Islam: The Religion of Peace?

[Gavur]

"There is a Real Fear of Radical Imams"

The recent riots across France have raised new questions about the integration of immigrants into European society. Muslims have faced particular scrutiny following terrorist attacks in Spain and Britain. SPIEGEL ONLINE interviewed Jytte Klausen, the author of a new book looking at the challenges from the perspective of European Muslim leaders.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,386823,00.html

AP
A British Muslim boy listens as his father reads from the Koran in London.
Danish-American academic Jytte Klausen has spent the past two years exploring the issues surrounding the integration of Muslims in Europe. In the course of her research, she has spoken to more than 300 of Europe's leading Muslims -- members of parliament, community activists, religious leaders, as well doctors and lawyers. Her new book, The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe, offers their perspectives on the difficulties facing the Islamic communities and investigates what can be done to fix them.

SPIEGEL: You seemed quite surprised to discover that many of the members of this "Muslim elite" you questioned were not part of the second generation of immigrants, as you had expected, but were actually fairly recent first generation immigrants. What does this tell us about Muslims in European society?

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Klausen: Many of the people I spoke to had come to Europe in their twenties, either as political refugees or as students. They were already educated, and that was critical for their self-esteem, that they already had that faith in themselves. There was a real difference between those Muslims who had moved to Europe and those who were born there. Those who had moved here would say to me: "Things are much worse where I came from. Here I can sit and talk to you without worrying about the police." By contrast, the people born in Europe did not take that view -- they were much more likely to say: "Europe has made all these promises to us and hasn't kept them." They were much angrier, and scored much higher in all the alienation tests I used.

SPIEGEL: And what does it mean for that second generation, whose parents came to Europe presumably for a better life, are they becoming a lost generation, an underclass? And if so, what can be done about it?

Klausen: In Europe, we have an education system which we have relied on in the past as a means of integration and a gateway to opportunity for all sorts of people. I myself am the first generation of my family to be university educated, and I only got a degree because it was free. My family did not have to pay for it. I think we have to think very carefully about why the education system is not working for the younger generation. Many of the leaders I talked to stressed there was a lack of early integration into politics, through youth groups and so on, saying it is not happening for young Muslims because the established political groups are skeptical, mistrustful of Muslims, they are aware of the political consequences of having Muslims elected to political offices and promoting them to leadership positions, even in youth groups. One exception to that rule was in Sweden, where the trade unions and other political groups have really encouraged young Muslims to get involved, but I didn't see that anywhere else, and I think it is very important that parties and groups start promoting Muslims to political positions.

SPIEGEL: Obviously if those groups start doing that now, it will be good news for youngsters who are in their early teens, but what about those who have gotten lost in between? Is there a serious threat, of further home-grown terror attacks like in London and Amsterdam and of the emergence of what some are calling a "Generation Jihad"?

Klausen: Yes. Two years ago when I started on the work for this book, I realized that there are many large cities in Europe that have a quarter to three-quarters of the population living without civil rights. They are living in highly socially and economically segregated areas with no mobility at all. I thought then that in many ways, Europe was like America prior to the civil rights movement. This was prior to the riots, but there was a real sense that this is a ticking time bomb and nobody is paying attention and it will lead to violence. There is a stark difference between the rioters and the terrorists, though. The only thing they have in common at all is that they are predominantly Muslim. The terrorists are better educated, many of them actually have jobs, they have all traveled internationally -- to Pakistan for example -- they are very international. By contrast the rioters are terribly domestic, very isolated.

SPIEGEL: One of the big problems you focus on is the lack of proper religious leadership in the form of properly trained imams in Europe who speak the language of the country they are working and preaching in.



DDP
A mosque in Essen.
Klausen: There is a real fear of radical imams. I spoke to a lot of people who were worried their children would fall into the hands of the radical imams because they are already alienated -- one woman told me her son had come home and said to her, "They all think I am a Muslim, they all expect the worst from me, that I am a radical, so I might as well do it." People think they can't take their children to the mosque and give them a version of Islam that is compatible with having proper aspirations for themselves in terms of education and integration. And then there is the language issue -- another man I spoke to in Stockholm said to me: "What good is a Saudi Arabian Imam to me? I am a Swedish Muslim."

SPIEGEL: Some countries, like Germany, are already taking steps to foster the growth of a so-called "Euro-Islam" and you mention in the conclusion to the book that you believe this European Islam is emerging. How would you characterize it?

