month trial at Manchester, England airport of scanners revealed naked images of passengers including their genitalia and breast enlargements only went ahead last month after under-18s were exempted.

According to a US Congressional source, the Obama administration's new list is meant to parry the coming expected rampage from the likes of Russ Limbaugh. Already some conservatives such as retired Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney who wants to get young Muslim men naked in the worst way. The former US Air Force general's comments during a recent Fox News broadcast. "We've got to go to more than just the normal process that they're talking about now," he opined on Saturday. "We have got to go to very; very strict screening and we've got to use profiling. And I mean, be very, very serious about the profiling. If you are an 18-28-year-old Muslim man, then you should be strip searched. If we don't do that, there's a very high probability that we're gonna lose an airliner."

The Obama administration has expressed for months an interest in revamping the Terrorism lists and who is on them who should not be. Now is the time to rethink the whole T list concept. They can boomerang and cause many more problems than they were constructed to prevent. The Obama administration should proceed on a case by case basic with people suspected of planning violence. It should immediately scrap the latest 675, 000,000+ Mega Special Global Terrorism List and try good works rather than threats and serial humiliations to build trust and friendship among Muslims and Arabs who are identical to ourselves in what they are working to accomplish in life for their loved ones.

The historic roots of a newly resilient ideology

By Sener Aktürk

* How Western anti-Muslim bigotry became respectable

As scholars who work on the centuries-old Islamic presence in Europe and the continent's first post-Holocaust genocide against, not coincidently, the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we were deeply disturbed but not surprised that an ostensibly tolerant and pluralistic Western democracy like Switzerland would vote by a margin of 57 percent to ban the religious symbol of 400,000 of its Muslim residents because they felt "threatened" by the grand total of four minarets that exist there.

The Swiss referendum was the tip of an iceberg reflecting both deep and age-old historic prejudice against a Muslim presence on the continent as well as a recent concerted ideological campaign to construct Muslims as the "other" on the part of rightwing racist movements in Europe and their fellow travelers in the neo-conservative and Southern Evangelical movements in the U.S.

While secularism and constitutional safeguards for religious freedom are seen as hallmarks of the post-Enlightenment West, Europe and the West have traditionally been far more hostile to religious-cultural pluralism than Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu and Islamic societies, which historically viewed religious and cultural heterogeneity and pluralism as the natural order of things.

This historic reality explains to a large degree why, in contrast to Europe, such religious diversity survived into the modern era in these societies, albeit not always harmoniously. Indeed, the famous thesis of the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne was that the very notion of "Christendom" or "the West" first emerged from the ruins of classical civilization in opposition to northern pagans and southern Muslim and Jewish infidels whose presence in Europe was actually coterminous with the spread of the Holy Roman Empire and Church in large areas of the continent.

While Paris was a collection of mud huts, Muslim Cordoba in the 10th century was the largest and grandest city in Europe with massive public baths, libraries, universities, underground sewers and even street lighting, which predated that of London by 700 years.

Recent academic contributions by David Levering Lewis, Maria Rosa Menocal and Michael Hamilton Morgan have underscored how the uniquely tolerant multicultural civilization of Muslim Spain and the Levant played a central role in preserving and enhancing the philosophic and scientific legacy of Greece, Persia, India and China, directly laying the foundation of the European Renaissance itself.

However, from neo- conservative ideologues such as Geert Wilders and Christopher Caldwell to Dutch and Austro-German politicians, conveniently forgetting the Ottoman origins of their tulips and kaffee kultur, the centuries-long European Muslim historic and cultural legacy has invariably been presented as transient and alien. Constructed as "aliens" in the European body politic, it is not surprising that European Muslims, Jews and Roma, from the Crusades to the Inquisition, and in our own era, the Holocaust and Bosnia, were the paramount targets of pogroms, ethnic cleansing and even genocide.

Even modern secularizing Western and southeastern European countries have been historically intolerant of mosques, minarets, synagogues and other symbolic forms of non-Christian representation. Budapest, Belgrade and Athens, which lived under Ottoman Muslim rule for centuries, like the fabled southern Spanish Muslim cities of Granada and Cordoba, did not emerge into the 20th century with a single surviving mosque.

