Middle East Press on Attacking Muslims' Values, Nice Killings And Europe's Test With Macron: New Age Islam's Selection, 30 October 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Desk
30 October
2020
• Nice: Not In Our Name
By Faisal J. Abbas
• Attacking Muslims' Values: Free Speech Or
Hate Speech?
By Merve Şebnem Oruç
• Turkey Joins Chorus Of Condemnation Of Nice
Murders
By Amberin Zaman
• Europe's Test With Macron
By Burhanettin Duran
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Nice: Not in Our Name
By Faisal J. Abbas
October 29,
2020
Three
people died in a knife attack at the Notre-Dame basilica in Nice. (AFP)
------
There are
no words too harsh to condemn the horrific attack in the Basilica of Notre-Dame
in Nice, and the stabbing at the French consulate in Jeddah. Yes, mockery of
the Prophet Muhammad, indeed of any religious symbol, is unacceptable. But so
is violence against innocent people — and it certainly must not be carried out
in our name as Muslims.
There is
blood on the hands of those who claim to be defending Islam, but who in reality
seek only political gain. Thanks to the malevolent tentacles of Turkey and
Qatar, the latest campaign against France has gone beyond politics, and is now
costing lives.
The misuse
of religion to score points has always been a favored tactic of malign regimes.
Iran is a master player; its so-called Quds Force should be renamed the
“Anywhere BUT Al-Quds” force, since Iran seems more keen on occupying Arab
capitals — Sanaa, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus — than liberating Jerusalem. When
Saddam Hussein was cornered, the Iraqi dictator also pretended to turn to
religion and added the words “Allahu Akbar” to the national flag (which was
ironic, since the Ba’ath regime was known for its atheism).
Thus,
spearheading the campaign to boycott France fits Recep Tayyip Erdogan like a
glove. The Turkish president is on the rack as a result of his aggressive
meddling in Libya, Armenia, Greece and Cyprus, leading to issues with Egypt,
the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the EU and the US. The grassroots campaign in
several countries to boycott Turkish goods is therefore understandable, while
the campaign to boycott French products is not. Neither President Emmanuel
Macron nor anyone in his government is responsible for the ill-conceived
caricatures that have caused so much offense, but Erdogan and his government
are directly responsible for bloodshed in the countries where Turkey has
interfered.
As an
analysis in Arab News this week made clear, Turkey under Erdogan has gone from
a policy of having zero problems with its neighbors to having nearly zero friends.
Zero, that is, apart from Qatar — which financially supports Turkey, funds
terrorism, and offers prime-time air space on Al Jazeera Arabic for the
Doha-based extremist cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to spew his murderous venom
against Christians and Jews. “Oh God, take the treacherous Jewish aggressors …
Oh God, count their numbers, slay them one by one and spare none,” he has said.
What is
particularly idiotic about the current anti-French rhetoric propagated by
Turkey and Qatar is that not only does it make every French citizen a target,
it also puts French Muslims — and their businesses — at risk of personal and
financial harm.
Those who
use religion for political gain, who whip up hatred and incite revenge, would
do well to learn a little about the faith they claim to profess. The Muslim
Hadith on Mercy recounts that when the Prophet Muhammad tried to bring Islam to
the people of Taif, they responded by hurling stones at him until he bled. The
angel Gabriel and the “angel of the mountains” offered to make the mountains
fall and crush those who had hurt him, but the prophet declined and chose
instead to forgive.
Such
forbearance is at the heart of Christianity, too. In his Sermon on the Mount,
Jesus explicitly rejected the notion of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth.” He told his followers: “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to
him the other also.”
We live in
grave and perilous times. If ever these lessons in tolerance were needed, it is
now.
------
Faisal J. Abbas is the editor in chief of Arab
News
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1755931
-----
Attacking Muslims' Values: Free Speech Or Hate
Speech?
By Merve Şebnem Oruç
OCT 30,
2020
Earlier
this month, French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled the deployment of a
series of hard-line measures to defend France’s secular values against what he
termed as Islamic "radicalism.” Saying, “Islam is in crisis all over the
world,” he prompted backlash from Muslims worldwide.
Two weeks
later, a middle-school teacher named Samuel Paty in the town of Conflans
Sainte-Honorine in France, was decapitated by an 18-year-old Chechen teenager,
who was later shot dead by French security forces. The gruesome murder came
after Paty had shown insulting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed in class.
The portrayal of Prophet Muhammed is strictly barred for Muslims.