Klausen: The revolutionary new Islam is what is called Islam of the Book, and it is based very much on an individual's own readings of the Koran, on each person sitting down as part of a prayer group and figuring out what Islam means to them. Usually there is no imam, and everybody has the same relationship to Islam because they can all read the text. That is already the Islam of Europe, the Islam of the next generation, the inter-ethnic Islam. It is all about a textual reading of the Koran, in local languages, and there are broad variations of interpretation, everything from neo-orthodox understandings where people say: "I must wear the hijab, because that's what the book tells me." Other groups say: "There is nothing in the Koran which tells women they must wear a hijab, only that both men and women should be dressed modestly." I think what is important is that when European governments step in and try and resolve issues around Islam, that they are attuned to this diversity, that they do not just work with traditionalists, because if they do, then we are going to short-change that new thinking which is going on and which should be stimulated and encouraged.

[Reincarnated Am]

What's wrong with this picture?

sorry guys couldn't help myself not to post this picture.

And they call us "Gavour"s

[Reincarnated Am]

Catholicos Aram visits Kuwait; ‘Armenians enjoy religious freedom’

KUWAIT CITY: Middle East, where different civilizations and religions co-exist in harmony, has become a shining example to the rest of the world, says the Head of the Armenian Church and President of the World Council of Churches, His Holiness Catholicos Aram Keshishian. This came at a press conference held at the Crowne Plaza on Thursday. “Muslims and Christians for centuries have lived together in the Middle East and have common values, traditions and history. Co-existence should be based on basic human, spiritual and moral values,” adds His Holiness. His Holiness, who arrived in Kuwait on Wednesday on a week-long trip to mark the 75th anniversary of the foundation of Theological seminary in Antelias, Lebanon added: “I totally disagree with the identification of violence with Islam. This is unacceptable. All religions, including Islam and Christianity strongly condemn violence in all its forms and will continue to do so.”


His Holiness, who is also the president of over 370 different churches, said one cannot organize individual and community lives meaningfully without spiritual and moral values.
As a strong supporter of inter-religious relations, dialogue and cooperation, His Holiness has played a significant role in promoting common values, mutual understanding and peaceful co-existence among different religions. “I seize this opportunity to express my profound gratitude to HH the Amir and the government for the hospitality and facilities provided to the Armenian community here.” Hailing the contribution of Armenians towards the progress of Kuwait, His Holiness said the community is playing a significant role in different spheres of social life, noting the community was enjoying religious and cultural freedom in Kuwait. “Our community under the patronage of the Archbishop Dr Goriun respects all the laws and regulations of state of Kuwait. We are in constant dialogue with our Muslim brothers and sisters and try to promote spiritual, moral and human values that promote peace, reconciliation and dialogue among different religions, cultures and civilizations.”


Ordained as a celibate priest in 1968, His Holiness Catholicos Aram obtained the title of Vartabed (Doctor of the Armenian Church) in 1970. Apart from his numerous articles and reviews in Armenian, English and French, Catholicos Aram has authored a number of books. “We are different in many respects but we belong to one common humanity. The common humanity which we all share must be respected and accepted. Diversities are enrichment and should not oppose each other. “From time to time we may face sensitivities but this is part of our life. We have to transcend these local sensitivities to unite on the basis of common values.” Earlier, Archbishop Armenian Prelacy of Kuwait and Arabian Gulf countries, Dr Goriun Babian expressed his thanks for the government of Kuwait for its support to Armenian community. Referring to the challenges facing dialogue among different religions, His Holiness said dialogue among different religions is not an easy process, adding “We face many difficulties and challenges on the road to peace but we must continue dialogue because this is the only way forward.” “In certain sectors of all religions, I see a tendency to exploit religion for non-religious purpose but we must be very careful. If religion is misused and abused then we are in trouble. This is one of the biggest challenges that religions should deal with realistically and responsibly.”


“We have different perceptions in respect to many issues pertaining to our human life but the challenge for different religions is how we can develop a moral order on which religions can stand together and act together. I consider this as a great challenge. Respecting one another should generate trust and bring us together and provide a common basis on which we can stand and give a message of peace, justice, freedom, human rights and reconciliation.” “We have a very good working relationship with the Vatican Church. I was in Geneva a few days ago together with Vatican representative and we gave lectures on the topic of collaboration between and the Vatican and the World Council of Churches.” Talking about the Armenian genocide, His Holiness said “It is our obligation to demand that the present-day Turkey formally accepts the genocide that had been planned and committed by their forefathers against Armenian people.” “This is our basic human right and it is our expectation that present day Turkey respect human rights. We cannot deal superficially or take for granted such crimes.” Citing an example, he said the former regime of Iraq also committed crimes against the people of Kuwait.

By Francis A. Clifford Cardozo - Arab Times Staff

http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/kuwait/Viewdet.asp?ID=5795&cat=a

[Gavur]

Bosnia: Haven for Islamic radicals?