Even though Athens is home to an estimated 200,000 Muslims, it took enormous controversy and the Olympic Games to be able to construct a single mosque. The same impediments are true of a number of European Union member states, which are obligated to maintain freedom of worship and non-discrimination. Germany is the EU member state with the largest Muslim population, boasting a minority estimated at 3 to 4 million people, but its capital city, Berlin, only has a single mosque with a clearly visible minaret that is located in the outskirts of the city next to Tempelhof Airport.

While Germany has appropriately made great efforts to restore synagogues, which had been erased from the skyline in the 1930s, right-wing mobilization against the building of mosques, as in the case of Cologne, instead of being viewed as bigotry has been championed by populist politicians and the mainstream media.

* Swiss referendum painfully ironic

The Swiss referendum is particularly painfully ironic since its Muslim community is to a large extent made up of secular Balkan Muslims who survived ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo. A hallmark of the Serbian and subsequent Croatian campaigns was to erase all vestiges of the unique and priceless Ottoman-Islamic architectural heritage in the region, with mosques and minarets as particular targets. At the time, one of the authors, Mujeeb Khan, was involved in lobbying efforts on behalf of the Bosnian state and had written in "East European Politics and Societies" that official British and French appeasement of the Serbian genocide reflected disturbing and deep-seated historic complexes against religious and cultural minorities in Europe.

The White House historian Taylor Branch in his recent book "The Clinton Tapes" confirmed this, recounting how Paris and London insisted on maintaining the arms embargo on the defenseless Bosnians. "They justified their opposition on plausible humanitarian grounds, arguing that more arms would only fuel the bloodshed, but privately, said the president, key allies objected that an independent Bosnia would be 'unnatural' as the only Muslim nation in Europe. He said they favored the embargo precisely because it locked in Bosnia's disadvantage."

Branch, in conversation with Clinton continued: "When I expressed shock at such cynicism, reminiscent of the blind-eye diplomacy regarding the plight of Europe's Jews during World War II, President Clinton only shrugged. He said President François Mitterrand of France had been especially blunt in saying that Bosnia did not belong, and that British officials also spoke of a painful but realistic restoration of Christian Europe."

The recent British, French and Serbian policy reflected 19th century European efforts to solve the Ottoman "Eastern Question" by expelling the "Turks bag and baggage," in the words of William Gladstone, from Europe in a campaign of ethnic cleansing which would claim the lives of over 200,000 Ottoman Muslims and render 5 million refugees whose descendants comprise a good portion of modern-day Turks.

While almost all nations commemorate their suffering and loss, this campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing and a similar one against Muslims in the Caucasus and Crimea has hardly been discussed in the Turkish Republic due to efforts at erasing the past after the founding of the republic.

At the time of the Bosnian slaughter, one of the writers, Mujeeb Khan, was the first to accurately predict that callous bigotry and indifference to the plight of highly secular and pacific European Muslims by the Western architects of "the new world order" in Iraq would catalyze militant movements across the Islamic world. He also pointed out that since the breakup of the Ottoman state, the Islamic world, unlike China and India, lacked for the first time a regional hegemon capable of preventing external invasions and undertaking industrial, technological and social development on a global scale and predicted that a democratizing Turkey would embrace her Ottoman-Islamic past and historic role of providing leadership and cohesion in the Muslim world.

Such a momentous change is now, of course, under way with the election of the Justice and Development (AK Party) and the development of the neo-Ottoman foreign policy, which has aroused tremendous popular support throughout the Muslim world and which, along with the re-emergence of China and India, might shift the global balance of power away from the West, where it has resided since 1750.

* Borrowing from the tool kit of demagogues

Sadly, the disgraceful example of bigotry and chauvinism set by Francois Mitterrand in Bosnia has been continued by the current French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Instead of joining his foreign minister and prominent human rights activist Bernard Kouchner in condemning the Swiss referendum, Sarkozy wrote an editorial in Le Monde expressing sympathy and called upon French minorities to practice their faith "discreetly" while "humbly" deferring to the centrality of Christian culture and history in what is ostensibly a hyper-secular and egalitarian state.