Defending
the right to publish religious caricatures, Macron has chosen to show his teeth
to French Muslims, the population of which is at least 5 million in the
country, failing to strike a balance between the fight against terrorism and
the collective punishment of Muslim citizens in his country, and invoked the
ire of Muslims all around the world. The offensive cartoons were projected onto
government buildings in France. He has been warned that an aggressive,
indiscriminate approach would only play into the hands of radicals, but he
ignores all the alarm bells.
While his
hostile political rhetoric against Islam has increased polarization in France,
two Muslim women wearing headscarves were repeatedly stabbed in a park under
the Eiffel Tower. The attackers were shouting racist slurs such as “dirty
Arabs," while sticking their knives in the victims’ bodies. The French
police did not record the attack as a hate crime. Macron did not even talk about
it. More than 1,000 Islamophobic incidents took place in France only in 2019,
including 70 physical attacks; however, the French government continued to
overlook these crimes.
Now it is
like 2015 again. We find ourselves again in a hot debate on the fight against
terrorism, the rise of fear and hatred, Islamophobia, xenophobia and the
definition of freedom of expression. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was
quick to criticize Macron’s way of handling the issue, but the French
government could not tolerate being contradicted and recalled the ambassador to
Turkey over Erdoğan’s comments.
Meanwhile,
Macron’s anti-Islam remarks have led to calls for boycotting French brands
among Muslims. But, ironically, France urged Middle Eastern states to stop
these boycotts. The Foreign Ministry of France said in a statement, “These
calls for boycott are baseless and should stop immediately, as well as all
attacks against our country, which are being pushed by a radical minority.”
France could not even stand being protested.
This week,
I came across a video of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s speech to the
Bundestag, German’s national parliament, during a budget debate in 2019. In an
emotional speech, Merkel talked of free speech in a way that should be heard by
all European leaders. She said, “We have freedom of expression in our country.
For all those who claim they can no longer express their opinion, I say this to
them: If you express a pronounced opinion, you must live with the fact that you
will be contradicted. Expressing an opinion does not come at zero cost. But
freedom of expression has its limits. Those limits begin when hatred is spread.
They begin when the dignity of other people is violated. This house will and
must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise, our society will no longer be the free
society that it was.”
If only the
French president listened to these words, I said to myself. A commitment to
free speech, is, of course, a fundamental principle of all democracies.
However, almost all Western countries have laws limiting certain kinds of
speech, especially hate speech or extreme speech, except in the U.S. In the
U.S., even the most extreme expressions of racist ideology are protected by the
Supreme Court. However, the Americans also contradict themselves as the content
of freedom of religious speech has frequently been criminalized under the cover
of anti-terrorism, revealing the double standards of the leading country of the
free world.
On the
other hand, European countries restrict racism and some other types of extreme
speech. In France, for instance, one can be sentenced to prison for denying the
Holocaust. Furthermore, homophobic hate speech is increasingly prohibited, and
even anti-abortion speech is frequently ruled out. But, oddly enough,
anti-Islam speech has become almost the core of free speech in Europe. Although
Western democracies advocate that minorities have to be protected from extreme
speech, it is not only far-right groups that set the tone of extreme or hate
speech toward Muslims. Anti-Muslim racism, hatred and discrimination toward
Muslims in Europe have been increasing among the leftist and centrist circles,
which justifies their tendency with the claim of protecting Western values and
defending secularism. In that way, they think that they won’t leave their
fingerprints and they can hide their Islamophobic bias.
Blasphemy
was abolished in many European countries, where their ancestors suffered from
the harsh punishments of the majesty of the church for ages. It is
understandable why they don’t like the word itself. Still, it has to be seen
that Prophet Muhammed is not only sacred but very precious to all Muslims. Many
Muslims embrace secularism unlike the extremists, and yet the prophet is
valuable to them. They are just asking for their values to be tolerated just
like they are expected to tolerate Western values.
Insulting
Muslims, offending their religious feelings and vilifying Islam is not just
words; they also trigger emotions of extreme dislike, detestation, abhorrence
and hatred, which eventually lead to hate crimes. As Merkel said, “freedom of
expression has its limits. Those limits begin where hatred is spread.” If only
European leaders listened to themselves...
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/attacking-muslims-values-free-speech-or-hate-speech
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Turkey Joins Chorus Of Condemnation Of Nice
Murders
By Amberin Zaman
Oct 29,
2020
Turkey
swiftly joined the wave of condemnations over the brutal murders of three
people by a suspected Islamist extremist in France’s coastal city of Nice
today, in the midst of an escalating row between Ankara and Paris over a broad
range of issues spanning the Eastern Mediterranean and the role of Islam.