By Nicholas Wood International Herald Tribune

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2005


SARAJEVO A police raid last month on an apartment near this city's airport uncovered evidence of an imminent suicide bombing, intensifying the fears of Western security services that Bosnia is becoming a haven for Islamic radicals.

The raid, which was carried out after an extensive surveillance operation by the Bosnian police and Western intelligence services, turned up an arsenal of weapons in the apartment, including suicide vests, about 30 kilograms, or 65 pounds, of exploding bullets and high explosive, and a machine pistol.

Investigators said they also found a videotape in which three men - at least two of them teenagers - are seen asking forgiveness from God for their "sacrifice," a recording made just hours before the raid. The two teenagers were arrested.

Subsequent investigations by the Bosnian police have led to the arrests of three more men, all Bosnian citizens, whose identities have not been revealed. Two of them were arrested on Nov. 19 and accused of providing support for the group.

The third was detained on Nov. 24 and charged with supplying explosives. The police said they had seized 10 kilograms of explosives kept by the same man in a forest in Hadjici, outside Sarajevo.

The weapons seizures and arrests, most notably of the two teenagers found in the apartment in the suburb of Ilidza - a Turk who had been living in a Muslim community in Denmark and a Swede of Bosnian heritage - have provided government and international officials here with evidence that a terrorist cell was working in Bosnia.

They have also shed light on a complex web that stretches well beyond the Balkans and that security services fear could threaten Western Europe.

Diplomats and international officials close to the investigation describe it as a series of overlapping networks, in which young Muslims from Scandinavia have been recruited as possible suicide bombers and sent to Bosnia. Government officials here say the group in Bosnia used the former Yugoslav state as a staging ground for attacks elsewhere in Europe.

"All the indicators show that Bosnia is a territory where they can come and rest, organize their activities and then go and carry out" an attack elsewhere, Dragan Mektic, Bosnia's deputy security minister, said in an interview.

The police have accused two of the Bosnian suspects with planning an attack in "internationally protected property," a commonly used law-enforcement euphemism for an embassy. But senior Western diplomats and Mektic said there were no indications that the target of the Ilidza cell was in Bosnia.

The surveillance began in late September, Mektic said, and focused on at least 10 people, some of them from the region, others Bosnian passport-holders with ties to the Middle East. During that time, five of the people rented the apartment in Ilidza, as well as rooms in a house in Hrasno Brdo, a rambling hilltop suburb of Sarajevo.

When the police finally moved to make arrests, they captured only three of the 10. The third person - who was not on the suicide tape - had rented the Ilidza apartment on the others' behalf. He was dropped from the investigation.

The potential for Bosnia to become a terrorist base has long been a concern of security services in Europe. The 1992-1995 conflict here ripped apart Bosnia's Muslim, Serbian and Croatian populations, opening the way for weapons' smuggling and organized crime.

The religious and ethnic overtones of the war attracted, at a minimum, dozens of Muslim fighters from the Middle East, many with experience fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, who brought with them the influence of radical Islam.

Many of those fighters settled here and married Bosnian women. They have remained largely at the margins of the Islamic community. While more conservative, they have not had a significant impact on Bosnia's Muslims, who by and large are moderate in their religious outlook.

Periodically, former fighters and others who came to Bosnia to help Muslims have been placed under investigation by Western and Bosnian security services, which claim to have thwarted several terrorist attacks as a result.




Continued..

[Gavur]

In January 2002, six Algerians living in Bosnia were accused of plotting an attack on the American Embassy in Sarajevo. No evidence of the alleged plot was made public, and a Bosnian court dismissed the charges and ordered the men released.

But the Bosnian government, under pressure from the United States, transferred them to American custody. They were flown to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they remain.

Bosnia gave passports to more than 800 former fighters and aid workers from the Middle East. Both the United States and Saudi Arabia have accused Bosnia of giving passports to known terrorists, sometimes under aliases.

Few details have been revealed about those believed to be coordinating the Sarajevo group, but Mektic and international officials close to the investigation say that Bosnia's liberal passport policy as well as its porous borders made it appealing as a terrorist base, despite the presence of several thousand European Union-led peacekeepers. The process of obtaining passports has been made more stringent over time.

"The flow of people, narcotics and other materials is very difficult to break," said Jonathan Ratel, a prosecutor in the department that deals with organized crime in Bosnia's State Court.

The background of the two men in custody has helped investigators make connections between the operation here and the rest of Europe.

Abdulkadir Cesur, 18, and Mirsad Bektasevic, 19, were arrested in the raid near the airport. Both had traveled to Bosnia three weeks earlier, according to Bosnian border police records, and had come from Muslim communities in Denmark and Sweden. Cesur is Turkish but has Danish residency, and Bektasevic left Bosnia at the age of 6 and became a Swedish citizen.