The high-profile intervention was part of his recently launched "debate on national identity" meant to appeal to populist French resentment of racial and religious minorities. Borrowing from the tool kit of demagogues everywhere, Sarkozy identified a few dozen burqa-wearing women in a country of 65 million as the gravest threat confronting the nation.

A few days after Sarkozy's Le Monde essay, the main mosque in the town of Castres was vandalized with swastikas and graffiti stating "France for the French" and "Sieg Heil." France's leading anti-racism organization, SOS Racisme, noted that such incidents and even more serious ones involving murder and injury grew out of the politically expedient appeals to racial and religious fears and intolerance by leading politicians starting with the president of the republic himself.

The legitimation of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry in the European mainstream has allowed formerly ostracized far-right Neo-Nazi and Fascist-oriented groups such as the British National Party, the Vlaams Belang of Belgium, the Liga Norda of Italy, the National Front in France and the Danish and Swiss people's parties to present themselves as respectable political movements. They have done this by distancing themselves from traditional anti-Semitic ideology, which continues to be viewed as abhorrent and often illegal, while openly espousing anti-Muslim bigotry, which is seen as much more politically correct and often reflecting mainstream political and media opinion.

In this, they have been greatly helped by anti-Muslim American neo-conservatives allied with people such as Mark Steyn, Daniel Pipes, Norman Podhoretz and Charles Krauthammer. During the Obama presidential campaign, the use of Muslim identity as a slur and form of innuendo was as vicious as any anti-Semitic whispering campaigns found in troubled parts of Eastern Europe.

CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com have documented how leading Republican politicians have long casually spewed anti-Muslim bigotry without any repercussions. Congressman Peter King of New York has stated that "there are too many mosques in this country," and GOP representatives Sue Myrick (North Carolina), John Shadegg (Arizona), Paul Broun (Georgia) and Trent Franks (Arizona) have collaborated with the far-right extremist and white supremacist Dave Gaubatz in demanding that young American Muslims not be allowed to serve as interns in Congress.

* An unholy alliance

In this anti-Muslim campaign, neo-conservatives have an unholy alliance with followers of Armageddon theology in many Southern Evangelical churches, including the likes of Sarah Palin, who view Muslims as the anti-Christ and feel that Jesus will not return until the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are destroyed and the Jewish Temple replete with animal sacrifices in Jerusalem rebuilt.

Both the reverends Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham have demanded that Islam be banned as a violent religion while enjoying intimate ties with the highest levels of the GOP and while continuing to preach a theology of hate, itself directly linked to historical crimes against African, Native, Hispanic and Asian Americans in the U.S.

Such views and those of European anti-Muslim bigots such as Wilders and the late Oriana Fallaci, who channeled Der Stürmer in complaining that Muslims breed like rats, have been given prominent positive coverage in neo-conservative media outlets like the Weekly Standard, The National Review, The Wall Street Journal and of course Fox News. The problem with these forms of bigotry is that they quickly spread to other ethnic, racial and religious targets as well, as witnessed by recent anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant hysteria in the U.S., posing ominous questions about the future of coexistence in now extremely diverse Western societies.

Bigots and chauvinists, like bullies everywhere, direct their vitriol toward those seen as weak and defenseless. Because China and India have emerged with a continental-scale hegemonic state and market structure in their historic domains of civilization, they are treated with great deference by Western statesmen and would-be hate-mongers like Rupert Murdoch of the News Corporation alike, a lesson Muslims would do well to ponder in the wake of campaigns of genocide, ethnic cleansing and destruction in their historic lands.

-- Sener Aktürk is a postdoctoral fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and a visiting lecturer in the department of government at Harvard University. Mujeeb R. Khan is affiliated with the department of political science at UC Berkeley and has published widely on Muslim-Western relations including in “East European Politics and Societies”. This article appeared in Today's Zaman.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/

Israel’s Arab women workers need not apply

by Jonathan Cook - The National - 1 December 2009

Israel’s finance minister was accused last week of trying to deflect attention from discriminatory policies keeping many of the country’s Arab families in poverty by blaming their economic troubles on what he described as Arab society’s opposition to women working.