The
assailant is said to have charged at the victims with a knife in the Notre-Dame
Basilica in the heart of city on the French Riviera, shouting "Allahu
Akhbar." Two of the victims were female, one a 70-year old who was
“virtually beheaded” as she was praying, the BBC reported. The suspect, who has
not yet been identified, was shot and detained soon after.
France’s
President Emmanuel Macron, who traveled to the scene of the carnage in Nice,
called it an “Islamist terrorist attack.”
Turkey’s
Foreign Ministry said in a statement, “It is clear that those who commit such a
violent act in a holy place have no respect for any humanitarian, religious or
moral values.”
Turkish
presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said, “Terror has no religion, language or
color. We will fight with determination and solidarity against all forms of
terrorism and extremism.”
Two other
attacks took place Thursday, one near the French city of Avignon in which the
perpetrator was shot dead and another outside the French Consulate in Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia, in which a security guard was wounded.
Turkey’s
rapid response to the killings, which French authorities are treating as a case
of terrorism, stood in stark contrast to its equivocation over the Oct. 16
murder of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty. Paty was beheaded by an 18-year old
ethnic Chechen man after showing his pupils controversial cartoons mocking the
Prophet Muhammed published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Turkish
prosecutors launched a legal probe into the magazine Wednesday after it
published a provocative cover deriding Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying
the depiction constituted libel and did not fall under free speech.
The
famously thin-skinned Erdogan has been raging against the West in recent weeks
over the treatment of Muslims in Europe, likening it to the horrors inflicted
upon the Jews by the Nazis. Western countries mocking Islam, he said Wednesday,
wanted to “relaunch the Crusades.”
But the
bulk of his invective has been reserved for Macron. Erdogan said his French
counterpart was in need of a “mental exam” because of his views on Islam, prompting
the Quai D’Orsay to recall its ambassador to Paris for consultations.
Macron drew
the ire of Muslims worldwide in an Oct. 2 speech in which he called Islam a
“religion in crisis.” Turkey has led the chorus of protest and calls to boycott
French goods.
But the
Nice attack may have caught Ankara off balance. There is a growing tendency
within Europe in particular to associate Turkey, long hailed as a Muslim
country that was uniquely Western-leaning and determinedly secular, with
Islamic fanaticism. Some have gone as far as to accuse Turkey of inciting the
Nice attacks by calling on European Muslims to resist “Islamo-fascism.”
Nicholas
Danforth, a Yale-trained historian and specialist on Turkey, suggested that
Turkey may be getting a taste of its own medicine. “If the Turkish government
thinks it’s unfair that they are getting blamed for this attack just because
they expressed some of the same views as the attacker, they might consider why
their country’s terrorism laws allow people to be jailed on the same unfair
logic,” said Danforth. He was alluding to the thousands of people, many of them
Kurds, jailed for airing views that would in most democracies be treated as
free speech but are deemed threatening to Turkey’s national security.
Turkey’s
image as a mentor of Islamic fanatics was spawned in the early days of the
Syrian conflict, when it looked the other way as thousands of foreign fighters
poured across its borders to join the Islamic state and other extremist groups.
Erdogan’s increasingly overt embrace of political Islam, such as the conversion
of the world-famous Hagia Sophia to a full-service mosque in July, has
delighted Muslim conservatives the world over but is steadily eroding Turkey’s
secular identity.
The first
Islamic prayers were due to be held
Friday in the former monastery of Christ the Saviour in Chora, another
Byzantine era church in Istanbul that was formally converted to a mosque from a
museum this year. The Kariye, as its known in Turkish, houses some of the most
exquisite frescoes of its time many of which have now been obscured by a white
panel. In a surprise announcement, however, the Religious Affairs Directorate
announced today that the inauguration had been postponed until further notice
because work on the conversion was still underway. There is speculation that
the delay was likely connected to the Nice attacks or the COVID-19 pandemic
rather than any change of heart over its status.
It hasn’t
helped that Turkish migrants have recently been targeting Armenians inside
France as tensions between the two communities rise over Turkey’s military
support for Azerbaijan’s ongoing campaign to wrest back the Armenian-majority
enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Footage this week from the city of Lyon showing a
group of men said to be Turks running amok in the streets shouting “Allahu
Akbar,” “Where are the Armenians” and “Where are you, sons of bitches” has
widely circulated on social media, as reported by the local online publication
Lyon.mag.