Acting on phone records, a senior international official close to the Bosnian investigation said, the Bosnian police tipped off their counterparts in Denmark about the possibility of a parallel group in Copenhagen.

On Oct. 27, the police in Denmark, working with the Bosnian authorities, arrested four men, all between the ages of 16 and 20, and seized computers, computer discs, books with radical Muslim literature and Danish kroner worth about $32,000, from separate addresses. Since then, three more people have been detained in connection with the Bosnian arrests. Out of the seven, none of whom have been identified, six attended the same mosque in Copenhagen's Noebbro district.

One international official close to the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is formally the responsibility of Bosnia's state prosecutor, said that the group had sought to recruit suicide bombers from established immigrant communities in the West.

"They are indoctrinated into thinking that they could be a huge cause for their people," said the official. "They are young and impressionable and potentially disenfranchised from the society they find themselves living in."

Bektasevic's background appears to fit that description. Unemployed since leaving school a year and half ago, he had begun to attend a mosque in Gothenburg, the city nearest their home on Sweden's west coast, said his mother, Nafija Hamedovic.

She described her son as having come under the influence of three men: a Palestinian from Syria, a Kurd and a Somali.

"He was not religious before, but in the past two years he practiced more seriously," she said in an interview by telephone.

"Some people frightened him and talked to him about hell, and told him he would be tortured in hell if he does not pray and does not believe," she said.

But she dismissed the idea that he could have been a suicide bomber, explaining that he had gone to stay with her relatives in Sarajevo and that he had no outside support.

"It's a lie," she said. "He didn't even have any money. I even had to pay for his bus ticket to Bosnia."

[Gavur]

German police search mosque, homes

Wednesday, November 23, 2005 · Last updated 10:14 a.m. PT



By MICHAEL POHL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

MUNICH, Germany -- Police and prosecutors searched a mosque and 22 homes Wednesday in southern Germany as part of an investigation into an outlawed Islamic group accused of spawning terrorists.

Bavarian police were investigating 21 people in connection with the pre-dawn raids near the towns of Ingolstadt and Schwabach, police spokesman Heinz Rindlbacher said. Police said they could not immediately report arrests or the results of the searches due to the ongoing investigation.

Authorities said the suspects may have been continuing the activities of Hilafet Devleti, or Caliphate State, which was outlawed in December 2001 under anti-terrorism powers put in place after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Cologne-based Caliphate State, led by Turkish-born Muhammed Metin Kaplan, had openly called for the overthrow of Turkey's secular government and its replacement with an Islamic state.

Former Interior Minister Otto Schily described the group, which had more than 1,000 members in Germany, as "a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists" that spread anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli rhetoric.

Kaplan served a four-year prison sentence in Germany for incitement in the 1997 killing of a rival cleric in Berlin.



He was extradited last year to Turkey, where he was sentenced to life in prison for masterminding a failed 1998 plot to crash an airplane into the mausoleum of modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

The ban on Caliphate State covered a number of affiliates, including one that was shut down in Ingolstadt. Former members rented the premises again early in 2003, saying it would be used for prayer, Rindlbacher said.

"In the course of the investigation, suspicion has hardened against 21 persons from the region that they are members of a forbidden organization or that they support its continuation," he said.

[Hovik]

Cia Plane Again Landed In Baku November 15

CIA PLANE AGAIN LANDED IN BAKU NOVEMBER 15

Pan Armenian
30.11.2005 01:26 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A secret US plane, fulfilling various CIA tasks,
again landed in Baku a few days ago - on November 15. Hurriyet Turkish
newspaper spread that feature referring to the Minister of Transport
of Turkey Binali Yildirim. It cleared out that November 15 DeHavilland
Dash 8-315B plane, owned by CIA Path Corporation dummy company, landed
in Istanbul on its way from Amsterdam to Baku. In Binali Yildirim's
words, the plane made "a technical landing" at Istanbul's Sabiha
Gokcen airport.

As reported earlier, the plane "serves" CIA secret prisons,
transporting suspects in terrorism from one country to another. Already
1.5-3 year ago US media had reported that the plane had landed in Baku
many times. The Council of Europe started an investigation of the case.

Romania, Poland and Azerbaijan are named among the countries, where US
"secret prisons" are available. "Analysis of shots made from satellites
will allow proving or denying the availability of such prisons,"
said Council of Europe Juridical Committee xxxx Marty. According to
western editions, suspicion that CIA secret jails are available in
Azerbaijan were justified after the statements of Turkish Minister
Binali Yildirim. Now the CE intends to "find the trace of CIA prisons
in Azerbaijan," Axisglobe notes. Azeri human rights advocate Murad
Sadaddinov remarked, "it is necessary to establish the availability
of these "secret jails" in Azerbaijan and what is the CIA plane
itself." Another expert Eldar Zeynalov remarks US sources provided
the information on flights and landing of the CIA vessel. "This needs
to be checked," he said.