A recent report from Israel’s National Insurance Institute showed that half of all Arab families in Israel are classified as poor compared with just 14 per cent of Jewish families.

Yuval Steinitz, the finance minister, told a conference on employment discrimination this month that the failure of Arab women to participate in the workforce was damaging Israel’s economy. Eighteen per cent of Arab women work, and only half of them full time, compared with at least 55 per cent of Jewish women.

He attributed the low employment rate to “cultural obstacles, traditional frameworks and the belief that Arab women have to remain in their home towns”, adding that such restrictions were characteristic of all Arab societies.

But researchers and women’s groups pointed out that employment of Arab women in Israel is lower than almost anywhere else in the Arab world, including such employment blackspots for women as Saudi Arabia and Oman.

“Most Arab women want to work, including a large number of female graduates, but the government has refused to tackle the many and severe obstacles that have been put in their way,” said Sawsan Shukha of Women Against Violence, a Nazareth-based organisation.

That assessment was supported by a survey this month revealing that 83 per cent of Israeli businesses in the main professions – including advertising, law, banking, accountancy and the media – admitted being opposed to hiring Arab graduates, whether men or women.

Yousef Jabareen, an urban planner at the Technion technical university in Haifa, who has conducted one of the largest surveys on Arab women’s employment in Israel, said the problems Arab women faced were unique.

“In Israel they face a double discrimination, both because they are women and because they are Arabs,” he said.

“The average in the Arab world [for female employment] is about 40 per cent. Only women in Gaza, the West Bank and Iraq — where there are exceptional circumstances — have lower rates of employment than Arab women in Israel. That gap needs explaining and the answers aren’t to be found where the minister is looking.”

He said a wide range of factors hold Arab women back, many of them the result of discriminatory policies by successive governments to prevent the 1.3-million Arab minority, which comprises one-fifth of Israel’s population, from benefiting from economic development.

These included widespread discrimination in hiring policies by both private employers and the government; a long-standing failure to locate industrial zones and factories in Arab communities; a severe lack of state-supported childcare services compared with Jewish communities; a shortage of public transport in Arab areas that prevented women reaching places of work, and a lack of training courses aimed at Arab women.

According to a study by Women Against Violence, 40 per cent of Arab women with degrees are unable to find work.

When interviewed, Mr Jabareen said, 78 per cent of non-working women blamed their situation on a lack of job opportunities.

Maali Abu Roumi, 24, from the town of Tamra in northern Israel, has been looking for a job as a social worker since she finished training two years ago.

A report by Sikkuy, an organisation promoting civic equality in Israel, revealed this month that Israel’s Arab population received 70 per cent less government funding for social services than the Jewish population, and that Arab social workers – in a poorly paid profession that attracts mainly women – had a 50 per cent higher workload.

Ms Abu Roumi added that, in addition, cash-strapped Arab schools, unlike Jewish schools, could not afford to employ a social worker, and that Israel’s Arab minority lacked the equivalent of the welfare institutions and foundations funded by wealthy overseas Jews that offered work to many Jewish social workers.

“Most of the Jews I studied with have found work, while very few of the Arabs on my course have been employed,” she said. “When a job comes up, it’s usually part time and there are dozens of applicants.”

The Alternative Planning Centre, an Arab organisation that studies land use in Israel, reported in 2007 that only 3.5 per cent of the country’s industrial zones were in Arab communities. Most attracted small businesses such as workshops for car repairs or carpentry that offered few opportunities for women.

“Israel’s private sector is almost entirely closed to Arab women because of discriminatory practices by employers who prefer to employ Jews,” Mr Jabareen said. He added that the government had failed to provide leadership: among governmental workers, less than two per cent were Arab women, despite repeated pledges by ministers to increase Arab recruitment.