“The
perception of Turkey in France is extremely negative,” said Marc Pierini, a
former EU ambassador to Ankara and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe.
“Because every time Turkey pops up, it’s about Turkey creating a new problem,”
he told Al-Monitor in an interview this week. “Even the Muslims of France are
growing tired of Erdogan.”
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/10/turkey-condemns-nice-murder-extremist-islamist.html
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Europe's Test With Macron
By Burhanettin Duran
OCT 30,
2020
French
President Emmanuel Macron is in a dangerous tailspin. His government not only
turned a blind eye to offensive depictions of Prophet Muhammad, an insult
against Muslims’ sacred values but projected them on public buildings in the
name of free speech.
Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was understandably enraged by Macron’s
Islamophobic attitude and attacks on Islam’s prophet. Objecting to the French
president’s alienation of his country’s Muslim community, he questioned
Macron’s mental health.
Erdoğan
also warned European leaders against the looming danger: “Europe’s prudent,
moral and conscientious leaders must tear down the walls of fear and start
talking about Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment. Without further delay,
European politicians must stop the hate campaign led by Macron.”
The current
war of words is part of a broader confrontation between Erdoğan and Macron.
After Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, the
question of Islam fueled tensions between the two leaders.
The French
president, who knows that Turkey’s leader is opposed to some Arab rulers would
respond vocally to an attack on Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, engages in an
act of provocation. Instead of combatting systemic Islamophobia, he promotes
French secularism and attempts to impose a so-called reform agenda on Islam.
Macron
intends to pass new laws to further repress the Muslim way of life. His
government prepares to take fresh steps regarding the Islamic headscarf, the
training of imams and Arabic-language schools.
This is not
just a drift away from French secularism. The new policy also threatens to turn
France’s Muslim community into a “parallel society” and to empower advocates of
violence. The French media, too, endorsed Macron’s Islamophobic agenda and
leftist groups defending Muslims’ rights, not just terrorists, are regularly
targeted by media networks.
In the name
of combatting Islamic "separatism,” Macron is creating an imaginary
monster to be exploited on the campaign trail. Confident in the popularity of
anti-Erdoğanism in France and the rest of Europe, he seeks to equate Islam with
Turkey and its president.
There is no
doubt that Macron would like to make up excuses in order to get European
leaders to sanction Turkey in December. The French president desperately seeks
to avenge his losses to Turkey’s leader in North Africa, the Eastern
Mediterranean, Syria and the Caucasus.
What is
difficult to understand, however, is that the French president seems to
disregard the risks of insulting the sacred values of some 2 billion Muslims
and imposing his "reform" agenda on them. Why does Macron downplay
the problems that his country stands to experience as a result of alienating 30
million European Muslims – including over 5 million Muslims in France?
Judging by
the initial reactions, Europe won’t heed Erdoğan’s warning against “a lynching
campaign against Muslims akin to what the Jewry had to endure before World War
II.” Marine Le Pen, who chairs the far-right National Rally (RN), has already
asked for a blanket ban on the Islamic headscarf in public places.
Let’s not
downplay the impact on far-right movements in European politics either as
centrist parties are increasingly vulnerable to racism and Islamophobia.
In Austria,
Sebastian Kurz, who dismissed a proposed ban on the Islamic headscarf as populism
in 2010, has since become a poster boy for that campaign and should serve as a
warning against the future course of European politics.
It seems
that this new generation of politicians did not serve Europe well. Racism and
Islamophobia are on the rise, as Austria and Germany join France in attempting
to “domesticate” Islam. In the name of integration, European governments put in
place mechanisms to forcibly transform, control and discipline the Islamic
faith and Muslims.
For the
record, efforts to create a French, German or Austrian Islam through state
policy could only backfire and would not only result in the arbitrary
limitation of the Muslim community’s religious freedoms but also make Europe
surrender to a wave of authoritarianism. It doesn’t matter whether one draws
parallels between the current developments and Europe in the 1930s or the
Middle Ages. It is a recipe for disaster.
Macron,
whose stated purpose is to build an Islamic Enlightenment, sends Europe down a
dangerous path. Endorsements from Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) won’t change the fact that Prophet Muhammad is being insulted or cover up
Macron’s arrogant project of “Islamic engineering.” Nor will they silence
Erdoğan’s righteous protest.
Let us not
forget that the Turkish president has warned Europe against a danger that
Macron seems desperate to create.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/europes-test-with-macron
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URl: https://newageislam.com/middle-east-press/middle-east-press-attacking-muslims/d/123316
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