[Gavur]

In Germany, Muslims grow apart

By Peter Schneider The New York Times

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2005


On the night of Feb. 7, 2005, Hatun Surucu, 23, was killed on her way to a bus stop in Berlin by several shots to the head and upper body, fired at point-blank range. An investigation showed that months before, she had reported one of her brothers to the police for threatening her.

Now three of her five brothers are on trial for murder. According to the prosecutor, the oldest of them, 25, acquired the weapon; the middle brother, 24, lured his sister to the scene of the crime; and the youngest, 18, shot her. The trial began on Sept. 21.

Ayhan Surucu, the youngest brother, had confessed to the murder and claimed that he had done it without any help.

According to Seyran Ates, a lawyer of Turkish descent, it is generally the youngest who are chosen by a family council to carry out such murders, or to claim responsibility for them. German juvenile law sets a maximum sentence of 10 years' imprisonment for murder, and the offender has the prospect of being released after serving two-thirds of the sentence.

Hatun Surucu grew up in Berlin as the daughter of Turkish Kurds. When she finished eighth grade, her parents took her out of school. Shortly after that she was taken to Turkey and married to a cousin.

Later she separated from her husband and returned to Berlin, pregnant. At age 17 she gave birth to a son, Can. She moved into a women's shelter and completed the work for her middle-school certificate. By 2004 she had finished a vocational-training program to become an electrician.

The young mother began to enjoy herself. She put on makeup, wore her hair unbound, went dancing and adorned herself with rings, necklaces and bracelets.

Then, just days before she was to receive her journeyman's diploma, she was killed.

Evidently, in the eyes of her brothers, Hatun Surucu's capital crime was that, living in Germany, she had begun living like a German.

In a statement to the Turkish newspaper Zaman, one brother noted that she had stopped wearing her head scarf, that she refused to go back to her family and that she had declared her intent to "seek out her own circle of friends."

It is still unclear whether anyone ordered her murdered. Often in such cases it is the father of the family who decides about the punishment.

But Ates has seen in her legal practice cases in which the mother has a leading role: mothers who were forced to marry pushing the same fate on their daughters.

"The mothers are looking for solidarity by demanding that their daughters submit to the same hardship and suffering," said Necla Kelek, a Turkish-German author who has interviewed dozens of women about the topic.

Meanwhile, Surucu's two elder brothers have papered their cell with pictures of their dead sister.

There is a new wall rising in Berlin. Looking over that wall, one sees the parallel world of the Islamic suburbs. It's a world in which women, unlike some Muslim women in Europe who have risen to expansive lives, are still subject to arranged marriages and the control of their families.

To cross this wall you have to go to the city's central and northern districts, to Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Wedding, and you will find yourself in a world unknown to most Berliners.

Until recently, most held to the illusion that living together with some 300,000 Muslim immigrants and children of immigrants was basically working.

Take Neukölln. The district is proud of the fact that it houses citizens of 165 nations. Some 40 percent of these, by far the largest group, are Turks and Kurds; the second-largest group consists of Arabs.

Racially motivated attacks occur regularly in Brandenburg, the former East German state that surrounds Berlin, where foreigners are few, accounting for only about 2 percent of the population. But such attacks hardly ever happen in Neukölln.

Stefanie Vogelsang, a councilwoman from Neukölln, says that residents talk about "our Turks" in an unmistakably friendly way, although they are less friendly when it comes to Arabs, who arrived after the Turks, often illegally.

But tolerance of Muslim immigrants began to change in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. Parallel to the declarations of "unconditional solidarity" with Americans by the German majority, rallies of another sort were taking place in Neukölln and Kreuzberg.

Bottle rockets were set off from building courtyards, a poor man's fireworks: two rockets here, three rockets there.

Altogether, hundreds of rockets were shooting skyward in celebration, just as most Berliners were searching for words to express their horror.

For many German residents in Neukölln and Kreuzberg, Vogelsang recalls, that was the first time they stopped to wonder who their neighbors really were.

When a broader German public began concerning itself with the parallel Muslim world arising in its midst, it was primarily thanks to three female authors, three rebellious Muslims: Ates, the author of "The Great Journey Into the Fire"; Kelek, who wrote "The Foreign Bride"; and Serap Cileli, who penned "We're Your Daughters, Not Your Honor."