Ms Shukha said: “The civil service is a major employer, but many of these jobs are in the centre of the country, in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, a long way from the north where most Arab citizens live.”

She noted that there were no regular buses from Nazareth, the largest Arab town in the country, to Jerusalem. “The transport situation is even worse in the villages where most Arab women live.”

In addition, she said, most could not travel long distances to find work because of the scarcity of child-care provision. Only 25 government-run daycare centres have been established for preschool children in Arab communities out of 1,600 operating across the country. Ms Shukha also criticised the trade and industry ministry, saying that, although it had invested heavily in training for Jewish women, only six per cent of Arab women were attending courses, and then mostly for sewing and secretarial work.

Mr Jabareen said that, according to his survey, 56 per cent of non-working Arab women wanted to work immediately.

“Since 1948 Israeli governments have been blaming poverty on ‘cultural barriers’ stopping Arab women from working, but all the research shows that the argument is nonsense,” he said. “There are hundreds of Arab women competing for every job that comes on the market.”

He said Arab men faced massive discrimination, too, but found work because they filled a need in the economy by doing hard manual labour that most Jews refused, often travelling long distances to work on construction sites.

“Women simply don’t have that option,” he said. “They cannot do that kind of work and they need to stay close to their communities because they have responsibilities in the home.”

Mr Jabareen added that on average Arab women in Israel had a higher number of schooling years than those in Arab countries and the Third World. There were even slightly more Arab women at Israeli universities than Arab men.

“All the research shows that the more educated the population, the more it should be able to find work. The case with Arab women in Israel breaks with the trend. It’s unique.”

A study by the Bank of Israel published this month suggested additional reasons for the high levels of poverty among Arab families. It showed that Arab men were typically forced into retirement in their early 40s, at least a decade before Israel’s Jewish workers and workers in Europe and the United States.

The researchers attributed Arab men’s early unemployment to the fact that most are restricted to physically demanding labouring jobs, and because they are rapidly being replaced by Third World workers who are paid less than the minimum wage.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

Violence against Muslims

* The 2008 Hate Crime Survey—available online—examines incidents of bias-motivated violence against Muslims, including attacks on persons and property, analyzes official and nongovernmental data, and assesses government performance in response to such violence in the 56 European and North American countries that comprise the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
o Acts of violence against Muslims and their places of worship continued in 2008 and 2009.
o Assaults against Muslim religious leaders, ordinary Muslims, and those perceived to be Muslim occurred with alarming frequency across the region.
o Mosques and other places of worship were particular targets of vandalism and arson. In some incidents, religious texts were also desecrated and destroyed.
o Certain international and domestic events—such as the terrorist attack in Scotland in June 2007—continue to provoke backlash attacks on innocent Muslims and those perceived to be Muslims.
* Governments are not doing enough to address the problem, and in some cases use anti-Muslim rhetoric to capitalize on the overall climate of fear and misunderstanding of Muslims and Islam.
* There is a longstanding strain of political discourse in Europe that has projected Muslim immigrants as a threat to European security, homogeneity, and culture. The situation has worsened in recent years in the background of terrorist attacks and official government responses to them.
* The problem of anti-Muslim violence is complicated by the multiple dimensions of discrimination that may occur in a single incident, as there can be an overlay of intolerance based on the victim’s religion, ethnicity, or gender. Intolerance is increasingly directed at Muslims and other minorities expressly because of their religion.
o Women who wear the hijab—a highly visible sign of a woman’s religious and cultural background—are particularly vulnerable to harassment and violence by those who wish to send a message of hatred.
* There is a lack of official statistics on the incidence of violent hate crimes against Muslims.
o Underreporting remains one of the most serious problems, as most victims refrain from reporting attacks to the police.
o The data deficit proves a challenge to comprehensive and well thought-out policy decisions to combat the problem. Lack of reporting makes it impossible to have a good picture of official responses to anti-Muslim incidents by the police and courts.
o Comprehensive nongovernmental data is missing as well: very few NGOs across the region monitor and publicly report specifically on anti-Muslim hate crimes.
* Only a few governments engage in official monitoring of hate crimes with an anti-Muslim bias:
o The United States has long been systematically monitoring anti-Muslim crimes.
o In the United Kingdom monitoring and reporting on "Islamophobic" hate crimes is most developed in London.
o Canada has recently started to produce official data on hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims.
o Austria has begun to monitor "Islamophobic crimes" within the framework of its reporting on right-wing extremism, releasing data for the first time on two such cases in the 2007 reporting.
o Authorities in France do not report explicitly on violence against Muslims, but their reporting of racist and xenophobic hate crimes offers a window into the problem of anti-Muslim violence, with over 60 percent of reported incidents perpetrated against people of North African origin, who are predominantly Muslim.
o No other government in the OSCE region reports crimes motivated by hatred toward Muslims
* There is a need for immediate initiatives to fight anti-Muslim violence. Human Rights First has recommended the implementation of our Ten-Point Plan to combat hate crime, which calls for:
o Vigorous law enforcement response to individual incidents;
o Cooperation between the police and affected communities;
o Systematic official monitoring, data analysis and public reporting.

