Swedish rallies in support of Muslims draw thousands after mosques attacks

Swedish rallies in support of Muslims draw thousands after mosques attacks

    Thursday, January 08, 2015   No comments

Thousands of people have rallied across Sweden expressing solidarity and support for Muslims after three attacks on mosques in just one week, which left five people injured. The participants had the slogan “Do not touch my mosque.”



Journalist estimates put the number of people taking part in the nationwide protest at around 3,000.

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Britain must work with regimes that have abused human rights, says William Hague

Britain must work with regimes that have abused human rights, says William Hague

    Thursday, February 14, 2013   No comments

Britain must be prepared to share intelligence with foreign governments that could prevent a terrorist attack in this country or abroad even if those countries have questionable human rights records, the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said today.

Speaking in the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks at a gas instillation in Algeria, Mr Hague said the Government will step up efforts to support the legal, criminal and human rights systems across North Africa.

Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute, he warned at the same that Britain faces a “stark choice” over whether to share intelligence with countries that could prevent a terrorist attack even if we do not have full confidence that the investigation and prosecution of the individuals involved would be in accordance with Western human rights law.“In many cases, we are able to obtain credible assurances from our foreign partners that give us the safeguards we need and the confidence that we can share information,” Mr Hague said.

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A Tribute to Islam, Earthen but Transcendent

A Tribute to Islam, Earthen but Transcendent

    Wednesday, April 18, 2012   No comments

By HOLLAND COTTER

DJENNÉ, Mali — As in so much of the Islamic world, “insha’Allah” — “if God wills it” — is how people punctuate conversations in this predominantly Muslim West African country. If you speak of starting a project, or taking a trip, or trying to pay a debt, the outcome is always understood to be conditional.

Recently Malians have had to trust heaven more than usual. The year’s millet crop arrived too early and much too thin. In late fall and winter there were attacks on Europeans by a Qaeda affiliate. The military overthrow of the government in Bamako, the nation’s capital, left one of Africa’s poorest nations shut off from the world. Meanwhile Tuareg rebels and Islamist forces have seized the northern half of the country, including Timbuktu.

Tourism, so vital to the economy, has been reduced to a trickle, though West Africa has never attracted the kind of monument-hungry crowds that flood into Egypt. Most travelers who come here are in search of “black” Africa — the Africa of so-called tribal art — and many are only dimly aware of the extraordinary vitality of Islamic culture, old and new, below the Sahara.

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The last crusade

The last crusade

    Sunday, December 04, 2011   No comments

by Kenan Malik

In the warped mind of Anders Breivik, his murderous rampages in Oslo and Utoya earlier this year were the first shots in a war in defence of Christian Europe. Not a religious war but a cultural one, to defend what Breivik called Europe's "cultural, social, identity and moral platform". Few but the most psychopathic can have any sympathy for Breivik's homicidal frenzy. Yet the idea that Christianity provides the foundations of Western civilisation, and of its political ideals and ethical values, and that Christian Europe is under threat, from Islam on the one side and "cultural Marxists" on the other, finds a widespread hearing. The erosion of Christianity, in this narrative, will lead inevitably to the erosion of Western civilisation and to the end of modern, liberal democracy.

The claims about the "Muslim takeover" of Europe, while widely held, have also been robustly challenged. The idea of Christianity as the cultural and moral foundation of Western civilisation is, however, accepted as almost self-evident – and not just by believers. The late Oriana Fallaci, the Italian writer who perhaps more than most promoted the notion of "Eurabia", described herself as a "Christian atheist", insisting that only Christianity provided Europe with a cultural and intellectual bulwark against Islam. The British historian Niall Ferguson calls himself "an incurable atheist" and yet is alarmed by the decline of Christianity which undermines "any religious resistance" to radical Islam. Melanie Phillips, a non-believing Jew, argues in her book The World Turned Upside Down that "Christianity is under direct and unremitting cultural assault from those who want to destroy the bedrock values of Western civilisation."

Christianity has certainly been the crucible within which the intellectual and political cultures of Western Europe have developed over the past two millennia. But the claim that Christianity embodies the "bedrock values of Western civilisation" and that the weakening of Christianity inevitably means the weakening of liberal democratic values greatly simplifies both the history of Christianity and the roots of modern democratic values – not to mention underplays the tensions that often exist between "Christian" and "liberal" values.

Christianity may have forged a distinct ethical tradition, but its key ideas, like those of most religions, were borrowed from the cultures out of which it developed. Early Christianity was a fusion of Ancient Greek thought and Judaism. Few of what are often thought of as uniquely Christian ideas are in fact so.

Take, for instance, the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps the most influential of all Christian ethical discourses. The moral landscape that Jesus sketched out in the sermon was already familiar. The Golden Rule – "do unto others as you would have others do unto you" – has a long history, an idea hinted at in Babylonian and Egyptian religious codes, before fully flowering in Greek and Judaic writing (having independently appeared in Confucianism too). The insistence on virtue as a good in itself, the resolve to turn the other cheek, the call to treat strangers as brothers, the claim that correct belief is at least as important as virtuous action – all were already important themes in the Greek Stoic tradition.

Conversely, perhaps the most profound contribution of Christianity to the Western tradition is also its most pernicious: the idea of Original Sin, the belief that all humans are tainted by Adam and Eve's disobedience of God in eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was a doctrine that led to a bleak view of human nature; in the Christian tradition it is impossible for humans to do good on their own account, because the Fall has degraded both their moral capacity and their willpower.

The story of Adam and Eve was, of course, originally a Jewish fable. But Jews read that story differently to Christians. In Judaism, as in Islam, Adam and Eve's transgression creates a sin against their own souls, but does not condemn humanity as a whole. Adam and Eve were as children in the Garden of Eden. Having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, they had to take responsibility for themselves, their decisions and their behaviour. In Judaism, this is seen not as a "fall" but as a "gift" – the gift of free will.

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