About the same age, all three grew up in Germany; they speak German better than many Germans and are educated and successful. But each had to risk much for her freedom.

Kelek was threatened by her father with a hatchet when she refused to greet him in a respectful manner.

Ates survived a shooting attack on the women's shelter that she founded in Kreuzberg.

Cileli, at 13, tried to kill herself to escape her first forced marriage. Later, she was taken to Turkey and married against her will, then she returned to Germany with two children from that marriage and took refuge in a women's shelter to escape her father's violence.

Taking off from their own experiences, the three women describe the grim lives and sadness of Muslim women in Germany.

Their books report almost unbelievable details that most Germans did not care to know. They describe an everyday life of oppression, isolation, imprisonment and brutal corporal punishment for Muslim women and girls in Germany.

For the young Turkish women living in Germany, forced marriages are not uncommon, Ates says. In the wake of these forced marriages often come violence and rape.

One side effect of forced marriage is the psychological violation of the men involved. Although they are the presumed beneficiaries of the custom, men are likewise forbidden to marry whom they want.

A groom who chooses his own wife faces threats, too. In such cases, according to Ates and Cileli, the groom as well as the bride must go underground to escape families' revenge.

Heavily veiled women wearing long coats even in summer are becoming an increasingly familiar sight in German Muslim neighborhoods.

According to Kelek's research, they are often under-age girls who have been bought, often for a handsome payment, in the Turkish heartland villages of Anatolia by mothers whose sons in Germany are ready to marry.

The girls are flown in, and "with every new imported bride," Kelek says, "the parallel society grows."

Ates says, "Turkish men who wish to marry and live by Shariah can do so with far less impediment in Berlin than in Istanbul."

Before the murder of Surucu, there were enough warnings to engage the Germans in a debate about the parallel society growing in their midst. There have been 49 known "honor crimes," most involving female victims, during the past nine years, including 16 in Berlin alone.

Yet it is possible that the murder of Hatun Surucu never would have made the headlines at all but for three Muslim students at a high school near where she was killed in the Tempelhof district.

The three openly approved of the murder. Shortly before that, the same students had bullied a fellow pupil because her clothing was "not in keeping with the religious regulations."

Volker Steffens, the school's director, decided to make the matter public in a letter to students, parents and teachers.

During 50 years of continuing immigration, Germans tried to tell themselves that Germany was not a country of immigrants. Suddenly, the obvious could no longer be denied.

Alarmed by the honor killings, Germans have begun to investigate the parallel society: a society proud of its isolation; purist and traditional yet, in its own terms, creative, forward-looking and often contemptuous of the German host society.

The recent riots in France have increased the sense of alarm. German politicians and experts lined up to point out why such riots are unlikely in Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart or Hamburg. They claimed that young Muslims in Germany - although up to 50 percent of them are unemployed - had full access to the welfare state and were not isolated in high-rise projects as in the suburbs of Paris.

Yet there was an undertone of panic. At stake is German confidence that their nation can continue as it had been: integrating immigrants without an integration policy, remaining true to the traditional German identity and preserving the reassuring post-1945 chronology of advancing modernism.

After 1945, Germany, in the process of reconstruction, needed great numbers of workers and initiated recruitment campaigns in the poor countries of Europe and along the Mediterranean rim.

The arrival of the 100,000th immigrant worker in the 1950s was cause for celebration; the exhausted man climbed out of a train at a German station and was immediately handed a check. But from the beginning, the invitation came with a certain reservation. It was no accident that the foreign workers were called gastarbeiter, or guest workers. Guests were expected to leave after a while.

It did not work out that way.

Max Frisch, a Swiss author, recognized the contradiction early on. "Workers were called," he wrote, "and human beings came."

These were people who wanted their families with them, people who after a long working life wanted to spend their remaining years in Germany, people who wished to provide their children with an education and a better future. Germany did not give guest workers passports or the right to vote, but it did incorporate them into the social system and gave them the opportunity to advance.

A result was the rise of a Muslim middle class - relatively broad in comparison with those in France or in England - contributing around 39 billion, nearly $50 billion, to the gross national product each year and billions to the national pension funds.

But as the German economic miracle came to an end, the most important condition of this precarious idyll changed.

Although active recruitment was stopped as early as 1973, more and more Turks and Kurds moved to Germany, in accord with a ruling on reuniting families.

These parents, wives, husbands and children took their traditional lifestyle to the German streets.

During the first years of immigration, Turkish women wore Western clothing; now, they favor flowery skirts, hand-knitted jackets and tightly bound head scarves.