Russian Muslims Between Oil and Federalism

Muslim republics in Northern Caucasus are rich in oil, natural gas, coal, gold, and many other mineral resources.

According to Ariel Cohen, a research fellow at the Washington-based Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, the huge oil reserves are estimated to be over 25 billion barrels under the Caspian Sea.

He estimated that oil reserves in the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are similar to those in Kuwait and larger than those in Alaska's Northern Slope and the North Sea combined.
Islam in Russia Part one

Natural resource abundance, however, could not result in economic prosperity among Caucasian Muslim republics because of many reasons.

Oil's Bloody Politics
Russia's control of Chechnya enables Moscow to control the flow of natural resources, mainly oil and gas.

For instance, the tiny republic of Ingushetia is rich in marble, timber, dolomite, plaster, limestone, gravel, granite, clay, thermal medical water, rare metals, mineral water, oil (over 60 billion tons), and natural gas reserves.

Yet, Ingushetia remains one of Russia's poorest and most restive regions. In 2003, Ingushetia's percapita income was 463 Euro/ $ 678 dollars per year, and this figure remains the same every year, with the average monthly income stopped at $60 starting from 2006.

As Russia’s daily online Kommersant reported that the difference between the maximum (in Moscow) and minimum (in Ingushetia) average percapita incomes in the first half of 2007 was 9.8 times.

And, according to Rosstat, the state statistics service, incomes in Russia's richest areas are nearly 10 times higher than in the poorest ones.

Many experts agreed that the Caspian Sea's oilfields and the strategic significance of oil pipelines passing through Caucasus were major incentives for Moscow to use force in Chechnya during the two Chechen Wars of 1994-1996 and 1999-2000.

In 1995, Time magazine's former Russia correspondent Andrew Meier wrote of many issues baffling Western observers about Russia's intervention in Chechnya.

He contended that the question of the timing of the invasion has gone unanswered while the reason was simply oil.

Chechnya, as many correspondents have noted, has considerable oil reserves that Moscow clearly covets. Yet, oil production in Chechnya has been dropping drastically by some 71 percent since 1991.

Much more significant is the fact that Russia's control of Chechnya enables Moscow to control the flow of natural resources, mainly oil and gas, running from former Soviet Union republics in Central Asia.

The small mountainous region of the Northern Caucasus sits astride a critical pipeline that links the oil-rich republics of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan — both are bordering the landlocked Caspian Sea — to the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. (Andrew Meier, What does Russia see in Chechnya? Oil)

The ongoing military conflict in the neighboring Chechnya has occasionally spilled over into other republics of the Northern Caucasus.

"Although there has been a decrease in the number of disappearances in Chechnya, serious violations continue with impunity, and in recent years the violations have spread to other parts of the Northern Caucasus," said Nicola Duckworth, the director of Amnesty International's Europe and Central Asia Program. (Human Rights Watch, Council of Europe Failing in Russia).

Muslim Republics Between Federalism and Unitarianism
Yet, usually the candidates of federal republic’s presidents are nominated by the president of the Russian Federation.
The system of federalism in Russia was inherited from the Soviet Union's political structure, and it was first formally instituted by the federal constitution of Russia in 1918.

Despite its professed commitment to "socialist federalism", the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a unitary state, and policies of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (RSFSR) [1] had to conform to those determined by the USSR.

After the dissolution of the USSR, the federal constitution was amended to eliminate the term "autonomous" from the title of the former republics of the RSFSR which was replaced by "Russian Federation."

So, all the territories, regions, and federal cities were recognized as members of the Russian Federation.

Russian federal subjects are tied with the Russia's federal government by the uniform Federal Treaty — the agreement on the delineation of jurisdiction and the powers between federal bodies and the central government in Moscow.

Principally, as many experts observed, the Russian constitution envisages the equal rights for all subjects; federal republics enjoy different status which allows them to adopt domestic constitutions, to establish state languages, to elect presidents, and to form constitutional courts.

Different status presupposes asymmetrical federalism in the sense that not all of the constituent units are equal in economical, geographical, and social spheres (Salikov, The Russian Federal System: Sub-National and Local Levels).

Although its constitution was compelled to be amended 15 times, the republic of Tatarstan enjoys the most rights among other republics.

Tatarstan's constitution of 2000 defines the republic's status without contradicting the constitution of the Russian Federation:

The republic of Tatarstan is a democratic constitutional state associated with the Russian Federation by the constitution of the Russian Federation, the constitution of the republic of Tatarstan, and the treaty between the Russian Federation and the republic of Tatarstan on delimitation of jurisdictional subjects and mutual delegation of powers between the state bodies of the Russian Federation and the state bodies of the republic of Tatarstan.


In fact, the sovereignty of Tatarstan shall be its inalienable qualitative status.

The constitution of neighboring Bashqortostan was adopted on Dec. 24, 1993. Article 1 of the constitution stipulates that Bashkortostan is a sovereign state within Russia; it has all the state power beyond the limits of authority of the Russian Federation.

The republic of Bashqortostan resolves all the issues of its administrative-territorial structure on its own.

The list of significant Bashkortostan's districts, towns, and municipalities as well as the order of establishing, amending, and changing borders of municipalities and their names are stipulated by the republic of Bashkortostan's law of administrative-territorial structure.

The head of the government and the highest executive post in the Muslim Republics is the president.

Yet, usually the candidates of federal republic’s presidents are nominated by the president of the Russian Federation.

The Kremlin’s direct involvement in nominating presidents of Russia's republics without paying attention to the will of local communities produces new conflicts and preserves the status quo, rather than changing the system itself for the benefit of the people.

For instance, in Ingushetia when former Ingushetia's president and Putin-critic Ruslan Aushev resigned from his post, former KGB and FSB [2] (Federal Security Service) member Murat Zyazikov took over the presidency with clear support from then Russia's president Vladimir Putin in a Kremlin-manipulated 2002 election.

In the eyes of the people of Ingushetia, President Zyazikov did not come into office through a democratic process, and therefore lacks local legitimacy.

Tensions between Ingush people and the government led to numerous recent protests and increasingly severe acts of violence in the republic.

Gennady Skorin of Prague Watchdog confirmed that in recent years the situation in Ingushetia has begun to change rapidly.

Abductions and law enforcement operations have turned the small republic into a place where no one could feel safe.

The Russian authorities’ claims that they hunted for extremists sounded like an open lie, because it is well-known that in most cases the people who suffer during the so-called "mop-ups" (zachistki) are innocent. (Skorin, Ingushetia as the last line of defence in Russia's Caucasus War).

"Some 200 kidnappings and over 500 murders are too many for a republic with an entire population of only about 300, 000," Skorin comments.

Marat S. Salikov, the dean of the Institute of Justice of the Urals Law Academy in Yekaterinburg, Russia, concludes that the central government’s attempts to subjugate federal states could lead not just to centralized federalism, but to de-federalization, like unitarianism. (Salikov, The Russian Federal System: Sub-National and Local Levels).