The trunks in which they had brought sacks full of dry beans, bulgur wheat and chickpeas metamorphosed into Turkish grocery stands. Traditional celebrations in the Muslim districts gradually became more like those back home. In the back rooms of the vegetable stands and halal butchers, prayer rooms sprang up, and in time became mosques.

"The guest workers turned into Turks, and the Turks turned into Muslims," Kelek writes in 'The Foreign Bride."

Growing unemployment in Germany - now 4.8 million people, roughly 12 percent of the work force - hit the Muslim immigrants doubly hard, especially the youth, who frequently drop out of school before obtaining a diploma.

Kelek asked a group of "import brides" who had been living in Germany for years how they had prepared for their future in Germany. Their answer: incredulous laughter.

Their answer was they had everything they needed, that they did not need the Germans.

Those with no work and no future were looked after by the mosques, which increasingly became the most important place of communication.

Inside their apartments, women resumed their traditional ways.

Amid German refrigerators, televisions and mobile phones, a rural culture was celebrating its resurrection. Life in Anatolia could be more modern and secular than in the Muslim districts of Berlin.

Many sociologists attribute the growth of a Muslim parallel society to the discouraging social circumstances of the third Muslim generation of immigrants, marked by high unemployment and high dropout or failure rates in public schools. But this explanation is incomplete.

The Muslim middle class has long been following the same trend. Rental agencies that procure and prepare rooms for traditional Turkish weddings and circumcisions are among the most booming businesses in Kreuzberg and Neukölln.

This conservative trend is likely to guide the next generation. For more than 20 years the Islamic Federation of Berlin, an umbrella organization of Islamic associations and mosque congregations, has struggled in the Berlin courts to secure Islamic religious instruction in local schools.

In 2001 the federation finally succeeded. Since then, several thousand Muslim elementary-school students have been taught by teachers hired by the Islamic Federation and paid by the city of Berlin.

City officials aren't in a position to control Islamic religious instruction. Often the teaching does not correspond to the lesson plan that was submitted in German.

Citing linguistic deficiencies of the students, instructors frequently hold lessons in Turkish or Arabic, often behind closed doors.

Since the introduction of Islamic religious instruction, the number of girls that attend school in head scarves has jumped, and school offices are inundated with petitions to excuse girls from swimming and sports as well as class outings.

There are no reliable figures showing how many Muslims living in Germany regularly attend a mosque; the estimates vary between 40 and 50 percent. Vogelsang, the councilwoman, stresses that the majority of the mosques in Neukölln are as open to the world as they ever were.

But the radical religious communities are gaining ground.

Vogelsang points to the Imam Reza Mosque, whose home page, until a recent revision, praised the attacks of Sept. 11, designated women as second-class human beings and referred to gays and lesbians as animals.

"And that kind of thing," she says, fuming, "is still defended by the left in the name of religious freedom."

The three Turkish authors are mounting a frontal assault on that kind of relativism.

They are fighting on two fronts: against Islamist oppression of women and its proponents, and against the guilt-ridden tolerance of liberal multiculturalists.

"Before I can get to the Islamic patriarchs, I first have to work my way through these mountains of German guilt," Ates complains.

It is women who suffer most from German sensitivity toward Islam. The three authors explicitly accuse German do-gooders of having left Muslim women in Germany in the lurch and call on them not to forget the women locked behind the closed windows when they rave about the multicultural districts.

German immigration policies and liberal multiculturalism are only one side of the problem. The other side is the active refusal of many in the Muslim community to integrate.

"The attacks in London," Ates says, "were in the eyes of many Muslims a successful slap in the face to the Western community. The next perpetrators will be children of the third and fourth immigrant generation, who, under the eyes of well-meaning politicians, will be brought up from birth to hate Western society."



Peter Schneider is a German novelist and essayist.

[Gavur]

Antalya’s St. Paul Cultural Center set afire by vandals.

Breaking News - Friday December 02, 2005
TURKEY : AUTHORITIES HARASS PROTESTANT COMMUNITIES


Vandalism at St. Paul's
December 2 (Compass) – Turkey’s Protestant Christian minorities experienced fresh harassment this past week from both security police and the judiciary, along with an attempt by vandals to set on fire one local church.

Last Sunday (November 27), members of the Agape House congregation in Samsun, a city along the Black Sea coast, were disquieted by a large, white minibus parked in front of their church as they came to morning worship services.


Church members suspected someone behind the van’s darkly tinted windows was using a video camera to film everyone entering the church.


The apparent filming continued after the service concluded, when church leaders checked the van’s license plate and confirmed it was registered to security police headquarters. Pastor Orhan Picaklar promptly called the police and demanded an explanation.


Two police officers soon arrived on the scene, one in uniform and the other a security official. Apologizing and urging the pastor to “cool down,” the officers promised to remove the van immediately.