Future of Muslim Republics in Russia
With intellectuals' joint efforts, the Russian Ummah can reach notable progress in influencing the foreign and domestic politics of Moscow.

The atmosphere of liberty which prevailed in 1990s in Muslim-populated areas of Russia has now abated.

Today, streets of even small towns of Bashqortostan and its supreme council, which enthusiastically adopted the declaration of the sovereignty of the Bashkir Soviet Republic on Oct.11,1990, are decorated with plentiful banners sympathetically demonstrating their dependence on Russia.

In 2007, the government celebrated 450 years of the "willful joining" of the Bashqort tribes to the Russian Empire.

The opposition, which believes in the independence of Bashqortostan from Russian supremacy, does not have many chances to be heard by internal or international communities.

For instance, right after the Russian aggression against Georgia, Tatar's independence party Ittifaq released an appeal to the international community, indicating why the oil-rich republic of Tatarstan must pursue independence from the Russian Federation.

The authors of the appeal state:

The republic of Tatarstan must be independent from Russia. […] Russia has been denying us the right [of] self-determination for centuries, [and] we have to seek help from the international community. Please protect us from the Russian aggression, help us to [gain independence, and to build] a democratic society. Oil-rich Tatarstan does not want to empower Russia any more. Recognize the independence of the republic of Tatarstan. The hard-working, trustworthy Tatar people — having old history, robust economy, well-developed oil resources, and rich agriculture — are ready to contribute to the development of the world civilization together with other nations.


Unfortunately, the appeal, which was circulated by email, attracted little attention from the media either in Russia or the West.

However, today, many Russian Muslim experts completely oppose the idea of the independence of Muslim republics from the Russian Federation, supposing it to be unfeasible due to territorial and demographic considerations.

For instance, as Damir Khairetdinov pointed out, only one-fourth of Tatar population is living inside the republic of Tatarstan while the rest are living in other parts of the Russian Federation.

In the case of Tatarstan separating from Russia, it may result in massive persecution of Tatars in Russia. These Tatars are descendants of the Kasimian, Siberian, Astrakhan and Noghay Khanates, and completely unrelated to the republic of Tatarstan.

Damir Khairetdinov believes that the secession of Tatarstan and Bashqortostan from the Russian Federation would be a colossal smack to the Russian Ummah which nobody will care about due to its small quantity and dispersal of its population.

Therefore, only with Tatarstan and Bashqortostan being part of the Russian Federation, the strengthening of the Russian Muslim Ummah is possible.

With intellectuals' joint efforts, the Russian Ummah can reach notable progress in influencing the foreign and domestic politics of Moscow.

This is already happening: nobody could even imagine that Russia, which is mainly a Christian state, would want to become a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), and want to utilize the Muslim factor in its foreign politics.

In this regard, the roles of Chechnya and Tatarstan, as well as of Muslim communities outside these republics — namely the Muslim community of Moscow — are the most notable.

Director of Nizhny Novgorod Islamic Institute of "Medina" Damir Mukhetdinov is also positive about the future of Muslims in Russia.

In his live dialogue on IslamOnline.net, Mukhetdinov pointed out that, according to the recent sociological researches, by 2020, Muslims may compose the half of Russia's population, which may be possible due to extensive labor migration from Central Asia to Russia.

In addition, Muslim Republics in the Northern Caucasus, especially Chechnya, have the youngest populations in the generally aging Russian Federation; in the early 1990s, it was among the few regions experiencing natural population growth.

In the first half of 2007, the birth rate in Chechnya was 26.4, while in Russia it was 11.28 per 1,000 individual.

During an iftar at the central Moscow mosque in Ramadan 2008, Grant Mufti of the European part of the Russian Federation Ravil Gainetdinov stressed on long-lasting tradition of dialogue between Muslims and other confessions of Russia.

He declared: "Russia is our shared home, and we, Muslims of Russia, are obliged to protect and enlarge spiritual wealth left by our forefathers."

[1] Today's Russian Federation.

[2] KGB is former USSR's and former Russian Federation's intelligence agency while FSB is Russia's Federal Security Service.