“Under what law are you doing this?” Picaklar asked them. “Why are you taking these recordings? By chance are you trying to harass us?”



Agape House
Despite police promises, the van remained parked in front of the church building until 6 p.m., when some of its occupants, who were frequenting a nearby coffee shop, returned and drove off.


Located in the city’s Atakum district, Samsun’s Agape House has just become the third Protestant church granted formal “association” status by the Turkish authorities. A year ago the mayor had vowed he would never allow the congregation, now numbering 35, to open a church there.


Concocted Legal Charges

On the judicial level, earlier this week in the Aegean coastal town of Selcuk, the local prosecutor’s office summoned two members of the Ephesus Protestant Church to answer accusations filed against them.


The prosecutor summoned church elder Kamil Moussa in writing on Monday (November 28) to make a formal statement. Moussa was asked to respond to charges apparently filed with a prosecutor in Tarsus, 550 miles across the country from Selcuk, just south of Izmir.


The Selcuk prosecutor informed Moussa that he had been accused of “threatening” a former student who attended the church’s Tyrannus Bible School from 2000-2002. The prosecutor declined to explain how or when the alleged threats took place, simply stating that a man named Ilker Cinar, now living in Tarsus, had registered a complaint against him.


Cinar grabbed sensational coverage in the Turkish media last January when he went on national television to “renounce” his conversion to Christianity and return to Islam. Announcing his intentions to expose “subversive Christian missionary activities” in Turkey, the 35-year-old Turk has since published two books and granted multiple interviews, all making extravagant claims regarding the extent and political motivation of Christian activities in Turkey.


When Moussa flatly denied having ever threatened Cinar, the prosecutor then interrogated Moussa about his Christian activities. The prosecutor refused to give Moussa copies of his written summons, Cinar’s charges or the statement the pastor gave in his office.


Two days later, on November 30, church secretary Gulsum Mezde received a summons from a second Selcuk prosecutor, informing her that she had been accused by a young Turkish man named Adnan Muradiye of threatening him if he did not convert to Christianity.


“This young man, whom I have never met, said that I am a woman about 40 years of age who made some threats against him,” Mezde told Compass. “It is obvious he never met me as he claimed, since I am 55 years old!”


According to Mezde, an individual bearing the name of Adnan Muradiye had sent an e-mail message to the church’s website on October 26, completing the request form to have a free New Testament mailed to him in Izmir.


“I sent him two email messages over the internet about that,” she said. “But he never came to our street address listed on the website, and he has never attended any of our church activities.”


After local security police detailed the allegations against her, Mezde decided to record her formal statement with them instead of the prosecutor.


“This is a completely concocted scenario,” she declared in her November 30 statement, in which she described the accusations as slander in violation of her legal rights.


“We have experienced this pattern before, when it appears that the authorities are getting people to make false accusations against us,” Moussa said. “It is annoying, but it also can be more serious than it looks on the surface. Unfortunately, some of them have the backing of ultranationalists and Islamists who have influence.”


Torched by Vandals

Meanwhile, in the resort city of Antalya along the Mediterranean coast, unknown vandals tried to set afire three windows of the St. Paul Cultural Center in the early morning hours of November 28.


According to the Rev. James Bultema, an American pastoring the English-speaking congregation at the facility, a neighbor woman across the narrow alley heard flames crackling outside her window at 1:40 a.m. Calling the fire department, she quickly woke up her husband and son, who with a water hose and buckets managed to douse the flames before firemen arrived 20 minutes later.


“If they hadn’t gone right to work, much more damage would have been done,” Bultema said, noting that the building has wooden ceilings. “As it was, about $1,100 damage was done.”


Bultema said the arson attempt appeared to be an amateur job by the assailants, who from the street could only access the three ground-floor windows of Paul’s Place, the center’s coffee shop. “Three windows were set afire, but only one was really burning,” he said.


Opened initially as a coffee house and prayer chapel in 1999, St. Paul Cultural Center was the first new Christian congregation in Turkey to gain government recognition as an official “association” in August 2004. Both English- and Turkish-language congregations use the office facilities and garden, worshiping in the second-floor sanctuary.


This week the European Union stepped up its criticism of Turkey’s reform efforts to meet its membership criteria, with EU enlargement commissioner Ollie Rehn citing religious freedom as one of six fundamental freedoms among the “significant shortcomings” that the country must address without delay.


In an interview published shortly afterwards in the Financial Times, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul acknowledged the difficulty of “spreading the spirit of reform” throughout the country’s judicial system.

[Gavur]

U.S. Accepts Iranian Christians for Resettlement

http://www.crosswalk.com/news/religiontoday/1367256.html